The Gaming Den

Everyone needs to blow off some steam from time to time, and there's too much going on in politics for half of this board to be the place. Also, it's the Stanley Cup playoffs. Let's discuss people hitting a ball (a puck is a flat ball) back and forth, and why our local team is better at it than your local team.

Hockey is like soccer, except interesting and with more equipment (we used brooms and goals in the street as kids). The main differences are: it's on ice so things move faster, there are walls preventing people and the puck from leaving the field of play, incidental contact is no big deal because you're on ice (sure, these players can weaving in and out while skating backwards, but the conceit is they can't just dodge the person from the other team who has the puck). Obviously intentional violence will get you taken off the ice for a time out, which also leaves your team short an active player.

Offsides is probably similar: you can't cross the blue line (near the center) into the opposing side before the puck. If the puck leaves the area, you have to leave and return before you can touch the puck again. This gives the defense some interesting tactical possibilities (forcing half of the opposing offense offsides so they have to leave and are out of formation is nice).

Icing is when the puck crosses the red center line and then the opposing team's goal line without being touched. The penalty is a face off in one of the circles near your goal. This keeps the defense from just hitting the puck wherever.

Combining those 2, the defense's choices are: hit to your own team>>hit the puck off someone>hit to opposing team>icing.

The only thing I know about hockey is the Bruins. If they aren't in it, I have nil interest.

... Not that I'd be super interested to begin with, but with hometown teams I feel obligated to show something.

I remember floor hockey being a particularly brutal pick for gym class. And I grew up & out before the other kids in my class, so I was usually the one dishing out the brutality. Ah, memories...

I got excited to watch hockey tonight, but apparently only Boston is playing. I'm more invested in this game than Toronto is. How do you get down by 2 in only 17.5 minutes?

I don't care about either team, but I also don't get to watch a good game. This is the most shameful thing I've seen in sports, and I grew up watching the Twins and the Vikings.

Yeah, well, we won. So there.

GO BRUINS!

So, how about that missed call during the Stanley Cup?

Ra Salvatore played hockey and incorporated it into Drizzt books which is cool

I've heard the NBA is debating "should players be allowed any say in which team employs them?"

On one side it appears to be "no, it's just a bunch of black people being uppity," and on the other "yes, why is making it more difficult to take advantage of employees not automatically the choice people want?"

Anyone have a more nuanced set of explanations?

The ability to trade players in sports has always seemed a bit slavey. How would that be accepted in any other industry?

I remember, as a child, being appalled at the notion that players could be traded between teams, rather than simply hired away from one.

Some NBA specific context for those who may be interested:


The player movement controversies in the NBA are generally a bit more class struggle than self-destructive racism. The NBA draft was originally a pantomime of an NFL system dating from the 1930s and thus predates blacks dominating league play in either sport but it's one of those ugly areas where the goal is making mad bank, the method is collusion and racism merely greases the wheels by tamping down on the sympathy the players can engender from what was once a primarily white audience.

Anyway, the current spate of anti-player movement sentiment is a self-inflicted wound on the part of the owners. First, the owners pushed for shorter player contracts so they could escape from prior bad decisions more quickly. Second, the league wanted to address the fact that for various reasons successful and/or big market teams have an easier time re-signing players than teams that are weak and/or from small markets even when you factor in that there is an individual player contract maximum. In a hilariously self-defeating attempt to provide incumbent teams an extra carrot to dangle the league implemented rules that make award winning players eligible for an ultra rich "supermax" contract when re-signing with teams that drafted them. The unintended consequence is that players understandably expect the supermax the moment they qualify but signing a bubble player who barely qualifies is crippling and something teams desperately want to avoid, a situation that can lead to an early divorce when the player realizes the team isn't committed to them long term. And remember how I said contracts are short now? Yeah, it's now possible for teams to find themselves in a situation where they sign a guy for four years only to be facing down a trade request in year two because the agent and player are savvy enough to realize the team is under immense pressure to move them quickly before the contract becomes so short that the trade value is reduced to nil.

The end result has been hilarious. So far the supermax has been doled out to four guys: Steph Curry, James Harden, Russell Westbrook and John Wall. Of the four, three likely would have re-signed with their old teams anyway and the fourth (Wall) is now considered the worst contract in the league because he blew out his Achilles'. The other guys who qualified for a supermax so far have just ended up in messy breakups when the team declined to put a ring on it. Fans are self-interested though and are more likely to side with their franchise than the player, however.

Apparently there's a cricket league in Canada which has signed some big names from overseas (from places where cricket is a tradition). Does anyone actually from Canada care about it?

I caught a game between Serena Williams and some other lady (Martic?) at the bar the other day.

Apparently they don't have "indoors" in tennis, so both of them looked like they were dying. When I was watching, about half of the shots went into the net, and a few times Martic watched the ball just pass because she was too tired to go after it.

I understand that part of athleticism is pushing your body, but I don't see where watching people barely able to function adds anything to the game.

In most sports it's not which is why teams have benches and substitutions.

I just read that the Minnesota Gophers football team, who have floated around #5 in the Big 10 (which is now 12 teams, unlike the 10-team Big 12) for as long as I can remember, might be competing for the Big 10 championship this year.

I think UFC is a sport. Anyway, racist got his ass beat.

We got any Boston fans here?


Edit: What even in the fuck is wrong with people?