It Was The Best Of Times, It Was The Meh Of Times

Five Things I Loved About the Season

1. Paul Martin. I picked Paulie Martin as my favorite player based on the fact that he wasn’t too terrible the year before. We’d all accepted that he wasn’t going to be the next Niedermayer, or even the next half-way decent puck-carrying d-man that we really needed. But he wasn’t terrible so it seemed safe to pick him as a favorite. Then he went and had a truly fantastic season. He played tons of minutes, was completely unflappable in every situation, stepped almost seamlessly into the role of the #1 d-man, and showed a comfort level with when to rush and when not to. So he was called out by his own father on TV for not being able to finish; he still won our hearts and minds.

2. Tom Gulitti’s Fire and Ice blog. The Devils are such a tight-lipped organization that not only do we not hear about injuries or contract situations, we also don’t hear any fluff behind-the-scenes stuff. Until now. Gulitti brought beleaguered Devils fans into the light this season by including in his blog tidbits like Mike Rupp’s suggestion box, Paulie Martin’s heroics when a fire broke out in the Devils parking lot, and what the boys thought of the movies they saw with Marty Brodeur as part of his playoff pre-game ritual. These little glimpses into life in the dressing room brought Devils fans closer to the team for the first time in ages and made the season so much more fun.

3. Hockey in HD. We’ve been hearing for something like ten years that HD would save hockey as a televised sport. I remember sitting in the Devils premium-seat season ticket holder lounge something like eight or nine years ago and looking at the HD TV they had set up thinking, “That’s pretty cool, but it’s so far off!” Well, it’s here now, and it’s worth the wait. This was the first season I got to see more than a handful of games in HD. Now that I’ve had a taste of it, I don’t ever want to go back.

4. Road tripping. The season’s highlight for me was driving to Buffalo and Pittsburgh to meet new friends and see great hockey games (or rather, two good ones and one horrifically awful one). There’s nothing better than bidding work adieu for a week and living the life of a hockey vagabond, where one’s one obligation is getting to the rink on time. If anyone wishes to pay me to do this for a living… Just sayin’.

5. SportSquee’s “Fly On The Wall” series. Margee wrote a series of masterpieces this season that went beyond laugh-out-loud funny. But best of all, they reminded me how much better the season is when one takes the time to poke gentle fun at players on all the teams, not just one’s own.

Five Things I Found Annoying This Season

1. Shoot-Outs. This season pushed me to the brink with the goddamn shoot-out. Obviously I didn’t go over the edge about post-OT-shenanigans and didn’t forsake hockey altogether but this season I could see a day when it might come to that. It’s just that bad. I honestly didn’t think shoot-outs would last two years, and yet they’re still there. I know that time after time people have proven that the shoot-out and the 3rd point don’t change the standings, but the fact remains that perfectly hard-fought games are decided by a individual contest of super skills. It’s just wrong.

2. The unbalanced schedule. I could not have been more tired of seeing divisional rivals on the calendar this year. By the time the playoffs rolled around I just could not take one more game against the Rangers.

3. Niedermayer and Selanne unretiring. This nonsense of retired-or-not was such an unwelcome addition to the NHL world. It was annoying enough when NFLers and NBAers did it; I was hoping hockey would stay above that fray. That it’s looking more and more like a move by Burke to circumvent the cap doesn’t make it any more admirable.

4. Slim-fit sweaters. Mercifully the Devils dodged the total-redesign bullet, but the massive changes that did go down with other teams are enough to annoy me.

5. Discovering how little perspective fans have on rival fanbases. This was the season I read a Caps fan calling Sabres fans “classless” for stepping on a picture of Ovechkin. Honestly, what has the world come to?