Sports. Honestly. Since 2011

FISH ON SPORTS: NHL Chants, MLB Starts and NBA Beefs

Great to be back once again this week. In case you missed them, here are the stories that made headlines this past week in the world of pro sports:

NHL CHANTS

We only have about two weeks left until the end of this year’s regular season and teams are already gearing up for a long, tough playoff run. Or, as Toronto fans put it, “we don’t know what that feels like”.

In an effort to loosen things up in practice, Leafs coach Randy Carlyle had the team scrimmage using some rubber balls instead of pucks. I’m not a fan of this move – I mean, why waste it in practice when you could be giving your team the balls they need to hold onto a third period lead?

It got so bad during last weekend’s home stand that fans started chanting “Let’s Go Raptors” in the middle of the Leafs game. I haven’t seen someone from Toronto switch allegiances that drastically since Rob Ford went from a crack pipe to a bong.

Canucks forward David Booth uploaded a picture online this week of him locking lips with a grizzly bear. He said he wanted to learn how to get closer to something that could bite his head off without getting hurt in preparation for his end-of-year meeting with John Tortorella.

Nashville goalie Pekka Rinne will don a new mask that was conceptualized by a local fan. The fan in question tried his best to capture the essence of the team – as a result, the final design shows a bunch of Predators giving up a powerplay goal.

 

NCAA

The Final Four matchups are set to kick off on Saturday. I’m very excited – I can finally find out which group of bastards I can blame my busted bracket on this year.

Florida coach Billy Donovan will join an exclusive group of coaches, which includes John Wooden and Mike Krzyzewski, if he manages to win a third National Championship this weekend. The group’s name? “Guys Most Likely To Turn Down Lucrative NBA Head Coaching Jobs”.

Rapper LL Cool J is currently in first place in the Celebrity division of CBS Sports’ Bracket challenge. His family is telling him to be ruthless and keep his top spot – in fact, if anyone manages to pass him in the standings, his mama said knock them out.

 

MLB

The opening week of the Major League Baseball season has not been short on entertaining moments. Mike Trout hit a homerun at his first at-bat of the year, Grady Sizemore did the same in a triumphant return to baseball, and CC Sabathia proved he’s better at finding his favorite meal on the local Whitecastle menu than he is at finding the strike zone.

Interesting fact about Cabrera’s new contract: the money he’ll make per at-bat is now more than the median household income in the state of Michigan. This isn’t really surprising though – he needs an entire household’s worth of pastries to tide him over in between plate appearances.

Milwaukee outfielder Ryan Braun got a standing ovation before his first AB of the season at Miller Park. I’m shocked frankly – I didn’t know that many Wisconsin natives appreciated illegal steroid use.

The Pittsburgh Pirates outlasted the Chicago Cubs Wednesday night in a game that went on for nearly six hours. It was so long and painful to sit through, most baseball fans thought they were watching a Bud Selig press conference.

 

NBA

With the March Madness tournament nearly over, many NBA execs are saying that this year’s draft class is “over-hyped”. The general feeling is that most of these kids will become flops who failed to live up to high expectations – in other words, they’d fit right in on the Knicks roster.

Interestingly enough, former NBA champion John Salley thinks the Knicks will reach the NBA Finals next year. I don’t think he’s really following the team closely though – he also said that Patrick Ewing will win Finals MVP.

Speaking of dysfunctional NBA rosters, the Pacers are experiencing some turmoil in their locker room. Apparently no one has the guts to make Lance Stephenson fly to their next game on a Malaysian airline.

But finally a good NBA story: as of this writing, the Spurs have won 19 straight games. Just to give you an idea of how many that is, take the number of games the Lakers were able to win in a row this season, and add 19.

 

AND FINALLY …

Time for a pre-weekend highlight-reel goal: check out Andreas Athanasiou dazzle during an OHL shootout earlier this week!

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