The Town of Odyssey

And the Ottawa Senators are officially moving on to the third round of the NHL playoffs! I was at my best friend's house all evening and missed the whole game, so I'm sorry I didn't get to see it, but if's definitely the result I was hoping for.

Catspaw wrote:And the Ottawa Senators are officially moving on to the third round of the NHL playoffs!

In other news, I hope the Rangers do well on the golf course.

Dr. Watson wrote:

Catspaw wrote:And the Ottawa Senators are officially moving on to the third round of the NHL playoffs!

In other news, I hope the Rangers do well on the golf course.

Aww, sorry, Watson. I forgot that you're such a Rangers fan. I don't hold anything against them, but I would rather see the Sens win...which they did. Are you vindictively cheering for the Penguins now?

The third round starts tomorrow already with Nashville vs. Anaheim. I don't have a strong preference in that series. I like both teams in general, but don't love either one. I was so pleased with Nashville for sweeping Chicago that I think they get the edge. I'm used to cheering for P.K. Subban from his years with the Canadiens, so that works in their favour as well.

I'm totally rooting for Nashville now that they knocked out those stinking Blues.

Hopefully San Antonio and Boston can pull off some miracles and give us an interesting NBA Finals.

Boston's first order of business is a miracle tonight.

Look man, I have only lived in 3 sports cities during my life. Two are terrible sports cities, one is San Francisco. I'm in no hurry to see the Warriors era end.

Woohoo! Big win for the Sens over the Pens tonight! 5-1 is a pretty decisive victory, especially since it was 4-0 with time to spare before the first period ended. No guarantees for game 4, but all those Penguin injuries have got to be playing a factor here.

USA! USA! USA!

At any rate, if Isaiah Thomas ends up in the Basketball HOF, how does that work?...

The Nashville Predators are moving on to the Stanley Cup finals for the first time in franchise history! They took down the Anaheim Ducks in 6 games, with a lot of the credit going to the amazing goaltending they've been getting from Pekka Rinne. It looks like they have an awesome fanbase who were going crazy cheering for them tonight, so I'm sure things will be crazy in the finals!

Well here it is, GS vs CLE, who could have predicted? Oh yeah, everyone did. People can try convincing themselves it means we're having great basketball all they want, but the honest truth is having the same final for three years is not good for the NBA. The entire season and postseason is meaningless; we legitimately could have just flipped a coin on opening day and said heads the Warriors win the trophy tails the Cavaliers do and skipped the entire year of basketball because it was completely pointless. These teams put on some good games, but it is not good for the sport. I know multiple people who are big basketball fans who are not watching a second of this series. To people not connected with either team this is boring. These two teams being here every year doesn't mean we have good basketball, it means we have two good teams. Good basketball means having more than one good team in each conference so we avoid the same final series every year.

I'm going to have to disagree with you. The bad teams should not get a handout and a free ride to the Finals as you are suggesting. Instead, the teams that lose Conference titles should simply get high draft picks--- a much better solution!

How did you interpret my post as bad teams should make the final? I clearly said what is truly good for the sport is to have multiple good teams in each conference so you can see good basketball from several sources, compared to having one good team on each side making the final series the same inevitability year after year and that single matchup being the only alleged source of good basketball.

Do you really disagree that having eight teams who could contend for the championship in a given year would make the NBA better than having two teams who sweep through the playoffs?

Yes. Yes. Yes! I disagree.

Providing incompetent GMs, underdeveloped players, and reprobate coaches with any kind of boost cheapens the quality of having the greatest players form the greatest teams. The NBA is designed for teams to enjoy spurts of good performance, then be moved over to make way for other teams. Busting up that system would create the kind of artificial excitement and celebrated mediocrity we expect from NASCAR and the WWE, not America's 2nd-foremost sport!

Again, who is saying to boost bad teams? I clearly, unmistakably said I want there to be multiple good teams.

If you think it's so great that two teams are this dominant I don't understand why you wouldn't think it would be even better if every team could play like them. Having a league full of Warrior caliber teams would actually be having good basketball. Having just one is just having one good team, as I said before. And in fact it draws the level of how good they really are into some question as the talent discrepancy is so obvious they may not actually be as good as they look as a good portion of their success could simply be due to having no competition.

May I ask a question? How do you fill a league with Warrior-caliber teams?

There is only one guy to can shoot from behind the arc at halfcourt and he has only one sidekick. There is only one Kevin Durant, a 7-foot small forward, and we certainly have a limited supply of Draymond Green. What are we supposed to do, break them up and ship them to different teams? That would certainly not be fair and there'd be alotta bitterness there.

I'm talking about what the ideal state of the league would be, to see genuinely great basketball rather than a couple good teams put on some good individual games. I didn't say there is a simple path to getting there right now. But it should still be the desired state for a fan of the sport.

I couldn't see NBA game 4 tonight. Anybody who did have thoughts on the officiating?

I actually missed it as well, but from what I read they finally started giving out technical fouls so sounds like an improvement.

The NHL playoffs are over. The Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup in a six-game final series, beating the underdog Nashville Predators 2-0 to win tonight. It was a bit of a bummer, since a big but irreversible mistake by the officials took away what almost definitely would have been a goal for the Preds when they blew the whistle thinking Murray (the Penguins goaltender) had the puck, but it really had trickled through his pads and the puck was just sitting right in front of the goal line, where a Preds player put it in the net right after the whistle was blown when it never should have been. Since the Penguins didn't score until there was less than two minutes left in the game, and the second goal was a late empty-netter, that's a pretty tough mistake to take. But hey, stuff happens, and it's not like the Preds didn't have other chances that they missed on.

The Penguins are the first back-to-back Stanley Cup winners in almost twenty years, dating back to the 1997-98 Detroit Red Wings, which is pretty impressive! Being a super old person, I have lots of fond memories of those Cup wins. I was a big Red Wings fan for a few years in the late 90s! *starts reminiscing about the good old days* *creaky voice* Why I remember when....

It was a really great 5/6 of a series! Refs messed up the finale big time.

Is there anyone else here glad that the Miami Marlins are finally getting rid of Jeffrey Loria and his dreadful managerial skills? Boy, I sure am