Reasons We Love Hockey Part 104

The 104th in our 118-part series.

The Infinite Promise of the Preseason

In the first week of preseason we’ve seen 3 of our Devils face serious injury. We’ve lost Colin White for a few games due to a severe laceration of his eyelid, Cam Janssen for who knows how long with a dumb separated shoulder injury (dude throws out his shoulder during one fight, gets angry he lost said fight, goes right back out to fight again and is now out for a prolonged period to have surgery; remind us again why we have this clown on our team?) and of course, we’ve lost Jamie Langenbrunner, the winger on what was our de facto top line from last season, for two months for a sports hernia. Usually, this should send us into a deep depression, knowing our season is lost. Fortunately there is a silver lining. This is all happening during the one time of year when we are buoyed by the infinite promise of a season not-yet started. Sure we’re looking an already-steep uphill climb to start the season, what with a 9-game road trip and a whole new system; adding the loss of one of our top forwards isn’t going to help the situation at all. But right now we can fall back on the idea that one of the young kids might, just might, step up in a big way. A few games into the season we’ll be pretty confident that none of them can and we should just write off all of 2007-2008 now, but until we get familiar with the kids, who’s to say Clarkson can’t save the day? Thus is the power of the Infinite Promise of a New Season. This is a fleeting sense of positivity, but we’ll relish it while we can.

Update

We wrote this Reason before Kevin Weeks sustained what is surely a concussion in tonight’s preseason loss to the Rangers. We know for a fact that the Devils goaltending prospects are weak (sorry Jordy) so we might have already reached the statute of limitations on this reason to love hockey.

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Reasons We Love Hockey Part 103

The 103rd in our 118-part series.

Unusual Player Bios

When we first started out as fans, Boomer went on a mission to obtain media guides from as many teams as possible. For some reason, poring over player bios seemed like a very worthwhile and rewarding project. This was back in the heyday of Brendan Shanahan’s fake bios (among his made-up accomplishments were serving as a ball boy at the US Open and appearing as an extra in “the Flinstones”) so there were still occasional tidbits worth giggling over. Then one year Shanny listed in his bio the hobbies “hunting and fishing” to poke fun at the fact that it seemed every other bio across the whole league contained either or both of the words “hunting” and “fishing”. This was all we needed to admit that scouring player bios would be neither worthwhile or rewarding. But it’s a hard habit to break altogether, so we’re eternally grateful for those players that buck the trends. We tip our hats to the guys who list a favorite food that isn’t chicken and pasta. We jump for joy for guys who list favorite vacation spots that aren’t Vegas or golf meccas. We love the guys who list a favorite book instead of just movies and TV shows. We especially love if that book is a long biography of Neil Young (Paulie Martin and “Shakey”) or a book that’s currently on an IPB Manor bookshelf (Mike Richter and “Guns, Germs and Steel”). Here’s hoping that as part of the league-wide trend toward more access to off-ice areas of hockey, players will be encouraged to show a little personality in their media bios. And if they’re not going to do that, we’d appreciate if they’d at least just make a few things up, just to reward those of us who are still reading.

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