2014 NHL PLAYOFF PREDICTIONS - THIS TIME, I WIN

I spent a chunk of yesterday preparing to enter The Warne Family Fund NHL playoff pool, which benefits the memory of my cousin Anna, and helps out the husband and son she left behind. I encourage you to sign up here for a mere $20 and enter your picks to win - there's stuff potentially in it for you, and hey, if you're American it's even numerically cheaper than it is in Canada, ya hoser.

That said, I filled out a playoff "bracket", assuming that was the pool they were running this time, but no, turns out it's a player-focused fantasy hockey thing, so you'll win on the basis of individual, not team performances. If you win, that is. So there I sat with my carefully-considered bracket, not really knowing what to do with it. Suddenly I knew what to do. Share it on The Hedonist Jive. My 30 readers love ice hockey!!

Western Conference - 1st Round
Dallas Stars over Anaheim Ducks (!)
San Jose Sharks over Los Angeles Kings
Colorado Avalanche over Minnesota Wild
St. Louis Blues over Chicago Blackhawks

Eastern Conference - 1st Round
Boston Bruins over Detroit Red Wings
Montreal Canadians over Tampa Bay Lightning
Pittsburgh Penguins over Columbus Blue Jackets
New York Rangers over Philadephia Flyers

Semifinals
San Jose Sharks over Dallas Stars
St. Louis Blues over Colorado Avalanche
Boston Bruins over Montreal Canadians
New York Rangers over Pittsburgh Penguins

Conference Finals
San Jose Sharks over St. Louis Blues
Boston Bruins over New York Rangers

Stanley Cup Finals
Boston Bruins over San Jose Sharks

I have found, like many hockey pundits, that many of these series are the proverbial "too close to call". Do I believe that my San Jose Sharks are the best team in the Western Conference? I don't know, do I? Or is it just kind of their turn? I know that I believe that Anaheim and Pittsburgh are paper tigers, and that the Blackhawks' time is probably done. Boston is likely unstoppable - who's better than they are in goal, defense and Top 4 line balance? - and that's why I'm picking them to take it all, again, three years after the last time they did it. Unlike in Vancouver in 2010, there will be no riots on the streets of San Jose when it's done. Maybe some spontaneous Javascript, or some awful funk-punk music, but no riots, I promise.

THE HEDONIST JIVE 2014 BASEBALL PREDICTIONS

Baseball's already here, and I'm just doing my predictions now? Rest assured that these picks were carefully assembled after much study over the weekend, before the "real" opening day (but after the faux opening day in Australia), and it's only now that I've been able to get to a computer to peck them out. These often-wrong prognostications are something I enjoy doing publicly every year, and sometimes, like last year, my picks aren't half bad (Boston Red Sox, anyone?). Usually I'm way off, but hey, so are most would-be pundits. There's a reason we're not talking about the 2013 World Champion Atlanta Braves. Maybe this is the year I get it right.

Without further tarry, here's what I'm pretty sure is going to happen in Major League Baseball in 2014. Commentary follows below.

NL West
1. Los Angeles Dodgers
2. San Francisco Giants
3. Arizona Diamondbacks
4. San Diego Padres
5. Colorado Rockies

NL Central
1. St. Louis Cardinals
2. Cincinnati Reds
3. Pittsburgh Pirates
4. Milwaukee Brewers
5. Chicago Cubs

NL East
1. Washington Nationals
2. Atlanta Braves
3. New York Mets
4. Miami Marlins
5. Philadelphia Phillies

AL West
1. Oakland A's
2. Texas Rangers
3. Anaheim Angels
4. Seattle Mariners
5. Houston Astros

AL Central
1. Kansas City Royals
2. Detroit Tigers
3. Cleveland Indians
4. Chicago White Sox
5. Minnesota Twins

AL East
1. New York Yankees
2. Baltimore Orioles
3. Boston Red Sox
4. Tampa Bay Rays
5. Toronto Blue Jays

NL Wild Card = San Francisco Giants over Cincinnati Reds
AL Wild Card = Boston Red Sox over Baltimore Orioles

NL Divisional Playoffs =     
Washington Nationals over San Francisco Giants
St. Louis Cardinals over Los Angeles Dodgers
 
AL Divisional Playoffs =    
Oakland A's over Boston Red Sox
New York Yankees over Kansas City Royals

NL Championship = Washington Nationals over St. Louis Cardinals
AL Championship = New York Yankees over Oakland A's

World Series = Washington Nationals over New York Yankees


A few comments:

• It burns and hurts down to the fiber of my being to pick the Los Angeles Dodgers to smoke my San Francisco Giants in the NL West, and for the potentially even more hated New York Yankees to go all the way to the World Series. Alas, this is the year that certain payrolls really make the difference and pay dividends to owners and fans alike in those cities. I mean really, how long did you think the Yankees would be absent from the Series? At least I have them getting beaten in what could be a quick series in which the Nationals' pitching totally dominates.
• Why is Pablo Sandoval pictured in a preview in which the Giants merely make the Wild Card? Because he's awesome.
• I'm a big believer in the Kansas City Royals, my favorite American League team. If they're ever going to make it happen, it's right now. I expect everyone to click together and that they'll hold off the Detroit Tigers, whom many have winning the World Series but who I think are due for a major comeuppance. No playoffs in Detroit this year.
• You know, outside of that and perhaps my elevation of the Yankees, my picks are pretty conventional. Washington is sort of a consensus choice to win it all this year, and no one's betting against the Cardinals, Dodgers and even the A's. I tinkered with the idea of the Anaheim Angels putting it together and making a strong run, but I truly don't think they've got the pitching, and expect even their top two guys (Weaver and Wilson) to fall off this year. Like Detroit, I feel that Texas' day has come and passed, and they'll be contenders but won't be able to unseat the Mighty A's for the third year in a row.

Let's both check back in October and see how we did, OK?

COMMENCING FOOTBALL DORKERY

Not soccer, but football. In the nine months since my last post on the subject of soccer/football, I have decided to "go native" and celebrate the term football when in conversation about The Beautiful Game, thus striking a stake in the heart of know-nothing Americans who claim that their inferior game is, in fact, football. "Soccer". Pffft. For shame.

And hey, guess what? I'm timing this post to go live at the exact moment that the English Premiere League kicks off its 2013/2014 season. I'm psyched beyond belief, as the frat boys used to say back in the 80s. All the games are going to be live in the USA via the new NBC Sports Network, either on TV or on their mobile apps. Last time we talked about this topic, I was relaying my difficulty in picking an English team to follow that "matched my personality", or whatever. I didn't want a front-runner (Chelsea, Man U, Man City, Arsenal - the big four whom everyone seems to think will be the big four yet again), and I wasn't bold enough to side with a team who'd just been promoted, like last year's Queens Park Rangers (since relegated to the Champions League due to poor EPL performance) or this year's Crystal Palace, Hull City, or Cardiff (who are from some place called Wales that's apparently near England or something). I like underdogs, but how heartbreaking to side with a team that's likely going to get kicked around and slaughtered all year during their one chance in the bigs, before being themselves unceremoniously relegated. 

I took a wacky online test to see which team I should follow, and they told me Sunderland, because I said in the quiz that I thought panthers were cool and because Sunderland is known as "The Black Cats". Next! No, I decided to throw my lot in with a lovable loser, a team that were once on top and are now scraping near bottom but who may be seeing glory days again. The team supported by Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler - to say nothing of prime minister David Cameron. The team that won it all in 1981, a time when I couldn't help but see their name even in the Melody Maker, NME and Sounds music rags I was devouring stateside. A team from Birmingham, a city in which I've never been. Ladies and gentlemen, my new, most favoritest club in all of English football is ASTON VILLA. Look for the awesome purple Villa scarves, shirts and "kits" I'll be wearing all Fall and Winter in support of newly-beloved team.

We're going up today against a tough Arsenal squad, but I think the boys have some fight in 'em, and I wouldn't be surprised if we eke out a hard-fought 0-0 draw, or as the English say, "nil-nil". What could be more exciting? Make sure you stay close to this blog during the entire EPL season for loads of righteous Aston Villa sports talk, perhaps as often as 3-4 posts on that topic, per day. Cheers!

THE HEDONIST JIVE'S VERY IMPORTANT 2013 MIDSEASON BASEBALL UPDATE

It was late March, 2013. A middle-aged man residing in San Francisco, California sat down at his computer to graciously provide the good people of the world with a forecast of the Major League Baseball season that was soon to come. This man, only just a mortal man, and no prophet, believed in things – nay, could see things. Perhaps, as is surely apparent now, this man could in fact see things that others could not. This man looked at all the conventional wisdom of his day, and while absorbing some and discarding much, made bold prognostications that were devastatingly prescient, while being stupendously unconventional. The man picked the Boston Red Sox to win their division, the most difficult division in baseball – for instance. That baseball team is now in first place in that division. This same man believed in the Atlanta Braves, a team beloved by no man in March 2013, and a team currently in first place in their division as well. It is no mere accident that I know so much about this man and his ways, my friends – for I am that man.

Oh right, what about those Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, or the San Francisco Giants? Yeah well, what are you gonna do, right? It's baseball! I've been basking in the first half of the 2013 season, and, with its resumption today after the All-Star break layoff, I thought I'd offer up a few thoughts and observations for you to take with you through the end of the season:

• Sports Illustrated recalibrated their World Series predictions in their new issue, so I guess that gives the rest of us license to do the same. They have St. Louis beating Texas at the end. I'll stick with my World Champions-to-be the Atlanta Braves, this time beating the Detroit Tigers in 7 games instead of beating the Anaheim Angels of Los Angeles, who will miss the playoffs and suffer an offseason of acrimony, finger-pointing and bitter recrimination.

• Like you, I'm loving the Pittsburgh Pirates story. For a big part of my youth, they were a dominant team, but the last time they were any good, we were all 21 years younger. I had thought that the big surprise story this year would be the Kansas City Royals, and in some quarters, it's a big surprise that they're not contending. A little piece of every baseball fan will die if the Pirates collapse in the second half, and don't at least finish with their dignity intact and their first winning record since 1992. Is that too much to ask?

• My San Francisco Giants, currently 8 games under .500 and yet only 6.5 games out of first place, will do one of two dramatic things in the next 3 months, all without making the playoffs. I'd give them about a 60% chance to actually have a worse second half, and to get to a "rebuilding" mindset about 6 weeks from now, if not sooner. As baseball becomes a sport of prospects in their 20s, as opposed to a sport of expensive free agents in their 30s, look for the Giants to embrace the new trend and start selling off parts (Pence, Lincecum, Romo and so on) in favor of stocking the farm. Then again – there's a 40% chance they start playing really, really well, far better than their mostly-abysmal first half, just enough to contend for second place or a strong third, and call it an odd-year aberration on the way to their third straight even-year World Championship in 2014.

• I'm also looking forward to the Great Steroid Bust of 2013. Any day now, Major League Baseball is going to announce who's in trouble from the Biogenesis scandal. Clowns like A-Rod and Ryan Braun will be suspended, most likely for a long time, and even their own union has proactively announced that it won't defend them. It's clear that the players, the grand majority, are looking to move on from this story and the taint that comes from it on their own steroid-free performances. Who among us isn't looking askance at Chris Davis, rightly or wrongly, for instance? I'd like for this whole thing to be gone, with the dopers swept out for good and playing field metaphorically leveled again.

• Can the Oakland A's keep playing this well? Man, I hope so. I've actually been to more A's games this year than Giants games, and all of a sudden it's just a fantastic atmosphere over there in the disgusting, decrepit Oakland Coliseum. I haven't seen such excitement and fan unity & cohesion since the BillyBall days. They're a fun team with what appears to be a terrific set of individuals for the second year in a row, and my dream Series is them vs. the Pirates this October.

• Hedonist Jive's favorite ballplayers, as of July 2013, in no particular order (see my 2010 list here – it's funny to see how many of those guys are out of baseball, on different teams, or just flat-out stink now): Andrew McCutchen, Pablo Sandoval, Paul Goldschmidt, Mike Trout, Freddie Freeman, Jacoby Ellsbury, Alex Gordon, Yoenis Cespedes, Aroldis Chapman, Chris Sale, Yu Darvish, Shelby Miller, Madison Bumgarner, Tim Hudson, Craig Kimbrel, Grant Balfour. Why? I don't know. I like these guys, the way they play the game and stuff.

See you at the end of the season, when we do our annual post-mortem and hand out some hardware!

I THINK I KNOW WHO'S GOING TO WIN THE STANLEY CUP

Some pals from work asked me to join their NHL playoff pool this morning, and it's forced the issue to your benefit. Now you get to be the beneficiary of my prognostications, as you were last year, when I correctly picked the Pittsburgh Penguins to beat the Nashville Predators and win the Cup. Wait, lemme check that. Right, I was a little off on that one. I will say that this has been one of my favorite hockey seasons ever; my guess is it only being a strike-shortened 48 games, as opposed to 82, might have something to do with it. I've been following pretty closely and I feel really good about my upset pick to win it all this year, The St. Louis Blues. (If they DO in fact win, I'm gonna win something like 2,000 Norwegian kroner, which is approximately 27 bucks).

Here's what you should be looking for in May and June, round by round:

Round 1

Pittsburgh over New York Islanders
Montreal over Ottawa
Washington over New York Rangers
Toronto over Boston

Chicago over Minnesota
Detroit over Anaheim
San Jose over Vancouver
St. Louis over Los Angeles

Quarterfinals

Pittsburgh over Montreal
Toronto over Washington

Chicago over Detroit
St. Louis over San Jose

Semifinals

Pittsburgh over Toronto
St. Louis over Chicago

Stanley Cup Finals

St. Louis over Pittsburgh

THE HEDONIST JIVE 2013 BASEBALL PREDICTIONS

Every year in this space – well, the last 3 years anyway – we get the upcoming baseball season a little bit right and a lot wrong. On the former front, for 2012 I picked the San Francisco Giants to go to the World Series last year, and they did. In case you forgot, they even won the goddamn thing. On the latter front, I had the World Champs being the Texas Rangers, and while they made the silly 1-game wild card playoff, they were toast by that point, and lost to the Baltimore Orioles (!). I had the Orioles and Oakland A's finishing in last place in their divisions – in my defense, so did everyone else – and both made the playoffs. I did not predict the decline of the Phillies, nor the rise of the Nationals. I predicted the rise of the Royals (they stunk) and the mediocrity of the Cincinnati Reds (they were amazing). But the Giants won the World Series, just like they do every other year.

This year I'm going to buck some conventional wisdom, draw out some dark horses, piss on a few parades and go for broke with a few of my picks. I've done my homework, having read two season preview magazines. I listened to MLB Network Radio on Sirius XM a bunch during the offseason, and I think I've gleaned a little "insider" information that will allow my prognostication skills to really shine this year.

So without further "adieu", meet your 2013 World Champions – THE ATLANTA BRAVES. They'll be besting the LOS ANGELES ANGELS OF ANAHEIM in a 6-game series this October. I'm a big, perhaps foolhardy, believer in the Atlanta Braves, and feel like they underachieve relative to their talent level most years. But this year – that outfield! Both Upton brothers and Jason Heyward, at least two of whom will have monster years in 2013. Craig Kimbrel, the best relief pitcher in baseball by a mile. Freddie Freeman, only the sixth-place hitter on the team but who underachieved with a still-great .340 OBP and 94-RBI season last year. Expect him to rage this year. Tim Hudson, my favorite old guy in the majors. Kris Medlen, a guy who barely threw a bad pitch in 2012. Something about this team looks very fetching this year; would be funny that they only managed one World Series Championship with Chipper Jones in the lineup for 20+ years, but that they'll bring one home this year in their first year without him. Enjoy your La-Z-Boy, "Chipper"!

More insight and trash talk after you absorb my picks (playoff-bound teams in bold):

NL East

1. Atlanta Braves
2. Washington Nationals
3. Philadelphia Phillies
4. New York Mets
5. Miami Marlins

NL Central

1. Cincinnati Reds
2. St. Louis Cardinals
3. Pittsburgh Pirates
4. Milwaukee Brewers
5. Chicago Cubs

NL West

1. San Francisco Giants
2. Los Angeles Dodgers
3. Arizona Diamondbacks
4. Colorado Rockies
5. San Diego Padres

AL East

1. Boston Red Sox
2. Toronto Blue Jays
3. Baltimore Orioles
4. New York Yankees
5. Tampa Bay Rays

AL Central

1. Detroit Tigers
2. Kansas City Royals
3. Cleveland Indians
4. Chicago White Sox
5. Minnesota Twins

AL West

1. Los Angeles Angels
2. Texas Rangers
3. Oakland A's
4. Seattle Mariners
5. Houston Astros

NL Wild Card = Los Angeles Dodgers over Washington
AL Wild Card = Texas over Toronto

NL Divisional Playoffs =     
Atlanta over Los Angeles Dodgers
Cincinnati over San Francisco
 
AL Divisional Playoffs =    
Detroit over Texas
Los Angeles Angels over Boston

NL Championship = Atlanta over Cincinnati
AL Championship = Los Angeles Angels over Detroit

World Series = Atlanta over Los Angeles Angels

• Did you choke on your coffee when you saw last year's last-place Boston Red Sox as my NL East champs, in what's universally hailed as the best division in baseball? I'm pretty sure I'm alone on this one this year, but I'm of the mind that their 2012 was a bizarre aberration of injuries, off years and Bobby Valentine, and that the true talent level of this team laid latent all year. We all have bad years, don't we?

• That division has 5 very good teams, but two of them are going to regress big-time this year, and I'm super totally psyched to report that one of them will be The New York Yankees, you guys!!! I loathe the Yankees viscerally, and I am dying for them to finally have the sort of lost, soul-sucking, ache-in-the-pit-of-the-stomach year the Red Sox had, or that my Giants have had more than half of the years since I've been a fan (i.e. 1977 up through now).

• I (incorrectly) predicted it last year as well, but the Kansas City Royals will be quite good this year, just narrowly missing the playoffs due to the rise of Toronto, and the Texas Rangers still having a little something left in the tank. They're my American League team that I follow, and people of Kansas City, let me be the first to congratulate you across the plains that your team will finally be worth watching for a change this year.

• (Note: Corrected this on 3/22 because I changed my mind with the Dodgers' injuries and a general malaise drifting up from LA....I now think the Giants will take the NL West crown). Just to show you I'm not a total homer, I've got the hated LA Dodgers beating my Giants this year in the NL West. Oh sure, we'll still make the playoffs, but unfortunately, they will be awesome. No, it's not because of their heralded new guys, it's because Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw, their homegrown studs, will lay waste to the rest of baseball this year. A full, healthy year of Matt Kemp. God help us all.

• I like the Nationals, just like everyone else, but I see a little "regression to the mean" this year. What if LAST year was their big wad-shot, and now they'll have to scrap to keep up with true giants like The Atlanta Braves? That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

See you April 1st! Can we just get spring training over with already?

PRETTY SURE I'M GETTING INTO SOCCER

If you follow the sporting life in the United States, you may have noticed that football aka soccer seems to have clicked a notch or two higher than ever before in American consciousness. Denigrated as an effete sport for "the rest of the word" during most of my lifetime, or dismissed as ponderously impenetrable or out-and-out boring by everyone else, there's still always been that hope that soccer could "take off" beyond the thousands of youth leagues around this country and actually have a professional class of athletes and a citizenry who truly care about the outcomes of games. The last two World Cups were a start; the Women's World Cup in 2011 also generated a ton of coverage and interest (as well it should have - those were some of the most tense and dramatic sporting events I've ever seen), but it seems like this past year we might have seen a slow tipping point, in which the US of A finally admits that soccer, aka original recipe football, is actually a pretty spectacular game.

Like any frontrunner, I'm right there with 'em. It also has something to do with hockey being on strike, and the slow-in-coming realization that the NBA is virtually meaningless until the playoffs start, what with 16 teams, several with sub-.500 records, getting in. Any hey, it's not like I just discovered the sport. As a card-carrying 45-year-old, I can attest to having attended NASL professional matches back in the late 70s. San Jose Earthquakes vs. the Tulsa Roughnecks, anyone? I was there. I got swept into the US's quickie enthusiasm for Pele and this league for a year or two, and when that evaporated, I barely paid attention to professional soccer again until this past decade. (In the US, there really wasn't much to pay attention to - and before the internet, trying to follow the English Premiere League was for hardcore soccer freaks or expats only).

In the internet era, I've had several false starts in trying to get into the game. About five years ago I swore I'd learn everything I could about the sport - not just rules, but history, strategy, players' names, all the teams and so on. I reckoned I'd focus on the English premier league, because that's where the majority of the world's great players are (a little less true now than it was even a half-decade ago). I needed a team. Having learned a little bit about Tottenham Hotspur on a trip to the UK in 2000, and understanding from having read "Fever Pitch" that they were the perennial London underdog to cross-city arch-rival Arsenal, I cast my lot in with them. That lasted about two weeks, when I got busy at work or something and forgot to check the standings for a few games. I concluded that my heart wasn't in it, and since the games weren't on TV anyway, I went back to the NHL and NBA for my non-baseball sports fix.

Things have changed pretty intensely the past few years. While I've been able to go deep during the World Cup every four years, having watched at least 10-12 games each in 2002, 2006 and 2010, it's only the past few years that ESPN has regularly shown English Premiere League games on their main channel, the one I get, albeit usually at 6 in the morning where I live. That's OK - that's what TiVo's for - and it ain't like I've got a dozen pals who are going to text me smack-talk about the Everton vs. Stoke City game. The US league, the MLS, is growing rapidly and seems to have finally found financial stability. Some of the markets - Kansas City, Seattle and Portland in particular - have a large and absolutely rabid fanbase, easily as intense and devoted as the fans of virtually any NHL or NBA team.

The MLS "game" is admittedly minor-league stuff, years behind its EPL counterpart across the pond in developing and recruiting top talent. I watched some of this year's playoffs, and was not only frustrated with the dumb rules (you play 2 games against your opponent, and whomever has the most goals across both games in total advances), I found the play a sad shadow of the English (and Spanish, and Italian, and German) league. Yet it's a start. There's a whole infrastructure of soccer resources I'm discovering to feed my growing mania for the sport. Dozens of websites, obviously; the Fox Soccer Channel (I don't get it, but their mobile app is pretty sweet); ESPN's weekly live games from England (more on the Watch ESPN app); a SiriusXM radio station devoted to 24/7 coverage and talk about the sport; and tons of podcasts and blogs. I'm soaking it all up and paying an inordinate amount of attention to the sport these last few months.

On that last note, I need to make a particular callout to the Men In Blazers podcast, SiriusXM radio show and blog. These guys - Rog and Dave-o - are British expats living in the US, on a mission to bring football/soccer mania to Americans in the manner they grew up in back in the UK. They're extremely cutting, funny, quick-witted and full of weirdo in-jokes that you need to be a GFOP (Good Friend of the Pod) to understand. It's done a great deal to stoke my new soccer fandom, and I thank them profusely for it. 

So now all I need is a team. There's no way I'm going to go for one of the sheik- or conglomerate-owned powerhouses like Manchester United (who are OMG amazing to watch, however) or Chelsea or Manchester City. Arsenal is too storied and popular. Tottenham, maybe. But what about some upstart whom I can grab onto now while they're decent enough, and ride all the way to glory when they get better? Someone like West Ham, or Aston Villa, or Fulham or even a team lurking in the Championship league (the minor league one step below the Premiership)? I'm still working on it. If you've got any ideas, let me know.

EVERYONE INTO THE HOCKEY POOL

I know I went a little overboard in my criticism of NHL hockey two months ago. I’d just come off a run of the regular season blahs. My two main sources of hockey information early in the season were my weekly subscription to Canada’s HOCKEY NEWS and the Toronto-based 24/7 NHL Home Ice channel on Sirius XM, which I often listen to in my car. Both were/are so dry, and yet so effusive about uninteresting developments in the hockey world that their utter mediocrity caused me to blindly curse the sport, curse the players, and curse Canadians in general. Plus my team (San Jose) were tanking. I was sour, and I turned to the NBA for succor. There I found, as I always do, a podcast/media network full of great talkers and great writers, able to shine a light on an often ridiculously entertaining sport full of funny, weird and transcendently superhuman athletes. I went a little overboard in acting like I’d traded my NHL badge for an NBA badge, but you might recall I promised I’d return to the fold come playoff time.

Here we are. Playoffs start today, with several games tonight and tomorrow, including brain-melting series like Pittsburgh/Philadelphia and Detroit/Nashville. Even my own San Jose Sharks snuck in that last week of the dreary regular season, and have at least an even shot of taking down the St. Louis Blues starting tomorrow night. Looking back at my 2011-12 predictions for the season, I was able to correctly prognosticate 13 of the 16 teams that made the playoffs, though I don’t believe there’s much chance of my preseason wish for a San Jose/Washington Stanley Cup final coming true – though both did make it in, “and you never know what can happen in the playoffs”, right?

One thing I’m noticing is the increasing popularity of playoff hockey pools. I got asked to be in two this year and accepted. One benefits a relative of mine who’s struggling with cancer right now; another benefits a far less lofty cause, and provides the winner with multiple craft beers from around the country. Folks are deservedly treating the NHL playoffs with the “second season”, March Madness-like respect they deserve and are choosing brackets, predicting upsets and are wagering real cash money on their picks. Here are mine:

Round 1

New York Rangers over Ottawa

Boston over Washington
New Jersey over Florida
Pittsburgh over Philadelphia

Vancouver over Los Angeles

San Jose over St. Louis
Chicago over Phoenix
Nashville over Detroit

Quarterfinals

Boston over New York

Pittsburgh over New Jersey

Vancouver over San Jose
Nashville over Chicago

Semifinals

Pittsburgh over Boston

Nashville over Vancouver

Stanley Cup Finals

Pittsburgh over Nashville

I won’t go into too much detail except for to say that Pittsburgh might be the most deep, unstoppable team I’ve seen since the Colorado Avalanche Stanley Cup team of a decade ago. Even if Sidney Crosby gets his face torn off by the Flyers this week and is concussed right back onto the bench for the rest of the playoffs, the Penguins will come out of the East rather handily. I’m also a big believer in the Nashville Predators, hailing from that hockey hotbed of Tennessee, with an arena right around the corner from the Grand Old Opry. Pekka Rinne is my favorite goalie in the NHL – a consistent, Brodeur-like superstar not subject to the whims and fates of the calendar the way most goalies are – a huge complaint of mine when you see 30-year-old Mike Smith (who?) working miracles in Phoenix all of a sudden, or Ilya Bryzgalov play one week like Patrick Roy and the next like Homer Simpson. Not Rinne and his amazing defense. Those boys are going to give Pittsburgh the fits in the finals, only to lose in 6 games.

And for those of you bummed at the increase in music and sports posts on this site, please sit tight. I’m going to work on a more-balanced attack in coming weeks, as well as an increasing frequency. One thing that’s helped is my folding up shop on my beer blog due to lack of drinking – not easy to write about beer if you’re barely drinking it, right? Keep your dial right here and I’ll be back real, real soon.

THE HEDONIST JIVE 2012 BASEBALL PREDICTIONS

It's sorta fun to be dead wrong each and every year here on the internet about what's going to go down in Major League Baseball.  I've been doing it, and doing it well, for five years now. This way, you hone your skills, you learn from your mistakes, and you move forward. And this year I'm truly dead certain I've got it right, and that I have succesfully prognosticated a series of events that will lead to an October World Series between the Texas Rangers and my only-one-year-removed-from-being-the-World-Champion San Francisco Giants.

Wait a minute, you're saying - dude - are you flashing back to 2010? Who'd blame me, right? Yet no - I'm confident that this semi-offbeat pick has the weight of all the scientific research that I put behind it - you know, reading three preview magazines this past week and being on the internet a lot. (And it's not that offbeat, since Sports Illustrated has the Angels beating the Giants in the series; I just think it'll be Texas doing the drubbing instead). I also have tried to buck the conventional wisdom a bit and shoot holes in some common favorites - like last year's hot-at-the-right-time St. Louis Cardinals; the regressing-to-the-mean Arizona Diamondbacks (they always do after a good year); the not-good-enough Cincinnati Reds; and (yes!) the finally too-old, too-slow New York Yankees, who will finish a disgraceful third. Die, Yankees, die!

Funny, too: I wasn't all that off last year in my picks. Remember one or two days before the end of the season, when Boston and Atlanta were about to make the playoffs? I'm sure you were recalling my Boston vs. Atlanta World Series pick from earlier in the year, and mentally congratulating me for my prescience (and thanking me for my belief in the Milwaukee Brewers to boot). Well, baseball's a funny game, isn't it? Both brought simply epic collapses upon themselves, making for the single best night of baseball in decades. This was followed up a couple of weeks later by a World Series Game 6 that might seriously be the single greatest game I've ever watched, up there with the Aaron Boone game, the Joe Morgan '82 walkoff grand slam against the Dodgers (I was at that game) and of course every moment of the Giants' 2010 World Series victory. I can't imagine that this year can have the drama of last year, can it?  

Well, I think it'll still be pretty wild. They've now got this one-game, play-in wild card going, which I guess I'm more or less OK with. So that's two more teams in the playoffs, albeit only for a game each. I wish I could explain my reasoning for each and every one of the placements here, but since I can't/won't, let me provide a few statements of soon-to-be-fact:

• Some teams are simply better than people give them credit for. Fact is, Boston and Atlanta each missed the playoffs by about five minutes last year. That won't happen this time, and I've picked each to be my bonus wild card team.
• Texas has a better top-to-bottom lineup than the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, hands down, and the pitching staff rates a B+ to Anaheim's A-. Texas will finally win that World Series they've been scratching for the past two years, then start dismantling their team - but right now they're easily the strongest club in baseball and I expect them to steamroll their way to the playoffs.
• Philadephia will just barely win their division. Utley, Howard, Victorino, Polanco and Ruiz will all either suffer from injury or regression, and only Hunter Pence will keep the lineup bangin'. One of their big 3 pitchers will have a rough year as well. I'm betting on Cliff Lee. They'll make the NL Championship, but they are beatable.
• Milwaukee will not lose a step post-Prince Fielder, and their pitching will continue to blossom. I don't like the trendy Reds pick and I don't like the Cardinals without Pujols.
• My second favorite team is the Kansas City Royals, and I think they'll be blast to watch this year. They will likely only finish .500, but in Kansas City that's a major accomplishment. Next year in this space I'll be pencilling them in for their first division championship since 1985.
• Finally, I think there will be an epic San Francisco Giants/Los Angeles Dodgers battle down to the wire the last week of the season for the NL West, as it should be. The Dodgers are nobody's pick this year, but I think they are going to be fantastic - just 1 to 2 games less fantastic than the Giants, who'll score at least 150 more runs than they did last year and will finally be on the right end of multiple 2-1 and 1-0 games, as opposed to last year's godawful offensive year. My guys this year are Brandon Belt, Pablo Sandoval and (yes!) Melky Cabrera - to say nothing of pitchers Matt (contract year) Cain, Tim Lincicum and Madison Bumgarner. One of those guys is going to win 20 games, and two are going to win at least 15.
• At the end of it all, the Texas Rangers will earn their first title and my Giants will feel the harsh and bitter sting of the loser. But that's OK. Don't forget, we/they won the World Series in 2010.

National League East
1. Philadelphia Philles
2. Miami Marlins (wild card)
3. Atlanta Braves (wild card #2)
4. Washington Nationals
5. New York Mets

National League Central
1. Milwaukee Brewers
2. St. Louis Cardinals
3. Cincinnati Reds
4. Pittsburgh Pirates
5. Chicago Cubs
6. Houston Astros

National League West
1. San Francisco Giants
2. Los Angeles Dodgers
3. Arizona Diamondbacks
4. San Diego Padres
5. Colorado Rockies

American League East
1. Tampa Bay Rays
2. Boston Red Sox (wild card)
3. New York Yankees
4. Toronto Blue Jays
5. Baltimore Orioles

American League Central
1. Detroit Tigers
2. Kansas City Royals
3. Minnesota Twins
4. Chicago White Sox
5. Cleveland Indians

American League West
1. Texas Rangers
2. Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (wild card #2)
3. Seatle Mariners
4. Oakland A's

Playoffs

NL Wild Card = Atlanta over Miami
NL = San Francisco over Atlanta
NL = Philadelphia over Milwaukee
NL Championship = San Francisco over Philadelphia

AL Wild Card = LA Angels over Boston
AL = LA Angels over Tampa Bay
AL = Texas over Detroit
AL Championship = Texas over LA Angels

World Series = Texas over San Francisco

A FEW THOUGHTS ON CURRENT SPORTS DORKDOM

I'm well aware over here that there's only a tiny subset of what is already a small group of Hedonist Jive readers that care about what I have to say about professional sports. Yet the cultural flag that I've chosen to fly out my digital window very much includes sports dorkery on an even and very respectable plane with music, film, books, politics and whatever else it is I choose to cover here. Just as pro sports is evolving to better places in some areas while backsliding in others, so too does my fandom ebb and flow in weird and unpredictable ways. I was thinking about it whilst running today and thought maybe I'd rap about it a little with ya, and see what your take is.

First, pitchers and catchers reported to Spring Training this weekend. That's baseball talk, for those of you who don't know. No matter how hard I try to make the NHL or the NBA my "thing" through their respective playoffs, even early-season baseball trumps it every time. That's just how I was wired & weaned from an early age. Baseball's my sport, and everything else is a distant second. I get really wrapped up in the rhythms of the season and stay that way just about all year. I don't watch every game on TV, in fact I watch only a few......but I'll bet I caught at least 120-140 of last year's SF Giants games on the radio, for instance, and was enraptured by that incredible final day of the season in which the Red Sox and the Braves completed epic chokes. Game #6 of this year's World Series also blew my mind (greatest game I've seen in at least a decade), despite caring not a whit about the Cardinals nor the Rangers. There's a certain highbrow intellectualism that goes with baseball's lowbrow aspects that really appeals to me. The people that write about it in places like ESPN, Grantland and in the blogs are often extremely funny, self-deprecating and able to pick apart the "science" and stats of the game in fascinating ways, and I continue to feel that, unlike the NFL, the yahoos and the idiots are deeply in the minority out there in the greater baseball audience.

This brings me to the NBA, and contrasting it with the NHL. Careful readers may remember this piece in which I predicted the 2011-2012 NHL hockey season and offered all manner of commentary. I was fired up. Something elusive happened during the offseason to get me thinking, this year. This is the year I'm really going to get into pro hockey. And let's be clear - I am into it. My predictions may have been wildly off the mark, but I still check the winners and losers every day, read the Backhand Shelf blog, and definitely read (American) Katie Baker's weekly column in Grantland, which frankly is the only - and I mean only - piece of hockey writing I'd truly call world-class.

Mere weeks into this year's NHL season, and I seriously already started getting bored. Many of the complaints about this sport have been repeated in many forums ad nauseum, and let me say that it's really not the sport - the on-ice action - that I have problems with. It's these things:

1. Canadians are not interesting. They may be nice, they may be funny at times, but it's obvious after diving into it that just about every media outlet for hockey is comprised of the bland leading the bland. Canada absolutely dominates hockey talk and hockey writing as well. I compare this to the incredible richness of the NBA media landscape - from Ryan Russillo at ESPN to the Basketball Jones guys (Canadians!) to the FreeDarko collective to even Bill Simmons himself, and it's no contest. The NBA is just a better product to dish about and argue about.

2. The players are not interesting. See #1. Compare the "celebrities" of the NHL with the swagger and brashness of the Greek Gods of the NBA. Nice Canadian farm boys who talk in cliches 99.9% of the time makes for utter boredom. I tried to subscribe to The Hockey News this year before realizing that there's barely anything to talk about here, and that an actual player interview is like death by 1000 cuts.

3. The regular season sucks. In no sport but hockey does the 82-game regular season really feel like a training camp leading up to the real season. I try to watch Sharks/Flames or Sharks/Blue Jackets games in December, and sometimes I can indeed get worked up about it, but with the league's idiotic "you get a point for an overtime loss" rule, I can't even tell anymore who the great teams really are. I just wait for it to sort out come late March, and then we'll see what happens. The NBA is only slightly better on this count, truth be told.

4. Hot goalies are far more frequent than consistently great goalies. This really bugs me. Outside of consistent studs like Dominic Hasak and Martin Brodeur and the like, ever since I've been watching this sport is seems like the goalie is almost an afterthought. Some nights he makes saves. Some nights he doesn't. He's on a "hot streak" this week. He's "running cold" this week. I know there is such thing as goalie skill - these guys wouldn't be in the pros if they didn't have it - but more often than not it feels like Lady Luck rules most goalies' careers. And I hate it when something other than skill or coaching is regularly the deciding factor in a sporting event, I just do.

I was just getting warmed up there, but you get where I'm going. I converted over to the NBA right when they ended their lockout, and I'm having a lot more fun following hoops - and that was before Linsanity. Sure, the NBA's no MLB. The last quarter can either be amazing fun or a total drag - all depends how close it is and how much they're fouling. That's been true of the sport of basketball since it started, and it's not like a new revelation for me or anyone else. Yet on balance, I find myself way more interested in every aspect of the NBA than I do the NHL.

Finally, as I've written before and as it probably obvious, all this obsessive mania for these 3 pro sports leaves no room for any others. I watched the SF 49ers' playoff games out of local pride and that's about it. I gave up on the NFL years ago. College sports is a joke - why watch an inferior version of basketball when the good ones will be pros next year anyway, really showing how great they are against elite competition? This way I can focus laser-like on the intricacies of my chosen three pro sports. Then when baseball season comes, I can give lip service to how great the NBA and NHL playoffs are, when I'm really watching Blue Jays/Rays over on TBS.

WHO KILLED THE USFL?

Maybe you’ve seen some of the heralded ESPN “30 For 30” sports documentaries from the past couple of years. I haven’t. Every time I try to grab one of them on Tivo, it’s always about auto racing or track & field or golf or something I’d rather slit my wrists than watch. I also keep forgetting that they’re being aired, so I miss all the good ones and learn about them well after everyone’s talked them to death online. In any event – ESPN has been making these high-quality documentaries from a variety of different directors for some time now; I now know what they’re capable of, because I went and bought “SMALL POTATOES: WHO KILLED THE USFL?” on iTunes and watched it the other night. 
 

The USFL! Man, do I love defunct sports leagues, and those that tried in vain to compete with larger leagues & threatened their way of doing business. I am old enough to have seen sold-out NASL San Jose Earthquakes soccer games in the late 70s, and old enough to have gone to one 1983 Oakland Invaders USFL football game. Not only do I remember the Invaders winning, my dad and I still to this day routinely echo the drunken black man in the stands who heckled one of the Invaders’ wide receivers after he butterfingered a pass, “Maaaan, Stevie Wonder could have caught that ball!”.  The ESPN documentary presents a concise, 1-hour history of this upstart league and how it presented a real challenge to the NFL for a couple of years there. They came out of the gate strong by signing star Georgia running back Herschel Walker out of college, and by adding ESPN exec Chet Simmons as their commissioner. Early on, the league actually was a big hit, playing its games during the NFL’s off-season and securing national TV deals with ABC and ESPN; certain teams caught on like wildfire in their hometowns, selling out big stadiums even during that first year.

The USFL continued to grab Heisman Trophy winners and other underclassman college stars right out of college – Steve Young, Mike Rozier, Doug Flutie, Jim Kelly - and paid them astronomical sums. All the early success went to many in the league’s heads – including New Jersey Generals owner (get ready for it!) Donald Trump. Everyone hates Trump, of course. This documentary unconvincingly sets him up as the fall guy for the entire league, because he brazenly pushed an idea to have the league play during the same season as the NFL, and to sue the NFL for antitrust violations as well. Yet by that time, teams were contracting like crazy. The novelty wore off quickly, and it was still obvious that the NFL was putting the better product onto the field every week, no matter how many anomalous Fluties the USFL was able to grab out of college. As failing sports leagues typically do, this one died fairly quietly and unmourned.

The documentary is a fun look at just what high, albeit unrealistic, hopes everyone had early on as this concept was exceeding expectations, and how many of the USFL’s on-field innovations (especially run-and-gun offenses) made it into the NFL very quickly. If all the 30 For 30s are this good, I’ll just Season Pass all of ‘em. Even the golf crap.

THE HEDONIST JIVE 2011-2012 NHL PREDICTIONS

When we talk about sports around here at the ‘Jive, which is not too often – but when we do, we’re usually talking baseball. Baseball season is by no means over, but I’d be doing you & the world a big disservice if I didn’t at least remind you that the other great North American team sport, the National Hockey League, is starting up again the day after tomorrow. That would be Thursday 10/6. No labor strife, and no big controversies this offseason except for a huge focus on aggressive hits and head injuries. Sidney Crosby, arguably the “face” of the NHL to the non-hockey world, is still suffering from post-concussion after-effects and won’t be playing this weekend. Brendan Shanahan, former Detroit Red Wings star & now the league’s rule enforcer & disciplinarian, is suspending players left & right over over-aggressive face-washes & body-spindling during the preseason. Lots of ensuing chatter. I can't pretend to care. Let’s play some hockey.

I haven’t made NHL predications in some time, in at least six/seven years, and I was of course dead wrong in public then as I often am in these matters. (I thought it especially awesome that the 2 teams I picked to play each other in the 2011 MLB World Series, Atlanta & Boston, each went into free-fall during September and were ignominiously eliminated on the last day of the season). I’ve been doing my homework this NHL off-season, however, and I’m feeling pretty good about these picks. I’ve been reading Backhand Shelf, Houses of The Hockey, Puck Daddy, Hockey News and ESPN’s NHLpage – have even been listening to XM’s NHL Home Ice and a few podcasts (!) – so this is pretty scientific right here. Let’s talk again about the results in April and we’ll see if my San Jose Sharks actually did finally shrug off their curse and get it done for Lord Stanley this time. Here goes:

NHL Western Conference (top 8 teams make the playoffs)

1.    Vancouver Canucks

2.    San Jose Sharks

3.    Nashville Predators

4.    Los Angeles Kings

5.    Detroit Red Wings

6.    Chicago Black Hawks

7.    St. Louis Blues

8.    Anaheim Ducks

9.    Columbus Blue Jackets

10. Calgary Flames

11. Dallas Stars

12. Colorado Avalanche

13. Phoenix Coyotes

14. Edmonton Oilers

15. Minnesota Wild

NHL Eastern Conference (top 8 teams make the playoffs)

1.    Washington Capitals

2.    Pittsburgh Penguins

3.    Boston Bruins

4.    Philadelphia Flyers

5.    New York Rangers

6.    Buffalo Sabres

7.    Toronto Maple Leafs

8.    New Jersey Devils

9.    Montreal Canadians

10. Tampa Bay Lightning

11. Carolina Hurricanes

12. New York Islanders

13. Winnipeg Jets

14. Florida Panthers

15. Ottawa Senators

Western Conference Finals: San Jose over Nashville

Eastern Conference Finals: Washington over Pittsburgh

Stanley Cup: San Jose over Washington, 7 glorious games

Some commentary: None of this really upsets too much of the conventional wisdom. I have a hunch that exciting times are due to visit Toronto after a long absence and that the Maple Leafs will finally make the playoffs & have a nice run. The other big surprise team – well, not to some folks – will be the Nashville Predators. Blessed with an amazing goalie (Pekke Rinne), an incredible defensive corps (Shea Weber & other brutes) and just enough scoring, they’ll achieve great things in front of not too many fans in that hockey hotbed of Nashville, Tennessee. The San Jose Sharks, though, have really got an incredibly balanced team across the board. They’ve been knocking at the door of this thing for so long, and just because they’re “my team” and in my backyard, I can’t ignore the fact that they’re totally loaded and ready to go off.

I’m also excited to see a few teams start to turn it around – St. Louis, the NY Islanders and the New Jersey Devils, who all had pretty weak 2010-11 seasons. And those Washington Capitals are a blast to watch – fast, loose and possessing the most exciting player of the decade, Alex Ovetchkin. I’m confident he’ll at least make it to the Cup this year given the supporting cast they’ve built around him, including goaltender Tomas Vokoun, who’s poised for a bounceback year. And Vancouver? Good enough to rack up the points in the regular season for sure - not tough enough to make it happen this year in the playoffs. Keep waiting, Vancouver - and try not to set anything on fire this year.

Grab a Labatt’s and start growing out your playoff beard as I am – should be a wild season, eh?