Turinng the NHL Into a Two-Tier League

For fun, let's imagine restructuring the NHL into two-tiers, sort of like professional soccer leagues around the world. There would be a Premier League (or Prince of Wales division, see what I did there.) and a Second League (or Adams division). Reorganizing the league this way would greatly reduce the number of “meaningless games” during the regular season and reduce the value of “tanking,” while producing more potentially exciting games and more interesting interactions between the teams, and, give the league a structure for incorporating all the expansion they're desperate to do. You'll see how all of that could happen as I get in to the details.

First, some basics.

36 teams, 18 in the Prince of Wales Division and 18 in the Adams Division. Each division would be divided into an East and West conference of 9 teams each. (This will also work just fine with a 32 team league, though the playoff structure would have to be redone.) Only the teams in the Prince of Wales (or Adams, doesn't really matter to me what the premier division is called) will be eligible to compete for the Stanley Cup (more on the playoff structure soon). (Obviously, the Adams division will have it's own playoffs, again more on that later.) All the teams will play every other team in the league at least once, but no team will play any team in the other division more than twice. (With the extra game being for “natural rivalries” between teams in different divisions, say, going from this year, Calgary and Edmonton.) In theory, once this is in place, you could keep adding teams as much as you want. Just keep the PoW at 18 and stick as many expansion teams as you want the Adams division and adjust the playoff structure accordingly. In theory, you could even add another tier if you wanted to.

The draft lottery would work essentially the same as it does now, with the entire league drafting together, so the last place team in the Adams would have the best chance at the first pick. Trades could also happen between divisions (more on that later.) Every team makes the playoffs within its division with one exception (more on that later). There will be a system of relegation and promotion (more on that later). That's pretty much the basics.

Let's get into the weeds.

EXPANSION

Let's start hashing things out by getting the League up to 36 teams and dividing them into the two divisions. The league has 31 teams at the moment, so we'll need five more to get there. Here are the cities that I think should get teams: Seattle (since it seams like they're going to get one anyway), Quebec City and Hartford (since they already had teams), Hamilton (since there has been some momentum around a team in Hamilton for years now, but for some reason we care about what the Sabers think), and...

a team owned by the NHL located in some city that wins some crazy-ass year long competition. Does Montreal have room for a second team? (Maybe.) Does Boston? (No.) Could somewhere small, but with hockey history like Saskatoon (birth place of Gordie Howe) make a case? Is there another Las Vegas hiding somewhere? (Branson?) PEI? Madison? A team shared by the Dakotas? Lake Superior? New England? And if, after some reasonable amount of time (5 years, let's say), that city, can't support an NHL hockey team, well, they just hold the contest again. The operations of the team would be independent of the NHL, but the NHL could potentially use it as a kind of ambassador team. Moving it around North America (or beyond), and trying out new things (ticket packages, carbon neutral arenas, municipal stakes a la the Green Bay Packers). Maybe this makes it hard to keep top talent and compete, but, well somebody's got to be last and if somebody's got to be last it might as well be a team that is also doing interesting things for the game of hockey.

Once we have all the teams we'll need to divide them into the two divisions. So, the PoW division would be composed of the original 6, plus the next 12 teams with the highest total of regulation and overtime wins over the last, say, five seasons. Yes, this means that an undeserving team or two might get bumped for an original-6 team that's had a bad run of late, but I honestly can't imagine starting out with any number of original six teams without a shot at the Stanley Cup. If they play their way into regulation after the league has been reorganized, well, that's on them. (Every redemption story, starts with a fall.)

The long term wins total, as opposed to say, the end of season ranking, is a way to reward long term success and prevent a good franchise that just happens to be going through a rebuilding year or two from being relegated and a bad franchise that happens to get a few good bounces down the stretch from being promoted.

With the divisions and conferences set, the regular season plays as it does now, with the scheduling exception described above. Oh, and while I've got you: 3 points for a regulation win, 2 points for an overtime win, 1 point for an overtime loss, and...1.5 points for a shootout win.

PLAYOFFS

The first thing one might object to, to this current structure is there isn't really a playoff race. Every team will end up in some form of playoff, either for the Stanley Cup or whatever the Adams division trophy is called. (The Kenora Cup, perhaps.) The only thing the regular season will decide, in terms of the specific season, is the seeding going into the playoffs. But that seeding will be significant and whether a franchise is safely in the PoW or in jeopardy of being relegated will be determined by their seeding. Let's see how that works.

First of all, the top seeds in the Adams East & West conferences will play the 9^th seeds in the PoW East & West conferences in a one game playoff. We could have both games played on the same day, maybe a Sunday, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. This essentially creates a hockey holiday, in which pretty much all hockey fans are watching both games and both games are absolutely vital for both teams. Think of how much money the bars in Canada would make on this day. Think of the parties. Think of how much fun that would be, to be with a group of neutrals and just pick a team to root for. Think of the parties the winning teams' fans throw. Think of the parties the losing teams' fans throw! The NHL could even throw a whole bunch of weird and awkward ceremonies all over the place and it would still be about as much fun as you can possibly have as a hockey fan.

The winners of these one-game playoffs, face the 8^th seeds in the PoW East and West conferences in a best of five series. The winner of that series enters the official Stanley Cup Playoffs as the 8^th seed. Depending on the situation, what happens in those playoff games and in that series, could have huge implications for the teams involved, but I'll get into the more when I get to relegation and promotion. And then it's a regular 8 team playoff. 1 plays 8, 2 plays 7 and so forth.

I want to point out one other benefit to this playoff structure: ta da! We have created a bye-week at the end of the season for seeds 1-7. One of the things no one really acknowledges about the Stanley Cup Playoffs is that, often, it's the good team that happens to be healthiest that wins. A bye-week doesn't solve all of the health problems that can impact the results of the playoffs but it mitigates them, at least a little bit. Every 1-7 team will have a week to give their legs a chance to rest, to recover from small injuries, to get their goalies off their feet a little bit. And since there will be hockey going on during that time, it's not like it would be dead time for the league or the fans.

And how about the difference between the 7^th seed and the 8^th seed? Significant games indeed.

Most of the new significance, though, will come from the relegation and promotion system, so let's do that now.

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RELEGATION AND PROMOTION

First of all, the Stanley cup winner is protected from relegation for two years. (Success should be rewarded.) Conference champs will be protected for one year. (So, you know, they can finally all touch the conference trophies.)

If an Adams Division team wins its way into the Stanley playoffs, it is promoted to PoW and the 9^th seed of the PoW is relegated to the Adams. Now the difference between the 8^th and 9^th seed in the PoW conferences is massive. Furthermore, in the Adams division, the difference between 1 & 2 is huge, as 2 doesn't even get a shot at promotion. But wait, there's more.

As above, the Stanley Cup winner is protected from relegation for two years. So they are not eligible for relegation, even if they end up 9^th in their conference, and even if they lose that one game playoff. If that happens, the 8^th seed is made eligible for relegation. If they lose that subsequent playoff series, they are relegated instead. So, if a Stanley Cup winner struggles at the beginning of the season, the significance between 7 & 8 is huge (on top of the significance of the by-week), as the 8^th seed could become eligible for relegation. But, also from above, it is possible for a PoW conference to have two teams protected from relegation in the same season; the Stanley Cup champ from two seasons ago, and the conference champion from the preceding season.

What happens if they're both terrible? And the 1 seed from the Adams beats them both. We can't have that team play the 7^th place team to settle the relegation issue, as that would wreck the playoff structure. So in that (most likely) rare case, if the Adams team wins more total playoff games than the 7^th seed PoW team, they are promoted and the 7^th PoW team is relegated. This means, that not only is difference between 6 & 7 significant, but, we could find ourselves with two playoff series where 4-1 is significantly different from 4-0. We could also see (again highly unlikely) a conference final in which the winner is protected from relegation for one year and goes on to the Stanley Cup finals and the loser is relegated.

So, now, through this system two-tiered system, there is a huge difference between the 9th and 8th place teams in the PoW, as moving up to 8th most of the time protects you from being relegated, and there is a huge difference between 8th and 7th because the 7th place team dodges that extra playoff series and is even more likely to be safe from relegation than the 8th seed, and, in rare years when two protected teams are bad, the difference between 7th and 6th is now everything.

In the Adams division, teams that would normally be churning through their season without a shot at either the playoffs or the top draft choice, will have something to play for as the difference between 2^nd and 1^st will also be huge. The 2^nd place team, settles for playing for the Kenora Cup (look it up!) and the first place team gets a shot at promotion.

The primary goal of this reorganization of the NHL is the create more meaningful games over the course of the season and the playoffs, and so we could see a last week of the season or even last day of the season, in which massive rewards are played for, and playoff wins that are significant even in playoff series losses. Sure, there might still be some tanking, but that would only be at the bottom of the Adams division. And you know what, that's fine. They're the bottom of the Adams division.

As you can see, promotion is actually pretty difficult to achieve. You could have a team do well for several seasons, and just choke in the one-game playoff. Likewise, you could have a team hanging out in 9^th place for awhile, getting saved from relegation over and over again by 8^th place teams. Or who knows what else could happen? So, I'm also totally on board with the idea of a semi-regular reassessment of the tiers, maybe every five or six years, in which some quorum of significant members of the league (owners, managers, coaches, players, scouts, journalists, etc.) get together and, through some formalized and transparent process, consider promoting and relegating teams outside of this structure.

TRADES AND THE SALARY CAP

For the most part, trades and the salary cap would work in the exact same way they do now. (However that is.) There would be trade deadlines and trades could happen across divisions. Free agency would work the same way, though, of course, Adams division teams would have a tougher time signing top name players, but, for the most part, things would look the same. But I would introduce one wrinkle, specifically around “rental” players.

A “rental” period would be open sometime after the formal trade deadline, but, only trades between the divisions would be allowed. This would give PoW teams a chance to stock up for the playoffs AND give good players stuck on Adams division teams an extra chance to end up in the playoffs. But let's add another wrinkle. PoW would be able to include “cash considerations” in their trade, however, that cash paid to the Adams division team would count against their cap for the year. (Who knows, maybe that's how it works already. I certainly don't understand all the cap rules and well, I'm not going to look it up.) But it will be different for the Adams team.

The Adams team would tag that as cap-free salary and as long as they apply it to players salaries it is excluded from cap considerations until it is “spent.” Here's how that would work. Say a PoW team sends a prospect and $10 million in cash to an Adams team. The Adams team could then use that money to bump up the salary of a youngish top-pair defenseman approaching the end of his contract by $5 million a year for two years. Or if they think they can play themselves into promotion with one big free agent signing, they can pay someone an extra $10 million the next year without any cap consequences. You could actually see a smart GM in the Adams division, draft well for a couple of years, make a couple of “rental” trades every year for a few years and end up with enough cap free salary to build a promotion team in one off-season. The important thing about this, is it provides a way for Adams divisions teams to compensate for the natural disadvantage they have in signing free agents.

It should also be noted, “rental” players wouldn't just be for teams looking to stock up for a serious Cup run. It could also be for teams trying to jump up to 8, 7, or 6. More teams would have motivations to make some kind of play near the end of the season to protect their place in the PoW and so more of these deals would happen, redistributing a fair amount of wealth downward.

Furthermore, the fact that inter-division trading exists and that there will be some incentive for Adams division teams to trade their players in rental deals, means that Adams division players, along with playing for the success of their teams, will also, essentially, always be trying out for the PoW division. Even if your particular team doesn't have the combined talent to do anything more than languish in the bottom of the division, you don't have to. You can play your way into the PoW division and perhaps right on to a Stanley Cup contender.

ADAMS DIVISION PLAYOFFS

The Adams division will also have a playoffs, which, I think, will be great for everyone. More hockey, with more significance. Maybe there's a fan base somewhere that just needs to see playoff hockey to get excited. Maybe there's a player who will thrive in that environment but never gets the chance because he's on a shitty team. The NHL is good at trophies, so why not have another. (The Kenora Cup. I made up this whole thing, so I can name the trophy.)

The Kenora Cup playoff structure will be the inverse of the Stanley Cup playoff. If the number one seed in the division plays its way into the Stanley Cup playoffs (one-game playoff, plus best of five series) it has essentially moved out of the Adams division, meaning that its conference will now have eight teams in it and a good old fashioned 8-team playoff will start. If the number one seed does not advance into the Stanley Cup playoffs, the 8^th and 9^th seeds in the conference will play a best of five series to become the 8^th seed and then we'll be back to the regular 8 team playoff structure.

CONCLUSION OF SORTS

And there you have it. More significant games. More playoff hockey. More story lines. New rivalries. More fan bases will have the opportunity to celebrate a kind of success. Better teams will play each other more often. More games with playoff implications would happen. There'd probably be more trades at the deadline. And the league can keep adding teams as long as they want without potentially compromising any of that. And we get a hockey holiday. It may be an impossible dream, but it's a good dream.

Also, 3 points for a regulation win, 2 points for an overtime win, 1 point for an overtime loss, 1.5 points for a shootout win. Think about it.

Two Days in the Life of Mookie Betts

It was late July last year or early August, when the Red Sox were long out of postseason contention and the autopsy notes were beginning to roll in, that a strange and oddly beautiful wave of optimism began to ripple through Red Sox nation. The season was lost, but the young guys were playing well. They were playing really well. They were making plays. They were winning games. They were playing better than they had the year before. If players like Jackie Bradley Jr., Xander Bogaerts, and Mookie Betts kept improving, and the Sox figured out a few other things (Hanley Ramirez, Pablo Sandoval) and filled a few gaps, this team could be pretty good. Maybe even really good.

And then, over the course of the off-season, pre-season, and the first few weeks of the regular season, it all came together. Hanley Ramirez moved to first base where he is clearly much more comfortable. David Ortiz's announced retirement and slightly diminished work load has re-energized his bat. Dustin Pedroia is healthy again. The Sandoval problem kind of worked itself out. Acquiring Kimbrel allowed the Sox to get another year out of Koji as a set up man. And Stephen Wright was able to hold the rotation together while Joe Kelly and Edwardo Rodriguez got healthy, David Price worked out a problem with his mechanics, and Clay Bucholz finally, finally, finally proved his does not have a spot on the rotation. (The pitching is still obviously the weak spot, but it's not so weak to keep the Sox out of playoff position.) Even moving Swihart to left field seems to have worked out.

And those young guys who seemed to be making progress suddenly became three of the best baseball players in the world. You could pick nearly any game in the last month and a half and odds are JBJ, Bogaerts and/or Betts did something remarkable, but, even with the Bogaerts leading the world in batting and JBJ's hitting streak, Mookie Betts on the last day in May and the first day of June was special.

Lead-off hitters are supposed to excel at a couple of very specific skills; get on base any way they can, see a lot of pitches to drive up the pitch count, and get into scoring position in a wide range of scenarios. In some ways, perhaps the most important skill for a lead-off hitter is the ability and aptitude to go from first to third on a single. Which means lead-off hitters tend to be faster and smaller than anybody else in the line-up and certainly smaller than the power hitters in the third, clean-up, and fifth spots. At 5'9”, 180lbs. with great speed, Mookie Betts fits that physique to a T. And thanks to good old fashioned physics with its force and mass and acceleration and whatnot, that physique is not the best for power hitters, who tend to look like David Ortiz (“husky” as one might say), Alex Rodriguez (linebackeresque), or Ken Griffey Jr., (tall and lanky). In short, lead off hitters aren't selected to hit for power.

So, it was something of anomaly when Betts absolutely crushed his lead-off home run on May 31, 2016. And it was downright weird that Betts crushed another home run in his second at bat in the following inning. Multiple-home-run games are uncommon, but not that uncommon, but two home runs in a row out of the lead-off spot is. By the second inning, Betts already had a remarkable game. But remarkable turned to historic when he hit his third home run.

No lead-off hitter for the Red Sox has ever hit three home runs in a game. The Red Sox were founded in 1901. Let that sink in for a moment. In the 115 year history of the team, on which played some of the greatest players in the history of the game, no one had ever done what Mookie Betts did on May 31, 2016. But what was even more impressive about the third home run is, by then, the Orioles had caught on that Betts can hit inside pitches. So they were pitching him outside. His third home run was an excellent pitch to the high outside corner, a difficult pitch to hit with power for even the bruisers in the middle of the line up and Mookie Betts crushed it too. And he wasn't done.

The game was pretty much decided when a fly ball was hit off Robbie Ross, Jr. (the Robbie Rossest Robbie Ross that ever Robbie Rossed a Robbie Ross) into shallow right center field. The camera follows the ball, leaving Betts out of the frame for a moment. With Dustin Pedroia and Chris Young running after it, it looks certain to be a bloop single. Then Betts re-enters the frame. It looks like he's about a mile away from the where the ball is going, but then that mile is gone in a blink and Betts is Superman sliding. Already flat on the ground, he catches the ball and slides right between Pedroia and Young. Lead-off hitters don't hit for that kind of power and right fielders don't make that kind of catch. It left Jerry Remy, who's only job is to talk about baseball, speechless. You could make an argument that Mookie Betts put on one of the greatest single-game performances in baseball history on May 31, 2016. But he wasn't done.

He lead off the very next game with a home run. And then, because a few minds hadn't yet disintegrated under the splendor of his performance, he hit another home run in his second at bat. No player, in the history of baseball, had ever lead off with a home run in each of the first two innings two games in a row. But if it was the catch that propelled his May 31st performance into the stratosphere, his second home run made his June 1 the stuff of legend.

In some ways I don't blame, Wright, the opposing pitcher for trying to do something, anything, to make sure Betts didn't hit another home run. I am 100% certain his manager or coach told him to make Betts uncomfortable or perhaps “brush him off the plate a bit.” And I think that, as a professional pitcher in Major League Baseball, there was almost no chance for an actual injury to Betts. But in the moment all I thought was, “That fucking asshole just threw at Mookie's head.” If it is possible to joyfully brandish the dancing double-bird at someone, I joyfully brandished the dancing double-bird at the Wright when the camera cut to him as Betts was rounding the bases.

It's one thing to hit three home runs in a game. It's another to hit three home runs in a game out of the lead off spot. It's another to hit three home runs in a game out of the lead off spot and make a breathtakingly graceful catch. It's another thing to hit three home runs in a game out of the lead off spot, make a breathtakingly graceful catch and hit another lead off home run the next day. Mookie Betts and the Red Sox came back to Earth relatively quickly from this little streak of magic. The weaknesses in the pitching staff showed themselves again with Bucholtz being moved to the bullpen, Kelley apparently in need of a few more rehab starts and Rodriguez oddly shaky in his first start back.

But it's another thing entirely to hit three home runs in a game out of the lead off spot, make a breathtakingly graceful catch, lead off the next day with a home run, and then crush your second home run in as many at bats after the pitcher threw one at your head. At the end of May and the beginning of June, Mookie Betts put on one of the greatest baseball performances we are likely to see.

It's Brett Conolly's Fault

Connolly in his natural habitat, not scoring.

There have been times this season when it seemed as though the sun revolved around the Earth. Early on, the Bruins' power play wasn't just the most dangerous offensive force in the NHL it was the only thing keeping them in games. They were blowing two goal leads and third period leads all over the place and their penalty kill was abysmal. The first two months or so, we had a bizarro Bruins and it looked like Don Sweeney's first season as general manager was going to be an utter disaster. The Chara window had closed. Blow up the team at the trade deadline and rebuild around Bergeron, Krejci, Pastrnak, and Rask.

But then, the Bruins figured things out. Their structure tightened. Kevan Miller came back from a stretch of healthy scratches at a much higher level of play. Even without Chris Kelly, the penalty kill fixed itself and is now as good as it has ever been. Colin Miller has been making steady progress. Brad Marchand has taken a big step forward as a goal scorer. Spooner is getting better every game. Vetrano, Ferraror and Tyler Randall are all contributing. Rask, after a shaky start, is now, back in his usual spot as an elite NHL goal tender. The team can now trust Gustafson. Krejci, before his most recent injury, was shredding opponents in the offensive zone, and Patrice Bergeron, along with everything else he's called up to do for this team, is the leading scorer and taking another big step towards the Hall of Fame. And the power play is still the most dangerous offensive force in the NHL.

But the Bruins are still only a wild card team, and with the East as ridiculously tight as it is, very vulnerable. They are fourth in their division and seventh in the conference with 3 or even 6 teams within easy striking distance. They're 5-4-1 in their last 10 (as of this writing), but 3 of those 5 wins came in their last 3 games. They blow leads. They are inconsistent.

And it's Brett Connolly's fault.

Even in the controlled space of sports, there is still enough chaos that both blame and accolades are impossible to definitively distribute, especially in team sports. We can make educated guesses, but there is still luck, there are still decisions beyond a player's control, there is still the schedule, the referees, the surface of the ice. Simply put, there is only so much any player, even the greatest players can do to influence the outcome of the game.

But Brett Connolly was brought to the Bruins to score. After eye-popping numbers in juniors, impressive numbers in the AHL, and one hell of a snap shot, it looked like Brett Connolly was about to make the transition to being a goal scorer in the NHL. Probably not a 40-goal scorer, or even a 30 goal scorer, but definitely a 20-25 goal scorer. That's why the Bruins got him last year in their attempt to make the playoffs. But right now he has 6 goals in 43 games and the gap between goal 6 and goal 7 continues to grow. Frank Vatrano has 6 goals in 30 games. Tyler Randall 4 in 20. Pastrnak 4 in 14.

The job of the General Manager is to present the head coach with an array of talent and most often that includes a mix of top players and role players. Top players use their talent to contribute in all parts of the game, whereas role players are expected to do well in specific parts of the game and hold their own in the others. So even if Connolly were just level with Jimmy Hayes (who, it should be noted, got 40% of his current goals in a blowout of the Senators) or Matt Beleskey, at 8 goals, both of which I think we'd still consider as under-performing, the Bruins could easily be second in their division or even their conference. A team can struggle when top players aren't contributing, but also when role players fail to fulfill their roles, even when they play well in other aspects of the game.

Which is why I feel doubly bad for calling out Brett Connolly. Not only is it rare for blame to be reasonably affixed to an individual player, but he has actually been playing pretty well. He is winning puck battles along the boards. He is playing well in the defensive zone. He is getting opportunities. But when you go through the Bruins' recent personnel moves, extrapolate the various players' roles, and look at their stats, Jimmy Hayes at 10 goals and 11 assists for 21 points seems OK, even if you want to see his +/- a bit better, and Belesky at 8 and 14 for 22 is lower than what we'd like but not catastrophically so, especially when he's sitting on a +10, and the B's haven't gotten much from Talbot and Rinaldo, but I don't think they expected much from either one of them.

In short, if you imagine what Don Sweeny saw when he looked at his roster this summer, and what he expected to get from every player on that list, really only Connolly is not meeting the expectations.

This is mostly good news, especially given how the Bs started this season. They are in the playoff structure, have sorted out the problems caused by adopting a new system, have maintained the success of their power play, and Brett Connolly (or anybody else) isn't dragging the team down despite his struggles with his particular role. And if the Bruins want to make a deal before the trade deadline, assuming no injuries, they know what they need; someone to make up for the 10-15 goals expected from Connolly that haven't materialized. And, it should be noted he could always turn his season around, go on a hot streak, and land the 20 or so goals the Bruins expected from him.

Though the Bruins don't necessarily need to do anything, I think the “healthy scratch” is under-utilized coaching tool that might do Connolly a lot of good. First off all, given how much of playoff success is drawn from, if not based on, the health of key players, I'd like to see Julien use the healthy scratch as a way of preserving the health of players in general. Second, I don't think it would be that difficult to re-frame the healthy scratch away from punishment for poor play and towards a learning opportunity. You can see things watching a game that you simply can't playing a game. Third, it matters who is also in the booth with you. From what I've seen, Connolly's biggest problem might be his spacing, that he is not quite in the right place to cash in on his opportunities. Loui Erikkson is very good at being in the place to score goals, so maybe giving Connolly a two or three game break with one of those games with Loui Erikkson with him to talk through spacing around the front of the net is exactly what he needs to break out of his goal scoring slump and help the Bruins secure a playoff berth. And you know, it probably wouldn't be that bad of an idea to check his hand.

So, where do the Bruins go from here? What does the rest of the season hold? Have you been watching the season? Did you think the Capitals were finally going to pull it together? And what happened out West with the Kings and everybody else? And what happened to the Canadiens? Sure, Price going down is big, but as far as I know, Markov is technically not injured. And how are the Penguins so bad? And what the hell happened with John Scott? And how the hell do the Bruins, the Claude Julien Boston Bruins have the best power play in the league, by a wide, wide margin. I'm not much of a fan of prognostication in general, but anyone who says they know what's going to happen to any team in the NHL this season is lying to themselves.

The Deflategate Post: Postmodernism, Politics, and Swearing

As anyone who has been unfortunate enough to spend time with me over the last few months knows, my partner especially, I am unnaturally entertained by Deflategate. I can't quite put my finger on it, but everything (well, nearly everything) about it just amuses me to no end. The incompetent power structures, the total lack of institutional oversight, the paranoia, the investigation with its numerous but somehow insufficient annotations, the dueling sets of scientific proof, the “balls” press conference (my god the BALLS PRESS CONFERENCE!), the official double-speak (“more probable than not” “generally aware”), the dueling conspiracy theories, and now, the punishment far in excess of any other team that has been caught doing anything similar and far in excess of all the players suspected or proven to have committed violence against women (Ray Rice only got two games when it was “more probably than not” he punched his fiance. Oh, and hi, Ben Roethlisberger and your three game suspension!), all for maybe doing something that has been empirically proven to have had absolutely no consequences. (One wonders how many fewer passes Jerry Rice would have caught without that stickum.) With all due respect to Gravity's Rainbow, Underworld, and I, Hotel, Deflategate is America's greatest post-modern novel.

There's a lot that I could talk about, and yes, much of it would involve the swearing I've got planned, but instead, I'm going to swear about politics. (Also, the NFL said in their fucking statement that the Belichick and the Patriots were not to blame, so why the fuck the fine and the draft picks?) Here we go. If you are a conservative laissez-faire Republican, who believes that the government should get out of the way of the economy, that taxes “punish” success, who got all up in arms over the “You didn't build that,” moment AND that Tom Brady and the Patriots deserve to be punished for Deflategate because they have besmirched the integrity of professional football, you have the self-awareness of a concussed newt.

Bill Belichik, Tom Brady, and the New England Patriots have done nothing that is not done by every corporation that uses every single nook and granny, every flexible clause, every bend and twist in the law to avoid paying taxes, paying their workers fair wages, keeping them safe, and incurring the apparently catastrophic overhead of not totally fucking the planet for everybody else. Just as the Patriots are better at reading the rules than everybody else, so is GE. Just as the Patriots, in their efforts to win at all cost, get very close to or step over the legally delineated line of conduct, so does nearly every bank, every hedge fund, and every major corporation. If you celebrate those corporations as “job creators” and you are celebrating the NFL's punishment of Brady and the Patriots as some form of justice, you are a fucking hypocrite. You have no idea what you believe or why you believe it and you are almost certainly a primary reason why we cannot have nice things, like paid parental leave, renewable energy, a living wage, fully funded education system, universal health care...

The Win-At-All-Costs Patriots, are, within their own system, ethically no different whatsoever from the Profit-At-All-Costs corporations that you somehow think are the fucking cornerstone of civilization. Sure, the Patriots beat your team over and over and over and over (Jets & Colts fans, feel free to just keep going), and you feel bad about that, but there are plenty of “losers” in the game of capitalism as well, and, from what I can tell, you don't give a fuck about the villages who lost their water supplies, the working poor who can't afford to make ends meet while having full-time employment, the people who get sick from pollution, future generations who will struggle with the effects of climate change, children in third world countries who end up working essentially slave labor, etc. If you had any idea what you actually thought and felt about these things, you'd realize that Rex Ryan is just the betamax of football.

Of course, you might argue that I'm talking about two totally different things; that it doesn't make sense to compare Goldman Sachs with the New England Patriots, but that is kind of my fucking point. The Patriots play football. Goldman Sachs and their buddies nearly destroyed the economy of the entire world. If you can get mad at Tom Brady for something that, despite their best efforts, no one was able to actually prove he did, but think Gary Cohn or Jamie Dimon are just doin' what they got to do and the pocket change fines they've paid are meaningful, then either you haven't really put a lot of thought into your belief structure, which, you know, I can see how that would happen to reasonable, well-meaning, intelligent people, or you are a fucking sociopath.

Yes. Economics, sports, and politics are very different human systems, and yes I am having a bit of a fun here, while venting a wide range of empty-the-liquor-cabinet frustrations, and yes, there are ways in which my comparison falls apart, but the point remains that humans are capable, and sometimes with beautiful results, of concurrently holding mutually exclusive belief systems. We are also capable, sometimes with catastrophic results, of passionately acting on our beliefs without ever examining or even really understanding what those beliefs are or mean. For me, with whatever is going on in my brain, Deflategate was an unnervingly entertaining way for me to grapple with this very troubling idea, (especially when I think that there is a real possibility the long term fallout from all of this could shatter the NFL as an organization. Seriously, just imagine if Brady's appeal reveals calculated intent to tarnish the Patriots.) but, that has always been a factor of the most successful post-modern novels. Yes, at their core a relentless heart of hopelessness beats, but you enjoy the story so much, you don't mind the absence of a satisfying answer to the posed questions.

Actually, wait, there is one other difference between the Patriots and the corporations you worship. The Patriots did not stand in the way when a member of their organization deserved to go to jail.

No Strong Enough Microscope: Sport, Data, and Delusion

Keeping the ball about a foot off the ground and aiming for a spot about a foot inside the post, kick the ball, after a relatively short run-up, as hard as you can ,to your natural side. You will score on pretty much every penalty shot in soccer you take. Practice the technique at the end of training sessions. If you are in the position to take a lot of penalty kicks, thus, allowing opponents to discover your strategy, randomly select a kick on which to aim for your non-natural side. If you kicking technique is good (as most professional soccer player's kicking techniques are) you'll score 90% of the time and be the world's greatest from the spot.

Sports are rich in statistics because, unlike, say, the weather or the economy, they are, essentially, closed systems. You have stable units of data to work with. And within sports, the penalty kick in soccer might be the cleanest, most closed, most noise-free data set available. A single shooter. A single goal keeper. A spot twelve yards from the goal line. One shot with three possibilities; goal, save, or miss. And with modern video technology pretty much every aspect of the process can be recorded and analyzed.

So what does “Twelve Yards: The Art and Psychology of the Perfect Penalty Kick,” conclude about “the perfect penalty kick?” Given all the data, all the interviews, all the experts, all the history, not much. At best, a few guidelines about the psychology, the need to actually practice penalty shots, and some suggestions for how players and coaches should manage themselves during the time between when the whistle is blown and when the shot is actually taken. The introductory statement is the practical that I gleaned from Lyttleton's more psychological examination.

But what happens when we begin to examine my perfect technique? How long should the run up be? How long should you take to set the ball and arrange yourself for the shot? Where on the twelve-yard mark do you actually place the ball? Where do you look and when do you look there? Can you give your target away with your eyes? What about the state of the turf? And this is before we get into the actual physical technique. Where do you place your plant foot and how do you angle it? Where should the point of contact on the ball be? What are the mechanics of that “kick it as hard as you can?” And, of course, with all the craziness going on around you, all the pressure, all the expectations, how do you ensure that you replicate the simple technique in important moments?

Sports are fractals. The closer you look, even within the closed systems of sports, the more you see. And no microscope is strong enough to distinguish (in the moment of course) the different lengths of grass, the different textures of ice, the millimeters distinguishing a successful point of contact, a successful angle of stick, a successful catch. It's not that data is unable to remove “bad bounces” from sport and more that it's impossible to ever be sure what is and what is not a “bad bounce.” Even with our super slow-motion, our high definition television, our ability to gather hard statistics, the base of sport, just like everything else, is mystery.

But, let's look at that opening statement again. Is there really that much mystery to it? I mean, people know how to kick a soccer ball. Especially professional soccer players. In terms of psychology, most of the psychology-based errors come from the decision making process, so the above technique would remove pretty much the entire source of psychology-based errors. Technique fails for professionals when they execute with doubt, and the above technique removes doubt. And the importance of routine is pretty much sports orthodoxy anyway. I'm not bringing this up because I think I'm some soccer genius, but to note, that despite having all the data, despite having the above conclusion so obviously before him, Lyttleton doesn't make it. In fact, he doesn't make any practical conclusion at all. It's almost as though he wants the penalty kick to be an “art” despite all the data pointing to the fact that, at least at the professional level, it's a “craft.”

As with fractals, once you see the pattern in sport, you see the pattern in sport, and, there's a point at which, that pattern becomes boring and powerless. I've touched on this before (here, in fact), but a big part of how we enjoy sports (all sports) is what we choose not to see. We ignore luck. We ignore statistics. We imagine phenomena like “momentum” and “wanting it more.” We build huge structures of rational information and then use those structures to be utterly and completely irrational. To put this another way, somehow our relationship with sports manages to be equal parts data and delusion.

Lyttleton's book is a fascinating micro-history, filled with interesting characters, anecdotes, and enough data to feel scientific, but, ultimately, I think Lyttleton is less interested in discovering an actual “perfect penalty kick” and more interested in the general phenomenon of the penalty kick. Which is just fine by me. Lyttleton succeeds at his project even if he doesn't necessarily succeed at his sub-title. (And there's a chance the subtitle was not even Lyttleton's idea.) However, if you're a player for England's national team looking to break your shoot-out curse, keep Twelve Yards for the off-season, and just read this post's opening paragraph.

Pre-order Twelve Yards.
 (Wondering why you pre-order a book coming out in June? Well, here's some publishing industry wonkiness.)

Luck Denial in Sport and Society

I don't know exactly when the tide turned for my assessment of the series, probably game three or four, but the phenomenon was distinctive and persistent enough that coverage of game seven between the Bruins and the Candiens featured a highlight reel of Bruins hitting the post. Though you won't hear it from any players or coaches, and now that the series is over, any mainstream journalist, or even most fans who want to put a good sportsmanship face forward, the Bruins lost to the Canadiens because of bad luck. Frankly, the fact that they took the series to a game seven while hitting the post 13 (13!) times shows just how much better, overall, the Bruins are. And the posts weren't the only bad luck. There were another half dozen times the puck ended up on edge or slightly offline and a Bruin ended up missing an easy goal. And the luck didn't just prevent the Bruins from scoring. A blocked shot lead to a breakaway and a Canadiens goal. A puck flipped into the neutral zone made through gloves and legs to land for a breakaway and another goal. The third goal in game seven really encapsulated the entire series for the Bruins. Chara was perfectly positioned in the two-on-one. He forced Pachiaretti to the side of the net and Pachiaretti just kinda flipped the puck towards the front of the net (probably the best play he had) and, of course it bounced off Chara and in, stretching the lead back to two goals. Chara did everything right and the Canadians just happened to score. Story of the fucking series. As much as it sounds good to say there's no such thing as “puck luck,” that's all it does, “sound good.”

Beyond public perception, there are very practical reasons for luck denial, for coaches and athletes. You can't practice for it. You can't train for it. You can't trade or draft for it. You can't strategize for it. By definition, there is nothing a coach or athlete can do about luck and so any attention paid to it distracts from the aspects of their craft they can actually do something about. For professional athletes, not mentioning, discussing, or complaining about the role of luck in an outcome isn't just about sportsmanship; it's a professional performance strategy.

But luck doesn't just affect sports. It also, affects, well, everything. Anything that involves a convergence of phenomena beyond your control is luck. To provide a personal example, there is a long list of decisions other people made and events I had no control over (some of which weren't so positive), that culminated in me being able to pitch my novel directly to Denis Johnson at Melville House. At any point in that chain of events, something could have happened to prevent me from that moment. That doesn't remove the work I put into the novel and the preparation I put into the pitch, but it does mean I can't, logically, claim 100% of the credit for whatever happens with my book.

As in sports, with luck in the rest of life, comes luck denial. In fact, one could argue our economic system, restrained-profitism operating within a democratically administered meritocracy, is built on the denial of luck. To put it simply, acknowledging luck means super-rich assholes have no justification for being super-rich. The base of profitism and the justification for the unequal wealth it creates is that through hard work and talent the super-rich, deserve their wealth. If you acknowledge that maybe some of their wealth was the result of phenomena beyond their control that ended up benefiting them, then the entire structure of contemporary capitalism comes crashing down.

Of course, it's never ONLY luck. Marchand dragged the entire team down. Not only could he not hit the net from two feet away, his absolutely inane snow shower penalty disrupted the Bruins momentum right when it seemed like they were going to start dominating play (again) in Game 7. Barkowski played like a rookie and for the first time all season, looked out of place in the NHL. Subban and Price carried the team on their backs until Pacioretti and Vanek got it going late in the series. But just because it's not ONLY luck, doesn't mean we should ignore the influence of luck in society. By far, the best metaphor for the general role of luck in our society is John Scalzi's essay on “Easy Mode.”  To summarize, those of us lucky enough to be born straight, white, American men (last I checked we didn't pass some pre-birth test that allowed us to choose our parents) play the video game of life on the easy mode. You still need to work hard to succeed, of course, and if you do, you will deserve much of whatever reward comes your way, but the undeniable fact of life is that at some point you will benefit from good luck.

Good luck and bad luck tend to even out you say? Over the course of time, you'll have just as much of one as the other, you say? Two things. One, not really an argument a Bruins fan is willing to hear at the moment. From Game 4 on, I just kept assuming there was no way the Bruins' luck could stay that bad. It did. One might argue that the Canadiens had their own bit of bad luck with Price's injury, but that really doesn't balance anything out, as it does nothing to benefit the Bruins. Two, if you flip a coin and it comes up heads, what are the odds the next flip will come up tails? 50%. How about if you flip it again and it comes up heads again? 50%. What if you flip it a million times and each time it comes up heads? 50%. Luck is like a flipped coin. Yeah, a lot of the time it “evens” out and most of us probably experience just about as much good luck as bad luck, but there is just no reason to believe the effects of good and bad luck will even out, or that there will be a zero sum gain, or that your bad luck now will somehow compensate whoever lost out because of your good luck in the past. I mean, Donald Trump has filed for bankruptcy four times (FOUR TIMES!!!) and yet, his array of good and back luck have allowed him to still be insanely wealthy, despite, four (FOUR!!) bankruptcies.

Even though it is an illusion, and there is no real way to ensure the most talented and hardest working are always rewarded, I think the meritocracy can be a net gain illusion. I believe society has a whole benefits when talent and hard work are rewarded in some way. But that's not what we have now. How do we solve luck denial in society? It starts with raising the minimum wage. The best way to acknowledge that shit beyond our control happens, while also rewarding hard work and talent, is to ensure the lowest members of society, still live safe, physically comfortable, lives of dignity no matter what mistakes they've made or how flawed they appear. The point is not that everyone is equal in terms of wealth, but that no one in the world's richest country, for whatever reason, is forced to live in or near squalor. Once the floor is raised, acknowledging that nobody is 100% responsible for where they end up in life, the negative repercussions of our illusion of meritocracy are essentially eliminated without meaningfully affecting the positive elements of the delusion. Talent will still be rewarded. Mistakes and failures punished. There will be rich and poor. All it would mean is the people at the top wouldn't be quite so astronomically rich, which is fine by me, since they don't really deserve it anyway.

Since I started with hockey, I might as well end with hockey.

On Brad Marchand: I can't think of a worse performance by a professional athlete that I've ever seen. Not only could he not hit the net, he consistently turned the puck over at the offensive blue line, and took stupid penalties, and did not, get in any opponents heads. He made bad decision after bad decision and played so poorly, not even Bergeron and Smith could hoist him to some level of competence. Along with “Another fucking post!” I think “Just dump the fucking puck in!” was my most frequent furious exclamation. There were other players who underperformed, but I don't think you could look at how Lucic (who had a wrist injury), Iginla, & Kreijci were as actively detrimental to the team. They were points when they were dumping the puck in, forechecking for a bit and then losing the puck. It would have been wonderful if Marchand's play lead to that. Yes, Rask needed to make a couple more big saves, and yes, Barkowski was generally out of sorts, but when you look beyond the posts for reasons why such a good team could lose, it's hard to look anywhere else but Marchand.

That said, I'm not sure trading him this off-season would make sense, if for no other reason than I can't imagine his trade value being very high. If the Bruins don't think he'll help them win another Cup, they would probably get the most value for their trade by giving him a chance to score some goals in the regular season before trying to move him. Then again, if the right deal comes around, as it did with Sequin, I wouldn't be surprised if Chereli made the move.

On PK Subban: I have never had a high opinion of Subban. He is unbelievably talented, but, in recent years, even in his, ugh, Norris winning year, I believe he has diluted his talent through diving, cheap shots, reckless hits, and whining to the official. As good a skater as he was, he never seemed to have his head enough in the game itself to truly be a great player. Shockingly, he cut out a lot (but not all) of those shenanigans in this series and was a force of fucking nature. The Canadiens would have lost four in a row if Subban hadn't played at the level he played. I mean, he looked ridiculous calling for the puck by jumping up and down on the ice, or rather, he would have looked ridiculous if he wasn't 100% right and 100% scored on the hockey equivalent of calling your shot. He still didn't deserve the Norris when he won it and he can still be a reckless, dangerous (ask Vanek about that), and cowardly player, but he showed some actual growth and actual maturity in this series and if he continues to mature this way, he will be an exciting player to watch.

On The Bruins Next Year: There's a reason why they won the President's Trophy and there is every reason to believe they will be an elite team next year. Of their core, only Chara is really aging out, and he had another Norris Finalist caliber season, and even if he loses another step Denis Siedenberg could easily become the Bruins' top shut down defenseman. Rask will still be Rask, Bergeron will still be Bergeron, and Kreijci will still be Kreijci, while we expect to see continued improvement from Krug, Bartkowski, Smith, and, pleasant surprise of the playoffs, Soderberg. And Cherelli proved he will make big moves (Sequin last year) if they make sense, and simpler, safer, prudent moves, (Meszaros at the trade deadline) if those are what's available. Logically, there is just no way to argue against the Bruins being Stanley Cup contenders again next year. Unfortunately, logic is one thing and luck is another.

Red or Dead and the Impossibility of Sports Fiction

No. There is no debate.

The greatest baseball scene I've ever read in fiction is the opening scene in Underworld. The greatest sports movie ever made (and this is not a debatable fact) is Slapshot. Besides a level of class-consciousness rarely seen in American pop culture, the two works of fiction share one major quality; there isn't much actual baseball in Underworld nor much actual hockey in Slapshot. What baseball there is in Underworld is all factual, narrating the legendary home run Bobby Thomson hit off Ralph Branca to win the pennant for the Dodgers. What hockey there is in Slapshot is all completely and utterly ridiculous; the championship is won when a player strips off his equipment while a brawl is happening (No, I won't specify which of those two things is the truly ridiculous act in hockey). In both cases, and pretty much all other successful sports fiction, the actual sport acts as more an element of the environment driving and organizing the action and the narrative suffers whenever the creator is obligated to actually show game play. Unless, as in Slapshot, the storyteller adds something purposefully unrealistic, the action drags, and whatever we're reading or watching feels forced.

Offsides. OFFSIDES!

This is weird because sports tend to be entertaining. Really entertaining. Almost universally entertaining. Why is real hockey, which I love to watch, so entertaining and meaningful that I will sculpt my social media days in order to somehow not learn the results of the game I've recorded, but depicted hockey, like say The Flying V from Mighty Ducks totally uncompelling? (Before I get myself into too much trouble, the first Mighty Ducks movie is actually a very good hockey movie, even if the hockey action itself, at least in my opinion, too often leaves charming behind to induce some good old fashioned eye-rolling. Interestingly, it too has a level of class consciousness you don't see often enough in depictions of our very classist society. Someone get me Zizek on the phone.)

In a way the gap is obvious. In an actual Bruins game the action is not pre-determined, whereas in a hockey movie, the action is. But why does this relatively simple gap leads to such a difference in emotional content? First, every single action in sport is a locus of potential excitement, in that every pass could be THE pass that results in a goal, every hit could be THE hit that changes the emotional tenor of the crowd, every save could be THE save that gives the team a chance to come back, and so every pass, every hit, every save, and every other thing that happens in a hockey game contains, at the very least, a shade of the emotional content of THE THING! In theory, sports fiction should have the same freedom to associate significance to all of its action, but because the story's significance often is only partly related to the results of the depicted sports action, fictitious sports actions can only access a shade of a portion of the significance of the story.

Secondly, a hockey movie does not have time to show an entire hockey game or season and so must essentially put together a plot-driving highlight reel. Unfortunately, highlight reels are anthologies of distinct moments presented with minimum context for us to appreciate athletic acts in and of themselves, whereas movies try to recreate the flow of action real games have without all that stuff that happens in between highlight reel moments. This gives a jarring sense of artificiality to whatever action is depicted. Finally, when you remove a hockey game from a focus on the athleticism of the action, and you remove the action from a meaningful result, or, when the sport you're watching doesn't connect directly to personal meaning, it's a lot of boring stuff that happens over and over again. That guy passes to that guy. That guy shoots. Those four guys are “digging for the puck.” In order to depict sport in fiction, traditionally creators have tried to avoid, mostly in unsuccessful ways, the relentless, repetition of actual sport. The repetition that is the very essence of sports. Which, as above, reinforces the fictitious nature of what you're watching or reading, and breaks your willing suspension of disbelief.

Enter David Peace and Red or Dead, Peace's massive monument to legendary Liverpool manager Bill Shankly. Rather than avoiding the ultimately repetitive nature of sports, he embraces it, structuring the prose style around the realistic movement of sport. And Peace doesn't hide his style choice. He tells the reader explicitly what to expect. The first three words Peace writes, in a preface-like passage titled “The Argument III” are “Repetition. Repetition. Repetition.” And that's what Peace does. Whether depicting a soccer match or Bill Shankly setting the table for breakfast, phrases repeat, progress, and accumulate. Just like actual soccer matches and just like actually setting the breakfast table. Just like going to work. Just like drinking coffee. Just like genetic reproduction. Just like meditation. Just like washing dishes. Just like working out at the gym. Just like writing a novel, or a poem, or a short story, or an essay, or a blog post. The same thing, with occasional and slight variation, over and over and over and over again.

The term that came to my mind to describe Peace's style is “passionate box score.” It is hard to describe what an accomplishment that is. Seriously, I'm sitting here struggling to finish this paragraph. If you know what soccer looks like it's easy to imagine the course of a game through Peace's prose, but that isn't even the point I'm trying to make. And by using the same prose style for both the greatest matches in Liverpool history and cleaning the stove (the Shanklys (“Shanklies?”) must have had the cleanest stove in the goddamn world) turns life itself into a passionate box score. (Which, in a way, places Red or Dead firmly in the modernist tradition.) Somehow, the passionate box score recognizes that life is just one damn thing after another while at the same time celebrating that all these damn things keep happening on the pitch and in life.

What separates all those damn things happening on the pitch and all those damn things happening in life is the damn things happening on the pitch have a tangible result. Since Liverpool had to win or lose or draw, we know, at the end of the game, that each damn pass, each damn shot, each damn save, and each damn tackle was part of the win, the loss, or the draw. And each win, loss, or draw is part of a League Championship or not part of a League Championship, part of a European Cup or not, part of an FA Cup or not, part of relegation or not, part of disappointment or not. But what is drying the plates part of? Peace's Shankly describes his playing philosophy as “total football.” Peace might be describing through his Shankly, “total life.”

Peace's Bill Shankly is a hero. A hero for our time and a hero for all time. Shankly's heroics are as simple and applicable as can be and they apply to everything from sports, to work, to making dinner, to hanging out with your friends, to politics and leadership. How was Bill Shankly a hero? He thought of other people first and he tried his fucking best and he never fucking quit and when he failed he failed having never fucking quit, having tried his fucking best, and in service to other people first. Just imagine for a second if our national character was defined not by the “self-made man” or the “rugged individualist” (both of which, total fictions) but “everybody trying their fucking best and never fucking quitting while making the world a better place for everyone else.” You know what, maybe don't imagine that, I don't have enough bourbon insurance for the emotional effects of such a thought experiment.

I wish there were some way to read with sections of my consciousness turned off. I know what soccer looks like. Sports, in general, are meaningful to me. And so I was prepared and sympathetic, both in terms of knowledge and in terms of emotional investment, for Peace's project. But I'm not at all sure what kind of buy-in someone who isn't connected to sports will give Red or Dead, especially since the style is so overt and relentless. I hope said sportless compatriot would be able to absorb Peace's passion and see the style as a poetic form, a restraint designed to also free, but I honestly can't be sure. I was willing to read this guy put on the same suit the exact same way a bunch of times because I understood what it feels like to watch the same shit happen over and over on a soccer pitch, but how does that pocket square look to someone who believes that shit on the pitch is boring?

But, all works of fiction erect barriers of experience between themselves and their potential readers. Every difference between the action, events, and characters depicted in a work of fiction, is a barrier that must be surmounted by the imagination of the reader. Of course, it's the author's responsibility to give the reader the necessary substance of the imagination, especially in works of fiction that, unlike science fiction or fantasy, don't have culturally accepted imaginative expectations, but it is also the reader's responsibility to try. Or maybe to think about this in a terms that could be reduced to an acronym on a bracelet: What would Bill Shankly do? He would try his fucking best, he would not fucking quit, and he would read to become a better person for everyone else he shares the world with.

Why the Bruins Won Everything in March

The Bruins have locked up the Eastern Conference with four games remaining in the schedule and have a solid shot at the totally-meaningless-but-I-guess-kinda-better-than-nothing President's trophy. Though it was formalized on Saturday's win over the Flyer's, with the waning of the Penguins, the Bruins have been the best team in the conference (and probably the league) for several weeks now. They only lost once (ONCE!) in March and put together an almost unbelievable string of games. Here's why they were able to do that.

They're Relatively Healthy
The boring fact of the elite teams of the NHL is they tend to distinguish themselves from each other based on how healthy their stars are. When an announcer talks about “playing well at the right time,” that is generally a narrative-biased explanation for the fact that Patrice Bergeron had a punctured lung and a dislocated rib by game 6 and Jonathan Toews did not. For the last month and a half, the Bruins have been relatively healthy, with only Dennis Seidenberg (who had the courtesy to suffer his season ending injury before the trade deadline) and Adam Mcquaid missing serious time. For the last month of the season, for a Stanley Cup contender, only missing two major players, and missing them in such a way that the team has the resources to compensate is about as healthy as can possibly be. Professional hockey is a war of attrition determined, too often by luck, and for the last month, the Bruins have been very lucky.

They Have a Legitimate Power Play
The Bruins have been the best even strength team in the NHL for a few years now thanks to a successful system (more on that later), a couple of top notch shut down defensemen, and a few top notch three-zone forwards, but, even when they won the Stanley Cup, their power play hindered them. Given their even-strength excellence, I've never believed a top ten power play was required for them to be successful, but it couldn't hurt. So what changed between then and now, where they're scoring at a third-best 20.8% clip. Unlike the top two teams, Pittsburgh and Washington, the Bruins don't have a sniper to bend the power play curve. Rather, they've had success because they run two fundamentally different power play systems.

Most teams have two power play units, but very few teams that I can think of, run distinct systems based on those units. The Bruins first unit has a pretty simple strategy, stick two monstrosities in front of the net and move the puck around enough to get a decent shot so the mythological beasts can fight to stuff in a rebound. By sticking Chara and Lucic in a power-I in front of the net the Bruins first unit throws down a physical challenge very few teams will be able to meet. And the result is that shut-down defenseman Chara, has ten (TEN!) power play goals. The second unit is an entirely different story all together, using puck motion to create passing lanes for lay-up goals on the side of the net. A system which requires an entirely different strategy to defend against. And then you add in the fact that, because of their overall defensive structure, they can have four forwards on the ice without undue risk of a short handed goal (they've only given up six all year), and the puck moving ability of Torey Krug and the three-zone skill of Bergeron and Kreici and the increased chemistry between Soderberg and Eriksson and you have a dominant power play without the typical NHL superstar on the best even strength team in the league. If there is any one of these particular points terrifying other teams, it is this one.

The Olympic Break
The Olympic break gave both Iginla and Eriksson a chance to get their legs back; for Ignila, that meant a bit of a breather and for Eriksson it meant getting his reps in after returning from his concussion. The energy Iginla came back with turned his line into a true top line and they have been dominating opponents ever since. Eriksson's improvement has, not only added more depth by improving the Bruins third line, but also, I think, played a role in Carl Soderberg's recent successes. A chemistry has developed between the two Swedes that was not really there with Eriksson on the Bergeron line. The result being that once again, there is no break in the Bruins forward lines. There is skill and grit on all four lines and now, all four lines are playing well.

The Bruins System
Third man high, three-zone center, protect the house, support your teammates, weak-side defender pressures the puck at the blue line. At this point, there is pretty much one vulnerability in the Bruins' team system; a cross-ice stretch pass, but since they know that, it isn't much of a vulnerability. If someone makes a mistake, there is always someone else to cover him. And both Rask (who is playing at Vezina levels) and Johnson (who is playing far better than any back up has a right to) are good enough to make up for nearly every time mistakes compound into a serious scoring chance. Over the last month and a half pretty much the only goals the Bruins have given up have involved the occasional long pass and the bad bounce amidst the chaos in front of the net. At this point, enough Bruins have been playing the system that it is second nature, and the system is intuitive enough that newer players have fit in perfectly.

But along with the strategic system, there is a powerful team character. It leads to Chris Kelly, who is pretty goddamn good in the face-off circle, to play wing, to Gregory Campbell staying on the fourth line and making less money than he otherwise would, to David Krejci working the point on the power play, and for every player to stand up for every other player. If the Bruins can win another Cup or two in the next five years and continue their overall success, one could argue Claude Julien is one of Boston's greatest coaches, if not one of the NHL's greatest coaches.

The Schedule
It should also be noted that the Bruins won a lot of games they were supposed to win. Florida twice. Carolina. Phoenix twice. Minnesota. Washington is a cusp team that “needs” points, but they are still below Boston in the standings, and the same goes for Montreal, Philadelphia, and New York. All four are better teams than those previously mentioned, but all four are still, not as good as the Bruins. Chicago was diminished. And Colorado has come back down to Earth. Not losing in March was still pretty fucking amazing, but the Bruins also benefited from a schedule that happened to set the table perfectly for them.

Perfect Hockey
Oh yeah, also they haven't been making mistakes. Like any mistakes. And the few that happen, are almost always taken care of by a teammate. It's fucking relentless.



Looking Forward
Given all that, it's hard not to be optimistic about the Bruins chances in this post-season. From what I've seen, the only real concern is Chara. Since the Olympic break, Chara seems to have lost a step. Thus far it hasn't been a problem, but against the Penguins, or even in seven games against the Canadians, having your top shut down defenseman a step too slow could cost them the series. Hopefully, with the Eastern conference now sewn up, they can give Chara (and Bergeron and Kelly and Campbell and Krejci...) a few days off to hopefully recharge his legs a bit.

But baring that, and assuming the Bruins stay healthy, at this point, there is no good reason not to expect the best.

Three Questions for the New England Patriots

With the Super Bowl over and some pretty definitive evidence that even if the Patriots had managed to beat the Broncos, they wouldn't have had a shot against the Seahawks, I think we're ready to look forward to next season.

Given how successful the Patriots were this season with so many catastrophic injuries, there are good reasons to be optimistic about next year. I mean, they got to the AFC championship game with a team just a few notches above their practice squad. Even getting just a portion of the talent they lost to injury this year, back for next year would make them, yet again, favorites to win the AFC East and make it to the finals. But injuries weren't their only challenge and as Brady and company look to win their fourth ring, I think there are three questions they need to answer first.

Do any of the rookie wide receivers have the talent to contribute to a Super Bowl win next year?
It is pretty clear that the learning curve for a new wide receiver for the Patriots is a little steeper than the average. Given how much of their success depends on Brady's decisions after the play has been called and after it has started, a new wide receiver has a ton to absorb before he can really contribute. But even if they all do get fully and completely on the same page with Brady next year, do they or does any one of them have the talent, whether as a deep threat or in terms of yards after the catch, to influence the structure of opposing defenses? If the Patriots think the answer to this question is “No,” then that determines their top off-season priority: get an impact wide receiver any way they can. Over the years this Patriots team has had a ton of success by staying out of the off-season auctions, and finding talent either undrafted, deep in the draft, or picking up mid-risk high-reward free agents, but I just don't think they have the luxury this time around. More on this later, but I think the window for another championship is beginning to close. However, if they do believe one or all of their rookies this year will blossom next year, then they find themselves (again) with a lot of flexibility this off-season. They'll be able to take their time, look for hidden gems in the draft, or try another veteran free agent who might have one more season left in the tank.

How much should we rely on Gronkowksi?
The Patriots are still a good team, even without Gronk, but it was clear their offense, as it is constructed now, just doesn't have the depth to win a championship without him. The problem is, for whatever reason (and I'm not going to speculate about how his off-field behavior might contribute) Gronk can't seem to stay healthy enough to help the team to a Super Bowl. Furthermore, he now finds himself uniquely vulnerable for career ending injuries. What happens if that forearm breaks again? What happens if that knee takes another hit? And then there's the regular wear and tear a huge body accumulates while being battered by other huge bodies. Gronk could come back completely healthy and, in the existing offensive system, put up record breaking numbers, or, he could not. I don't think the Patriots should answer this question with personnel (though they probably will look for another tight end who can catch) but, if they want an offense that is not as limited by his absence, they might have to answer this question with strategy. Essentially, they should build the “No Gronk” plays into the system, diversifying it slightly so that, should they not have him, it is harder for their opponents to take advantage of that absence.

In some ways, this question is a lot harder than it appears. You might be thinking, “Of course you diversify your offense, why wouldn't you?” and I think there is some truth to that. But changing an NFL offense isn't that easy, if for no other reason than the team would have to first answer the question, “Change it to what?” And given the challenges they had incorporating rookie receivers this year, do they really want to throw a whole new set of plays and wrinkles at them? In terms of return on investment, there is a chance it is actually better for the Patriots to continue with their current system and hope Gronk stays healthy.

When should we start planning for the post-Brady Patriots?
Assuming he stays healthy, which is a pretty perilous assumption, I think it's reasonable to expect Brady to play well for another, maybe three years. But two, three, or five years from now, Tom Brady will retire and the Patriots will have to start someone else at quarterback. Unfortunately, unless Ryan Malette is the next Steve Young, the Patriots are going to face a ton of difficult decisions in the lead up to that transition. Unfortunately, one of those decisions might be sell off our valuable players, collect draft picks, live with failure for a few years, and rebuild the team from scratch for whatever character of competition the NFL then has.

They could, of course, decide to make those decisions after Mallet has proved his abilities one way or the other, and given all the other decisions that would be required of a “post-Brady” plan, it'd be hard to argue against that idea. As with the Gronk question, in terms of cost/benefit, there is a lot to be said for just waiting this one out. You know, especially since New England area sports fans are so forgiving. They totally won't turn their back on the Patriots if, after over a decade of unparallelled excellence they have to slog through five or six crappy seasons, right? Right?

For the last eight or so years, I've had a somewhat distant relationship with professional football. I've worked on Sundays and so, have only watched the Monday night, Thursday night, and occasional Sunday night prime time games. Even once I got a DVR, football was never quite important enough to me, to go through the trouble of recording (and then fast forwarding as much I as watch) the games and watching them later. But, my schedule changed and now, assuming I get around to buying those wireless headphones for the TV, I'll be able to watch pretty much every game next season. Which makes me wonder how my relationship to the sport will change. Of the four majors, football is my third favorite to watch (after hockey and baseball and before basketball, and I still much prefer rugby, and, in the right setting curling) and I've reached a satisfying relationship with it. The few games I got to watch had an “eventness” to them that I don't know if they'll have next year.

Will watching more games deepen the relationship? Will I gain a better understanding of football systems? Will I get bored? And how much do I care about concussions in the NFL? I will now be expression an opinion that I did not have the opportunity to express before. And there's that whole non-profit not paying taxes thing.

Also, since I've got you, Shawn Thornton's goal was the best goal.

Fixing the NHL's Discipline Problems

The recent game between the Bruins and the Penguins highlights the shortcomings of the NHL's discipline system. It's hard to say how effective it has been since it was instituted after Matt Cooke ended Marc Savard's career. I honestly don't watch enough games to keep track of things, but, there doesn't seem to be many fewer hits to the head than there were before the system was established. Or even if the incidents have decreased, that decrease might be entirely from Matt Cooke no longer routinely hitting people in the head. Which I guess is something. But there is still a lot of dangerous plays happening and there is way too much confusion and ambiguity around how to punish these plays. Luckily, a bookish intellectual living in Somerville is here to save the NHL. Here's how I would fix the NHL's Discipline problem.

Systematize the Suspension System: Right now, a player gets suspended for as long as Brendan Shannahan says he gets suspended. Whether it's fair or not to criticize Shannahan's judgment—wait, no, it is. Far too often, Shannahan makes his decision based on story lines and public relations. If it looks really bad, you get a long suspension. If it doesn't look too bad, no matter how dangerous the play was, you might not get a suspension. And if you're a star player in the playoffs like Shea Weber you might not get suspended at all. (Just a fine.) This is not just a problem with Shannahan, but a problem with human judgment. There will always be an element of judgment in anything like this, but the more we can minimize it, the fairer and more effective the discipline system will be. How would the system work? The NHL would establish classes of dangerous plays. For example, a flow-of-play, on-the-puck dangerous play might be a Class C infraction, like if, in going for a legal hit, a player's arms, elbows, or shoulder, unintentionally made significant contact with an opponent's head, would carry a 2-game suspension for the first offense, and then additional games for each additional offense after that. These classes can make distinctions between (and should certainly include) plays involving sticks, fists, shoulders, and elbows, as well as plays targeting the upper or lower body. (Lower body stuff in particular is being neglected I think, especially given how many fights start with one player taking a shot at an opponent's knees.) This system doesn't have to be massively complex, just give enough structure that it is not always the responsibility of a human judge to assess the discipline.

Render the Fact of Injury Irrelevant: For the most part, a player can engage in a wildly dangerous play and get away without punishment if the opponent is not injured. I think we all know that if Marchand had gone off on the stretcher we would all be talking about Neal's knee to the head as one of the dirtiest plays of the last few years. If the play is dangerous, it's dangerous and that's it, and that fact needs to be formalized in order for discipline to be a meaningful deterrent to dangerous plays. Does this mean someone could end up with a 10-game suspension for a play in which his opponent was totally unhurt? Yes. But the goal of the discipline system is not to punish injurious plays but to prevent dangerous plays. That said, I would be totally cool with formalizing some kind of “severity” extra consideration. For example, if the league wants to add a greater penalty to a play because they believe it was an unusually severe example of the dangerous play, I think it would be fair to include the fact of injury as evidence in their case for the extra punishment, but not as proof for the extra punishment.

Formalize the Benefit of the Doubt: What was the difference between Orpik's unpenalized hit and Seidenberg's penalized hit? The benefit of the doubt. Essentially, the referees gave Orpik the benefit of the doubt; that he'd committed to the hit before the strange puck bounce off the boards put Erikson in a dangerous position and his target was Erikson's chest, even though there was substantial contact with the head. They assumed he was making a good hockey play, and the responsibility for the injury Erikson suffered, rested in the nature of hockey and an unlucky bounce. Seidenberg was not given the benefit of the doubt on his check. The result is that no one is really sure what constitutes an illegal hit to the head, which means that, if you've got a chance to really deck a guy, it might still be worth the risk. One way or the other, the league needs to formalize the benefit of the doubt and write into the rules something like, “If the referee is unsure whether an illegal hit to the head occurred he should assess the penalty.” Or not assess the penalty. The important thing is that everyone knows that if the play is borderline, as most plays are, it will be called the same way in every game and every situation.

Reform the Instigator Penalty: (Yeah, I've harped about this before, but it's relevant.) I don't know if fighting deters dangerous plays. I don't think anyone knows for sure one way or the other. But enough people, with all different relationships with the game, believe the idea that it is going to stick around for the foreseeable future. However, the structure of the instigator penalty compromises whatever ability fighting may have as a deterrent. A player who decides to engage in a dangerous play, knows that there is an extra deterrent against coming after him. However, I don't think we should get rid of the instigator role entirely. Too many fights are started after perfectly legal hits. Here's how I'd change things. After a fight, if the referees believed there was an instigator to that fight, they would formally label that player an “instigator.” After the game, the league would review run of play preceding the fight. If they believe there were no dangerous plays, the “instigator” is suspended for one game (and an additional game for each additional time he is an “instigator”). If they find a dangerous play, that player is not assessed the suspension. If the dangerous play they do find, fits one of the classes of suspension, that player is suspended under those rules. In this way, players are punished, both for unnecessary fights and for dangerous plays. (Sidenote: I don't entirely understand why a society perfectly cool with MMA and boxing has a problem with institutionalized fighting in hockey. That's not an endorsement of fighting in hockey. I honestly don't really know how I feel about it, but it does strike me as a tad incongruous.)

There is a chance that hockey (and football) is coming to a crisis point. The players are now moving so fast and are now so big and strong that plays that were safe for decades are now dangerous. To put this another way, our skulls haven't gotten any thicker even as the rest of our bodies have gotten bigger and stronger. Which, of course, brings about some of the most difficult questions around the nature of sport. How much risk is justified for our entertainment? What do we do about youth sports where, by definition, the kids playing are not responsible for their own well-being? When do the dangers of sport overtake the joys and whose joys have precedence? I honestly, hope we don't end up needing to ask these questions, but unless the discipline system is fixed, we will.