Cheers and Jeers – May 4th

The Good and the Bad of this past week.

It’s Friday. So we close out the "Week That Was" with our latest volume of… "Cheers and Jeers!"

This week, I draw up some shap for Alex Burrows, the Stamkos graphics and late, LATE night hockey while I take a lightsaber to the hands of Star Wars nerds, Kings doubters, and DALE EFFING WEISE.

CHEERS to Alex Burrows for being selected to Team Canada at the IIHF World Hockey Championships and playing his first game this morning. It’s quite the journey to go from ball hockey to Team Canada. Burrows is a shining example of how immense amounts of hard work and dedication can lead you to great heights. Huge kudos to Burrows for this amazing accomplishment.

JEERS to anyone (that includes me) who doubted the Los Angeles Kings as a serious Cup contender. They steamrolled the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Canucks and are one game away from sweeping the 2nd seed St. Louis Blues. They are currently making Brian Elliott look like a very ordinary goaltender, in a year where Elliott looked like a world-beater. Sure, Elliott was having an extraordinary season, in every sense of the word, but the Kings 3-0 series lead is not just about Elliott falling back down to Earth. The Kings are dismantling the entire Blues lineup. And it looks like the Kings are playing even better against the Blues than they were against the Canucks. They are just starting to hit their stride. Scary stuff, and MANY of us had them pegged wrong.

CHEERS to the Tampa Bay Lightning for their awesome Stamkos infographic, celebrating his 60-goal season. I’m a geek for this type of work, but this is particularly well done. It’s full of boatloads of interesting information, it’s beautifully laid out, and uses some wonderfully creative graphics to illustrate Stamkos’s marvelous campaign by the numbers.

JEERS to Dale Weise for being an idiot. What a complete pinhead. His new twitter avatar shows him, when he was still was the New York Rangers, leveling current teammate Dan Hamhuis. So the Canucks are out, and Weise takes the time to change allegiances? "I might as well show a picture of me as a Ranger, because they’re obviously better than the Canucks." What the hell is he thinking? Here’s his explanation yesterday via Twitter, "great pic i found on my comp at home couldn’t stop laughing when i saw it…..who would have known me and hammer would be boys after! (…) haha not at all hockey players leave things on the ice you play hard but when its over its over …were real tight now!" Yeah. we get it. Leave it all on the ice. Blah blah blah. Something tells me that when you suddenly wave a team flag of a different colour, folks in management don’t take kindly to that.  So, nice going, Mr. RFA, I bet Mike Gillis will DEFINITELY want to sign you back in the off-season, what with the lack of players clamouring to make the team. Oh wait…. Yeah. See ya, Weisey.

CHEERS to lengthy playoff overtimes. I LOVE THEM, especially when I don’t have a horse in the race. When you’re not emotionally invested in either team playing a long overtime game, the game becomes nothing but fun. You start finding weaknesses and breakdowns on both teams as they start to get more and more tired. And once the game gets to triple overtime, I find myself hoping that the game goes longer and longer. I like witnessing history in sporting events. When the Rangers scored in triple OT to beat the Capitals, I was actually disappointed. I wanted to go WAY longer. I wanted it to get to record-breaking territory. I will always remember staying up late to watch the Canucks/Stars 4OT game in 2007, which ended up being the 6th longest NHL game in history. And with the Canucks out of the playoffs now, I’m thoroughly enjoying ANY game that goes into overtime. The longer, the better. (THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID!)

JEERS to this stupid "May the 4th Be With You" bullshit that a bunch of lonely Star Wars nerds started. Quit using this random day as a reason to celebrate your ridiculous devotion to Star Wars crap. LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME. All these stupid nerd holidays can suck it. Pi Day, Towel Day, Star Wars Day, Hobbit Day, International Talk Like a Pirate Day?! WTF?! Enough. How about International Talk-To-A-Girl-For-The-First-Time-In-Your-Life Day? How about you celebrate that?

And a special, solemn Jeers to cancer for claiming Adam Yauch, aka MCA, of the Beastie Boys. I know cancer claims thousands of people every day, and I’ve had my own very close experiences with cancer. So I’m already well ensconced on the #fuckcancer team. So there isn’t really a need to jeers cancer. That’s kinda understood. But it took someone from us who was an musical innovator, a tireless activist and a model human. Today, for Adam, I’m gonna kick it root down.