You Know What I Hate?! – OCT 24

Sweatshirt Guy is angry and so am I.
Credit: iStockphoto/Thomas Perkins

In this week’s edition, I crack the whip on TSN’s schedule makers, hockey in the Desert and trolling, "professional" journalists.

You know what I hate?! TSN’s back-to-back game presentation schedule. Is TSN so cheap that they don’t want to pay their panelists to work in between games? Instead the try to cram Game 1 of a back-to-back into 2.5 hours. It’s been a LOOONG time since I saw a game wrap up in less than 2.5 hours. And without fail, the late game, usually involving the Canucks, gets pre-empted and joined in progress. Even when they DO manage to try to fix the problem, by putting the second game on TSN2 to start, they screwed that up too! Did you see that debacle of a presentation on last Tuesday’s game for Rick Rypien tribute??! Or course you did! They couldn’t have screwed that up more if they tried. Fix this mess, TSN. Start your games at 7PM ET and 10 PM ET. End of problem.

You know what I hate?! Watching the Vancouver Canucks take penalty after penalty in the first period of every single game. GAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW! What are they doing?! The Canucks have started almost every game by with multiple trips to the sin bin, giving their opponents an early leg up and/or killing any momentum that they try to build up. Canucks fans are likely well aware of how good the Canucks record is over the last couple of years when they’ve scored first. They’re almost forcing themselves to play from behind when they strike up the penalty parade. Enough, ya goofs! Calm the eff down, keep skating and and keep your stick on the ice. Also, I’m sorry if that sounded Don Cherry-esque. But seriously, enough with the first period stick penalties.

You know what I hate?! Fans referring to their team as "we". I have ALWAYS hated this habit. It’s so bloody annoying. No, fans, "we" didn’t win the game. THEY won the game, while YOU sat your fat ass on the couch and drank beer and yelled at the TV. "We" didn’t come back from three goals down only to come up short. THEY fought and clawed to try to come back to win a game. YOU took regular piss breaks and talked smack to your idiot buddies. And YOU probably got close to changing the channel when you thought THEY couldn’t do it. Chris Jones at Grantland wrote a great article on this very same topic. The unnecessary swipe at Leafs fans could have been omitted, but let’s face it – as a west coaster, I loved it.

You know what I hate?! The continued and ridiculous facade put forward by the NHL that people in Arizona give a flying fart about hockey.  This photo from last week’s game where the Coyotes hosted the Kings has made its way around. It’s proof positive that people don’t care and will NEVER care about hockey in Phoenix. What garbage. Gary Bettman, quit trying to put lipstick on this dead pig. Get that team out of Phoenix and into a market where people care about hockey and will pay to see it.

You know what I hate?! TROLLING JOURNALISTS! Holy balls, Mark Spector. You’re supposed to be a legitimate sports writer. And one who’s been in the business for many, many years. The piece you wrote about Canucks fans was a sham. You may have made a couple of salient points in that post, but they were so completely covered up by your cheap, unprofessional tactics to widely insult an entire fan base. You let your thinly veiled Edmonton colours taint your article from start to finish. It was so bad that you even had an Edmonton writer, a writer in your own market supporting the same team you do, tell you who baseless and immature your article was. I mean, honestly, who the hell do you think you are – DAMIAN COX?!