I feel like a kid on Christmas morning. The puck drops on the 2006-07 NHL season tonight, and I'm giddier than a congressman at a boy scout convention.
While the general, sane population begins to cower and pout as summer draws to an end, we hockey fans perk up and prepare to greet the cold with open arms. That winter nip in the air smells as sweet as blooming spring flowers, and we dig for our sweaters and beanies with the glee of a teenage girl shopping for a new sun dress in April.
Even when the worst month of the year, February, rolls around, the budding playoff push numbs us to its cold, dull, holiday-less misery (president's day doesn't count, and valentine's day is sort of like a negative holiday).
Anyway, hooray for hockey.
So the season launches with three games tonight, two of which will be nationally televised on the home of the NHL, Versus (formerly OLN). OLN did a decent job in its debut season last year, picking up the exclusive NHL broadcast rights after ESPN dropped them like a glass of wine at a Parkinson's convention amid well-founded post-lockout viewership concerns.
OLN/Versus veteran Ted Nugent (top) melts Buffalo Sabres RW Maxim Afinogenov's Russian face with a bodacious American hunting riff.
Yes, the National Hockey League on the Outdoor Life Network, your go-to crock pot for rodeo, hunting, fishing and all sorts of other redneck fun. Bull riding at 7; Hockey at 8, Ted Nugent's "Wanted Ted or Alive" at 11. Talk about a match made in heaven. How many folks do you suppose subscribe to both The Hockey News and Field And Stream? Minnesotans and Canadians don't count.
But even if the league's exposure and legitimacy was a fraction of what it was with ESPN, OLN's '05-'06 game lineup was surprisingly pretty good, and Bill Clemente, Pierre McGuire and Keith Jones did an okay job picking up the slack in the studio. OLN's ratings, of course, went through the roof (which may be why they felt compelled to change their moniker to something a little less, well, outdoorsy).
That said, the NHL on OLN did feel sort of like a retarded NHL 2Nite; dumbed-down hockey for the OLN psychographic. Buccigross, Melrose and Ferraro: you are missed.
So anyway, now it's the NHL on Versus, and it all starts tonight with Buffalo vs. Carolina at 7pm ET, followed by Dallas vs. Colorado at 10. And if you sprung for the NHL Center Ice package, the game of the night should be Ottawa at Toronto at 7:30.
Better go get my work out of the way; maybe pick up some Labatt.
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Two tracks today:
While drummer Moore's solo records have found him setting aside the Nawlins swamp funk of his Galactic day job and flexing his jazz chops, this project leans a little more toward the former. Perhaps that's because his lineup on III is a little funkier than the more straight-ahead jazz support he had enlisted on his first two solo ventures. Robert Walter on keys and Will Bernard on guitar, with some sax and trombone help from Skerik and Mark Mullins, respectively. Walter penned most of these songs, including this one, which would fit on any of his Twentieth Congress discs.
Stanton Moore: "Poison Pushy"
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And, appropriately, the New York Rangers Goal Song.
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