SCOTT JACOBS

In 1996 the Winnipeg Jets moved to Phoenix and became the Coyotes.  In 2011 the Atlanta Thrashers left town after being bought by True North Sports and Entertainment and became the Jets. Complicating matters is that the Jets old history remains with Phoenix, while Atlanta’s grim lackluster presence gets to stay with the new Jets. Okay, now that we got that out of the way the Jets finally unveiled their new logos today.

I want to like them, I do.  But shove a maple leaf down my throat in a sport that has a number of Canadian teams already and I just don’t understand why they couldn’t have been a little more creative with this.  I’ll reserve jdgement until when the jerseys come out (September I’m hearing), but I’d give it a 6/10. It’s a hell of a lot better than the last sports franchise to relocate: The Oklahoma City Thunder.   But red, navy, and silver?  Again.  They couldn’t have tried a more unique color combo?

SCOTT JACOBS

Sports are fun, cartoons are awesome. Sports cartoons are six kinds of epic.  So we found a guy who loves both sports and graphic design, and we asked him if he we could show off his awesome work. His response? Yes. #Winning.

But seriously, Gary Finkler is a really talented freelance artist who creates some wicked cool sports cartoons.  We’re going to begin posting them here in our efforts to make him world famous, and to show how diverse Juiced Sports can be.  It’s all in good fun.  Check out a sampling of his terrific work with more cartoons after the jump.

Goodell and Obama.

Four centers walk into a bar

Now playing first base…

Winnipeg to Phoenix / Atlanta to Winnipeg: Let there be Jets!

Un-fortune-ate teller

No cartoons were injured during this post (that we know of). Check out more of Finkler’s work at The 7th Inning Sketch.

Cartoons: Gary Finkler

SCOTT JACOBS

Canada loves their hockey.  In the same way that the United States cherishes their football (not futbol), the country to the North loves their pucks.  They created the game.  They play it more than anyone.  Hockey is practically religion to all the maple leaf loving ‘eh’-ers.  Yet no Canadian NHL team has claimed the Stanley Cup since Montreal way back in 1993.

So it’s not surprising that Vancouver was crushed when their team’s Stanley Cup dreams were destroyed last night 4-0 in game 7.  Boston, the city that wins everything (as if they needed another reason to gloat), got another ring to add to their sickeningly stacked post Y2k collection, and they did it at the expense of a team that has never won one.  The Canucks completed their 40th anniversary with a goose egg to show for their championship pedigree.  Losing the last two games of the series, and four of the last five apparently did not go over well with Canucks fans, who decided that starting a riot was the appropriate way of taking out their anger.

It’s funny because I tweeted last night that Vancouver fans were straight class for staying the whole game despite their team’s listless uninspired performance.  The fact that they even cheered some Bruins players as they paraded around the Canucks home ice with the Cup was a pretty unique site to see.  At the end of the day Canada is in love with hockey, and if they couldn’t watch one of their teams win it, at least they got to see the trophy in person (I’m guessing that was their logic).

But I guess I jumped the gun on Vancouver fans being classy.  They did afterall boo NHL commisioner Gary Bettman mercilessly. That has to rank right up their at the top of most awkward trophy presentations ever.  Seriously, he had to practically scream at the top of his lungs just to have his voice heard. I have never in my life seen such an angry crowd towards a commissioner after a championship game.  I thought they were going to jump onto the ice and beat him into oblivion (See for yourself):

Fortunately they stayed in their seats.

But when they left the arena, after the slow painful realization that their NHL best Canucks came just one game short of bringing their native country the Cup, drunk sadness turned to bitterness.  Bitterness turned to stupidity.  Stupidity turned into a riot.  Rioting led to injuries. Nearly 150 of them in fact.

They took to the streets in droves and began looting and rioting, damaging stores, and breaking windows.  People compared it to a war zone as firefighters scrambled to the scene and police in riot gear scanned the area.  Numerous arrests were made as well.  Cars were flipped over, sirens started blaring, and people were screaming.  C’mon Vancouver! Sportsmanship?  Eh.

This apparently isn’t the first time.  In 1994 following another bitter Stanley Cup game 7 defeat, Canuck fans also rioted in the streets of Vancouver.  That game took place in New York (’94’s riot was nothing compared to last night’s).  For a beautiful city, Vancouver people sure know how to turn things ugly.

So yeah, they take this stuff seriously (maybe a little too seriously).  Which leaves me kind of relieved that Canada won the  Gold Medal Game back in the 2010 Winter Olympics, which were held in the same arena: the Rogers Centre.  Canada partied like crazy after winning, but now just imagine had they lost.  Would Canada fans have burned the city down?  Something tells me that the U.S. which barely tweeted at all about the Stanley Cup on a national level, didn’t need to win a gold medal at the expense of a city destroying itself.  But that’s just me.

For the NHL in a strange way the riot actually brought more attention to the Cup than the series itself.  By starting a riot, Vancouver turned a sports story into a worldwide curiosity.  Again, it’s publicity, even if it’s not good.

As for the Bruins, congratulations you lucky S.O.B.’s.  They won their first Cup since 1972 and did it behind the brilliant goal-tending of Timmy Thomas, who completed an epic playoff run with 798 saves (an NHL playoff record) and the Conn Smythe trophy for Playoff MVP.  Further adding insult to injury was the fact that he was just the 2nd American to win the award. He was the only American on Boston’s team!  I’m sure Canada loves that.

People tend to forget that the Bruins were the first American team in the NHL.  Probably has something to do with the fact that you’d have to be 87 years old to have even been alive when they dropped their first puck.  An Original Six team, they now have six Cups to go along with the moniker.  The Bruins were also one of the league’s first expansion teams in addition to the Montreal Maroons.  There’s a fun useless fact the next time you try to impress a Canadian girl.

Boston also has 23 division championships to go along with their rich history.  Their captain Zdeno Chara, the first to hoist the cup after they defeated the Canucks, is the tallest player in NHL history.

Consider this: the city of Boston now has 7 championships to their name since the start of the century (Patriots: 3, Red Sox: 2, Celtics: 1, Bruins: 1).  The City of Cleveland hasn’t won anything since 1964.  Speaking of Cleveland, fans were tweeting LeBrongo last night about Canucks goaltender Roberto Luongo, who was anything but spectacular when his team needed him most.  Then again, when your team scores 0 goals it’s going to be hard to win any game you play (The numbers back that up)!  But even when LeBron’s not playing he’s talked about.  Add Le in front of anything nowadays and apparently you get a star player who wilted in the moment.

As for Vancouver, they’ll recover eventually, but isn’t it odd that in both the Stanley Cup Finals and NBA Finals, the heavy favorite lost the final four out of five games of the series, and their superstar played incredibly erratic?  People were calling Tim Thomas ‘Dirk’ and Luongo ‘LeBron.’  Hard to fight the logic.

It’s even harder to think that with hoops and hockey done, it’s nothing but baseball and lockouts for the next 2-3 months.

Crap.

Photos: Getty, Reuters

Staring down the barrel of a humiliating offseason and a summer of endless questions, the Vancouver Canucks finally got the final goal to bury the pesky Chicago Blackhawks, their past demons, and a North American media ready to pounce on them for what would have been one of the great choke jobs in sports history.

Disaster averted.  Dream alive.

For the number one seed Canucks, the NHL’s President Cup winner with 115 points, celebrating a first round series victory like they just won the Stanley Cup was merited, and given all the grief Chicago has given them the last two post-seasons, redemption tastes so sweet.

In front of a raucous home crowd that lived and died with every line change and every shot, the Canucks won a wild game 7, 2-1 in overtime to slither past the defending champs and into the second round.  Their franchise goalie locked up for another decade still kicking.  Their dreams of delivering Canada Lord Stanley’s Cup very much alive.

Yet it was Alexander Burrows who netted both Vancouver goals, the second an absolute rocket, that sent a delirious white towel waving crowd into pure bedlam.

It didn’t come easy.  It never does for these Canucks, who sported a 1-0 lead with under 2 minutes to play when Jonathan Toews stormed in with the equalizer, short-handed nonetheless.  And you couldn’t help but think, “here we go again.”

And merely seconds into overtime, Chicago was awarded a powerplay, and had some golden opportunities.  But they couldn’t convert, as Luongo made some beautiful saves to preserve what has been a sensational season for Vancouver.  The 40 year old franchise wasn’t going to go down tonight.  Not in front of their crowd.  Not after this season.  Not after being up 3 games to none.  Not after one Vancouver Sun columnist remarked that a loss in this one would be something Canuck players would take with them to their graves.

Burrows refused to let that happen, saving his best for last: his 2 goal night culminating a 3 goal series.

The last one emptied Vancouver’s bench and ended Chicago’s bid for a repeat (their roster, gutted in the offseason because of the salary cap, coming just short of an epic comeback). Net-miner  Corey Crawford was awesome and the Hawks fought valiantly till the bitter end, but for the first time in three years against the Blue and Green it wasn’t quite enough.

What does this game mean to Canada? Well, put it this way: Prime Minister Stephen Harper was watching the game from his private campaign plane.  And I’m guessing he wasn’t rooting for Chicago.

For a hockey crazed nation and a city that treated winning the gold medal in the sport like winning the World Cup, this was a big deal.

The number one seed is moving on.  Vancouver, you can breathe again.  For now.

Photo: Reuters

The NHL has found a great idea to bring interest to hockey: Unleashing each NHL franchise as a superhero!

They have partnered with Stan Lee to reveal one hero per day every day in January. We’re still waiting for 10 of the heroes to be unveiled, but the 20 they have so far look cool. See them at NHL.com.

Yahoo! has a long story about the background and details of the project. Apparently some of the “hockey purists” don’t like it.

“I understand what’s happening right now. We’re getting negative feedback from some of the hockey purist bloggers,” said Baratta, chief creative officer for Guardian Media Entertainment.

As noted in the Yahoo! article, the characters are kind of “cheese-tastic,” but attaching super-human characteristic to athletes and teams is nothing new. The marketing campaign is supposed to appeal to young kids who might like such action comics, but I think it also brings attention to the NHL to a broad base, as noted by the blog coverage this project has received. Even if older sports fans aren’t comics fans, they still might tune in to the All-Star game just because they are reminded by the attention this marketing campaign is receiving.

For that matter, I’m not even a hockey fan, so I wouldn’t be writing about hockey at all if it weren’t for the Guardian Project. Sure there’s a lot that’s ripe for ridicule in terms of the story-lines and weapons that any superhero is going to use, but if it increases the viewership of the all-star game and the second-half of the season, it will be a success.

You can vote at Facebook for what character you want to see revealed next. We need to see the Avalanche!

MITCH BLATT

A week ago, I wrote about the immature thuggish sport of hockey that encourages assault. There were so many “thugs” in the NBA the year or two following Ron Artest’s fight. Oh, the bad media coverage you get if anyone in a real sport gets in a fight.

Now, as if to prove my point about hockey’s professionalism, Vancouver Canucks forward Rick Rypien has been suspended after he got into a fight with a fan:

“I was just standing straight up applauding as (Rypien) was getting kicked out. He was out of control,” Engquist told Russo. “And then I said, ‘Way to be professional,’ and he obviously didn’t care for that comment and decided to grab me and almost dragged me over the rail. If my brother wasn’t grabbing me and the other player wasn’t grabbing him, he probably would have dragged me over the edge.”

- The Star Phoenix

Some code of honor you got there, hockey. (Video in the Full Post)

The fan fight comes 1 minute into this video of the player fight:

Remember when you were 10 years old how fun it was to get in fights at school?

NHL players get into fights every game, sucker punching each other with intent to assault, getting into six fights in two minutes and intentionally breaking each others’ jaws.

Hockey is essentially legalized assault. Crime on ice. In a minor league hockey match, which included the six fights in the first two minutes, one player is actually being charged with assault:

The Jacks confirmed that they have pressed charges against Macmillian and that more charges could be filed against others involved in the incident.

This is the same thing that happens in every hockey game just to a worse degree. Hockey is allegedly a sport about getting a puck into a goal, but they have basically legalized and promoted assault and battery in the games. There are penalties for some of the fights, but the league doesn’t do anything to discourage fighting, because they want players to fight.

In the NBA or NFL, when players fight, there’s a big controversy on ESPN, and players get suspended and denounced as thugs. In hockey, the point of the game is to be a thug. Shall we say there is a racial question sticking its head here, or is it just because no one ever sees any fights in hockey–no one watches–that they don’t talk about it? As Scott Jacobs wrote at JSB, hockey begins another season under relative obscurity.

I wonder, do hockey players think they are being tough by fighting? They’re playing a sport for freaks sake, so if they are actually any good at that sport, they should just score a goal rather than fighting. Fighting is the providence of 10-year-olds who get into a lame argument about what down it is in recess football.

Fighting in hockey, I guess, is for losers who can’t outplay their opponents on the ice. Indeed, Wikipedia says, “Fighting is usually performed by one or more enforcers, or “goons” — players who are typically better at fighting than hockey.”

Also according to Wikipedia, “Fighting is governed by a complex system of unwritten rules that players, coaches, officials, and the media refer to as “the code”.” Yes, hitting people from behind and unprovoked is part of a great ethical code…

If football is war, with two teams engaging on the gridiron battlefield, hockey is terrorism. Football players follow the Geneva Convention, so to speak, but hockey players ignore all rules of war and fight with terrorist tactics and war crimes.

Wikipedia says that fighting is “a considerable draw for the sport” and that “some fans attend games primarily to see fights.” True, the sport of hockey is itself very boring, but fighting over the results of such a boring sport is only pointless and ignorant.

Apparently fighting is supposed to “intimidate” players. That means that football is a more manly game. Football players don’t have to fight to intimidate each other. They just lay into their opponents with a devastating hit, consistent with the rules of the game. If hockey players were able to check very hard, also consistent with the on-paper rules of the game, they could maybe intimidate each other that way.

So people who want to watch sports will continue to not watch the non-sport of hockey. People who want to watch fighting would be better off watching MMA. And hockey will continue to get no ratings for their thug league.

SCOTT JACOBS

The NHL season began today.  Did you know that?

I practically forgot.

The NFL’s opening game each year is a national event, a shrine to the previous season’s Super Bowl winner.  MLB’s first game usually takes place on a Sunday Night on national TV, usually between two primetime teams.  The NBA has recently been opening it’s season on a Wednesday night on TNT with a doubleheader, always featuring the defending champion and their ring ceremony. And the NHL opens in a foreign country so out of touch from the sports fans psyche that the game is practically forgotten.

Tucked in between a trifecta of MLB Division round games, the NBA’s exhibition season, and a month and a half into the NFL and college football seasons, the NHL opened it’s 2010 season today.  In Helsinki.  Where’s that?

Answer: Finland.

And o by the way, if you’re curious, it’s the Hurricanes taking on the Wild.

As I write this article they play on.  For those of you keeping score at home it’s 2 Eastern time in the U.S.  Most people are at work.  Most kids are at school, and the MLB Playoffs resume later today.

The NHL is already behind the eight ball.  ESPN Magazine’s Preview for the sport was shameful.  I get that ESPN doesn’t care about hockey.  They helped kill it’s vitality in the states.  Versus is still relatively obscure to most people, even in spite of their great college football games that they’ve had.

For years the start of hockey season was a big deal for me.  I circled it on my calendar eagerly anticipating it’s arrival.  But now the NHL is such an afterthought that it’s feasible a week could go by without some casual sports fans even realizing they dropped the puck.

The NHL needs a big stage to open it’s season, not a location that I need a globe to find.

They need to make it known that their opening game is important, that you should watch because of this, this, and this.

The NHL which was once one of the Big 4 sports in North America is now a forgotten entity, revisited in mid spring when they start the playoffs.  In any other sport, the defending champions slicing and dicing their roster (like the Blackhawks did) would be one of the summer’s biggest stories.  In any other sport, a team that made the playoffs despite being bankrupt and owned by the sport, would be at the forefront of our sports news.  In any other sport, stars defecting to Europe would be a big deal.

But this is the NHL we’re talking about.  And if you can name the two teams to which I was referring you’re ahead of most casual fans.

The NHL has a niche following, and many people feel it’s experimentation with the Sun Belt has failed.  But hockey’s ability to promote itself and get it out on the forefront has also failed.  Yes, they’re still coming in drives to the arenas, but hockey’s water cooler appeal has flat out melted in the last 5-7 years.

And living in the Southeast like I do, well forget it.  You’re practically a minority if you can put together a cohesive hockey conversation.

But I find it hard to believe that a league that’s been around since 1917 can be such a blip on our sports radar. Maybe they expanded too fast, maybe they made some bad decisions, but to have been around for almost a 100 years and have the most well known trophy in sports, it seems inexcusable to open a season this quietly.

Some say the NHL doesn’t mind being a niche sport.  I don’t think that’s the case.  I just think that the NHL has fallen off the map so much, that they don’t even have any idea where to begin to start climbing back up.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: we tend to think these mega sports leagues like the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL are infallible, but with the path the NHL is going towards, it’s on the verge of becoming invisible.  Which for the sake of their league, isn’t a whole lot better.

Photo: AP

PAUL NARDIZZI, Boston comedian

After blowing a 3-0 series lead, the Bruins did themselves even prouder by taking a commanding 3-0 lead in game 7, only to blow that to a Philadelphia Flyer team that was seemingly dead in the water 7 days previous. What made it even harder for Bruin fans to swallow was the fact that the B’s, whose own history book is already laced with an infamous too many men on the ice penalty in a Game 7 back in the 70’s, once again found themselves a man up despite no one in the opposing penalty box. This time the culprit was Marc Savard, who mistakenly thought six plus one still equals six, when in fact in hockey it equals two minutes in the sin bin during crunch time of a 3-3 game.

Savard had recently returned from a head injury, so he was not exactly the guy you wanted standing near the easy latch bench door when the game was on the line. Personally I would have strapped him to the bars of a steel cage every time he came off for a line change, and for backup I would have been clutching a tranquilizer gun just in case the meandering moron somehow escaped. I’ve never exactly been sure why hockey players always seem to have this ‘running out on the ice when it’s not their turn to be on the ice problem,’ and in particular during the playoffs. You never see two goonish centers in the NBA at midcourt saying, “Hey, being that we’re both white, I’m pretty sure one of us shouldn’t be out here right now.”

Savard’s head was clearly still not right based on a few other plays he screwed up during the series. He was asked after game 7 just what the F he was doing out there when his line mates all knew it was not time to go out there. The response was, “I was getting tight, so I decided to go for a walk. Luckily I was wearing a sweater as it was really cold out, it was a like a sheet of ice out there.”

Bruins Coach Claude Julien took the high road and did not blame any particular player for the loss, in fact he said, “We lost as a team and need to get better at both ends, we had our chances but just did not capitalize, the loss had nothing to do with that idiot Savard or his inability to count on his fingers or his failure to sit still on a wooden bench until I tell him to get his ass up.”

The doctor who cleared Marc to play is now being investigated as it is unsure if anyone ever gave him any sort of clearance to practice medicine. Just what did Marc have to do to convince this clown that he was ready anyway? Savard took a mammoth shot to the head that sent him off in a stretcher; yet several weeks later he’s sent out there without any tubes sticking out of him or electrodes attached to his brain stem? Really? We’ve come a long way in medicine haven’t we? In football, guys a lot larger than Savard retire after hits like that, but NHL doctors not only ship the demented bastard out there amongst a sea of sticks and elbows, they don’t even supply the addled fool with a simple flow chart so he can follow rudimentary line changes.

Something tells me the tests they conducted on Marc were not very difficult. “Okay Marc, I just need you to hold this stick in your hands and swing it. Very good. Start lacing ‘em up. What color is this black puck? Wow, two for two, here’s your cup. Now how many fingers do I have up my nose? Are my shoes tied or untied? I just farted, please tell me when you smell it. Excellent, now you fart. I’m going to jam my foot up your ass, tell me when you feel uncomfortable. Allrighty, go play center.”

Is Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest the biggest slap in the face to starving countries? “Hey, heard you guys are starving over there, sorry no we got nothing, can’t do anything for you. All we have is a couple of barrels of meat that we use for this gluttony contest. Feel free to help yourself to whatever you can find in the puke bin. Want a wet roll?” ESPN should rename the contest F%$$ You Africa.

The contestants in this farce actually call it a sport; however eating is not a sport, it’s a need. We all have to eat. It’s as if these pinheads will stop at nothing to garner a victory. Why don’t you go to the hospital and challenge a guy on life support to a living contest? That’d be a great event. Nurse walks in, “Excuse me sir, are you a visitor?” “No, I’m his opponent, and I’m in the lead.” Yank the cord out of the machine. “Ï’m 1-0. Now I’m going to head down to the Tourette’s Syndrome wing and see who can swear the least. Oh wait I can hear them already, I win! Now I’m going to challenge a woman who just had a sex change operation to a pissing contest. And then I’ll battle a schizophrenic in a game of Guess Who. Should be 4-0 by days end. “

Paul Nardizzi is a comedian who has appeared on Late Night with Conan O’Brein, The Best Damn Sports Show Period, the NESN Comedy All Stars and elsewhere. He is the author of The Sarcastic Sports Trivia Book Vol. I & II.