The Big Monday Thing - Victory Crisp Season
You do not crisp until...the win is...rolled into a wisp?
Hey if you happen to be the CEO of Nestlé or whatever, how about throwing a Coffee Crisp sponsorship our way? I promise I’ve never said anything bad about a billionaire before.
Victory Crisps! It’s a thing.
The Week of: May 2nd-8th
Results From Past Week:
We got some postseason hockey to recap, friends! Your Pacific Division-winning Calgary Flames took on the Wild Card upstart Dallas Stars in Games 1-3 of their first-round matchup this past week, and hey, it could have been worse! The bad news is, there wasn’t a lot of offense to speak of, but the good news is it’s way easier for me to recap.
We had a goalie battle in Game 1, with Jacob Markström and the Flames shutting out Jake Oettinger and the Stars in a 1-0 triumph at the Saddledome, in which both netminders put on a show.
We had a goalie battle in Game 2, with Jake Oettinger and the Stars shutting out Jacob Markström and the Flames with Calgary falling in a 2-0 defeat, in which both netminders put on a show.
We had a goalie battle in Game 3, but okay I guess it was mostly Oettinger, as Dallas broke the stalemate in their home barn with a 4-2 victory. Markström was pretty good. I don’t know.
Not great! But let’s not panic yet. I’ll tell you when to panic. I know the exact time to panic.
Flames Overall Playoff Record: 1-2
Standings: We don’t do this part now.
Soundtrack: Tubthumping - Chumbawamba
Absolutely, it’s Chumbawamba. This song was good enough for FIFA World Cup ‘98 on the original PlayStation, so it’s good enough for the Calgary Flames, and The Big Monday Thing by extension.
I was compelled to make sure no one from Chumbawamba has died. So far, not yet! They did have a member named Boff Whalley though. British people! Pretty sure he’s the one who takes a whiskey drink.
What We Liked:
For probably very stupid reasons, I was apprehensive about how Jacob Markström would perform in the playoffs. Just a hunch, or perhaps a medium-sized dose of sports-induced fatalism. Who knows?
The important thing is I was wrong, as he’s been spectacular. Through three games, he’s sporting a sparkling .974 sv%, all while the team has only allowed six goals, two of which were empty netters. Nothing he can do about that! Markström wasn’t in any danger of cardiac arrest after Game 1, but he was downright solid and made the saves he needed to. He kept his squad in it for Games 2 and 3, ultimately futile of course, as the offense more or less dried up. But it’s important that he keeps showing out on peak performance because while this team is working through it in the offensive zone right now, they’re too good to stay down forever. Markström is going to be called upon to make sure the storm has been weathered when they finally kick into high gear. I suspect he’s going to do just that.
What We Would Prefer Not To See:
Take your pick here: too much sustained defensive zone time far too often, Jake Oettinger being slightly better than Markström somehow, the parade to the penalty box (side note: I haven’t looked into the numbers, but anecdotally it seems to me like the Flames are getting caved in at the NUMEROUS 4v4 states of play, none of this parenthetical being something I’d have predicted).
I think we’ll go with Matthew Tkachuk’s persistent search for somebody to fight. The postseason is historically a time you see the majors go away, so it’s distressing watching on as our perfect angel strives to engage in punch-punch. He is far too important to be spending five minutes bursts away from the game, even if he’s taking John Klingberg down with him. Tkachuk is at his best when he’s playing with an edge, but he’s at his worst when he’s not playing at all. Not to mention he’s already flirted with injury because of these extracurriculars, and like, hey man, you’re kind of a massive part of the best line in hockey, we’d sure like to see you be that.
We’ve heard a lot of criticism from some fans about Gaudreau and Tkachuk disappearing in this series. I think that’s an over-exaggeration, but the top line works so well because they all compliment each other so perfectly, you don’t want to kneecap it by removing one of the key cogs in the machine, because then all three of them suffer, and thusly so do I.
Enemy of the Week:
Joe Pavelski. It’s Joe Pavelski. Fuck this guy. He’s roughly the same age as me, a withered old husk of a man whose heart is liable to explode after going up three flights of stairs, and he’s out here putting the Flames’ stomachs in knots every time he skates through the slot. They gotta stop this guy or this series is over sooner rather than later.
I also really hate looking at his face? Like it’s bad to look at. You can tell he likes bad music.
What Comes Next:
Are you sick of the Dallas Stars yet? Well, don’t be! We’ve got to endure them (hopefully) three more times this week, and hey, maybe they’ll be way less annoying when they’re down a game in the series than they are when they’re up one.
We’ll find out today, and maybe as soon as Wednesday how this goes, but if it doesn’t go any longer than that, something terrible has happened.
Darren McCarty New Life Of The Week:
Let’s give it up one time for deathmatch wrestling.
If you’re a fan of the graps like I am, you’re bound to be subjected to varying qualities and styles of the one true sport, which is what is beautiful about the entire damn thing. Deathmatch wrestling is a specific discipline within The Business, and it is JUST ABOUT exactly what it sounds like. It’s an art form to itself, and one that is more of an acquired taste than most, because, yeah, it’s pretty brutal, whether it’s going right or not. If you caught wind of a story a few years back about actor David Arquette almost dying in the ring after a botched light tube spot (that’s right, botched light tube spot), that was deathmatch. It’s a spectacle of blood.
Which is why I shouldn’t have been surprised as I was while doing some intermission tweet scrolling during Game 3 to see Calgary Flames Legend Darren McCarty and noted bleeder being decimated inside the squared circle at Ruthless Pro Wrestling’s Body Count event. What a fun sentence to say.
I won’t post any of the footage I watched, but if you’re interested, it’s out there. He was only managing a tag team, but that means nothing, and he caught the wrath of what we in the know call “foreign objects”. Also, nearest I can tell, the entire event was sponsored and possibly bankrolled by McCarty’s line of CBD products? I’m learning so much today.
Unrelated Fact:
George Kirby made his debut for the Seattle Mariners on Sunday and goodness did he ever not disappoint. Kirby jumped straight in from Double-A Arkansas and threw six innings of four-hit shutout ball, and after his night was over he got to see Abraham Toro blast his second bottom of the ninth dinger in consecutive days, before Ty France doubled into left in the 10th to break Seattle’s AGONIZING six-game losing streak.
It was a short notice appearance for Kirby, but that still proved to be no trouble for his friends from college and high school baseball, all of whom promised to be there when he took a Major League mound for the first time. There was a loud and boisterous Kirby fan section having a ball all game, including his friend Dean, who wore his “Kirby Your Enthusiasm” shirt to the park:
Let’s get me one of these shirts.
See You Next Week:
So on Tuesday morning, I’m having some wisdom teeth pulled, and I’m going to be flying high on some powerful painkillers for the rest of the day. Debating contributing to this week’s ScorchStack issue under those parameters and seeing what I come up with.
Or I’ll just be asleep. We’ll see!