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Friday Foofaraw: Our Bears Season Preview Roundtable

By 1408

Look at out, kids. We did it. But we can’t make you any more football-stupid than you already are.

Is there any chance this team is going to be good?

Cieslak: No. There’s a chance they win 7 games making it the worst possible outcome for a rebuilding team outside of making the playoffs and getting the absolute piss kicked out of them in the wild card game. I still ride with Jay, mostly because everyone hates him which makes me like him more and more because I’m human poison. But the injuries to McPhee and Kevin White always being hurt and Alshon Jeffery almost a lock to *get* hurt, this team is in deep trouble this year. Worse yet it doesn’t seem like this year’s draft was that good. They should try and continue to stockpile good picks and winning more than 4 games is a bad way to do that. I wish they were going to be that bad – the coaching staff is too good for them to be the worst team in the NFL.

Fels: If I squint, and I mean really hard, I could trust Fangio to come up with different schemes to keep them in a lot of games they probably shouldn’t be in. They do have actual linebackers this season, instead of the Streetwise salesmen they had last season. The secondary still blows, but I understand trying to build a front seven before as secondary as that can partially cover for that. Not enough against any real QB of course, but the Bears also have a pretty cushy schedule in that regard. We have no idea what Osweiler is. The Eagles don’t have one, The Cowboys one is hurt. Who knows what you’ll get out of Stafford with no Megatron. Looking over the whole schedule, there’s really only three or four games you’d say they have absolutely no chance in, because this is football and it’s dumb and really most teams are just this goo no one can make anything of. 

When I stop squinting, Cutler will do the best he can but once again has no weapons. The line should be barely ok with Sitton but absolutely no one can get hurt. There’s going to be a lot of games where they needed touchdowns and get field goals and lose by one score. 

It all adds up to 7 wins, maybe 8, the same thing we’ve been watching basically for the past 20 years. 

Feather: Sure. This is the NFL and there’s a reason why hillbilly red-ass Jerry Glanville said it stood for “Not For Long.” Aside from basically one team (New England), every year is dependent on who doesn’t lose 30 players to catastrophic injury. We’re at the point of the NFL timeline where I was just simulating seasons on Madden ’08 and basically every roster is filled with make believe players. 

So can the Bears be good? Why the hell not. Sam Bradford is running the ship in Minnesota. Detroit is Detroit. Sweep those 4 games and split with Green Bay and the Bears are halfway to 10. That doesn’t seem nearly as implausible as when Teddy Bridgewater had 2 healthy knees. Factor in a softer out of division schedule than normal and suddenly, we’re expecting meaningful football in BEAR WEATHER again. 

See? I’ve got you believing. Of course, they’ll probably lose three key players in Houston and everything will go right down the toilet. Football is the worst. 

McClure:The NFL is stupid and a bloodbath, so maybe, but who gives a shit? It’s a sport that does not allow for incremental growth, so there are no years to build on as we’ve seen the likes of the Cubs and Hawks go through. Every year is a crapshoot because players limbs fall off literally ever 10 seconds. Plus, it’s far more amusing when the Bears are bad. This entire city is completely emasculated when they lose, and it’s hilarious. The average football fan is even stupider than the average hockey fan, and the arms race that is the marketing of the sport has now turned everything into a life or death reflection of self worth, and this city takes that to the extreme with its ill-conceived notions of what football is supposed to be about. Just look at the last week with how weepy and maudlin even the most critical Bears observers got with the release of Robbie Gould, an overpaid and bad kicker and locker room lawyer. But because he’s white and nice to the media and keeps perpetuating the Bearsiest of Bears ideals, there are still garments being rendered a week later. 

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I’m Miss World Cup, Watch Me Break And Watch Me Burn – C.I. World Cup Preview: Team Europe

By 1394

Here’s the thing. I love Anze Kopitar. I love watching him play. I think he’s the equal of Toews or Bergeron as two-way centers who can do anything you ask him. If he didn’t play on the West Coast he’d probably have a Selke to his name already (though Bergeron should honestly win it every year until he retires, and then maybe one or two years after that).

That doesn’t mean I think an international tournament should be mutated so that he can play with a mishmash of other players from countries the NHL just doesn’t fancy instead of Slovenia. While that’s not the reason Team Europe was created, it sure feels like it. The NHL feared Denmark or Switzerland or Norway or whatever else getting embarrassed in three games. I’m not sure this outfit will do much better.

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I’m Miss World Cup, Watch Me Break And Watch Me Burn – C.I.’s World Cup Preview: How Dumb Can Canada Be And Still Win? Let’s Find Out!

By 1293

Moving on to the overwhelming tournament favorites and the hosts, Team Canada. I’ll give Canada this; they’ve gotten away from trying to pick a “team,” like the US is still intent on doing, and got them in trouble in some junior tournaments, and are just picking the most talent they can find. When you have this much to pick from you clearly don’t need checking and 4th lines. They’re not doing the best job of it, of course. But it also doesn’t matter given the talent gap they have over the rest of the world.

It would probably be more fun to try and pick a team that Canada left at home and see how well they’d do. It would start with Subban and Letang. You could have Martin Jones or Roberto Luongo in net. Behind Subban and Letang you’d have Mark Giordano, T.J. Brodie, Ryan Ellis, and a host of others. That’s probably enough right there.

Speaking of which, how is the corpse of Jabe O’Meester ahead of any of those guys? That’s the thing about Canada’s decision makers. They’re still wrong. And still dumb. And it doesn’t matter. Why is Alex OrangeJello here ahead of Subban or Letang? Because he’s right handed? Kiss a sick monkey’s wet ass. Should Weber be ahead of them? Probably not. Still, Vlasic, Burns, and Doughty is more than enough to push those players down the chart and not make too much of a difference.

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I’m Miss World Cup, Watch Me Break Watch Me Burn – C.I.’s World Cup Preview: This Beer Fart Of A Team USA

By 1781

A day later than I had planned due to some planning snafus getting out of Montreal. Though I maintain Quebec is a weird vortex that just changes the date on your flight without you knowing so you can never leave (yes, I am Kat Stratford maintaining that boy kicked himself in the balls).

First off, let me say that I really wanted to like the World Cup. In my mind, it really did have a chance to be better than the Olympics, and if the league is willing to have it regularly for a while (correctly) it still could be with a built up reputation. This is for a couple reasons.

One, some of the reasons I am the hockey fan I am is the ’87 and ’91 Canada Cups. Ok, I barely remember ’87 but I do remember that even at six-years-old seeing Gretzky and Lemieux on the same line was a really cool thing. It was like seeing Jupiter and Saturn combine. I saw one of the of the warm-up games in ’91 at the Stadium between the US and Canada that featured a Roenick penalty shot on Belfour (saved) and the first sighting of the unholy monster that was Eric Lindros and Chris Chelios bouncing off of him like a superball. The US taking the first World Cup in ’96, with a completely loaded roster that is still kind of hard to fathom, is a cherished memory for a lot of us this age. This tournament, in whatever form, has certainly shone bright at points.

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Keith, Bolland, And Other Thursday Notes Except I Never Come Up With Notes That Aren’t In The Headline

By 1928

Couple of notes popping up the past day or so.

-Duncan Keith has dropped out of Team Canada, apparently to keep rehabbing or resting his knee that he had problems with last season. I think this is a good barometer of what these players think of the World Cup, where they sort of like it but they’re not risking much for it. If this were the Olympics I wonder what Keith would have done. And we’ll go more into the World Cup in September, but it feels like a real missed and biffed opportunity on the NHL’s part.

What’s more important locally of course is the condition of Keith. While Keith’s play didn’t really drop off from what we’ve come to expect, and he certainly benefitted from getting to play with Hjalmarsson the most, it was noticeable that he didn’t have quite the jump that he used to.

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Fishing In The Clearance Bin At Some Tragic Casual Corner

By 1655

“…and it’s sort of comical how you think you’ve made a choice that exempts you from an NHL forward when in fact, you’ll be playing the forwards selected by the very people in this room from this pile of stuff.”

-Miranda Priestly, or at least she should have

Let’s get something out of the way right at the top. Jiri Hudler was not a make-or-break player for the Hawks. He was not the difference between them winning a Cup and them not. They would almost certainly need one more forward or two even if he signed here. But he might have been the difference between gaining an automatic playoff spot and fighting for a wild card, which could mean something and which might not.

However, the Hawks not having $2 million to scrape together to get a player pretty desperate for a job tells you the dire straits they are in. While some Hawks fans would love to believe that A) the Hawks didn’t really want Hudler or anyone else and B) this was all part of the grand plan, that is simply foolishness. If the Hawks didn’t want Hudler they’re simply wrong, whatever his flaws. They are short two proven forwards on the top six, and if we put Hossa with Toews to make up that gap then there are two holes on Kruger’s wing on the third line and in the West you have to have a top 9 at minimum. As for a plan, well, the Hawks are making it up with what they have to, thanks to holding on to somethings for longer and more money than they should have. But we’ve been over that and over that.

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Mile High Poaching

By 1410

And no, that’s to referring to cashing out the last of the bowl on a trip to Vail while Tyler and The Bros aren’t paying attention.

Late last night Mike Chambers of the Denver Post reported that Blackhawks assistant coach Kevin Dineen interviewed with Joe Sakic and Avs brass for upwards of three-and-a-half hours, and is a finalist for the job vacated by intractable asswipe Patrick Roy along with Bob Boughner. And potentially losing Dineen behind the Hawks’ bench would be decidedly bad for the organ-I-zation on a lot of fronts.

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So Much For All That

By 1491

On one hand, Jimmy Vesey choosing to play for the New York Rangers spares us all from a winter of trying to correct people when saying his name wrong. On the other, the Blackhawks need more good forwards.

You can see my dilemma.

In the end, Vesey did exactly what was rumored the whole time – he wanted to play close to home.

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Tom Petty Wrote Something About This

By 1394

We’ve come to the precipice now. Jimmy Vesey hits the free agent market at midnight tonight. This is what hockey news in August is like, six teams fighting over a college free agent who probably maxes out as a second line winger. If you haven’t yet, check out Ryan Lambert’s piece on him today and what he can and can’t do. Ryan watches more Boston-area college hockey than most, so he knows of where he speaks.

I do find it somewhat funny that the main crux of the Hawks’ pitch to Vesey, because every team is going to offer the same two-year ELC with the same bonus structure, is essentially their biggest weakness. “We’re not deep enough at wing so you can play with Toews because basically we don’t have anyone else to do it.”

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Friday Foofaraw: CI’s Premier League Preview

By 1199

If you’ve followed my Twitter feed for any length of time, you know that I much prefer talking about footy than I do hockey. And I feel like there are a lot of hockey bloggers who feel the same way. Our weekends make sense again, as the English Premier League is back to get us up far too early when we’re already hungover and to make us even more miserable than we were before (except for Man City supporters, except I don’t know any Man City supporters and am pretty sure they don’t exist). So without any further ado, let’s go through all the clubs of the EPL in my own special way to see what’s in store for the next eight months. And this is in no particular order of expected finish.