Archive for the ‘Bottoms Up’ Category

Bottoms Up is a semi-regular feature on Backhand Shelf that admits that sometimes the underdog doesn’t win: sometimes they just lose and lose and lose some more. In this edition, let’s do the panic again.

We may only be a little over one week into the 2012-13 season, but that’s apparently plenty of time for fans to start collectively freaking out over how their teams and players have performed out of the gate. Blackhawks fans are anticipating a 48-win season, Sharks fans are certain that Patrick Marleau is going to score 50 goals this season, Senators fans are heaping praise on Vezina-frontrunner Craig Anderson, and Bruins fans just know that Dougie Hamilton will be the blonde, pale version of Bobby Orr.

Yes, it’s that time of the season again: the time when everyone is rushing to snap judgements of teams based on ridiculously small sample sizes. While it’s good times for fanbases of teams that have gotten off to hot start on the season, fans of teams in the basement are beginning to panic. And thanks to the condensed nature of the 48-game schedule, people feel justified in panicking so soon.

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Bottoms Up is a weekly feature on Backhand Shelf that admits that sometimes the underdog doesn’t win: sometimes they just lose and lose and lose some more. In this edition, a reminder that season previews are total crapshoots.

There is now officially just one week left in the NHL regular season and, for the teams in the basement of the standings, it can’t come soon enough. This will be the penultimate Bottoms Up of the 2011-12 season, as next week we’ll take a look at the season as a whole and the long journeys that led to the worst teams in the league ending up as cellar dwellers.

This week, however, I want to look back even further, before the season even began. During the 2011 off-season, every hockey publication and blog worth its salt drags out a crystal ball, lays out the tarot cards, and tears open tea bags. Predictions and prognostications are everywhere in the month leading up to the start of the season, partly because they’re fun, partly because everyone is desperate for the season to begin, and partly because it gets discussion going.

There’s nothing that gets a hockey fan more fired up than seeing his favourite team disparaged, particularly if its done before a single game has even been played. Hope springs eternal during the summer, as newly acquired free agents fly into town, fresh-faced rookies start making a name for themselves in training camp, and team management starts making big promises about competing for a playoff spot and once they’re in…who knows?

For some of those teams, the big dreams come crashing down almost immediately, while others soar briefly then slowly deflate until it’s difficult to see that there was any promise to begin with. Take a guess which one is more depressing.

Most season previews deal with the big winners: who’s going to win the division, the conference, the Stanley Cup. But a few also predict the bottom end of the standings and I’m going to take a look at exactly how accurate those predictions were. The three I’ll be looking at are The Hockey News, Puck Daddy, and Backhand Shelf’s own Justin Bourne.

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Bottoms Up is a weekly feature on Backhand Shelf that admits that sometimes the underdog doesn’t win: sometimes they just lose and lose and lose some more. In this edition, how low can you go?

While the Senators, Capitals, Sabres, and Jets scrap for a spot in the playoffs in the East and the Coyotes, Stars, Avalanche, Sharks, and Flames do the same in the West, a slightly less inspiring battle is taking place in the basement of the NHL. All season long, the basement was a place to be avoided: one of the stairs is busted, the lightswitch at the top doesn’t work, and there’s a funky odor coming from…somewhere.

All that has changed, however, as we near the end of the season and more and more teams give up their playoff dreams for the much more realistic and attainable goal of a top-end draft pick. Suddenly, the basement is the place to be: Columbus has kitted it out with a TV and Playstation 3, Edmonton brought a couple lava lamps, and Buffalo forgot their scented candles when they moved out, which do a pretty decent job of covering up the smell.

The best the league’s have-nots can hope for at this point is to finish in the bottom five and have a chance at moving up to the first overall pick in the draft lottery.

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