Before the EPL season I predicted how the table would finish. I also made predictions for some other European leagues, but I will focus on the EPL because that is the league I follow the closest. Here were my picks: Continue reading
Daily Archives: 05/30/2013
Hayden Barnard Commits to Mizzou Basketball
I made my return to College Spun this week with a post about the latest commit to the Missouri basketball team.
Past Post on Brandon Saad
Back in September 2011, I wrote something about Brandon Saad’s preseason success for Sauce Hockey. It was a few months after he was drafted by the Blackhawks and he stayed with the big club for a few games before being sent to his junior team.
This season Saad has been a key forward for the Blackhawks playing on a top line with Jonathan Toews and Marian Hossa for most of the regular season. In the playoffs Saad was moved around and now is on a speedy line with Andrew Shaw and Viktor Stalberg that caused a lot of problems for the Red Wings in game 7.
NHL Fortunate the Blackhawks Won
Last night the stage was set for the NHL. With the NBA Western Conference finals over and boring inter league baseball on the diamond, Game 7 of the Chicago Blackhawks and Detroit Red Wings was the main event in sports.
With record second round numbers for Game 6, it was inevitable that Game 7 would set a new record. Sports fans that don’t love hockey would tune it for a game 7. Especially when the two teams playing are rivals and have huge fan bases.
The game went exactly how the NHL and NBC would want it to go for 58 minutes. Chances on both ends, big hits, players sacrificing their bodies to block shots and great goaltending all were on display at the United Center. Whether you love hockey or not you had to appreciate what was happening on the ice. Many of those people used Twitter to share their thoughts.
Then with under two minutes left, a disaster occurred for the NHL. A Niklas Hjalmarsson goal, which would have given the Blackhawks a 2-1 lead, was waved off because of coincidental rough minors by Kyle Quincey and Brandon Saad behind the play. The over 22,000 people at the United Center had no idea what happened, but the many more on Twitter chimed saying how bad the call was and joking that Joey Crawford has become a NHL ref. The last thing the NHL wants is the play on the ice being overshadowed by a poor call by the ref. Brent Seabrook quickly scored an overtime winner for the Blackhawks and the NHL all took a sigh of relief.
If Detroit won the game in overtime, all the talk this morning would’ve been about the bad call. All of it, and it would look terrible for the league when they were the main sport that night. Instead the Blackhawks won and it is a lot easier to ignore the questionable call late in regulation.