Black Monday

Today, the monday following black friday, two coaches in the NHL have received the axe. Bruce Boudreau of the Washington Capitals and Paul Maurice of the Carolina Hurricanes saw their coaching stints end. Both teams entered the season with different expectations but shared some of the same headaches that can bother a team early on.

The Capitals once again are aiming their sights on a stanley cup run. They have led the eastern conference in points the last two years but have had dismal playoff efforts, failing to reach the conference finals. Boudreau has had ample opportunity to succeed with arguably the best team on paper in the league but has not done so when it has counted. Washington is a couple games over .500, but 3-7 in their last ten games including some embarrassing blow outs along the way. The firing of Boudreau seems to be a wake up call for the team, a reminder that they need to play up to their potential. 

Boudreau feeling the heat

Maurice and the Hurricanes have set their expectations a little lower. After failing to reach the playoffs by two points last year and eight in 2009-2010, the teams eyes were set on finally breaking through. A slow start has landed the team at a 8-13-4 record. The Hurricanes can't afford to fall back this early on, and have to hope this sparks a change.

Maurice has been fired twice from the 'Canes organization

But what does firing a coach actually do? Will NHL players who are already motivated by millions of dollars actually change due to a firing? 

My first thought is no. These players are grown men who if preform well are rewarded with millions of dollars. This money is necessary to support themselves or their family. This seems like enough motivation, but more than not these mid-season firings work and there have been enough examples just this season. 

The St. Louis Blues were 6-7-0 until they fired David Payne and hired Ken Hitchcock. Since then they are 7-1-2. Montreal started 1-5-2 until they fired assistant coach Perry Pearn and went on to win four games in a row. 

One could make the argument that the new coach is bringing fresh strategies and plays to the table but it is unrealistic players would pick up and execute anything new so fast. 

I would hope that a job didn't have to be lost for professional athletes to start playing at 100% but it seems to work, and until the trend starts going the other way it will undoubtedly continue to happen.

Be Who You Are

As a pretty big baseball fan I follow an ESPN blog called the 'sweetspot'. This blog keeps you informed on what is happening around the league. In early august, baseball analyst Steve Berthaiume posted about baseball uniforms. In it he put all 30 baseball teams into three categories based on their uniforms/logo. They were The Traditionalists, Those on the Cusp and The Offenders. Here is the intro. 

"Bill Parcells once said, "You are what you are," meaning that if your football team's record is 8-8, whatever circumstances you'd dealt with didn't really mean anything; in the end you were a .500 team. It sounds depressingly pessimistic but the attitude is actually something out of a Zen koan; it strips away attachment and perception and zooms in on the core of what you are. That's more of a performance issue but it gets us pointed in the general direction of baseball uniforms. 

For that topic, I prefer this: Be who you are. This speaks more about identity in regard to baseball franchises; more specifically the marketing and branding of each team's personality. Be who you are. By that I mean more than just a discussion of which uniforms you like best. This runs a bit deeper. Because fans, more often that not in my experience, have strong connections to a team's particular logo or color choice, the uniforms those teams wear represent a traditional identity, the inner layer of the core. 

Too many franchises have become lost in the marketing jungle. In an effort to be current or edgy some teams are sporting homogenized, corporate colors and logos that seem to deny their histories and traditions. A few might have had logos that were at one point considered hokey or outdated. I say, embrace the hokey. Wear it with pride. All thirty teams have colors and logos that represent their one genuine identity with which fans connect. There is a reason why I see so many fans walking around wearing old hats with former logos. There is a reason those who market the game seem to try and manufacture nostalgia at every turn. It's because we've lost some of it in a haze of generic logos or poorly conceived alternate jerseys which only seem to admit that a much larger mistake was made in the first place. Be who you are. 

Here's a list, a subjective one to be sure, of those who embrace their true identities and carry on tradition by wearing them proudly and those who have lost their way and hopefully will soon hear their true selves calling from an overlooked closet in a back room somewhere."

Our local team, the Toronto Blue Jays were put on the "Offenders" list with only the Mets, Brewers, Astros and Padres.

"The Blue Jays. Everyone on the team should be dressed like Ernie Whitt or Garth Iorg. Toronto won two World Series with its old Blue Jay bird logo and the light blue and white colors with the split lettering. Be who you are. Their current look is awful. Joe Carter jumped around the bases in a unique and classic look that needs to be brought back. When I look at Jose Bautista wearing number 19 at the Rogers Centre I should see Otto Velez at Exhibition Stadium."

This really made me think. I grew up with the newer Blue Jays logo's and never really thought of going back to the classic uniforms we wore in our glory days. This week the Blue Jays made the change.

Home

Road

Alternate

I am a huge fan of the new gear and and look forward to this new era of Blue Jay Baseball.


Find the article here

Cereal

Honestly wtf.  That shit turns soggy in 2.5 seconds and renders itself uneatable. If I wanted to eat paper mache I would. How do we have the technology to go to the moon but can't make cereal that lasts? Sort it out Kelloggs...