Stu’s Notes: Can the Rangers Save Hockey?

Hockey is dying.

Like baseball before it and after it, like NASCAR during it, like possibly the NBA depending which cable news universe you base your entire belief system off of, hockey is dying, and there are only two things that can save it:

The New York Rangers and the Edmonton Oilers.

As the Stanley Cup Playoffs reach the onset of the Conference Finals this evening, four teams remain. One is a lame, carpetbagging, inflammatory team from a trendy city towards whom hockey fans still feel instinctive affinity because they never really liked the Red Wings and they’ve yet to reevaluate their beliefs. One is a dynasty in the making, a former expansion franchise still on its own turf, a perfectly respectable team who exploits the current rules but those are the current rules, a team that in any other sport would be great for the game but in hockey is terrible for the game because this team plays in Tampa and it is more than a little unnatural to have a good hockey team playing in the most vanilla major city in Florida (aside from Tampa’s sidekick, St. Petersburg). The others are the Rangers and the Oilers.

For the Oilers, the case is simple: Hockey should be strong in Canada. They actually care about it up there, even more than they care about it in the seven contiguous American states which care about hockey. The Oilers were the team of Gretzky, Edmonton is the northernmost major city in the Western Hemisphere (vibe-wise, we mean, because Dublin doesn’t feel northern, it feels Irish), some professional team in Canada needs to be good at this sport or the planet is going to implode.

For the Rangers, it’s also simple, but it isn’t as immediately self-explanatory. The Rangers are an Original Six team. The Rangers are also a team of Gretzky. The Rangers aren’t very good historically—just one Stanley Cup since Pearl Harbor—and they have enough fans that should they win this thing, the country will know, partially because they play in the city through which this continent’s media runs. Which brings us to the real point here:

To be a healthy sport, you need to have a successful presence in New York. Why is baseball dying? The Yankees can no longer win in October. Why is the NBA in trouble? The Knicks are a disgrace. Are the—oh man, I just realized the Giants and Jets also play in New York. And that all the college teams in New York are terrible. And that the NIT is moving out of Madison Square Garden. This is worse than I thought. It’s not just some sports that are dying. American sports at large are in peril, and therefore America itself is in peril. The Rangers are our only hope.

Sorry, Canada. Resurrecting your professional hockey traditions is going to have to wait. Igor Shesterkin has to save a nation which is traditionally an existential rival of his own.

Roger Clemens Is Still a Dick, Right?

Non-prospect Kody Clemens is probably debuting tonight for the Tigers, and a portion of the baseball world has whipped itself into a tizzy getting all excited because he’s Roger Clemens’s kid. Which is confusing. Because I thought we agreed we don’t like Roger Clemens.

I have to be careful about this in Austin, where Clemens was a good pitcher and is a good donor and there’s a longstanding cultural tradition of looking the other way at just about anything, but I mean, Clemens has been called an asshole since even before the steroid stuff. Should he be in the Hall of Fame? Sure. But he’s still a jackass.

Is Brandon Hughes Related to Pat Hughes?

This may have been covered already on the Pat & Ron Show, but I like to imagine that Cubs up-and-down relief pitcher Brandon Hughes is related to longtime Cubs radio broadcaster Pat Hughes, but also that it’s distant and neither of them knows yet but someone out there knows.

In other Cubs news, Joe Kelly was spotted at the game last night by a friend of the blog. In other Joe Kelly news, did you know his father-in-law played for the Twins? That escaped me until last night (when the friend of the blog found it out on Google while trying to figure out who our hero’s seating companions were). (By the way, this isn’t a cult. We just really like Joe Kelly. We aren’t having people tail Joe Kelly or anything. We just happen to have a friend who sat three rows behind Joe Kelly last night and posed for a picture with him in the background out of excitement and joy. Not a cult. Not stalkers. Just normal, healthy Joe Kelly fans.)

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Viewing schedule tonight:

8:00 PM EDT: Oilers @ Avalanche, Game 1 (TNT)

I think I’ve already explained the stakes here.

8:05 PM EDT: Brewers @ Cubs (MLB TV, second screen)

I do really appreciate that the Cubs have good broadcasters. If you’re going to stink, having good broadcasters is a must.