Sports – Page 16 – the Addison Recorder

Teuvo! Teuvo Teuvo Teuvo!

March 25, 2014 by -J. Leave a Comment

a.k.a., A Very Biased Look at the End of the 2014 NHL Regular Season from The Addison Recorder

Each NHL team has only 10 games or so left in their season, so the Recorder decided it was a good time to catch you up on anything you may have missed since the Olympics. Our resident kind-of-but-not-really-an-expert hockey expert look at what the likely playoff scenarios are, who’s peaking, who’s crashing, and… Teuvo.

Oh, yes, he will talk about Teuvo. Sweet Teuvo. Glorious Teuvo. Y’know what, why wait any longer?

Teuvo Teräväinen

The biggest story for final stretch of the Chicago Blackhawks’ season is easily Teuvo Teräväinen. The Finnish prospect is like the Hodor of the NHL, in that… Erm. Hm. Okay, he’s not like Hodor at all, aside from the fact that the only word he is capable of speaking is his name, over and over.

Um, well, uh… I may have made that up, too. Look, let’s just go with the Teuvo + Game of Thrones thing so I can throw in this picture of a My Little Pony-fied Teuvo riding a dragon into Westero… -side Chicago. We can get to analysis and other silly topics afterwards.

Yes, this is a thing. There exists a wonderful Tumblr known as My Little Blackhawk, created by Chicago artist / burlesquer / hockey nerd Ali Lawrence. You should consider it required viewing.

Now that the hyperbole is out of the way, let’s take a hard(-ish) look at the last few upcoming weeks of ~~Teuvo’s~~ the Blackhawks’ season:

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The Best of Friends: Thoughts from the Dugout

March 7, 2014 by Travis J. Cook Leave a Comment

Spring training is rolling right along. Players all across the major leagues are fighting for roster spots, Ryan Braun apparently can’t not hit the ball (hmm, suspicious…maybe…PED’S?!?!?! *cue screeching violins*), and yours truly is equally focusing his attention between baseball, his own outside projects, the final month ever of How I Met Your Mother, and trying to decide which NBA team he should root for. (I mean, Stephen Curry is awesome, so Golden State? Or the Bulls, even though they’re perpetually doomed?)

What this means is that there’s not terribly much for yours truly to write about. Fortunately, I have made promises, promises that I intend to keep. Thus, a book review.

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A Tale of Three Rosters: Thoughts from the Dugout

February 22, 2014 by Travis J. Cook Leave a Comment

Good afternoon.

As the Addison Recorder’s resident baseball columnist/editor/self-appointed scribe, I’m making a resolution this year to bring you the weekly baseball column I’ve always wanted to write. I’ll continue to write about movies, theatre, and whatever other events cross my path, but after joining the IWBAA, I feel it’s my personal duty to live up to the standards that membership in such an organization calls for. (I.E., more baseball writing) Hence, consider this my first column from the Dugout across from Wrigley Field (otherwise known as Bag End). It is my hope to be the closest baseball writer of residence next to the greatest ballpark in America (and possibly any ballpark, unless someone can tell me that they live closer to a stadium than I do. The challenge is out!).

Having said that, I am aware that Spring Training has just begun. Which is awesome, but far from a wealth of immediate topics to write about.

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Olympics Recap: Fire On Ice, or, “Believe What You Want But That Glacier’s a Fact!”

February 19, 2014 by Andrew Rostan Leave a Comment

There’s something very special about this skater…read on to find out.

Monday night, while watching Meryl Davis and Charlie White take home a magisterial gold medal for the USA during Ice Dancing, all five male Addisonians ended up in a twitter conversation regarding how attractive the female halves of the pairs were. (Including Travis, heroically joining in from a stalled Megabus.) My own comment was that this relates to why I love figure skating, as mentioned in my earlier recaps: the particular meld of athleticism and aesthetic gracefulness. Female figure skaters in particular look like Gainsborough and Reynolds paintings come to life in their elegance, but more importantly, they have trained their bodies to do things hardly any of us are capable of doing. Quadruple jumps and spins on ice at incredible speeds on bodies that have less muscle? Call me astonished every time.

But no one will equal the grace of bronze medalists Elena Ilinykh and Nikita Katsalapov, so remarkable that MY MOTHER called to tell me to watch them. Not as technically brilliant as the competition, they conveyed so much emotion and poetry to make up for any deficiencies: many tweeters called it “a true dance on ice.”

Ilinykh and Katsalapov

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Olympics Recap: Costas Rises

February 18, 2014 by -J. Leave a Comment

Bob Costas is back! He’s back, and a lot less pirate-looking!

Let's go in for that close up. pic.twitter.com/rQg3bYiftO

— SB Nation GIF (@SBNationGIF) February 18, 2014

During Costas’ absence, Russia has taken the top spot in the medal count (if you count total medals — Germany currently has the most gold medals). Norway has been dethroned from the count, and if you believe the gents from Oslo, it’s partially because of a ski-wax conspiracy. This isn’t the only controversy that Costas has missed: some lugers are positive Russia turned up the temp on the sled track to give their sledder better odds; the Russians, for their part, are still protesting that disallowed hockey goal against the U.S. Men’s team.

We’ll come back to that, and all the other hockey goings-on. But first, WE CURL.

Canadian skip Jennifer Jones, using her superpowers to render Newtonian physics moot.

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Growing Up Jeter: Looking Back to Look Ahead

February 15, 2014 by Travis J. Cook Leave a Comment

I’m getting this column out a little early. It would normally be posted some time in October/November, but I’m predicting that I’ll have…something going on then that would prevent me from giving this particular piece the due attention that it deserves. So we’re running it a little early.

Derek Jeter announced this week that this upcoming MLB season will be his last playing the professional sport of baseball. No more October glories. No more leaping throws to first. No more singles dumped into right field with scientific precision. No more articles about his lack of defensive prowess. Well, actually, those aren’t going anywhere. In fact, they’ll breed like roaches after the apocalypse. Sorry, Internet.

It would appear that Jeter saw the season-long hero’s tribute that Mariano Rivera received last season (rightfully so; the man was hands down the greatest closer the game has yet seen), where as the Yankees traveled from city to city, Rivera was treated like Napoleon passing through the Arc D’Triomphe, receiving gifts of plenty and beneficence from dignitaries and opposing teams alike. It was particularly unreal, something that seldom happens in sports because of our tendency to vilify everyone and everything under the sun. (The NFL season is too short for a farewell tour, basketball’s greats tend to hang on until the last minute before retiring (three times), and hockey is apparently a sport that’s popular in Canada.)

If you thought last season’s six-month tribute to Rivera was crazy, wait until you get a load of what Jeter’s farewell is gonna look like this year.

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Olympics Recap: Dispatch from the Official Addison Ice Master and Deliverer (PLUS Non-Olympics Postscript)

February 14, 2014 by Andrew Rostan Leave a Comment

Maybe a kindler, gentler title will mean less injuries, falls, and general recklessness tonight, eh?

Meredith Viera has taken over the hosting duties in the absence of Costas and Lauer, and while she looks the part of Winter Games host in an all-white ensemble. But she has almost no personality, delivering the results with standard charming morning-show monotone.

CHILLED TO THE MARROW: I am not stopping the skeleton puns for the follow-up to yesterday’s first part of the Women’s final.

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Olympics Recap: “I Don’t Know How You Escaped My Carnival of the Damned, But You Won’t Escape the Taste of My Blade!”

February 13, 2014 by Andrew Rostan Leave a Comment

As one of only two single members of the now eight-strong staff, the plan is for me to join J. (and any others who decide to leap into the fray) to cover the Olympics on this Valentine’s Eve and Day (I mean, what else am I going to do but help our group?) and again on Wednesday and Thursday. These days were not picked at random: they are the days of my favorite of all Winter Olympic events, maybe Olympic events, period: men’s and women’s figure skating.

Why do I love figure skating so? I think it’s a combination of my great admiration for people who can do things I cannot (if you’ve ever seen me on the ice rink, you would know the truth of this statement…plus I got into it when I was still overweight, and skaters are among the most superbly built athletic figures of them all) and my own personal aesthetic loves (this goes beyond beautiful women and men who, like William Holden in The Bridge on the River Kwai, I can appreciate…I’ve come to value good clothing design, and I love classical music, film scores, and Broadway music, so seeing people interpret this in a way even more daring and risky than most modern dancing…this involves wearing blades on your feet like frigging Lotte Lenya in From Russia With Love…is one of the heights of art for me. Art meets sports. Of course this was something I would be very into.)

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Olympics Recap: Heia Norge!

February 12, 2014 by -J. Leave a Comment

It’s day 6 of the Sochi Winter Olympics (or day 7, if you count the opening ceremony), and we have been reminded that Norway is very good at skiing. Also, there are a lot of Olympic medals for skiing events. By simple syllogistic reasoning, we can deduce that Norway has a lot of medals so far. And we’d be right. Well done, us. Gold star.

Here are the other things we’ve cared about over the first few days. YES, there are spoilers from this morning. I assume y’all were watching the Women’s USA-CAN hockey game, so nothing should be a surprise.

HOCKEY

Hockey: Egads, the USA-CAN Women’s game was a contentious affair. The first two goals were scored on power plays, and the third goal went in after play was whistled dead. Technicalities. I could describe this game as two evenly-matched teams, where Canada’s savvy defense & transition play saved its bacon in the 3-2 win. Or I could sarcastically congratulate the refs on finally calling out Canada for too many players on the ice with less than a minute left. It would’ve been nice if they noticed things like that any time in the preceding 59+ minutes. Grumblecakes, say I.

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Welcome to the Opening Ceremony!

February 7, 2014 by -J. Leave a Comment

Kick off the Winter Olympics with the Addison Recorder! Andrew and -J. will live-blog the not-live Opening Ceremony from the comfort of a TV screen on the north side of Chicago.

Is that an asterisk?

10:27 PM: Really, Lauer? NBC had done a great job of not whitewashing the external negatives that surround these Games. Well, not too much. Then you go and end it by pleading for folks to only talk about what we ‘should’ talk about at the Olympics? No, sorry Matt, you lost me. –J.

***

10:17 PM: ANDREW says — Maria Sharapova is one of the most accomplished torchbearers ever, although she’s not Muhammad Ali or the Tenth Doctor.

The final relay is a fine mix of different athletes representing all the different sports, including the gold medal gymnast who happens to be dating Putin. Two 1970s national heroes from figure and hockey are make the final run to the torch. There’s a youthfulness in their running, almost an Updike-Rabbit Angstrom quality, which is touching to see. The torch itself is a slimmed down Devil’s Tower, the “Pictures at an Exhibition” recall fits, and together they light the torch, and the most spectacular display of fireworks which thankfully do NOT blow up the roof cascade into…the Nutcracker. AND THE SNOWFLAKES WORK THIS TIME!

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