Sidney Crosby

the Fifth Line: Redux

Leave a Comment

Everything we have ever done or will do, we are going to do over and over and over again. One might say that a puck is like a flat circle…

Okay, technically a puck has height, so it’s not actually flat, but the point is that this week has seen a lot of recurring events in the NHL. Break out the Lone Star beer and let’s talk about eternal recurrence… on the ice.

rust_cohle

It was all the same dream. A dream that you had inside a locked box. A dream about being the first star. And like a lot of dreams there’s Pierre McGuire at the end of it.

[Read more…]

the Fifth Line: Rosen-Kane & Guilden-Toews are Dead

1 Comment

Watching the Chicago Blackhawks eke out a victory against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday was a harrowing experience. Once again, the puck seemed bound and determined to give probability the slip. Chicago was approaching 30 shots on goal with nary a point in sight!

I joked on Twitter that the Blackhawks were bending probability worse than the coin in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead.

tumblr_n4lwj1bxKz1s6f6tno1_400

Then I realized that Tom Stoppard’s play was actually the perfect lens through which to talk about probability and absurdity in the NHL. Assembled below are aspects of the play, characters, and relevant quotes all mashed them up with their NHL equivalent. Despite the title above, Kane and Toews aren’t who I’ve lined up to play R&G — that comes at the end, naturally. Instead, Chicago is best represented by that damn coin.

The Coin: Chicago Blackhawks

A weaker man might be moved to re-examine his faith, if in nothing else at least in the law of probability.

[Read more…]