NHL Playoffs

[Pete]

Does anyone care?
Anyone have any teams in it?

I'm an Islanders fan, so I'm excited. My teams are traditionally incompetent (Mets for baseball and Jets for football), so this is very refreshing.

[Taco-Calamitous]

I don't pay attention to NHL usually, heh. I hear about it when I listen to the sports talk radio. For some reason, I thought this happened in the fall? Like, around the baseball playoffs? Maybe I'm thinking of the basketball playoffs? Eh.

I once went to a San Jose Sharks game, when they were bad. I dunno, they might be bad again? I remember hearing one time after that game that they were good, but that was also a long time ago. I don't root for them. My sister in law likes the Penguins, tho.

What was that one Paul Newman hockey movie? That was an amusing movie.

Sorry Pete, lol.

[Pete]

Slap Shot? That movie was an all time great.

I'm beyond excited that the Islanders swept the penguins, but I'm not sure how I feel about getting almost a week of rest waiting for the hurricanes and capitals to finish their series. On one hand, I hope they beat the crap out of each other and tire themselves out. On the other hand, I'm worried that with a week off, the Islanders can cool off and get rusty.

For full disclosure, I root for the Mets, Jets and Islanders for my vacation, football and hockey teams. I was about 2 months old when the Mets last won, and that's the last championship my teams have had. Perennial losers

[Taco-Calamitous]

Yes, Slap Shot! Along with Paul Newman, it included the Hanson Brothers. The good ones, before Hanson (when was the last time Hanson was relevant? Was i the 90s still, or early 2000s?) "Fuckin' machine took my quarter." I like that director. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and the Sting were also great movies.

The only sport I pay super close attention to is football, and my team's lack of doing well lately (Packers) has seen my interest waning lately. I grew up rooting for the Blazers for basketball, tho I don't pay super close attention to that. They got a 2-0 lead over the Thunder, but they're losing right now, apparently. It's surprising to me, because I thought earlier in the season, they were doing worse than normal. I don't pay attention to any pro baseball teams, but Oregon State has won 3 national titles in the last 15 years, and has been making the post season most years, so... They did a bit better in basketball too, but then they didn't go anywhere for the postseason. Football team is still terrible.

[Pete]

How'd you wind up becoming a Packers fan living in Oregon? I'd have assumed you would have liked the Seahawks just based on the region. Then again, Brett Favre was the man back in the day, do I can see that.

College sports isn't much of a thing where I am. Most of the basketball teams are a joke, and with the exception of Army, football doesn't really happen on a noteworthy level. My college didn't even have a football team.

It was kind of awesome when I went to Notre Dame a few years ago to see them play. The concept of having an insane arena right in the middle of campus blew my mind and I kind of started to understand how people get so amped up for the games.

[Taco-Calamitous]

Yeah, I became a Packers fan partially because of Favre. The first year I gained significant interest in football, the Packers won the Super Bowl. I watched a game where they destroyed the Broncos, and saw them do the Lambo Leap, so they seemed really cool. Also, my brother made some comment that was probably a diss, in retrospective ("look, they can do whatever they want. Run over that ref, and he's just like, 'I'm fine, I'm fine!'") That also made them seem cool to my pre-teen mind. My dad had instilled in me a hatred of the Cowboys and the 49'ers, which all the kids at school rooted for, so I wanted an alternative. He rooted for the Vikings, but they were bad, lol... (coincidentally, the Seahawks were also pretty bad at this time).

So yeah. That '96. The Oregon State football team were near the end of their 28 consecutive losing seasons, and 4 (or 5?) years removed from their best season ever. They destroyed Notre Dame in the 2001 Fiesta Bowl, lol. My family has always been big OSU fans, even though they have been not good in a majority of sports during my lifetime.