Rite of Spring '15: exhume our idols! bury our friends!

[Still MIGHTY]

I was going to actually post a thought on the game and chime in on, yes, the three posts the Ducks hit in the overtimes, including Sami Vatanen's two crossbars, but ohhhhh myyyyyyyy Godddddddd

Biiiiiitch, bitch, bitch, biiiiitch, bitch, bitch, biiiiitttttccccchhhhh

I'm sorry there's a Pacific Time Zone. I'm sorry there's people here. I'm sorry there's teams here. I'm sorry that the Blackhawks play a whole lot of overtime.

Get the over it.

Would you have preferred our regular start times at 7:00 pm? They already moved it up an hour. And that's fine. It's not easy, but manageable. Just about everyone was there at puck drop, so we did it. And you do realize that the games in Chicago are 7:00 pm local there, right? So if its another lengthy overtime, you guys are still going to bitch about it.

If the Ducks make the Cup Final, all the games are going to start at 5 Pacific/8 Eastern. No matter what. That's NHL/NBC/CBC thing. They did it with us the first time in 2007 and with the Kings. No special treatment. And trust me, that one sucks. That really really sucks. Getting anywhere on the freeway between 3-5 is hell. We all made it work in the Cup Final, because that the's damn Stanley Cup Final. You have to. But hell, despite our best efforts, my grandfather and I missed the half the first period of the Cup-clinching Game 5 because of traffic and having to park a mile away. Only Game 1 was easy because it happened to be Memorial Day.

So no, Game 5 won't be at 3/4 pm local start just in case of Blackhawks overtime so we don't infringe on Chicago's curfew. Even if it's Memorial Day. And guess what? It's another 6 pm Pacific/8 pm Chicago start. So strap the in.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/flames-vs-ducks-anaheim-s-success-helps-grow-local-hockey-scene-during-battle-with-calgary-1.3058258

He admitted attracting people to the sport has not been easy, even to a second round playoff game as evident on Thursday night's match-up against the Calgary Flames where hundreds of empty seats could be seen from the stands.

Hundreds of empty seats? It was an easy sellout. Trust me, I've seen the difference between a "sellout" and a sellout. The people were there. Get out of here with that, CBC. (And there's been a lot of these articles, even from Chicago, treating Anaheim fans as some exotic animal in need of more research and interviewing random locals. Stop it.)

However, I think west coast fans are pretty used to getting screw over with start times, so it wouldn't be like people would say "Wait, we started at 5:30?!" They deal with it for primetime NFL games and advanced round games in baseball and basketball. Like I said, there's really no way to fix it and make everybody happy, but I think routinely having playoff games end well after midnight does more to hurt the league than help, even if they are great games.

Not start times for local games, no. TV road games, sure. For primetime NFL games, different animal. It's either Sunday, or it's Monday night which at the most would happen twice a season in one city, and I don't think it does. For baseball, guess what? That sucks, and no, we're not used to it. Who plays day playoff games in the middle of a Tuesday or Wednesday? It's not the 1930s. Everyone has lights. And basketball, did you see the start of the NBA's West Finals at Golden State? 6 pm local. Hmmmmm.

You and other Blackhawks fans said it yourself. The problem with the games ending after midnight is the Blackhawks. The league isn't going to accommodate you just because the Hawks don't like to finish in regulation. Deal with it, or, I strangely agree with Bettman here, tape it.

[CS85]

If the Ducks would simply recognize that the Blackhawks are God's Gift to Hockey, shoot themselves in glorious ritual sacrifice, and depart the mortal coil, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

[Tigers6884]

If the Lightning would simply recognize that they are Satan's Gift to Hockey, shoot themselves in glorious ritual sacrifice, and depart the mortal coil, we wouldn't have to watch this awful team anymore.

FFTY

[TorinK92]

Expecting the league to schedule games in order to please: A ) the away team's fans halfway across the country, and B ) people who want to go to bed earlier because a game has a chance to go to overtime seems really weird to me.

[Sport]

I'm not understanding the outrage from Chicago, either.

You're even in central timezone so it could've been an hour worse. The league isn't going to change how they schedule games because the Blackhawks have a penchant for going to overtime. Your team is on the road, you deal with the schedule.

[Unocal]

We're talking about timezones, not a game, not a game, not a game, we talking about timezones.

Not the game, but we're talking about timezones, man. I mean, how silly is that?

What are we talking about? timezones? We're talking about timezones. We ain't talking about the game. We're talking about timezones, man.

[Alex Houston]

The simple solution here gentleman is to get rid of the best-of series and make everything a one game playoff. Season ends in May and each group of games is only played on the weekend.

Or better yet, why not go Premier League style and just give it to the best record at the end of the season. That way, every game means something, not just until April.

Now, on a more sane note, I find it impressive how the Hawks have turned into the anti-Cubs and Bulls in this city in the 2009-present era. Despite going through two extra games battling fatigue at this point essentially, they somehow manage to always pull through, so no disrespect to the Ducks and their cavalcade of close calls, but the Hawks will win this series. Anyone want to call me on it can get a crisp dollar bill in the mail should I fail. But yes, there's only been one time during this era, the 2011 series versus the Canucks, where I felt the Hawks were clearly the worse team and hell, even then they're a Sharp wrist shot away from turning Vancouver into the third team in five years to blow a 3-0 lead. Somehow, the pendulum of luck has swung more often than not their way, despite having you think that the law of odds would let some other team catch the break. So unless the Ducks are going to copy their SoCal counterparts and be a team of destiny where things seem to just fall into place into an uncanny way, I suspect they'll fall in six.

I'd also like to chip in something else I thought was humorous. In reading both a Hawks and Ducks site after Sunday's game, they both essentially said the same thing.

Chicago: "Hey, we stormed out the gate and Andersen was great. If we do that a couple more times, boom! Title town bitches, lolhawkswin!"

Anaheim: "Yea, we neutralized Toews and Saad pretty good and our depth canceled out theres, I like our odds moving forward, quack quack!"

I can only imagine the talking points now in both camps, but Boudreau has got to find someway to survive the onslaught out of the gate they found themselves in the first two games and start working on that thinning blue line if they want any shot in this.

[TorinK92]

I'm not understanding the outrage from Chicago, either.

You're even in central timezone so it could've been an hour worse. The league isn't going to change how they schedule games because the Blackhawks have a penchant for going to overtime. Your team is on the road, you deal with the schedule.

Exactly.

I mean, on any given night during the regular season if you're on the east coast and watching your team play in the west, the game can start as late as 10:30 for you. Here the games in Anaheim are starting at 8:00 for people in Chicago, the games are ending when they usually begin on the east coast during the regular season. If your game goes an extra 1 1/2 to 2 hours because of overtime, big whoop, welcome to our pain. Enjoy the fact that your team is good enough to make it past divisional seeding.

[CS85]

You guys don't get it, do you? I want to have my cake and eat it, too. I don't see why this is so hard to understand.

[TheOldRoman]

Expecting the league to schedule games in order to please: A ) the away team's fans halfway across the country, and B ) people who want to go to bed earlier because a game has a chance to go to overtime seems really weird to me.

Well, not just for the road team, but also for the huge majority of hockey fans who might watch the game. You can't do anything about a 9:30 EST start in the first round, but there were no games going against this last night. But yes, pointing out that literally every other league tells the west coast to cram it in such situations is really weird. Like I said, the latest start of last year's NBA Finals was 9 EST, and basketball games generally go quicker than hockey games. That's all. It's something the league should consider then they get to the conference final.

[Cosmic]

Last year's NBA Finals were between a Central team and an Eastern team. A 9 EST start time is 8 in San Antonio; it's not really applicable in this situation.

[TorinK92]

So what's the fix here? Start the games at 5 Pacific and tell people from Anaheim to teleport to the game?

[FiddySicks]

I'd say the best solution to this problem is to tell people from the east coast and Midwest to cram it. If you don't want crappy start times, then beat the west coast teams earlier in the playoffs. Simple as that. It's a HUGE country, and west coast sports is usually highly overlooked enough as it is. What more are we really obligated to do to cater to people in the east? We do that enough as it is.

And look at it this way. While east coasters are enjoying their Sunday mornings during football season before the 1PM start times, were left with 10AM starts. A minor complaint, indeed. But it's not like we make ZERO sacrifices in this matter.

[See Red]

I'd say the best solution to this problem is to tell people from the east coast and Midwest to cram it. If you don't want crappy start times, then beat the west coast teams earlier in the playoffs. Simple as that. It's a HUGE country, and west coast sports is usually highly overlooked enough as it is. What more are we really obligated to do to cater to people in the east? We do that enough as it is.

And look at it this way. While east coasters are enjoying their Sunday mornings during football season before the 1PM start times, were left with 10AM starts. A minor complaint, indeed. But it's not like we make ZERO sacrifices in this matter.

When I lived in the mountain time zone I loved the earlier kickoffs on Sundays and I loved already having college football games on when I woke up on Saturdays.

Does the west coast really cater to the east coast that much? Living in Colorado, which is obviously an hour ahead of California, I thought the start and end times for the vast majority of sporting events was pretty ideal -- start around 7, end around 10. Given the choice, I'd rather have sporting events start a little earlier than I'd like than to end way later than I'd like, which is the case on the east coast. If I went to bed at a reasonable time every night, I would miss the ending of almost every single significant sporting event.

[twi]

Well all the trendoids live in Cali and god forbid they miss the start of games; so everyhing must start late at night so they are home even though they dont really care and just watch sports because it is the thing to do and California is the most important state because thats where all the fabouless people live. The East Coast fans they dont matter. That is why MNF starts at almost 9 becuase the Cali people cant miss the start of the game even though the ending is more important and the game dont end to midnight meaning kids on the east coast never see the ends of World Series and MNF. Never see NBA Finals games end and overtime in the NHL.

Yeah this has grinded my gears for years.

Oh, get bent.

Quality contribution. Thumbs up.

Crazy stat shown on Lindqvist, last 6 games 9 goals against, last 6 periods 11 goals against. Now if the Lightning could only allow less than 5 they'd be in business...

Edit: Whoooooooo! Nikita Kooooooo-cherov!

[sportstar1212]

Son of a bitch...

[FGM13]

Kucherov!

[Unocal]

And to think, these Lightning struggled to score against Petr Mrazek, yet have put up six-spots on Carey Price AND King Henrik.

[Geoff]

I just love the fact that the Bolts broke the Rags one-goal game streak... then and won a one-goal game the next game. TROLLOLOLOLOL

6

[The_Admiral]

I'd say the best solution to this problem is to tell people from the east coast and Midwest to cram it. If you don't want crappy start times, then beat the west coast teams earlier in the playoffs. Simple as that. It's a HUGE country, and west coast sports is usually highly overlooked enough as it is. What more are we really obligated to do to cater to people in the east? We do that enough as it is.

Yeah, this is pretty much it. I'm just glad the game didn't start at 9:30 here.