This is a little belated, but I've been kind of tied up since I got back from Florida. Anyway, here goes:
Whenever I travel I like to take an informal (and completely unscientific) poll regarding which sports teams have the most fans wearing their gear. Disney World is an excellent venue for this type of analysis because you get to meet literally thousands of people. Some of them even come to Florida completely unprepared for the impending cold snap with only one jacket in their possession, and as a result are wearing the exact same Red Wings fleece in 90% of their vacation pictures. (Not that that happened to me or anything.) As disappointing as it is, I have to call Ohio State and the Pittsburgh Steelers the winners by a long shot. I even came across a whole family of Buckeye fans sharing a horse-drawn carriage ride around the campground while we were waiting for the Hoop Dee Doo to start. I was actually surprised that Disney let people wearing those kinds of outfits on their property. They used to have standards for attire. (One of my fellow interns almost got turned away at the gate one day because he was wearing his Gamecocks shirt. But they have no problem letting the Buckeyes roam their property freely. I’ll never understand it.) Anyway, I was pretty disappointed with the representation for the various Michigan-based teams.
I did have one guy in a Wings hat ask me where I got such a beautiful jacket (not the one referred to in the story about ill-prepared vacationers. I swear.). It was a nice little moment of camaraderie. High five, random guy.
On my last morning, I headed out to the park in my Wings fleece (Okay, I admit it. It was me in that anecdote above.) and Wings visor (because apparently I can’t travel without looking like a banner for the state of Michigan) and I got booed by a guy in a Blue Jackets jersey. I’m not kidding. He actually booed me. I just stared at him with my best “Seriously?” face. That’s hard to picture unless you know me, but it’s a good one. I promise.
One morning at the hotel, I saw a guy in a Lindros Flyers jersey in line for the pop machine (I was on vacation. I reserve the right to drink pop for breakfast. I usually get breakfast Slurpees when I’m down there, but they don’t have them at All Star Sports…and yes, I did make an effort to book the other hotel I like to stay at just for their Slurpee machine.) and I asked him if he was excited for the Winter Classic. He had no idea what I was talking about. Seriously.
All Star Sports has a giant wall of sports pictures in the lobby. They’re gloriously sun-faded (Memo to Disney: Bad. Show. I couldn’t even wear a hair tie on my wrist when I worked there…) and I promise you they haven’t been updated since the hotel opened in the ‘90s. Anyway, there are a handful of hockey pictures among the assortment. I can almost promise you that whoever picked them out was a Wings fan. How can I tell? Stevie Y is in three of the seven hockey pictures. I even took pictures to capture them in all of their sun-faded glory. There’s one of him winning a faceoff against Steve Rucchin, one of him being hooked by Joe Sakic, and another of him just standing there and being awesome. Jaromir Jagr and Marty Brodeur also made the cut, along with Martin Straka and a couple of guys whose names I can’t make out in their photo captions and I’m reasonably certain that I don’t care about anyway. The recognition of the greatness that is Steve Yzerman makes me feel a little bit better about having sold my soul to the Mouse a few years back.
My hockey-watching knowledge came in handy when we stopped in Nashville on the way down. I was told that my flight would be taking off at 8:30 and had a brief moment of panic when I looked at my watch and saw that it was 8:45. Fortunately, I remembered that Nashville games always start at 8 or 8:30, which reminded me that they’re on Central time there. See, all this time I spend obsessing over hockey comes in handy once in a while.
One of the first things I did during my visit was head over to the Cast Surplus store. It’s where Disney sells over-stocked items at steep discounts to Cast Members. While there, I managed to snag 5 Wings Cup Champions shirts from ’08 for 90 cents each. One for each of my parents, two brothers, and me. I’m pretty sure it was the greatest shopping moment of my life.
My only source of score updates came from frequently texting Google. I was feeling pretty good about the Wings’ victory over the Lightning until I had the brilliant idea to call home and request that the box score be read to me. It was at that point that I was informed (rather reluctantly) that Zetterberg had been injured. Thanks for ruining my vacation, Ohlund.
There’s a new show at MGM that’s modeled after American Idol. The guy who won the show that I saw looked exactly like Jonathan Ericsson. It was uncanny. He even claimed to be the same height. I’m no longer convinced that his knee is actually hurt. I think he might secretly be pursuing a music career by auditioning for Idol in Disney World.
The Canadian pavilion at Epcot sells jerseys from the Canadiens, Leafs, Oilers, and Flames. It turns out that even the Canadians don’t care about the Canucks or the Sens. Also, all of the pavilions in World Showcase sell local foods and specialties. America’s pavilion sells funnel cakes. God bless the USA.
During one bus ride back to Sports, “I Wanna Drive the Zamboni” came on the overhead speakers. I was apparently the only one there who knew the lyrics. And, yes, I sang them. I may have also danced in my seat a little.
And finally, Little Sister requested a Wings jersey for Christmas this year. She was willing to accept any of the members of the Flying Circus line. I was quite proud. I’ve clearly taught her well. It’s pretty cheap with screen-printed numbers (and the small ones are up on the shoulders instead of the sleeves for some reason), but she was pretty excited about it.
Yeah, that's me in the Yzerman jersey. My sister's 12. I've still got her by 1 inch, even though I look shorter in this picture. I'm apparently the world's shortest person. Also, how awesome are my pants?
In all the drama surrounding Jiri Hudler yesterday, I didn’t get a chance to mention a couple of noteworthy retirements. Former Wings rivals Joe Sakic and Claude Lemieux both announced that they are calling it quits (Lemieux for the second time). While I realize that it’s long dead, I came of age as a Wings fan during the heat of the rivalry, and there is a part of me that will always hate the Avs. Also, the title I chose for this post sounds vaguely like one of Aesop's Fables...
I can honestly say that the one Avs player who I never quite grew to hate was Joe Sakic. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I wanted him to score against the Wings, but it never seemed to make me as angry as it did when other Avs found the back of the net. In their analyses, a lot of other fans are suggesting that part of the reason we never hated Sakic was because of his similarities to Steve Yzerman (mostly that they were both long-time captains who wore #19), but I never cared about that. I always had a grudging respect for him that prevented me from achieving the level of hatred that I had for the rest of the Avs. There was something about him that always struck me as classy. Even back then when I was a little kid. I’m not going to lie and say that I didn’t have a few laughs at his expense after the Snowblower Incident last year, but I kind of did feel bad for the guy. I’m not going to write up some big career eulogy comparing his numbers to those of The Captain because, frankly, we all know which player I would choose. Sakic’s a nice guy and all, but I’m a Wings fan, and with that come some insurmountable biases. Namely the belief that Steve Yzerman is as close to a deity as I will ever see don hockey skates. But that being said, for someone like me who spent the better part of my formative years despising the Colorado Avalanche, it says a lot about Sakic that I always respected him and am a little sad to see him hang up the skates for good. And there’s really no higher compliment that I could give him. Except maybe for calling him a near-deity in hockey skates…
On the other side of my hatred scale is the other notable former Av who announced his retirement. Claude Lemieux. It’s been thirteen years since that fateful day when he rearranged Kris Draper’s face with what was one of the nastiest checks I’ve ever seen, but simply hearing his name is still enough to make me groan in disgust. I do have to give him credit for one thing: he taught me how to hate. There was literally no one in the world that I despised as much as Lemieux back in the day. Actually that hasn’t changed at all in the intervening years. He remains the most celebrated cheap-shot artist in recent memory (although to be fair, Chris Pronger’s giving him a run for his money), but even worse, he had this terrible knack for coming up big against the Wings. It was like he would lie low until the Wings came into town and then find a way to elevate his game three notches and drive me absolutely batty. Some might say that this is a compliment to his abilities, but they couldn’t be more wrong. Puck Daddy had a big post celebrating his career today. It was the most distasteful thing I’ve read on a hockey blog this side of that Pens Blog post making fun of Vladdie. That famous picture of Darren McCarty absolutely destroying Lemieux while he huddled into a turtle position is tied for my favorite hockey image of all time. There’s a reason that it’s hanging on my bedroom wall. One of my saddest days was when I lost the Free Press comic that featured Lemieux’s head Photoshopped onto the body of a turtle. It was stuck in my mirror for years before it finally disappeared.
When Claude popped back up in San Jose this year, I was a little upset. At that point, it looked like the Sharks were going to be the biggest obstacle to the Wings repeating as champs. The thought of Lemieux having a hand in that once again was far too distasteful for me to accurately put into words. Oh how silly and naïve those thoughts seem now as I look back in retrospect. There are some guys for whom I would feel bad if their final season ended up with a massive first round upset. Claude Lemieux is so far from making that list that he couldn’t even read it with a telescope.
Now I leave you with this little beauty. Because, really, is there any other way I could end this post?
Yeah, that's me in the Yzerman jersey. My sister's 12. I've still got her by 1 inch, even though I look shorter in this picture. I'm apparently the world's shortest person. Also, how awesome are my pants?
