Vancouver Canuck fans are like my baby

Finally something at a sporting event that my baby is really interested in — boobies!

In case you missed it — or haven't gone back in your DVR to rewatch, then pause, then slo-mo forward, then slo-mo backward, then pause, then regular time forward, then pause again — a tanned Vancouver fan punctuated her team's victory Wednesday by flashing her breasts at San Jose thug Ben Eager as he sat in the penalty box, an act that was broadcast across the nation on CBC's Hockey Night in Canada.

As you know, Sports Baby is still too young to watch TV and it's probably for the best as this random boobing likely would have confused him into thinking it was time for a late-night snack. Not sure what he would have made of the piercings, though.

This spirited young gal, however, clinched it for me as I am now fully onboard with this Canucks playoff run. With the Sedins back performing their creepy magic and Ryan Kesler playing with more grit than an ice cream cone dropped on the beach, there's a lot to like about the team these days (except for Bieksa. Who are you going to fight next? The goalie? The masseuse?) Throw in the Green Men and their chesty one-game replacement and you've got yourself an interesting team. An Albertan by birth and blood-beef level, I'm ready to get behind the team of my adopted home at least for these playoffs.     

It's not the first time I've dabbled in Canuck-ism.

Back in 2009 I wrote this in a North Shore News column:

"I'm not going to jump on your bandwagon just yet, but let's just say I hear the music and am not recoiling in disgust. Another series win and maybe I'll start wearing more green and blue (and orange and yellow and red and brown and purple — gosh you've had some horrible uniforms)."

The weird thing is Canuck fans don't seem to want me. Back in 2009 I got a strongly worded response from a gentleman from Surrey suggesting that, and I'm paraphrasing, "the followers of the Vancouver Canucks hockey club will not be needing your rooting interest and you might be better served to go somewhere else and have sexual relations with yourself."

Odd, I thought. But then this year's playoff run heated up with the thrilling Blackhawks series and the Nashville beatdown and Canucks fans started to voice the same kind of opinion.

"The bandwagon is quickly losing passengers!!" one of my Vancouver friends wrote on Facebook as the Canucks struggled to close out Chicago. "All y'all should just get off and STAY OFF." The post was accompanied by a lot of congratulatory harumphing plus the obligatory Maple Leafs fan reminding us why we all hate Toronto the most.

The we-don't-need-your-support argument even made it into the Vancouver Sun where a columnist wrote this, an opinion piece, titled Dear Rest of Canada - Please Get Your Own Hockey Team, that reads like a 15-year-old's first crack at the humour module of his Grade 10 language arts class. 

I don't quite get the thought process here. This isn't some indie band that you can claim you discovered first and then get all moody and backstabby when your dumb friend Monique claims she heard them before you and your bike courier boyfriend ends up dumping you for that big fake Monique and then proposing to her at Burning Man as that very band wraps up their Songwriter Series set.

This is the NHL. This is the only Canadian team left in the playoffs and, along with Boston, the only team with any sort of history that goes beyond "a brief history of fans not knowing anything about hockey."

How are you going to put together a proper riot after the Canucks lose the finals if only fans who have been with them since the Stan "Steamer" Smyl days are invited?

Canuck fans have gotten to my wife. She's refusing to go anywhere near the bandwagon. She may look sweet but she holds grudges — if a few fans tell her they don't want her support for the team, she's taking that to the grave.

I'm not so hardcore. Tampa Bay broke my little Flames-loving heart back in 2004 so I'd love to see the Canucks beat them. San Jose's Patrick Marleau broke the record for world's glumest face so he and his buddy Joe can take a hike too. (I say this even with Marleau on my playoff pool team. That's how serious I am.)

What does this have to do with my baby? Well, as judged by the Twitter-gasms going on Wednesday night, it seems Canuck fans like boobies. Sports Baby likes boobies too. Heck, who doesn't like boobies? It's a party!

Let's end with a video that made me laugh and laugh (and no, it's not the boobies. If you want to see those try everywhereontheinternet.com).

It's baseball players goofing around during a rain delay. Outstanding.


Photo: Getty Images
Follow me on Twitter @Sports_Andy

The playoffs are like my baby

I'm going to start with what is likely the first piece of actual, legitimate parenting advice found on the Sports Baby blog: sleep training works.

In a previous post I lamented that our sleep training program which was meant to get Sports Baby on a consistent and comforting schedule of naps and sleeps was instead putting him onto a consistent schedule of heartbreaking wailing. Nothing goes better with a crisp spring morning than a confused seven-month-old dropping salty tears on his crib sheets as he stares after the father who has put him down and walked away. It sucked more than Donald Trump's latest dinner date (bravo Seth Myers — I'd recommend watching all of the video in that link but you can fast forward to the 12-minute mark for the Trump evisceration if you like).

Anyway, after two weeks the wailing stopped and the napping started. We used the strategy we found in a book called The Sleep Sense Program written by Dana Obleman who is, I would guess, some sort of powerful She-wizard.

Sports Baby figured the sleeping thing out just in time too, because with him on a regular schedule I've been able to catch a lot of the amazing must-see playoff action going on right now. I can say, with mild exaggeration, that these were the greatest combo NBA/NHL playoff first rounds ever.

In the NBA none of the first-round series went to seven games and yet they were all pretty fantastic with some twists and turns and, most of all, star players putting on a show.

The only sweep was Boston over New York but it had to be the closest four-game sweep I've ever seen, if that makes any sense. The Knicks could have, perhaps should have, won the first two in Boston including game 2, which saw Carmelo Anthony put up 42 points, 17 rebounds and six assists in a losing effort. The Atlanta Hawks upset the Magic in six games even though Orlando's Dwight Howard averaged 27 points and 15.5 rebounds per game. Miami and Chicago took care of business against Philadelphia and Indiana, respectively, in five games but both the 76ers and Pacers put up frisky fights. Toronto hosted a clinic for local seventh graders who then went on to defeat the Raptors in a high scoring affair. "They were just making shots," said head coach Jay Triano. "We maybe needed a little more urgency on defence."

In the Western Conference the Lakers beat the Hornets in six even though Chris Paul nearly stole the show by doing his best Jack Layton impression — the leading a team of nobodies to a very respectable finish part, not the having cancer part. In a game 4 win Paul led all players from both teams in points with 27, assists with 15 and rebounds with 13.

Memphis, the No. 8 seed, toppled No. 1 San Antonio in an upset that would have been shocking if it wasn't so thorough — the Spurs never really had a chance against big men Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph, two former immoveable objects (due to fatness) turned unstoppable forces. Oklahoma versus Denver should have been a thrilling speed race but the Nuggets were unfortunately slowed by injuries. Even so, four of the five games were decided by four points or less as the young Thunder moved on.

And then there was Portland vs. Dallas, a series that featured one of the most amazing performances I've ever seen. Portland's Brandon Roy is a three-time all-star who should be in the prime of his career but instead has become a fringe player due to the fact that his knees retired two years ago. In game 2 of the Dallas series Roy played only eight minutes, scoring zero points, and was reduced to tears as he watched the entire second half from the bench. In game 4, however, Roy returned to glory, scoring 18 points in the fourth quarter to lead the Blazers to a two-point victory after they trailed by 23. If you like sports at all and you haven't seen his amazing performance yet, just watch this video. It may be you with tears in your eyes now. And by the way, the Blazers lost the series in six games.

Now, could you imagine, the NHL playoffs were even better. They may not have had the same star power — that's what happens when you let jackal third-liners cripple the careers of stars like Sidney Crosby — but four of the eight matchups went to game 7. Here in Vancouver it was like a Leonard Cohen song: "The whole damn place goes crazy twice and it's once for the devil and once for Christ."

The devil seeped in when the Canuck-killing Chicago Blackhawks won games 4, 5 and 6 to force game 7 after losing the first three games of the series. Christ appeared just in time for this to happen, saving top-seeded Vancouver the embarrassment of being the first ever city to riot following an opening round loss. As they say, the Luongo works in mysterious ways.

In the end there were no major upsets in the NHL, but every team except for Detroit had to work for their series victories (thanks Coyotes — why can't you be doing all this sucking in a place where somewhere will care that you suck so much?).

Not to be outdone, Sports Baby has put on some must-watch performances of his own. Last week he started crawling and he hasn't stopped since. It's pretty adorable. And when I say he's a must-watch I mean it literally as we now can't take our eyes off him for fear he will crawl over to an electrical outlet and discover what burnt toast feels like.  

Looks like I'll be doing some baby proofing this weekend. I don't mind — the playoff second rounds pale so far in comparison to round one-derful (yeah, that's right — I've already fully embraced the terrible daddy puns).

Happy Mother's Day!

Photo: iamatrailblazersfan.com

Follow me on Twitter @Sports_Andy 

Fantasy sports are like my baby

If there's one thing that has held me back from writing the Great Canadian Novel it's my stupid, happy, fulfilled, non-tortured, nourished life that has kept me from grasping the loneliness and isolation needed to make Quill and Quire quiver.

If there's another thing it is fantasy sports.

As I write this I am toggling back and forth every minute or so to a Stattracker webpage and secretly cheering against my favourite baseball team — the Jays, natch — because I own a relief pitcher for their opponent and he is currently in line to record a save.

I've had a fantasy flurry lately, drafting two baseball teams and a playoff hockey squad while also completing stretch runs in basketball and hockey. I know what you're thinking: "Wow Sports Andy, that's a lot of fake teams. You're the coolest person in the world."

Even so, as a husband and now father I sometimes wonder if fantasy sports takes up too much of my time. And now that my friends are rich enough to drink artisanal beers rather than mass-produced swill, they've decided to bump up the league entry fees from zero to something.

I'm not in any $150,000 leagues — yet — but it still does feel kind of odd coughing up 20 or 25 bucks several times a year for fake sports when I have a baby I could be buying books or salmon or replica basketball jerseys for. On the plus side, more often than not I tend to finish in the money in these things so I have actually made more than I've spent. If I were to hazard a guess as to what kind of return I'm getting for my time spent managing my teams, I'd say I make about $0.0000000000001 per week.

I'm very happy to report, however, that I've never left my baby alone in the crib or bathtub or whatever to go and tend to my teams. I wasn't sure this would be the case. Now that I'm on parental leave and home all day I find that I actually have a lot less time to compulsively scan the Internet looking for info on players and matchups and what the weather is like in Baltimore and such. When I was at work with a computer right in front of me it was much easier to sneak a quick peek for one or two hours a day. (Haha, my boss reads this blog — I'm only kidding of course. It was more like one or two minutes a day. Haha. Moving on.)

The one thing I say about fantasy sports to keep myself from feeling like a maladjusted, obsessed addict is that it does help me stay up-to-date on all of the Big Four sports. As someone who writes about sports for a living I feel like this is a good thing.

If not for my playoff hockey pool I'd have no idea who Teddy Purcell is. If you asked me last week who Teddy Purcell is I probably would have guessed that he's a recovering alcoholic lounge singer who briefly made a name for himself in 1997 with a recording of hilariously crooned 2 Live Crew songs. Now I know that Teddy Purcell, one of those guys whose name always should be said in full, plays hockey in the NHL for the Tampa Bay Lightning. I know that this year was his first as a full-time big leaguer and he did quite well, scoring 51 points in 81 games. I know that he went undrafted and hails from St. John's, NL. Important stuff.

I also know that Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Ted Lilly gives up a lot of dingers but always has a pretty good WHIP, Cleveland Cavaliers guard Ramon Sessions played a lot better at home than on the road this year and Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice still does not get all of his team's goal line touches. Scandalous, I know.

How does this help me cover the local sports scene for my job with a community newspaper? I'll get to that later. (Note: by later I mean never.)

Those little details that I learn playing fantasy sports remind me a little bit about having a baby and the little things that I notice now that I never did before.

Walking with a stroller is one activity that introduces you to a whole other world known only to parents and perhaps people riding Segways. Recently while taking Sports Baby on his first ride on Vancouver's Skytrain we joined the little parade of strollers heading for the elevator. I'd never noticed it before but it's an adorable little line that gets tucked away from the dead eyes of the rest of the commuters. At the Marine Drive stop we took one slow elevator up one floor before transferring to another slow elevator to get to the platform. Kind of fun if you have the time to enjoy the view of the Fraser River out of the windows of the elevator. Not so fun if you're rushing downtown for an important sit down with the head of the Vancouver Police Department's anti-gang unit. (We weren't. Why would we take a baby to a business meeting?)

The baby-less have also probably not noticed the swarm of strollers that converge on community centres and libraries like little cup holder-equipped sharks whenever a free class is offered. Thankfully I haven't yet witnessed any stroller rage incidents.

The same little stroller jams can form at malls as parents search out the one washroom equipped with a change table. God forbid there could ever be a nice place that doesn't smell like broccoli farts where I wouldn't have to wait forever and then feel rushed while I changed my baby's diaper.

Wow, my fantasies really are changing.

Photo Justin K. Aller/Getty Images

Follow me on Twitter @Sports_Andy

Being a sports fan is like raising my baby

Frequent readers of the Sports Baby blog might be under the impression that raising a baby is the coolest, easiest thing in the world.

Teething is no big whoop. Adding solid foods is as natural as hemp shoes. Sports Baby is cuter than homemade undies and even his sicknesses are cherry-coated.

Probably the only person who will see right through this is my dentist. I haven't been to see him since Sports Baby was born but when I do finally hit the chair I can envision him taking one look at my grille and declaring, "New parent I see."

"Haaaaa iiiiiiiii huuuuuuu oooooooo aaaaaaaa?" I'll blurt out in response.

"You've been clenching you're jaw a lot, grinding your teeth. And I also see you're related to Vikings."

Actually, he says that every time I see him. Not the clenching part, the Viking thing. He won't shut up about the Vikings. Apparently my mandibular tori are a dead giveaway. Plus I pillaged like three boxes of floss from him.

Anyway, I have noticed recently that I am unconsciously clenching my jaw and grinding my teeth a lot when I am around my baby. It often happens when I am carrying him or holding him or spotting him so that he doesn't slam the back of his head into the floor while he works on sitting up. I certainly wouldn't want that to happen. Again.

Sorry Buddy.

I think the clenching is just part of the overall worry, anxiety and stress that arrives at the exact same moment that the baby does. Every second that I am in charge of his wellbeing is a beautiful gift from God and/or Buddha but every second is also terrifying. Every second is one more moment that I could lose focus and he could do a header off the change table, putting me on the front page of The Province under a huge headline "Daddy's worst nightmare!" I don't remember grinding my teeth very much when I used to spend an entire Sunday afternoon tinkering with my fantasy baseball lineup in between naps while "watching" golf. 

Now on top of the constant fear of breaking my baby there are things like sleep training to worry about. Sports Baby knocks out his night sleeps but still has trouble napping. The baby books say he is sleep deprived and if he doesn't get a good nap soon his development will be stunted and he'll end up at some third-rate kindergarten that doesn't even have a Latin teacher.

The sleep program will help put him on a consistent schedule and give him good sleep habits for the rest of his life, they say. It's tough going, however, and the only thing it seems to have added to his schedule so far is a good hour or two of puzzled whimpering. Grind grind grind.

It kind of reminds me of what it can be like to be a devoted fan of a sports team. In every league in every season the fans of all but one team end up disappointed. While the ride can be thrilling, there's also constant dread about when and how the whole thing will come crashing down.

As a young boy I was won over by the slap shot of Al MacInnis and the moustache of Lanny McDonald and became a Calgary Flames fan. I don't live and die with their every move anymore but my gut still churns deepest for them. This season I've followed their playoff drive from afar, even listening to one important game on the radio.

For those of you under 20, a radio is a thing that airs music that you don't like and gassy windbags that don't like you. It also plays the Flames games that you can't watch on Sportsnet West in Vancouver because of some ridiculous blackout rules enforced by the ridiculous NHL — what better way to build up a following for your league than massive blackouts!? (See my Twitter rant on March 21 for an elaboration on my thoughts about this arrangement.)

Of course, this meant that I got to listen to my team lose on the radio. Fun.

Somehow the Flames are still alive in the playoff race, leaving just enough hope for fans so that they'll sit through a few more molar-mashing games before finally getting their teeth punched out once and for all.

There's a difference between being a fan and being a parent though. Unless you're a 70-year-old fan of the Montreal Canadiens or the New York Yankees or a five-year-old fan of the San Francisco Giants, most of your sports seasons have come to a grinding halt at some point.

As a parent, however, I find that the teeth clenching is far outweighed by every little awesome thing Sports Baby does from laughing at my funny faces to barfing on my shoes.

There isn't a Stanley Cup at the end of this journey. There's something infinitely better. 

Photo: CP Photo/Bill Grimshaw

Follow me on Twitter @Sports_Andy

The NHL is sort of like my baby

Sports Baby has started teething and it is not at all what I expected.

At some point in my life I got the idea that teething is a horrible process that causes unspeakable suffering for babies and heartbreaking aggravation for parents.

I envisioned unwitting babies pushed to the end of their tiny little ropes by crippling pain brought on by their toothy terrors bursting from their subterranean hiding holes by tearing through baby's poor, defenseless gums like a vicious mutant worm blasting through a foot-wide brick wall. And oh the blood.

Then I learned that teething takes more than six months, sometimes close to a year, and I wondered how babies handled it all without crawling to the nearest bridge and scooching off the edge just to end the suffering.

Finally it came time for my little guy to start the dreaded process. One day his first little tooth bubbled just below the surface of his gums ready to wreak its havoc. The next day came and phew, no havoc, just a cute little tooth peeking out of Sports Baby's adorable smiling mouth. The day after that a second one popped up.

What? No blood? No fever? No baby sneaking into the liquor cabinet to douse the fires with a dram of whiskey?

Apparently I've been misled about teething. "Cutting teeth" is in fact a misnomer. Baby teeth do not, in fact, cut through the flesh, but rather a chemical released by the body causes the gums to open, allowing the teeth to glide on through.

Relieved that Sports Baby won't be suffering horrible pain, I've downgraded his suicide watch from a Charlie Sheen to a Will Smith.

Teething can have some uncomfortable symptoms but so far Sports Baby is taking it all like a champ.

The NHL is teething too but it appears that its brains have been so battered by rogue stanchions, flying elbows and blind assassins that it has lost the ability to release that chemical to soften the sting of the process. No, it's a bloody mess out there.

Just two months ago I wrote another blog post praising the NHL for gaining attention with some clever ideas. But since then a Sidney Crosby concussion (the "blind assassins" link above will take you to a video of the play), a Zdeno Chara near decapitation (see "rogue stanchions" above) and a dirty hit from Matt Cooke (see "flying elbows") have been the biggest stories coming out of the NHL.

The league, however, may finally be putting some teeth into its disciplinary rules to punish players for hits to the head.

Cooke was suspended for the rest of the regular season and, somewhat surprisingly, for the first round of the playoffs for his recent elbow to the head of New York's Ryan McDonagh. This after Cooke skated away without any penalty or suspension for this eerily similar hit on Marc Savard last season. Savard suffered a concussion and now his future in the game is in doubt after receiving another concussion two months ago.

That the NHL gave Cooke a lengthy suspension, including playoff games, this time around is a sign that the league may finally be taking these hits seriously. Cooke, however, was an easy target. The hit was a blatant blindside brain bash and Cooke is a repeat offender who has been suspended by the league before.

But as many hockey commentators are pointing out, the test will come when a star player does something like this. Would Alex Ovechkin, himself a repeat offender, get a lengthy suspension for an elbow to the head delivered in the playoffs? This handy and hilarious NHL suspension flow chart from the Down Goes Brown blog predicts that he wouldn't.

Regardless, tougher suspension guidelines are apparently on the way for next season and maybe the Cooke suspension will send the message that the league is not fooling around anymore. Then again, maybe it won't.

Wasn't the 25-game suspension to Chris Simon for this March 2007 slash to the face of Ryan Hollweg supposed to send a message that the league was serious?

Wasn't the 20-game suspension to Todd Bertuzzi for breaking Steve Moore's neck in 2004 supposed to send a message?

Wasn't the 21-game suspension to Dale Hunter in 1993 for nailing Pierre Turgeon after Turgeon scored a goal supposed to send a message?

Wasn't the 16-game suspension to Eddie Shore for almost killing Ace Bailey with a stick to the head in 1933 supposed to send a message?

Wasn't the 11-game suspension to Killer McSlashface in aught-six for inventing the Zamboni and then using it to run over an opponent supposed to send a message?

I guess teething is not always painless.

Photo Icon SMI

Follow me on Twitter @Sports_Andy

Hockey on TSN is like my baby

My baby gets a lot of applause from his Mama and me.

He holds his head up high during tummy time? Wild cheering. He rolls over? Happy dances. He burps? Woop-woop. He farts? Yeah boyyyy!

When my mother-in-law visits she gets a great kick out of watching me lose my shit anytime my baby loses his.

I think it started very early on: any sign of life — be it a tiny baby cry, finger squeeze or sticky black newborn poop — was affirmation that he was real and alive and not some cruel French ultrasound technician’s idea of a Juste Pour Rire gag.

Our little guy gets huge love not only for the big milestones but also for little things that nobody but his parents would find all that impressive.

It reminds me of how TSN makes a huge deal out of some hockey events, celebrating their every nuance like it was Neil Armstrong curing AIDS.

TSN started with the World Junior Hockey Championships, growing it from a nice little tournament played by the world’s best teenagers into a month-long orgy of analysis, speculation, selection shows, door knocking, hydration science, hype, flag-waving, dream shattering and cowboy hats. And that’s before the tournament even starts.

The latest event to get TSN’d was Friday’s all-star team draft, an idea that was dreamed up by Brendan Shannahan and Rob Blake, a couple of former players who now work for the league. The NHL, however, let TSN run the draft from overblown start (a pregame analysis show that revealed only that the TSN analysts cared way more about the drafting strategy than the players did) to awkward finish (Phil Kessel winning a pity car). In-between the proceedings were actually kind of fun — in an awkward way, like watching a cute kid try to tell jokes — but it was a little surprising that TSN was given free reign over the entire proceedings without anyone from the NHL or any American TV network involved.

Can you imagine an NBA event like this running without an appearance from the Godfather, David Stern? Then again, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman frightens children, so it was probably good that he wasn’t front and centre.

To TSN’s credit, their gushing over these events works. The World Junior Championships are now one of the biggest events on the sports calendar for most Canadians while in the rest of the world the tournament ranks in importance somewhere between cup stacking and the Illinois State Fair Hog Calling Contest.

And the fantasy draft format made this year’s all-star game a big hit as well, bringing relevance to a competition that no one has cared about since Eddie Shore almost killed Ace Bailey.

I’m hoping that our parental gushing has the same positive effect on our baby. I know it helped me.

My parents were always telling me how great I was, even after the piano festival where the adjudicator’s only compliment to me was that she was impressed that I was able to play at all with my hands shaking as much as they were.

My parents’ positive power gave me a lot of confidence. A lot. Like, Helen Hunt high on PCP confidence.

And look at me now. I have almost a dozen HD TV channels and I drive a Nissan Versa.

Actually, the greatest thing my self-confidence did for me was help me land a dazzling woman who is way better looking than me and trick her into falling in love with me. My wife says that one of the greatest gifts I could give my boy would be to pass on the confidence that I have to him.

Well, son, you’re the best baby burper I’ve ever met. You’re welcome.

Photo Dave Sandford/Getty Images

Follow me on Twitter @Sportsbaby

The NHL is like my baby

My baby is smart.

One of his favourite things to do is read books with us. I suppose technically he’s not reading the books — more like looking at, smacking and then chewing on them — but he pays rapt attention whenever we prop one up in front of him and start telling him the story.

I don’t know if he’s a lot smarter than your average baby — maybe the Rhodes Scholarship selection committee members and their lawyers had a point — but he amazes me with the things he learns every day. I guess that’s just how the growing mind of a baby works. It’s thrilling to watch up close.

My baby is also, or at least will be, bilingual. Somehow my wife learned how to speak French growing up in Medicine Hat, Alberta — something that seems about as likely to happen as someone learning how to hang-glide growing up in a submarine.

Nevertheless she is fluent in both English and French and speaks only French to our baby so that he will grow up knowing both languages. This arrangement made me nervous at first, envisioning linguistic confusion such as this happening throughout his life:

OPERATOR:

9-1-1, what's your emergency?

MY BABY AT SIX YEARS OLD:

C'est Mama, elle est dead!

OPER:

Mama, L.A. dead?

MBA6YO:

Oui!

OPER:

We? We who?

MBA6YO:

Mama! Elle est not moving!

OPER: 

L.A. not moving? Is there an earthquake? Are you in L.A.? This is Vancouver 9-1-1.

MBA6YO:

Yes, I sais!

OPER:

You say what?

MBA6YO:

I sais c'est Vancouver!

OPER:

You say say Vancouver? Well I say say prank calling 9-1-1 is a federal offense.

MBA6YO:

No! Elle est dying!

OPER:

L.A. is not dying. I was just there last month. There was a movie filming, I think I saw Tom Cruise getting into a golf cart with Nelson Mandela. Anyway, I've tracked your location and called the police. They're on their way to get you now.

MBA6YO:

Bon! Vite! Tell them all to give my Mama aide!

OPER:

You're sick (hangs up).

But apparently going the bilingual baby route actually gives kids more “cognitive flexibility,” according to a study by researchers from Concordia and York Universities. Très good.

Anyway, you’ll remember that this post is called the NHL is like my baby and I am writing that my baby is smart.

No, my two weeks of parental leave have not made me crazy — I am actually inferring that the NHL is smart. That’s a statement I never thought I’d make under Gary Bettman’s rule. After all, under his reign the league did bloat to an ungodly 30 teams — including ridiculous teams in places like Florida, Carolina and Tennessee — while still managing to lose teams in hockey hotbeds Winnipeg, Quebec and Minnesota. And a season was lost to a lockout. And now as Canadian cities that actually like hockey are bending backwards to get teams, it’s “Oh no, that team will never leave Phoenix. Not on my watch.” What a DB.

Anyway, someone else must be running the show these days because the NHL has had some truly inspired ideas and is suddenly as hot as wasabi eye-drops.

The first was allowing HBO to bring it’s fantastic 24/7 show to the rink, resulting in a series about the Capitals and the Penguins that is just f&#*ing incredible, to use the common parlance of the show. The series led up to this year’s Winter Classic outdoor game, another great NHL idea that is becoming such a popular New Year’s Day tradition that college football’s Cowboy Hat Bowl, Walter Sobchak from The Big Lebowski Bowl and Ball-peen Hammer Bowl are all considering moving to different days.

Now the NHL has come up with the idea of having captains pick teams in a fantasy draft for All-Star weekend. Brilliant, even if the idea was stolen from an old Bill Simmons column. It still took balls for the NHL to make that call, and it has raised the all-star game’s profile from flat-lining newt to frisky golden retriever recovering from surgery.

I still might not watch the game — after all, hockey all-star games are about as exciting as synchronized swimming in a fountain — but I will at least watch the draft and I am more interested in the game than I have been since I was 12 years old.

Smart work, NHL. Now can you please call the Rhodes people and tell them I was just kidding about the bomb threat. 

Photo Brian Babineau/NHLI via Getty Images

Follow me on Twitter @Sportsbaby