Playing Second Favorites
Favorite teams rarely change for people, but “second favorites” seem to change quite often.
During the early 90s, I loved watching the Penguins due to Mario Lemieux, Paul Coffey, a blossoming Jaromir Jagr, a guy like Kevin Stevens scoring 50 goals and racking up 250 PIMs… well, you get the idea - they were fun to watch and seemed to have a bit of everything.
During the late 90s I lived up in Buffalo and found myself rooting for the Sabres pretty quickly. It was easy with the blue collar-type team they put together and a city like Buffalo only has the Sabres and the Bills for major sports team, so they get a good amount of coverage (relative to the size of the media there).
When I moved back into the NY metro area after that, it was easy to just have one team to follow again, but I still always found myself tuning into one other team (after the Islanders) to watch games more than other teams.
There’s always a reason: fantasy players, favorite player who was traded (or signed somewhere else), someone you meet and talk to and start rooting for his team (whether it’s player or management), or that one team was simply a ton of fun to watch.
A year off and tons of roster movement make me wonder who will wind up being my second fave this upcoming season.
One potential team is the Nashville Predators, who I never thought I’d look forward to seeing. Steve Sullivan is just fun to watch on the ice. David Legwand is going to have a breakout year at some point (right?). Hopefully they’ll sign a scoring forward to compliment these guys. As most of you know, I’m a fan of the gritty players and no team may have a more fun checking line than the Preds. Yesterday the Predators traded for one of the most entertaining and hard-working tough guys in the game in Darcy Hordichuk (Darcy’s personal site). Today’s Tennessean mentions coach Barry Trotz is considering using him on a line with Jordin Tootoo and Jeremy Stevenson:
Trotz said Hordichuk’s style of play is a cross between two Predators — wrecking ball Jordin Tootoo and feisty Jeremy Stevenson.
“Stevenson’s more experienced and is probably a little better-rounded player because of his experience,’’ Trotz said. “Darcy’s probably just a touch bigger than Stevie, but he plays a little more like Tootoo. Not exactly like Tootoo, but he makes a lot of contact in his game and he rubs people the wrong way with that contact.’‘
Trotz said he sees the possibility of the three players alternating roles from time to time, but also envisions the trio forming an “energy’’ line at times. None of the three is a natural center, but Tootoo played the role at times as a junior.
“We’re going to continue to be aggressive and hard-skating,’’ Trotz said. “Every year over the last three we’ve probably gotten more aggressive in terms of putting extra pressure on the puck. We’ll continue to do that.’‘
Of course, it’s way too early to decide what other team I’ll be watching as much as the Islanders (and the other NY locals), but there’s always something that makes you gravitate towards one other team at one other time.
Go ahead, share with the class.
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