Saturday 3/23/24
Basically been working since two something this morning, but have checked out some of this Iowa/Holy Cross game in the women's tournament. Holy Cross has done better than you would have expected. Defense obviously sold out to be stop Caitlin Clark, which worked to a degree, because she got pissed and had to be more of a playmaker.
NESN is a low-rent network. They're cheap. When the Bruins aren't on NESN, there's no pre and postgame show on the channel because of that cheapness. Tonight in this Hockey East Championship game you have classic rivals who are twenty minutes apart from each other on the B line--you can walk from one school to the other--and are ranked 1 and 2 in the country, and NESN has the game on their back-up station, NESN+, because the main NESN channel is airing a Red Sox spring training game.
How oblivious can you be? The Red Sox? A team no one cares about--I'm one of the only people who do right now, because that's just who I am, someone who always cares about the Red Sox, even as they sicken me--and a Saturday night prime time spring training game? Who is going to watch that? Anyone under eighty? Seriously, what are we talking, a couple hundred people? Who would have that on on purpose? It's very hard to conceive of someone out there--anyone--thinking, "I'm going to tune in to that Sox spring training game tonight." This hockey game is like the biggest college hockey game that's entirely local in forever. Doesn't get better than BC against BU as the top two teams in the country playing for the conference championship unless it's the same two teams playing for the national title (which may end up happening this year; I hope they're seeded so that it is a possibility). This is a big college hockey game. Big, big, big. These two teams are loaded with future NHL players. I'm going to say the they've ever had more future NHL players across their combined rosters. We're talking rosters clotted with high-end talent.
Wanted to mention this now: Cutter Gauthier's assist last night when he was going behind the net but wrapped the pass back around his body before continuing on, was one of the best passes I've seen in a long time. This guy can shoot the puck and that's perhaps the focal point of his game, but that was a sick pass. Guys who make a play as they're starting to go behind the net and kick the puck back out on that short side--you don't see it that much--are almost always studs. That kind of play always surprises me. Surprises everyone. It's hard to get the angle and timing right, because if you don't, you just bank it off the back of the net.
I also think it's nuts that BU's Macklin Celebrini is only seventeen. You're that good at seventeen that not only are you playing at this level, but you're pretty much the best player? Or right there, anyway.
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