You can't spell "fucking debacle" without "NHL"

Maybe you could, but why not add the "H" somewhere? "Debac-hle" has a certain Scottish gruntiness. "F-uh-cking" is like puking and swearing all at once, with the hiccups. This would be better if it was spoken and not written, is the point.

If you were at home yesterday (and you were), you may have been reading a book or kicking your dog, or whacking it on an old Kerri Strug-cover TV Guide, but at 1pm, EST, you no doubt snapped to attention and said, "Oh. My. God. Hockey on now!" and ran to the TV and put on NBC, because you remembered, apropos of nothing, that the first-ever outdoor NHL game in America was about to start. And then, no doubt, you turned the TV off again, because you either remembered that hockey is not a sport anymore or you happened to be more than 5 seconds early tuning in and caught the end of the foundation makeup infomercial NBC was running before the hockey game. That's not a typo. Ten minutes to gametime and what are we seeing? Live shots of the stadium? Interviews? Those gay, "meet the man behind the man, you know, the gay one that all you women would like, if he wasn't so fucking gay, like Mike Bacsik" profiles of the players? No. It was an infomercial for women's cosmetics. Surely, though, all the curious viewers sat through that to get to the game. Surely.

And then, the magic: Buffalo. 30 degrees. Big, fat snowflakes. 70,000 people in a football stadium, with the nearest seats only 50 yards from the ice. (Wait...what?). Problems. Uh oh. F-uh-ck.

Oh, Mike Emrick and Eddie Olcyzk (vybrny) are calling the game. Emrick may be NBC's top hockey guy, but he has a voice like a cat whose tail is caught under a rocking chair; Eddie O. is just a doofus who can't keep a thought going. And, for extra fun, Darren Pang will be rinkside for analysis and observations--all of which you have heard before if you've played EA Sports' NHL 2002, 2003, or 2004. ("Oh, Doc, I thought that one was going in!" "That was a water-bottle rocker, there, eh!" "The post is the goalie's best friend!")

But before we can get this thing underway, there's the little matter of the anthems. We begin with that of Canadia, our whitest neighbor, because--wait a minute, neither the Buffalo Sabres nor the Pittsburgh Penguins is a Canadian team! Why are we doing this one? All the players, who were worried about keeping warm, have their helmets off and are standing still, losing heat. Good plan, NHL.

But the coup disgrace came next. This big, fat, Irish drunk fuck named Ronan Tynan waddled his drunk, fat ass up to the microphone and rambled something like this to the equally drunk crowd of Buffalonians: "A'm here ta do 'Gooooood Bless Amerdica,' an ah'v jus bean tew Af-gan-isss-dan ta see ar trups." (He meant "our troops"--"OUR"?? You're from Ireland, you stupid, jingoistic fuck!) He continued, "an ah jus want ta seay, thur ta best bunch ah trups in the hull wurld, an ah luv 'em, an ah'd be chuffed ta get fucked by enny wunuffem, ennytaym! Gooooo Buffalooooo! Kill, kill, kill!!!" This is the exact transcript of Ronan Tynan's remarks, and I dare him to sue me.

And then, Ronan Tynan, it turns out, is a famous singer of jingoistic, moronic pap, and he warbled out "God Bless America" as Blackhawk helicopters flew overhead. The crowd--once again, mostly stupid, drunk, fat, Buffalonians--loved it, and never once did anyone so much as wonder what black, military helicopters, God's blessings for our wars, or Irish, Mike Bacsik-esque queens have to do with a hockey game. I assume that, if the helicopters would fit inside, we'd be treated to this same dumbass display prior to every event in Buffalo. "And now, to honor America for no reason, without context, and unironically, here's Ronan Tynan and the US Army's 'Death from Above/Babykiller' unit to sing 'God Bomb the Brownies' before we open the Bedpan-liner Manufacturers' Convention of 2008!"

But back to yesterday. Whiskey McBeer finished slobbing America and handed over the mic to the actual anthem-singer who then did "The Star-spangled Banner"....no, he didn't. Instead, they just started the game. There was no US anthem at all. Don't you find that weird? It's like somebody said to himself, "Goddammit! If the Canadian anthem says, 'God keep our land glorious and free,' then we have to have some kind of God song for the US of motherf-uh-cking A! Screw the real anthem--FS Key didn't put the word 'God' in it, so it's out! Do we have a song that goes, 'Jesus and I used to dock our foreskins, now come on, SCOTUS, end abortions?' No? OK, how about something that rhymes 'hockey' with 'Rocky,' Rocky was played by Rambo, and so hockey = foreign wars and US awesomeness? No? What the fuck?! What DO people write songs about??! Oh, fine, we'll just do 'God Bless America'...but I want a big, fat, Irish drunk up there, somebody who'll make Mike Bacsik look respectable!"

But enough about Mike Bacsik. He's a loser, but the real loser here was the NHL. Contrary to what this Sports Illustrated columnist thinks, the game itself was a debacle. The ice needed major repair every ten minutes or so. The game, as a consequence, went an hour over its allotted time and by that point it's doubtful anyone was watching at all. The officiating, as usual, was bad (nice to know weather makes no difference), and just for extra "what??" factor, the NHL actually assigned local officials to work the game. As in, the refs were from the Buffalo area. Fair's fair!

So not only was the game up against 4 bowl games, not only was it preceded by an infomercial for women's face makeup, not only was the rink poorly-built and unsuitable for good hockey, not only was the city of Buffalo involved, not only was the game marred from the get-go by an inexplicable effort to tie militarism and imperialism to NHL hockey, not only was NBC's coverage poor and boring, but...well, actually that just about sums it up.

Hockey will always be a niche thing in the US. But it does all right as such. Showcasing the sport once a year is a fine idea--it might even draw new fans if done right. But yesterday's event was bullshit on its face and it pissed off this lifelong fan enough to turn off the TV. I'm pretty sure that's the opposite of what the NHL wanted. So, what the f-uh-ck?