We're back everyone! A hastily-written 2012-13 NHL season preview

So, not so surprisingly, I've been somewhat quiet around these parts and though I'd rather not go into it, there was a really good reason why. That said, on Saturday at long last the puck will be dropping on the 2012-13 NHL season and there is just a ton of stuff to get excited about, to say nothing of the premier matchups (Chicago-Los Angeles, Pittsburgh-Philadelphia, New York-Boston) that we get on opening day alone.

However, given the consequences of the NHL's work stoppage, rather than the full 82-course serving of a standard NHL season, we'll be seeing a slap-dash truncated 48-game menu this time around. What's even more wild is that the 48 games each team plays will be played entirely within a span of 99 days, which means less of a developed and cohesive performance all around and more of a frenetic breakneck scramble to make the postseason, which will be played out in full.

If anyone remembers last season's 66-game NBA slate in which it seemed like the Knicks were playing about five times per week, this will be something like that. No one is entirely sure how different teams will respond to it, and as a result of the condensed schedule certain teams one might have expected to be title contenders (the Rangers, Detroit) might fall victim to exhaustion due to age or an aggressive style of play while teams not quite ready to make the jump (Edmonton, Florida) could take advantage because of their relative youth in the shortened schedule.

The important thing to understand, however, is that with only one other example of this situation to fall back on, no one is really sure how this will shake out, though if it ends the same way, I won't really be complaining. Either way, it's going to be kind of hard to predict who to bet on in the horse race, but because we need to fill these column inches, here is who might be Secretariat, and who might be Zippy Chippy.

Feeling Big Blue

This season Sports Illustrated revamped it's NFL predictions from September with the foresight and knowledge of eight weeks of football already past and came up with new picks for the Super Bowl that were different, rational and not far off from what I would have pegged it at myself. The choice by SI's Jim Trotter, with the argument of "Whom do you trust late with the game on the line? Two-time Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning or Matt Schaub, who has never started in the postseason?" was the New York Giants to win a second consecutive championship with a 24-20 victory over the Houston Texans in Super Bowl XLVII. At the time that I saw this after I got my issue in the mail I had one thought run through my head.

"Oh, I don't like this one bit."

I hesitate to say that I'm superstitious. After all, the idea that a few words printed on a page in a soon to be forgotten article in a weekly periodical don't actually have the power to unseat or upset anyone or anything. They're just words, meaningless as every game in college football's postseason with the notable exception of one. And yet fear still ran down my spine as I saw it, hypothetically jinxing everything I had known to be a true, reasonable interpretation of the season's first half. After all, the Giants had overcome an early season hiccup against Dallas and were 6-2 with a comfortable division lead at the season's mid-way point, their lone other loss being a frustrating, but forgiveable road defeat at Philadelphia which had not yet revealed itself to be utterly horrendous.

Otherwise, the Giants were off and running with an offense looking every bit as potent as one would have expected, a solid defense, championship experience in their back pockets and an absolute thrashing of a San Francisco team many expected to (and still expect to) compete for a Super Bowl title this February. All of this makes the fact that New York is already home for the summer more than a little baffling, and if you happen to call yourself a Giants fan (spoiler alert: I do), it's more than a little frustrating. I sat in my father's living room in New Jersey Sunday watching my team display in just about every facet why it has the potential to make a Super Bowl run any time it gets into the postseason and the entire time I kept watching Chicago stave off Detroit on my laptop and realized what the Giants did wouldn't mean a thing. This is maddening to some extent considering had the Giants done what was required of them in just one of any number of previous games this all would have been moot, but in the end, a rational man takes his gifts and hesitates to get greedy.

This offseason, I am going to pretend that that is me.

MAMBINO's Pro Bowl Selections

It happens when Mike Antoni is prompted to talk about defense. It happens when an Asian student has to explain a B+ to the parental droids. It happens when you have to explain a mischievous deed to a significant other.

Rambling run-on sentences.

When you don't know what you're talking about or when anything you say won't be believed, you may fall victim to over-talking and fail to use punctuation regarding tone and speed. I am certainly above such pedestrian nonsense, but rather than risk it, I present to you, the MAMBINO Pro Bowl rosters defined by best Youtube video.

Special thanks to my committee: Pucklius, who has staved off NHL Lockout-induced suicide for yet another day, and TuckRule, who is probably playing Madden to find a new NFL team to root for.

Instant Trade Analysis: R.A. Dickey to the Toronto Blue Jays

Toronto Blue Jays get: SP R.A. Dickey, C Josh Thole

New York Mets get: C Travis d'Arnaud, SP Noah Snydergaard, C John Buck

Timing is everything, and in R.A. Dickey's case, timing apparently wasn't worth two years and $25 million dollars.

The 38 year-old knuckerballing 2012 NL Cy Young winner was shipped to the Toronto Blue Jays for two of the team's best prospects, including one of the most elite in all of baseball's minor leagues.

Dickey's story is one of the best in baseball, in which he missed two of the last twelve seasons not from injury, but because he wasn't good enough to make a team. He reinvented himself as a knuckleball pitcher in the middle of the last decade after several seasons in Texas. As a Ranger, Dickey established himself as one of the game's worst every day pitchers, throwing up a 5.72 ERA, 1.56 WHIP and just 5.8 strikeouts per nine innings, amongst many other ghastly stats. In short, he was absolutely terrible and was actually fortunate to stick around int he Majors as long as he did.

However, after two seasons in Seattle and Minnesota honing his craft (to the tune of a 4.99 ERA, 1.58 WHIP and 5.1 strikeouts per nine innings--about as on par with his Texas numbers as he could get), Dickey was a scrap heap signing with the Mets in 2010. He immediately became a bright spot amongst an otherwise forgetful NYM season, throwing together a stunning 2.84 ERA and 1.18 WHIP in 26 starts and 174 innings. Since then, Dickey has been simply amazing, doling out two seasons of 32 and 33 starts, with 2012 being his masterpiece: 2.73 ERA, 20 wins, 1.05 WHIP, 230 strikeouts (!) to only 54 walks and a NL Cy Young Award. The blessing and the curse of the knuckleball is that because it's thrown without rotation, it's hard to predict where it's going to land. Luckily for Dickey, he's been able to understand the art of the ball's static nature and put it into places where he's able to accurately deceive the hitter.

Love and the New York Giants: It happens when you least expect it

I am single. I'm fine with this, but I know I won't be forever. As a result, I date a lot. Probably too much if you ask my friends or my wallet, but in the now multi-year, multi-part journey I've endured in hopes of finding someone to share a few months if not my life I have been met by one frustration after another and remain single. This is partially because I'm picky and partially because I'm an obnoxious sarcastic loudmouth who occasionally misses the nuances of charmed conversation, but in all irksome experiences that compose the catastrophic cluster that is dating in New York city in your 20s, my friends have continually harped on one maxim to ease my anxieties.

"It always happens when you least expect it."

Now that is a load of horseshit if I ever heard it. I've spent all but three years of my post-pubescent life not particularly trying in the dating world and the vast majority of that was all spent single. So clearly, not expecting it hasn't really been the elixir. In all of my life the only area in which not expecting anything has truly paid off has been with the first, most dearest thing I ever truly fell in love with: The New York Football Giants.

I was a wide-eyed optimist when I first was cast under the spell of Big Blue in the early 1990s. After all, the Giants were just a few seasons removed from their last Super Bowl title, an upset of the high-powered Buffalo Bills in 1990 that is unfortunately far more widely remembered for Scott Norwood's miss of a far more difficult than remembered game-winning field goal as time expired than it is for Bill Parcells' brilliant ball-control game plan -- the Giants had more than 40 minutes of possession -- or Mark Ingram's insane, twisting extension that earned a crucial New York first down. The first season I truly got invested in the NFL, the Giants battled with Dallas for the top seed in the NFC before the Cowboys, and Emmitt Smith, literally ran away with it in overtime in the final game of the season in 1994 -- on a separated shoulder no less.

Was Johan Santana's No-Hitter Worth a Mets Playoff Run?

On June 1st, 2012, it only took two hours and thirty-five minutes to erase 50 years of frustration. 

For the first time in New York Mets history--over 8,000 games, four National League pennants and two World Series title since 1962--a pitcher had thrown a no-hitter. Johan Santana, the team's ace, had put down 27 batters while registering zeroes all along the St. Louis Cardinals' side of the scoreboard. The setting couldn't have been more perfect; in front of 27,000 fans on a cloudy summer's night in Queens, Johan threw a career-high 134 pitches on his way to the franchise's first-ever no-no, striking out reigning World Series MVP David Freese. Santana, who had not led the the Metropolitans to the playoffs since his acquisition in a blockbuster trade with the Minnesota Twins in 2007, came back from a lost 2011 season in which he hadn't thrown a single pitch. SNY broadcasters and franchise mainstays Keith Hernandez and Gary Cohen, admitted after the game that they both truly believed that they'd never live to see a Mets' no-hitter. Grown men were crying in the stands, jumping into one another's arms as if the Mets had won the World Series. For many of them, the feeling might have been just as joyous. 

Our man Pucklius was one of the masses that night that yes, jumped into a stranger's embrace and high-fived bartenders. While the excitement of that night will eternally warm the hearts of Mets faithful, reality has set in on the rest of New York's 2012 season. 

At the time of Johan's no-no, the Mets were 29-23, tied for the Wild Card lead with one third of the baseball calendar in the books. Somehow, they had broken through the restrictions of their infamous payroll squeeze and a rebuilding movement that had stripped a once-formidable squad down to its studs. Though perhaps inevitable, the Mets have careened back down to Earth from their lofty perch at the top of the standings. One of the primary reasons? Johan Santana. 

Since June 1st, Santana has gone 3-7, with a sky-high 8.27 ERA and allowed at least six runs in his last five starts. In fact, he's only managed two quality starts in that time span, giving up an astonishing 68 hits. Some members of the media are laying his decline on the fact that Johan had been left to throw an enormous amount of pitches after coming off major shoulder surgery for a torn capsule, a rare injury that effectively ends careers. There's no concrete evidence to suggest that this one particular game set off Santana into statistical hell. After taking a year off, perhaps throwing well into the summer months was never in his future. However, the proof is there, and it's not a large logical leap to say that this no-hitter was the beginning of the end not just for Santana, but also the Mets' 2012 season and playoff hopes. 

That being said, we've asked Pucklius to weigh in on all issues pertaining to the Mets' first-ever no-hitter, as well as the fascinating psyche of the fanbase.

Zach Parise and Ryan Suter can go home again

Hockey does not have "bringing my talents to South Beach" free agent bonanzas. Yes, there are teams that win championships as a result of being heavily stocked with talent and depth that rolls them to a Stanley Cup, but often those teams are built as a result of deftly scouted drafts with the occasional smart free agent signing sprinkled in here or there. Look no further than the 2009 Penguins or the 2010 Blackhawks for evidence. While free agency is a large part of hockey, the tendency, often, is for teams to lock up their prized young assets early on, or at least attempt to do so, with a massive contract that gets them paid, but keeps them in the fold through their formative years. Many stars stay with the same organization for the vast majority of their careers and few championship teams are built almost exclusively on big-name free agents. The closest team in recent memory that might fill that description is 2002 Detroit Red Wings, an astonishingly old team which had four Hall-of-Famers (Steve Yzerman, Igor Larianov, Brett Hull and Luc Robitaille), six more players that are certain to be inducted at some point (Pavel Datsyuk, Sergei Fedorov, Brendan Shanahan, Nicklas Lidstrom, Chris Chelios and Dominik Hasek), two more that just might join them (Darren McCarty and Tomas Holmstrom) and two players that had already scored overtime Cup-clinchers for other teams in the previous six years (Hull and Uwe Krupp).

They were an immortal squad built on the backs of veteran acquisition and free agency in a way that is a dramatic outlier from how the NHL, generally speaking, has done business. Even that team, however, was no situation of LeBron James and Chris Bosh signing contracts as the top two free agents with the same team. Seeing the top two names on the market go to the same place is rare. Seeing them go to a small market is rarer still. And yet, on July 4, 2012, while most of us in the U.S. were prepping for our barbecues or traveling to to someone else's, the Minnesota Wild, they of the one division title in their history, three playoff appearances all time and none since George W. Bush was still in the White House, managed to sign Zach Parise and Ryan Suter to identical 13-year $98-million contracts that will carry them both from the age of 27 to their post-retirement fishing days near the Superior Hiking Trail.

The Minnesota Wild are not a good team. Despite a surprising first half before a tumbling second in 2011-12, they are an unbalanced mixed of unfulfilled promise (Dany Heatley), inconsistent offense (Devin Setoguchi) and a whole lot of youth. And yet, somehow, some way, they took the two prizes of free agency in this offseason, Suter, the top defenseman on the market, and Parise, the top forward available and given his combination of youth, leadership, offensive production and defensive dedication arguably the most desired free agent in the history of the NHL. While the idea of the Wild attempting to lure Suter and Parise to Minnesota as a package deal had been floated for months due to the fact that both are friends, Parise is a Minnesota native and Suter is from neighboring Wisconsin, the notion had been met by most hockey insiders and fans alike with scoffing and amusement.

As a lifelong Devils fan, I personally felt as if of all the teams in the hunt for Parise, Minnesota was probably the least likely destination. Rumors that the Rangers, Penguins, Flyers, Blackhawks and Red Wings would all be hot on his trail seemed a far more likely result to anyone paying attention, and despite the rampant assumption that Parise would simply go to the highest bidder like any free agent might, the New Jersey Devils, the team which had drafted him, groomed him for eight years and that he captained to the Stanley Cup Final this June was in the mix right to the very end. Ultimately, and Parise and Devils GM Lou Lamoriello both confirmed it, the top free agent on the market wasn't interested in getting $120 million from the major powers of the NHL like Pittsburgh, Detroit or Chicago. The money would be there wherever he went. This was about playing in front of his biological family in Minnesota or his professional family in New Jersey.

In the end Parise's decision was between Minnesota and New Jersey, and New Jersey lost out.

Who Starts the All-Star Game for the National League? Dickey or Cain?

I'm not surprised that the sporting world is having an argument over who should start the MLB All-Star game for the National League. Every year can't have an automatic answer like a dominant Roy Halladay or a war horse-like half season from Justin Verlander. I'm not even surprised that Matt Cain is a part of the conversation, considering his video game statistics and the accompanying hype provided by the perfect game he threw just weeks ago.

What I am surprised about is that the opposing part of the argument for NL All-Star starter is...R.A. Dickey.

Yes, Mambinities. R.A. Dickey, who spent his 2002 and 2007 seasons out of baseball because he wasn't good enough to make any team, is a probable All-Star. R.A. Dickey, who in 2006 as a 31 year-old, transitioned to a full-time knuckle-ball pitcher, is not only a probable All-Star, but considering starting material. R.A. Dickey, who at age 37 is having his most dominant season ever, is a potential All-Star starter and Cy Young candidate. Yes folks, that R.A. Dickey.

Unbelievably, just three years after finishing the season with Minnesota with a 5.21 ERA and walking nearly as many batters as he struck out, R.A. Dickey is favored by many, including our own Pucklius, as the presumptive National League All-Star Starter.

However, he's not without his detractors. An e-mail debate began to stir today with the assertion that yes, the Mets ace was more deserving of throwing the NL's first pitch than Cain.

State of the Mets: Unexpected Hope is Amazin'

(I'm posting for Pucklius, because Blogger sucks.)

At the beginning of the 2012 Major League Baseball I wrote on this here blog a forecast of the New York Mets with such doom and gloom it might have sent the most optimistic fans running for the hills. In short I said that the real pain of watching this team was not how good or bad they would play this year but that the bleak financial outlook left a fan without any hope at all for this season or the next. I'm not going to say I was wrong, because the financial situation of the team, cloudy as it is, still leaves a great deal of concern for the future. I should also say that while I thought this would be a year in which the team went nowhere and made few strides toward being a consistent postseason contender, I didn't think it would really be that bad.

Of course, I didn't think it would be good either.

I thought that like every season there would be the occasional moments of joy and excitement, the rare comeback win or the fun rookie hot streak by the latest incarnation of Timo Perez in which a callup drums up excitement until the rest of the Majors had scouted him to death and adjusted for him. But I didn't expect or count on a few things. I didn't count on the Mets sweeping the Braves to open the season and get off on the right foot, I didn't count on Johan Santana smoothly coming back from major shoulder surgery, I didn't count on David Wright coming back to life and I didn't count on a suddenly pleasant and happy locker room that made its impact on the field because the 25 guys on the roster all genuinely like each other.

And I certainly did not count on Robert Allen Dickey suddenly becoming the most dominant pitcher on the planet. Dear God, I did not count on that.

2012 Stanley Cup Preview

The Stanley Cup matchup couldn't have worked out better for THE GREAT MAMBINO. Our resident NHL expert, Pucklius, will be on the precipice of a heart attack, as he roots for Devils legend Martin Brodeur to hoist the trophy one more time. Que-Ese, TGM's favorite utilityman and promoter-extraordinaire, is on the other side, cheering for the Kings of the city of angels.

We've been giving you previews all along the way as these teams have fought through battle after battle just to have their names etched next to Lord Stanley. But for this final round, I asked Puck and Que one question:

Who has the better playoff atmosphere?

LA Kings Bandwagon Fan Crash Course Educator

As the Lakers unceremoniously went down 3-1 in their eventual loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder, I quickly realized that like a lover scorned by a hateful broad, I'd have to find a new steed to hitch my wagons to for a sweet sweet rebound.

Enter YOUR...Los Angeles Kings.

I'm sure I'm not the only one. Los Angeles, like Boston, Philly or Miami, is a frontrunners town. Whichever of our teams that is in the driver's seat, that's the one we'll readily and happily attach our interest to, regardless of whether we've watched a game this season, know the best player's name or hell, even the rules of the sport. This is just how it is. Don't blame me. I didn't found the city.

Fellow Lakers fans (and even some of you Clippers refugees that may have found your way over to this glorious stink-free blog), I realize the spot we're in. You want to keep the adrenaline going by rooting for a team in the playoffs, but yet, you don't know a damn thing about hockey. Or maybe you know a bit, but you've been preoccupied with checking out Kenneth Fareid's offensive rebound rate and the progress of the Kings wasn't on the front burner. Look, I get it. That's why we're here.

I've exchanged a series of e-mails with MAMBINO ace hockey writer Pucklius, asking questions inn order that us bandwagon Kings fans might get a crash course in puck education. Let's be honest; at the end of this, no one is going to mistake you for a pedigreed NHL fan born in the swamps of Calgary. However, you MIGHT just learn enough to have a passable conversation about possibly the only champions in LA this June. Onward!

Blood in the Hudson: Rangers vs. Devils

If you grew up in the New York metropolitan area in the 1990s, the 1994 Eastern Conference Finals left a mark on you. It didn't matter if you liked hockey or if you didn't, but the Devils were playing the Rangers, 1940 was emblazoned into your psyche and Mark Messier was busy carving out a place there for himself, too. Of course, if you liked hockey, then it was a horse of a different color entirely. The 1994 Eastern Conference Finals in the NHL were a series with drama that was almost unmatched by any other postseason series in the history of sports. Granted, I have a particular soft spot for both hockey and this series in general, but if you look at the facts -- and we will do that in a moment -- there is no postseason series I have seen in any sport that has proven its equal, though the 2001 World Series comes close.

To wit:

The 1994 season is widely remembered as the campaign in which the Rangers finally broke the curse of 1940, when the team opted to burn its mortgage on Madison Square Garden in the bowl of the Stanley Cup in celebration, thereby desecrating a sacred object and sentencing the team to more than half a century without a championship. Or so the theory goes. While the Rangers' victory over the Devils in that season's Eastern Conference Finals is not forgotten, people often forget that while the Rangers had the second-best record in the NHL that season, the Devils had the second-best just six points behind them. Add into the mix the natural geographic rivalry of two teams that played across the river from one another, as well as a bitter dynamic for New Jersey in which the Devils played consistent ugly duckling to the big, bad Blueshirts -- something that is still the case despite the Devils being the more successful franchise since 1994 by an extremely wide margin -- and what lay ahead was a dream set up to a dream series.
So to recap, this is what we were presented with before that series:

-- The two best teams in the NHL's regular season by the most significant empirical metric
-- A natural geographic rivalry between two teams and fan bases that hate each other
-- A measure of recent history, as the Devils and Rangers had played a bitter seven-game series two years earlier
-- A chance for the Devils to finally crawl out from big brother's shadow
-- A chance to reach the Stanley Cup Final, the most that could possibly be at stake between these two teams given the League's format

Stanley Cup Playoffs Round 2 Preview: Late Night With the NHL

If you watch as much of the Stanley Cup Playoffs as I do, you have to be prepared for some late nights. After all, the postseason, with its potential for games that theoretically can never end is often full of overtime epics that stretch into the early morning hours, and this season's rendition has been no exception. In fact, the first round of the 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs had a record 16 overtime games, with the piece de resistence being between Chicago and Phoenix, a series that saw overtime in the first five games.

So, of course, it's only fitting that the last game of the round, last night's Game 7 thriller between New Jersey and Florida, which didn't start until 8:30 p.m. despite being on the east coast so as not to coincide with the end of Game 7 between the New York Rangers and Ottawa Senators, needed more than 60 minutes to be decided. After all, Game 6, too needed more than 60 minutes to be figured out, resulting in Ilya Kovalchuk's beautiful backhand feed after noticing he had lured in both defenders on a 2-on-2, which Travis Zajac took in front of the net and deposited between the legs of Scott Clemmensen to save New Jersey's season.

But what was surprising about Game 7 between New Jersey and Florida was not that it needed more than 60 minutes to be decided, but that it needed more than 80. Double overtime isn't something particularly unheard of, but overtimes have ended surprisingly early this postseason. Only three of the 16 overtime games this season reached a second extra period in the first round and the vast majority of games were done within about 10 minutes. This seems to run contrary to the typical postseason overtime trend of "try to end it quickly and if you can't settle in and lock down the neutral zone and wait for a break," not because games aren't ending fast on the whole but because they aren't ending immediately and still aren't running on forever.

No need to worry, though. The Devils and Panthers solved that problem for everyone Thursday night by keeping the sportswriters, TV watchers and schedule-makers up deep into the evening in a holding pattern until somebody scored. As someone who is, shall we say, emotionally connected to one of these teams, it was an experience that was euphoric at its end but excrutiating for the rest of the duration. After all, playoff overtime is a precarious tight-rope walk where every slight shift in weight or brief mental mistake -- and those are inevitable -- could mean the end of a game or a season. The playoffs are stressful. Game 7 doubly so. Game 7 in overtime triply so. A Game 7 in double overtime? You get the idea. And despite nibbling on my fingers for most of the late evening, it was an immediate and explosive relief when Adam Henrique did this.



The game wouldn't have gone that far, however, were it not for the absolutely stellar play of Martin Brodeur. As we've noted here earlier, Marty has struggled for stretches of this season and started to look his age -- an age that will reach 40 next weekend -- and while the Panthers did manage a furious third-period rally that tied the game with less than four minutes left, both of those goals were the result of an unbelievable amount of pressure and maybe a little too much contact with Brodeur put on by Florida. After all, people will forget that a third Florida goal early in the third period was waived off as a result of goalie interference, but they may not forget that the Panthers peppered Brodeur with an almost absurd 19 shots in the third period alone, a number that in the hayday of New Jersey's Cup-winning defense of Scott Stevens, Scott Niedermayer and Ken Daneyko would have represented what he saw in an entire game.

All things considered, Brodeur was probably the best player on the ice, outplaying fellow elder statesman Jose Theodore with 43 saves on 45 shots, and the win was reassuring for a fan base that has started to wonder if Marty can still put out the top performances. After all, before last night New Jersey hadn't won a playoff series in five years and Brodeur hadn't won a Game 7 since the Devils topped the Mighty Ducks in the decisive final game of the 2003 Stanley Cup Final nine years ago.

And then there was the devastating collapse against Carolina in 2009 that no Devils fan in their right mind ever speaks of.

2012 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs Primer

So, once every year -- let's call it, "spring time" -- people remember that not only is hockey going on, but it's playoff time. Now every sport's playoff time is better than its regular season (take note, BCS) due to the increased stakes and the ratcheted-up intensity that results from it. Out of all of the major sports postseasons we see in North America, the Stanley Cup Playoffs stand out above them all as the best.

Don't buy it? Let me count the ways.

Burning Qs for the 2012 MLB Season (Part 1)

Whoa! The 2012 MLB season snuck up on us like a new Rihanna LP - unexpected and yet, we're incredibly happy it's here. Like, way too happy.

As is tradition with the birth of every new season, we're greeting it on MAMBINO like you would any old friend; with incredibly invasive questions, exploring the greatest weaknesses, storylines and potential surprises in the next year.

We've rounded up the MAMBINO stable better than Billy Crystal and Daniel Stern could, and written down some questions that HAD to be answered before the 2012 MLB season kicks off in earnest next week (yes, I realize that we're ignoring "Opening Day" which is an opening series in Japan with the A's and Mariners that started last Wednesday. No disrespect to my Japanese forefathers, but we're pretending that baseball isn't going on yet because those two teams are glorified Triple A squads. It's not about Japan. For real. It was 80 years ago, everyone's gotten over it).

2012 NFL Mock Draft, v2

UPDATE: Check out our third and final Mock!

Last month, we posted a Mock Draft right after the NFL season ended. Since then, the playoffs have shed more light on what last year's contenders need to get a little farther next season. The Senior Bowl also took place, featuring the country's best NFL prospects who haven't declared early as a junior or red-shirt sophomore, or whose draft stock is entrenched in the early first round.

This time, we changed up the format a little bit. First, we added two more mockers to the stable. Pucklius is a regular contributor to the Mambino franchise; his best Mambino post is on New Jersey Devils superstar Ilya Kovalchuk. Zimmy is also in the fold this go-round, taking time out of his regularly scheduled Tim Tebow ass-tasting.

Second, instead of alternating picks between everybody, each mocker was assigned 6-7 different NFL franchises. Each dude controlled the teams not only for purposes of drafting, but also trades. We thought it would add a nice wrinkle, especially for teams that had 2 1st round picks. More stability, accuracy be damned.

On with the show...

Fear and Loathing on the Seven Train

If you've read my sporadic updates on this here fair blog you've probably gotten a clue that I am a New York Giants fan. As a result, well, this month's been pretty good, and my mindset has followed accordingly. But if anything can drag me down from these Monrovian few weeks it's the unsettling news that baseball season is just over a month away.

Don't get me wrong.

I like baseball. Love it even. I try to see at least part of all 162 games live on TV each season (provided I'm in the country), and I've actually seen my favorite team play in person in 14 different stadiums around the U.S. If making multiple trips to Milwaukee and driving from Chicago to Detroit and back in a day to see your team isn't evidence of love, I'm not sure what is. There's one problem with all of this, though.

My team is the New York Mets.

Don't blame me for this. I sure don't. I'm pretty sure the responsibility for this lies with my father, who took me to my first baseball game ever at Shea Stadium in 1991, got my name on the scoreboard because it was near my birthday and then hung a framed picture of the message above my bed for my entire childhood. Waking up every morning and seeing this left me no choice. All I could think every day was, "Wow, maybe this Bud is for me."

The ultimate irony in all of this, of course, is that my parents are actually Yankees fans. The fact that my first game was a Mets game was for me random chance, but not them. They had a choice, they chose poorly, and now I pay the price for six months every year.

On the plus side for me, this season the price I pay probably won't be that high. With what's looking like a potentially disastrous and certainly unpleasant season in Flushing, I can expect prices for tickets to torpedo pretty significantly on the secondary market -- beyond the five-game package I so foolishly bought already. I should note though that even the Mets acknowledge their tickets won't exactly be the most desirable on the market. My package breaks down to about $12 per ticket, which is pretty much what it costs to see a team in a small market like Pittsburgh, where I'm going to be in April for roughly the same price -- and standing room tickets at that.

Oh. Hey. We've Got a Second Half to Play.

I'm going to be brutally honest in admitting that with the Giants playing in this football game you might have heard about this coming Sunday, I'm a little preoccupied with my own emotional anxiety this week. Really. But I was still able to look past the looming specter of next Sunday, not just to take the rockin' good time that was the NFL's annual touch football beauty pageant last night, but to notice that earlier in the day we had this thing called the NHL All-Star Game.

There was, granted, very little defense in a game that more or less devolved into superstars trying to set each other up for crazy two-on-ones without applying any actual hockey strategy. After all, we wouldn't want to risk committing penalties on a weekend when the players almost certainly had no practice running a penalty kill with each other. Despite the fact that really only half the game was played, we did get to see some pretty cool goals and some sweet celebrations to boot. And let's not forget Claude Giroux's attempts to knock down his Flyers teammate Scott Hartnell because he promised to donate $1,000 every time he fell to the ice.

But now that Hartnell's donated $4,000 to charity, it's time to focus on some more pressing matters, namely the second half of the NHL season, which will get underway Tuesday night when 26 teams take the ice. As per the NHL's usual situation, the playoff races in both the East and West are looking particularly tight at the moment. Of the 30 teams in the League only eight are more than five points out from a postseason spot, which means we'll have 22 teams fighting for 16 spots as the calendar starts to approach April. However, if we're going to be more specific about this than simply who might be headed for early spring tee times with old Jewish authors (Goodbye, Columbus! Get it?!), you're going to need a list of what the big stories are as we head down the stretch of the 2011-12 regular season.

Here's your primer. Or at least the best one I can muster.

Pittsburgh's Sid-uation
Most of the hockey world has kept its eyes on Pittsburgh this season not for who is there, but for who notably isn't. When he's healthy Sidney Crosby is according to most accounts -- including mine -- the best player on the planet. Ever since he suffered a concussion more than a year ago however, he has spent far more time rehabilitating and seeing chiropractors than he has playing hockey. Crosby had a much publicized -- and enormously successful -- return earlier this season when he scored two goals in his first game in more than 10 months and wound up tallying 10 points in 8 games. However, the headaches returned and he's been off the ice ever since, leading to much speculation which was complicated this weekend by two startling revelations, the first being that Crosby was determined to also have suffered an injury to his neck in addition to a concussion, and that Sid is apparently good friends with Tom Brady. Because of an otherworldly season by Evgeni Malkin, the Penguins have managed to stay afloat despite injuries to numerous players in addition to Crosby, most notably Kris Letang (who has since returned) and Jordan Staal, but there is no doubt that Crosby brings Pittsburgh to a different level. While the Pens expect him to return for the playoffs, questions will linger until he returns to the ice and in the worst way possible, the NHL could feasibly have found its own Peyton Manning.

NHL All-Star Game: Like you in the school yard, but cooler.

Depending on your perspective when it comes to these things -- that is to say the "right" perspective or the "wrong" one -- the best part of each sport's annual midseason break is almost certainly never the All-Star Game itself. When it comes to that yearly talent showcase, each of the four major sports is prone to injury replacements, popularity contests and local host ballot stuffing that denigrate the game at its finest. And did I mention that they don't exactly play defense at these things?

As a result, the best event of the weekend gets trumped by what's around it. The MLB All-Star Game is never as fun to watch as the previous night's Home Run Derby. The NBA All-Star Game can't possibly match up to the Slam Dunk Contest. The NFL Pro Bowl is always completely inferior to, well, anything else that's on TV that night.

When it comes to my favorite All-Star weekend of the four major sports -- the NHL -- the game itself, while periodically entertaining, is nearly devoid of physical play and often results in goofy scores like 12-9. The Skills Competition on Saturday night, however, is almost always a safe bet for some impressive moments (let's see you fire a hockey puck 105.9 miles per hour), or at least some highly goofy and entertaining ones. But of all the events and innovations that the NHL has introduced to its All-Star format -- and there have been many -- the clear-cut greatest thing the League has done -- and arguably the greatest aspect of any sport's All-Star format, will be on display tonight in Ottawa.

Tonight at 8 p.m. ET, the NHL will put on its second annual NHL All-Star Fantasy Player Draft. The NHL has come up with several different All-Star formats to attempt to drive up interest, be it the obvious of Eastern Conference All-Stars against West, the more inventive version of the defending champion against the rest of the League or the North American players against the rest of the World. But as Leagues always scramble for ways to breathe fresh life into a stale product, they have come up with plenty of incredibly stupid ideas, but the NHL has come up with a phenomenal one.

All of us played sports as children, all of us have experienced the long-entrenched process of two captains alternating picks for their teams and all of us have known how awful it feels to be picked last. Or perhaps that final one was just me. But seeing it done with athletes this superior is a fresh and exciting change to an All-Star Game -- and it makes for phenomenal television. At the NHL's first Fantasy Player Draft a year ago, the very real drama that unfolded as captains Nicklas Lidstrom and Eric Staal selected their teams was fascinating to watch.

An Ode to Kyle Williams

It was around 12:30 a.m. that I finally got home to my apartment last night and for the first time on what had been an exhausting Sunday of football, I got a pit in my stomach. It was an odd time for it considering that I, a Giants fan, had just finished watching my team win the most mentally exhausting game I've seen in nearly 20 years of following the team -- and yes that includes Super Bowl XLII -- and I was bouncing off walls knowing that my team was going to its second Super Bowl in five years.

But of the things I've learned over the years, one of the big ones is that athletes are not super human, nor are they emotionless icons to be pilloried or praised at our convenience. They're people. Just regular people like you or I. Some people don't quite realize this, and one of whom, apparently, is a random San Francisco 49ers fan named Javier Pasquel. I don't know him. I don't particularly care to meet him. I do not care to ever be involved with him in any way and that is because while trolling through my twitter feed, I came across this gem that @javpasquel put out there after having his heart broken by his Niners:

"@KyleWilliams_10. I hope you, youre wife, kids and family die, you deserve it"

His awful grammar aside, Pasquel's point is that he, as a fan, is upset. I once made these mistakes, notably rooting for Emmitt Smith to get injured as a child, something that, considering his track record against the Giants with injuries probably would have been poor strategy. Despite Pasquel's anger however, his outlet was completely unacceptable because not only is it cruel and inhumane, but Williams is a person, too, and as the obvious goat of the Niners' 20-17 loss in overtime in the NFC Championship Game last night he is probably feeling about as awful as any person could.

Those implications of goatdom come as a result of not one, but two stunning fumbles while returning punts at pivotal times for the Niners yesterday. The first, a fluke-ish bounce that grazed his knee, was more unforgivable than the second, a clean strip by Giants linebacker and special teamer Jacquian Williams in overtime, but it is cruel, excessive and somewhat misleading to blame Williams for these two moments -- the second of which clearly led to New York's winning field goal that sent the Giants to Super Bowl XLVI. There were multiple factors leading to New York's win last night, among them the Giants consistently improving defense, the unflappable willingness to stand in the pocket by Eli Manning and perhaps most importantly, the stellar all-around job by punter Steve Weatherford. But factor into that the almost complete nonexistence of San Francisco's wide receivers throughout the game -- Michael Crabtree, whose name might not have been mentioned once during the broadcast chief among them -- as well as Alex Smith's wilting performance in the fourth quarter and overtime and you have numerous places on which to cast blame.

But beyond that, there are dozens of reasons to ache for Williams. The biggest might be that he wasn't even supposed to start this game as a punt returner, but was unexpectedly thrust into action when Ted Ginn Jr. suffered a knee injury a week earlier against New Orleans. Williams' inexperience showed throughout the game, not just in his fumbles but in several curious decisions, including a diving grab of a punt that he probably should have let go and a fair catch at the 12-yardline when he had room to run. Williams was not ready for the moment, as much of that falls not just on his youth -- he's only 23 -- but also on his coaches who are supposed to prepare him to make decisions like those rote second nature by the time the game is played.

Further lost in the drama is that Williams attempted his own mea culpa through his play. On the next kick return he had after his first fumble, Williams was an arm tackle away from breaking into open field and giving San Francisco a 21-17 lead. Shockingly that video is not available on YouTube. On the return in overtime in which he surrendered what was eventually the game-winning turnover, he once again looked like his legs would be moving for a strong return. Clearly a phenomenal athlete -- Williams was drafted by the Chicago White Sox in 2006, a team for which his father, Kenny, is the general manager -- his speed was beginning to show as the game wore on and he became more comfortable. While I will make no bones about it -- as a Giants fan I am over the moon that he lost the ball -- it is impossible for one's heart not to go out to someone who just may have had the most brutal night of his life on the biggest stage possible.