The south gets checked off

Warm weather is finally in the air, but for many the winter sport of hockey is really just beginning. The NHL playoffs finally began April 14, which, for the record, is 25 days after my calendar informed me Spring began. Who am I to complain, though.

I’ve been enjoying the sport of hockey for the first time in my life and I’m ready to see the tournament to determine the best of the best.

Much like the NBA, the NHL has a ridiculously inclusive playoff system.

Slightly more than half of the teams in the NHL (16 of 30) make the postseason. The obvious reason for this is money. Americans love tournaments and, more importantly they love seeing the underdog impossibly beat the towering favorites.

What better way to see that than to include a bunch of terrible teams in a short series playoff system?

What could be more American than unnecessarily long playoffs when a sport traditionally played on ice ends sometime in mid-June?

I’m not sure why things like this irk me. I would like to believe it’s because I think in an ideal world, the best team should always win, but that can’t possibly be true. If it was, I’d be a hardcore Yankees supporter.

I think the reason has more to do with timing. I’m really enjoying watching hockey, but it’s Spring time.

People go to hockey games when it’s too cold to go to any other sports. We put on jackets and gloves and then we can keep them on during the game. Hockey is a sport built for the cold.

It’s for that reason I probably think most NHL teams that exist in the lower half of the contiguous 48 states are incredibly ridiculous. The Dallas Stars, for example, used to play in Minnesota. Am I really supposed to believe there is a bigger market for hockey in Dallas, TX than Minnesota?

Most teams in the South are expansion teams. As the NHL grew they tried to explore new territory to gain fans.

For this reason, most of these teams have laughably awful names. Atlanta Thrashers, which begs the question, what exactly is a Thrasher? Is it someone who listens to thrash metal?

The Carolina Hurricanes, which actually probably isn’t any worse than their original name: the Hartford Whalers.

Then there’s the great Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, which fortunately now just go by the equally as non threatening Anaheim Ducks. The original name was so ridiculous Disney realized they could make one of the worst trilogy of sports movies ever based on it.
I have no idea how well these teams do in their respective markets, although I have to imagine at least some of them have an active and large fan base. It doesn’t matter. When I picture the perfect hockey fan, it isn’t some guy at a honkey tonk in Nashville wearing a Predators jersey while feeding quarters in the jukebox to hear the live Garth Brooks album.
I suppose this, along with about a thousand other things, makes me a complete hypocrite. A few weeks ago I wrote off a couple teams simply for being in Canada, and now I’m going to drop some teams for being the extreme polar opposite. There’s nothing rational to the way my mind works.

If I’m going to cheer for a hockey team, it needs to exist in an area where I’m comfortable with it existing.

That means you won’t see me pulling for the Western Conference’s number one seeded San Jose Sharks in this year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs. Their Californian partners the Sacramento Kings won’t be tempting to thrill me either.

Divisional rivals the Phoenix Coyotes also don’t have a chance of any support from me over the next two months.

The Eastern Conference mostly gets off light, with their eight playoff teams mostly hanging out in the Northeast. Don’t expect me next year to start actively being a fan of the Conference’s bottom dwelling Florida Panthers.

The Eastern conference’s number one seed is the Washington Capitals, a team I’ve brought up as possible contenders in a previous column. The team plays in the southeast division, and Washington D.C. does straddle very gingerly on the Mason Dixon line. Are the Caps a southern team?

I have to go ahead and say ‘no.’ South and North have almost as much to do with geography as they do history, but I’m going to make a judgment call on this one and say any city that got hit with over 30 inches of snow this winter cannot reasonably be referred to as being in the South.

Washington, you can live another week.

The rest of you teams, have fun playing on ice this upcoming month while everyone else enjoys the nice weather.

Brian Anderson can be contacted @banderson@keeneequinox.com