VANCOUVER, BC – MARCH 29: Head coach John Tortorella of the Vancouver Canucks looks on from the bench during their NHL game against the Anaheim Ducks at Rogers Arena March 29, 2014 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Anaheim won 5-1. (Photo by Jeff Vinnick/NHLI via Getty Images)
NHLBy Dave Lozo on

Hockey is the best sport, because we don’t have to deal with Colin Kaepernick takes or national anthem takes or troops takes. So here’s a mailbag that has questions about the troops and national anthems, along with some important rankings of play-by-play people in movies. NHL Mailbag!

1. What do you think about John Tortorella not saying war and battle when it comes to talking about hockey games? Is that something that’s really important? Should we all stop using those words? It’s just a game, after all.

Michael

It’s been an amazing past two weeks for pseudo-intellectual, faux-patriotism nonsense. When I want to be lectured about the proper use of language and showing proper respect for other people, I know I turn to John Tortorella.

Every so often, some sports person has an epiphany when it comes to using militaristic terms to describe the actions of athletes playing a game. I remember this happening after 9/11, when Giants lineman Lomas Brown said he’d stop saying things like “war” and “battle,” and now Tortorella wants to do the same as a person with a son in the military.

Sorry, but this is me doing the most exaggerated wanking motion as I roll my eyes into the back of my head.

Words are important and carry meaning, sure. Sometimes, like with war and battle, they carry multiple meanings depending on their usage and context. There’s something really warped in the United States if you say to someone, “Both teams battled out there tonight,” and later think, “I’m sorry for disrespecting the men and women who fight for this country.”

To whom is this philosophy catering, anyway? The troops? People are always concerned with protecting the troops, the bravest, toughest and strongest people in the world. They put their lives on the line every day, some of them on the front lines in foreign countries, and I’d venture to guess that 95 percent of them don’t care if you refer to a hockey game with four fights as a war. If there were ever a people that weren’t going to get offended over something like that, it’s people that risk their lives on a regular basis.

Like this guy:

https://twitter.com/JamesMHagan1/status/772486060962095104

But if you do believe “war” and “battle” are sacred words only to be used to describe a soldier walking across a minefield or a man bayonetting another man in an effort to take his land or oil, why stop there? That’s not the only militaristic lingo available in sports.

What about football games that are “won in the trenches”? You know who else spends time winning things in trenches? Soldiers. Maybe stop and think for a second, you insensitive prick.

What’s that? Four baseball teams spent hundreds of millions of dollars on four ace pitchers? And you want to call that an arms race? Buddy, you know what an arms race really is? Yeah, I bet you feel like a bad American now, don’t you.

A home run is a bomb? An A-Rod home run was an A-Bomb, according to John Sterling?  Someone threw a bullet from right field? Someone treated the puck like a grenade? A team has an attacking mentality? Someone won a puck battle along the boards? Heck, you do realize that hockey allows for hand-to-hand combat, right? Some may even call that a conflict.

Football is played on a field. You know what else occurred on fields? The Civil War, you jerkoff, so maybe stop calling that quarterback a field general. He knifed through the defense? That guy who is good at scoring goals is a sniper? That basketball guy is a deadly shooter? Why are you trying to make the troops cry, person who doesn’t care about them as much as me?

Do you remember football brothers Raghib and Qadry Ismail who had the nicknames Rocket and Missile? ROCKET AND MISSILE! And do you know what rockets and missiles do? They burst in the air in a song about killing our enemies that’s played before every damn sporting in a country that’s perpetually at war.

What about using the words outside of sports contexts? Am I really supposed to get angry that my father’s time in the Air Force isn’t thought about with proper reverence while watching a stoned dude play bass in a battle of the bands? Should I shout at the tattooed guy in the fedora playing keyboards in a ska band that it should be called the Competition Of The Bands? “A real band was the BAND OF BROTHERS, COMMY!”

Only in sports can you find a group of people not taking brain injuries seriously and allowing for bare-knuckle fighting choosing to take a stand on metaphors and similes. Only in America will someone get more upset about war imagery in sports than war itself.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to watch a movie called The War of the Roses. Whoa, wait, I’m sorry. I’m off to watch The Violent and Contentious Divorce Saga of the Roses.

2. World’s Fair

https://twitter.com/afalker/status/772850421937287168

“Care” is a loaded word. The players clearly do not care. The World Cup has dealt with more dropouts than Joe Clark during his first year as a high school principal. But do you need someone else to care about a thing for you to care about it? That’s something only you in your heart can decide.

I do not. The hockey will be good and I will enjoy watching it. I’m not going to be as invested in this tournament as I would the Olympics, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. And if we want to really deal in reality, I can assure you there are many games during the course of a season where not every player is 100 percent checked into the proceedings.

I just feel bad for the hockey writers that have to cover this goofy event like it’s the Stanley Cup Playoffs. There are at least a dozen writers that left for various locations around the globe before the Labor Day weekend so they can go watch meaningless practices and tweet meaningless line combinations. The World Cup cuts the offseason for players, who truly need the rest after a season that’s too long in the first place, but media types who barely get time at home with their families have that offseason cut down by two to three weeks too because of this.

I know what you’re saying. “I’d give anything to have those jobs and give up my Labor Day weekend.” Well, you don’t have that job, so you don’t know, so shut up.

What bugs me is the money involved for my journalistic brethren. The World Cup could generate $100 million, which will be split between players and the league. That’s a nice chunk of change for an exhibition tournament that’s not the Olympics. What about media folks, many of whom signed contracts or took jobs when a World Cup wasn’t part of their schedule? It’s essentially an extra month of work and travel for most that I’m guessing isn’t resulting in extra compensation, because most writers are contract employees, not hourly ones.

That bugs me, and I’ll be watching on my couch.

Anyway, care about the Young Guns team (which I will never call Team North America), since they seem to have the group with the largest CARE/60. I wrote them off months ago but they may have a shot if everyone else doesn’t care and Matt Murray stands on his head. I honestly care more about them than I do about the shoddy American team.

3. Team Anthem NA

We’ve been over this:

By the way, after this offseason of anthems, I hope Team Europe demands each and every player’s anthem be sung before every game. How can anyone say no at this point? It’s a chess match that ends in four moves.

“We want all the anthems played.”

“That’s absurd.”

“What’s absurd is how you are disrespecting these nations’ troops.”

“Fine, play all the anthems.”

Also: I’m sorry that troops/anthems/America has spilled so heavily into this mailbag. Maybe we need a goofy question next.

4. Actually…

Never mind.

5. Who would you cast in your OBJ/Lena Dunham movie?

Tom

Over the weekend, I had a viral situation based on a three-page sketch I wrote imagining what would have happened if Odell Beckham had actually talked to Lena Dunham.

https://twitter.com/davelozo/status/771818330634137600

Ideally, Lena Dunham would play Lena Dunham and Odell Beckham would play Odell Beckham. Alas, that requires someone with a good sense of humor (not Dunham) and a football player to deliver a joke about the inaccuracy of his quarterback (not Beckham), so that’s out the window.

So if it were to require actors, I’d ask Donald Glover to play ODB and Melissa McCarthy to play Dunham. And really, if they’re not too busy, they can go right ahead with that this week. This is me granting permission.

6. Vin Scully’s best work was obviously covering the Chatham A’s in Summer Catch. Which broadcaster had the best call in their respective sports movie:

Vin Scully – Summer Catch
Bob Costas/Al Michaels – BASEketball
Dan Fouts – The Waterboy
Justin Timberlake – Trouble with the Curve
Elizabeth Banks/John Michael Higgins – Pitch Perfect
Pat Summerall and John Madden – The Replacements 

Tom again

Scully is great but I wish we could get to the bottom of the rumors that he and Jessica Biel were an item during that movie. I believe it, because what woman could resist the sweet tones of Scully?

But seriously, let’s cross off anything related to BASEketball, the movie that proves even the geniuses behind South Park have bad ideas, and Fouts, who is a bad actor. Timberlake was a solid announcer in that auto racing movie and Banks/Higgins did a good job in the baseball movie, but clearly the answer is Chris Berman in the remake of The Longest Yard.

Just kidding. Every sports announcer in a sports movie is bad. Except one.

That’s the worst clip I’ve ever seen. Ever.

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