This season I got to a Washington Capitals hockey game for the first time in three years (which also happened to be attended by wondrous Playboy Playmate Amanda Cerny, who unfortunately I couldn't find in the crowd). They showed a montage of movie clips to fire up the crowd at the end of the game, their "Unleash the Fury" crowd participation event. I didn't remember them doing this at the last game. Anyhow, I recognized most of the clips, but there was one with Paul Dooley as a sports announcer that I didn't recognize. Turns out it was from the famous near-parody of minor league hockey starring Paul Newman, entitled "Slapshot". Though the era of hockey goons is somewhat beyond us (no matter what's happening in the Flyers - Penguins series right now), it seems timely given the current spate of penalties getting handed out in the playoffs.
You can see the clip below. Dooley is pretty funny at the end of it.
Hockey does need to do something about its target-the-head concussion problem. Players are bigger and stronger than they were 20 years ago, but the human head hasn't changed any.
Hope the Caps can unleash the fury, legally, against the Bruins tonight. They are one of the few Washington-Baltimore sports teams that have been consistent winners over the past decade, something I want to write more about later. Though it is possible to have nascent hopes for the Nationals, who appear to have a pretty amazing pitching rotation right now. That's what got the Tampa Bay Rays into the World Series a couple of years ago -- a young and hungry rotation where everybody had a good season.
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