Brief Interjection

The good thing about groin injuries, most specifically Angelo Esposito's groin injury, is that this way Pittsburgh hockey fans are not psychoanalyzing the play of an 18-year-old kid in games against other kids.

Here are some samples of what I'm missing out on this week.

He made a bad pass! He's not NHL ready!

Wow, slick hands! I'm licking my lips imagining him on Crosby's wing this season.

He doesn't understand how to play defense. There is no way, with that lack of defensive awareness, at his age, that he will ever be a productive NHL player.

Phenomenal play! He'll be a star!

Sutter benched him! He's gotta be a prima donna with an attitude problem.

Invisible on the ice! He's got bust written all over him.

Much as I did want to get my first look at my team's most recent first round draft pick in actual game action, I'm actually rather relieved I'm not listening to Pittsburgh hockey fans, or really, the diehards who are so hard-up for hockey they play with proxies for hours in order to watch hockey in the middle of the summer (and yeah, I usually count myself as one of the diehards) over-analyze Esposito's every play (the way certain others have already started to do with the other player who free-fell in the draft, the Rangers' Cherepanov).

Truth told, I know it's the Super-Series. I know hockey players play to win games and that the Canadian players are fighting for a spot on this year world junior squad. That being said, however, these are hockey games played in August. (Warning for sarcasm impaired: Snark forthcoming.) Fans jumping to conclusions and making lifelong career projections should at least save that exercise until these prospects line up against mature NHL talent in training camps. As for me, so long as Esposito's groin heals by training camp, I'll view the injury as a blessing in disguise--saving me, like all the other fans watching their team's prospects with eager, hopeful eyes--from eying every tiny play intently, and thinking aloud, through incessantly blogging, which tiny plays proclaim "boom" or "bust."

Now, about those other two types of fans. My baseball team's sudden surge of apparent competency has confounded me to the point of not yet composing those posts that I expect to be rather lengthy but hopefully, also, at least slightly amusing (if only amusing to me). To whet your appetites, however, ask yourself: Am I a squeamish hedge-my-bets moderate who swings both ways and is best described as incredibly indecisive, or am I a hard-nosed, harsh, cold cynical realist who is best described as seeing the negative in everything and in a word accurately labeled as a doomsayer?

If you've read this blog, you can probably guess where I best fit among the two remaining fan types. But rest assured: rather than read previews, predictions, and rankings of the top players in the game (so many other people do that so much better than I ever could, excluding The Hockey News, but more on that if and when I deem it a worthy blogging topic), you'll instead be able to read how the indecisive/hedge-bets-always moderates who can't make up their minds about anything and the cynical, hardened realistic doomsayers view their teams' chances this year. Again, of course, from the perspective of my team's home division, the Atlantic.

In the meantime, however, maybe I'll use that proxy. And waste time analyzing every other team's prospects. But then again, how is time spent watching the most fabulous sport in the world* ever wasted when one gets to see real hockey games played in August?

(*Apologies aren't necessary to other sports, but I feel the need to point out something that should be very evident. In succession, I have watched Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, and Sidney Crosby star for my team. Each player, provided Crosby stays healthy, will be regarded as among the best of all-time, and as the best player of their respective generations. When one watches such talent play, the utter fabulousness of the sport of hockey shines above all else--and I can only hope the NHL's marketing department clues into this fact sometime soon, too. But I digress, as usual, and that's a post for another day. But hockey season is right around the corner, and that's, plainly and simply and absolutely, fabulously fantastic.)