By Paul M. Banks
-Why does Jim Belushi have to be at everything Chicago sports related? (It now extends over into the Illini and SIU Salukis as well) For some odd reason (or should I say lack of reason) he appeared in a collection of Chicago “celebs” honoring the Blackhawks playoff appearance on the jumbotron at Game 1. He was rightfully booed. We need to extinguish him.
-Or at least add him to next year’s douchebracket.
-Games 3, 4, and 6 in Calgary reminded me of Rocky IV, when he goes to Moscow to fight Drago in his home land: lots of loud, hostile people wearing red in a foreign country…Then again returning home for game five and seeing all the red jerseys and red towels in Chicago, made the United Center also look like a Communist party rally in Red Square.
-The Chicago Tribune’s Shannon Ryan was at all 7 of the games/press conferences that I attended these past couple weeks. So maybe her job isn’t as fun and glamorous as you might think it is. After all you have to spend a fair amount of time in the same places as me.
-Remember when I talked about the huge Indian head logo on the floor of the Blackhawks locker room a few months ago? How it is believed that anyone who steps on it, will be eternally cursed for doing so? Because of the added media attention of the playoffs, they roped it off. Now it is safe.
-Joke I’m running into the ground this week
People ask me “How’s the playoff atmosphere?” and I respond “it’s electric……boogie woogie woogie”
-Rhyming Heckle of the week
“Hey Phaneuf, Sean Avery told the truth” –guy in 300 level of United Center in game 5.”
-With Todd Bertuzzi and Mike Keenan, maybe the Flames should go ahead and sign Sean Avery and (bring Marty McSorley out of retirement too) then we could have all the biggest knobs in the league on one team.
Alberta Clipped
Watching games 3 and 4 in Calgary on tv, we all noticed the C of Red. But did you notice how EVERYONE at the Olympic Saddledome has a jersey on, never a shirt o sweatshirt? And it’s only the current red jerseys, never the other colored jerseys or throwbacks- amazing how they got everyone to conform to that!
-What I learned from chatting with other sports journalists this week
No one cares about spring college football even though coverage of it has grown exponentially this week, and Chicago is ten times more interested in the Blackhawks playoff run than they are in the Bulls postseason. People just don’t seem to care too much about the Bulls here. Oh and we realistically may not have a newspaper here in ten years. A more detailed explanation on all these things in the next edition of Week in Review