Running NHL 2023-24 regular season thread

https://x.com/croumeliotis/status/1712254318093435119?s=46&t=3h1AnURCaCOlm1-UZ3KQog

 

Ugh. An awful disease. For it to happen to anyone, much less Melrose, just sucks. All the best.

 

My grandfather had Parkinson's for years, if not decades, and lived well into his 90s. I don't remember him not having tremors, mobility problems and being difficult to understand, and he died in 1999 (on Dec. 31 at 11:45 p.m. for what it's worth) when I was almost 16. As reticent as I am to criticize anyone for how they choose to bow out, it was a little unsettling the way ESPN portrayed it as a quasi-death sentence.

 

I covered the Kings during their Stanley Cup run in 1993 and I always felt there was something not right about those people and that organization. I couldn't pin it down and I couldn't criticize Melrose because during that playoff run, he stood up and answered every question as long as there were questions being asked -- and, believe me, when Karen Crouse picked up the beat for the Orange County Register ahead of the conference finals, there were questions being asked.

(Anaheim had been given an expansion team for the next season and the OCR sports editor decided he better figure out what this hockey thing was about. Karen had never covered hockey. She was on vacation in the Caribbean and was stopping off in Savannah, Ga., on the way home to see her dad. She was told to go directly to Toronto to pick up the Kings. She bought 5 books on hockey and read them on her way to Toronto. She had a zillion questions and Melrose patiently answered every one).

Melrose caught lightning in a bottle with the '93 Kings, but quickly declined and was gone a couple of years later. He was under the influence of Tony Robbins, a self-help "guru" who I saw trolling for girls in Toronto bars. Likewise was Bruce McNall, the fast-talking shyster who owned the Kings and wound up in prison. I knew there was something wrong with him when he was in the locker room after every game with the TV and radio guys flocking to him, while the players who scored and prevented goals were largely ignored. His front office people were ridiculous. One woman admitted that when she woke up with tingle in her throat, she called in sick and had chicken soup delivered from Junior's Deli in Westwood to her home in Palos Verdes Estates.

 

Because for many, it is. I'm glad your grandfather didn't seem to suffer as much, but I know first-hand someone who did – my stepfather, who was my father in pretty much every way aside from the biological aspect.

He and my mother got wiped out in a nasty crash – some idiot didn't see the STOP sign and sideswiped them. The offending party hit driver's door, where my mother was, yet she was fine. My stepfather broke his thumb, but worse he was so shaken up internally that the Parkinson's symptoms started to emerge. I wasn't at the crash ... it occurred about 1,000 yards from the front of our subdivision (put it like this ... found out a '96 Maxima with a five-speed could go when one winds it up ... couldn't have cared less what the authorities thought as it was a straight shot to them under those circumstances ... that Blazer my mother was driving was seriously mangled). Weight loss, then tremors, then more mobility problems, weakened speech, trouble sleeping, crippling physical breakdowns.

Twelve years of f_cking horror – and that's from our viewpoint. No telling how much more terrifying it was for him. And, as of Monday, it will have been 10 years since we lost him. But, years later, I told my mother that when he went, I was relieved. She didn't take it the wrong way ... in fact, she agreed. We almost lost him three years before we did ... some sepsis that stopped his heart for a bit, then a hospital that completely screwed up everything his first 24 hours afterward. Not exactly a memorable Christmas because he was touch-and-go for much of it, which is probably a big reason why that place was more forgettable than the others on the journey. I don't make it through those years without family and a friend who is no longer in touch (wish I hadn't ... I make mistakes, too).

Sorry, UPChip ... Parkinson's IS a death sentence for many. Here's to hoping Barry Melrose's journey is better.

 

That's fair, we all experience these sorts of things differently. I am encouraged that there are medicines and therapies available to patients now that neither of our loved ones had access to that can at least mitigate some of the worst of it.

 

Don't bury the Ducks just yet ..... wait until Monday, please.
The Ducks are the last team to play (which is irrelevant since it all evens out by the end of the season). They are at Vegas on Saturday night and play host to Carolina on Sunday -- the two conference favorites. Then Dallas is their third game next week. Looks like a rocky start. But if every team is better than you, you could get beat every night.

 

The Ducks projected lineup has the third defensive pairing as Pavel Mintyukov and Ilya Lyubushkin. I don’t know about hockey, but Anaheim is going to beat the shit out of everybody else in Scrabble.

 

MTM, I watched the end of the Kings-Canes game last night to get a glimpse of the Canes ahead of tonight against the Ducks. Nick Nickson was doing the TV play-by-play with Jimmy Fox as analyst and Daryl Evans between the benches. I never really cared for Alex Faust and I thought Nick should have gotten the TV job when Bob Miller retired. He is in the Hall of Fame, for chrissakes. Do you have any idea if this is permanent?

 

It is. The Kings are simulcasting games on TV and their streaming station.
It was great hearing Nick again, since he’s been buried on radio for a long time and I rarely hear those games with every game on TV.

 

Nick Nickson was the Dodger Stadium PA announcer when Kirk Gibson hit his World Series homer. [/crossthread]

 

Yes. I knew that. Dodgers and Kings, two of my long-ago beats.