Well, I made it through night one of this MOPP! crap. Thanks to Steve over on the Hodgkin’s forum, I remembered that I still have some Zofran I was given at the start of all this chemo stuff. I’ll give that a try tonight, but I figured I’d call the doc to see what they suggested. Their answer? The zofran. Good to know I’m smarter at medicine than I am at locating it. Or something.
So now that the puking’s over (oh, the count wound up in the teens and took around four hours before I could stop throwing up and go to sleep), it’s time to talk hockey!
The Devils have been awesome as usual. It almost feels like their ’95 Cup run again, ’cause none of the announcers seem to understand how the Devils work. They continue to be amazed that they function as a team and when one person goes down, another’s there to take their place. Duh – that’s Devil’s hockey. Everyone knows the role they’re supposed to play and they play it to the best of their ability. Is Cam Janssen out there trying to score beautiful goals? No – he’s out there hitting people. Is Brian Gionta picking fights with the other team’s enforcers? No, he’s going to the net and scoring goals. This is what a team is, and the Devils have always personified that. That’s why Ken Daneyko’s number was retired this season. He’s not going to wind up in the hall of fame like everyone else whose number has been retired by their team, but he was the ultimate team player. There’s a reason they call him Mr. Devil, and it’s not the horns.
Jaromir Jagr. I should start off by saying I’ve never really cared for Jaromir. In my mind, while a hockey forward should obviously be good at offense, they have to pay attention to defense as well. Probably one more reason I’m a Devils fan. All of the times I’ve watched Jagr play, he’s never coming back to help out. He’ll often stay back either by the blue line or occasionally as far back as the opponent’s blue line, waiting for the puck to bounce to him. He also doesn’t go out on the penalty kills. For someone who skates and puckhandles as well as he does, he should be out there in any situation they can get him in. But no, he doesn’t like defense. Either that or his coaches have realized he’ll probably do something stupid like his attempted sucker punch on Gomez that dislocated his shoulder.
Take Peter Forsberg. Take Joe Thornton. These are big guys like Jagr. They can skate, they can shoot, they can puckhandle and they can make awesome plays. They can also play defense! And as for Forsberg, he can just get mean when he’s out there. I like that. Too bad he’s a Flyer.
So Jagr comes back for Game three, and makes an immediate impact on the team by scoring no goals and getting no assists. Way to go, Jags. Even better that the Devils’ first goal is scored 68 seconds into the game, as Jagr’s jersey number is 68. Welcome back to the series. Maybe you should focus on growing out that frilly mullet of yours again.
Sadly, I missed the first two Devils goals and the entire first period. Why? We interviewed some realtors who are going to be taking over the house selling duties for us. Between my new chemo and the pain that can go into selling a house properly, we’ve decided to hand over the house-selling to someone else.
These guys were great, despite making me miss part of the Devils. There are some great fringe benefits to working with them and their company, and it should help us get this house sold quickly and get us another one rather quickly as well. They’re coming back over to have us sign the contract tonight, and they’ve already submitted our house to the newspapers for an open house this Sunday. Sweet! I’ll just need to make them aware that there may be a Devils game at 6, of course.
The even cooler thing is, they know the area around here very well and actually thought we had underpriced the house. They said it was one of the best and nicest old houses in the area they had seen. Hot damn! If we can get it to sell for their price, then we can pay the commission and still be pretty close to our asking price. How cool is that?
