Hockey and Marc Burch

I went to the Caps pre-season game last night against Carolina. Obviously golden goals in OT are exciting, but I really can't get too excited about hockey in general. In soccer when a player is offsides, the players scream at the AR, wag their fingers and the supporters go nuts. In hockey there is polite applause. In soccer, a long ball from the back that finds an on-rushing striker gets everyone out of their seats and cheering. In hockey, the equivalent gets a whistle, a TV timeout and more polite applause. The only thing that I enjoyed last night that I don't think I could get from a soccer match is the 15 second Metallica clips that are pumped through the arena speakers before each faceoff. I love me some loud Metallica.

Here's my contribution to the Match Debrief for CHI vs DCU from Sunday.

The Bad

1. Marc Burch: I'm a huge fan of his and have been so impressed with that left foot of his as United made their impressive run after the All Star Break. But I wonder if MB has been reading too much of the positive press about himself. I got the feeling in the Chicago match that every time the ball came to him, he would just send in a cross but without the quality of previous games. I felt like he was making crosses too early or with no target or without enough pace. He may believe he can do no wrong and it seemed true in the FCD game in early September. But I think Burch needs to continue to do well by concentrating on quality and a target. Instead, it feels like he just hits it and assumes that the result will be a goal.
   

So if football is "pointyball", what is hockey? "Deflated-and-melted-into-a-lump-ball"?

Lastly, check out Nathan's comment to my post yesterday regarding the UEFA Champions League where I specifically mentioned the Turkish club Fenerbahçe.

Hi, nice blog. I, like you, am an American fan of soccer, and my team is Fenerbahce. I know...it's weird. Anyway, I have a blog about Fenerbahce in English if you ever want to learn a little more about our club - www.fenerbahceworldwide.blogspot.com. I have another guy who writes for me as well, and we try to update our site every day or so.

This is awesome because I think I know exactly what happened. I think he googled the name of his favorite club and found this blog because of an innocent reference on my part. Actually, that's the exact same way (googling "DC United", not "Fenerbahçe") that I found The DCenters originally. But the point is that I'm adding new readers immediately! Woo-hoo!