Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Notes on a Paper Plate



Two slices and a Coke, $2.75. We have a winner.

There is no better place to consider one's good fortune than at the 2 Bros. St. Marks pizza stand on Ninth Avenue and 40th Street in Manhattan. It has noise, bus exhaust, honking taxi drivers, Mexican music on the stand's speakers and me, the hockey-loving Mexican-American studying my notes from Monday's Rangers-Devils game and tonight's Kings-Coyotes contest.

(Note: I used to go to nearby 99 Cent Fresh Pizza, but I found the slices worthy of about 60 cents and the accommodations -- a counter with your back to the street and no chance of seeing Martin Hanzal closing in from the sidewalk to crush you into the glass -- to be below my usual low standards.)

I do not understand what drives Marian Gaborik these days. He's in the playoffs and his team has a shot at reaching and then winning the Stanley Cup, and yet he looks like the same tourist he was when he played for the Minnesota Wild. I can look at stats, zone starts, shots and time on ice, but for me the damning number is the amount of time he has wasted being the tourist Marian Gaborik.

Get off the halfboards already and go to the net. Drive the net. Hit somebody going for a loose puck in front of the net.

I know, you might say, it is much better to get all those photographs of the action if you go up and down the sidewall. That's the song of the tourist. Time for Gaborik to summon up a new tune.

The next note on the paper plate concerns tonight's game.

The Kings have a chance to close out the Western Conference finals with a victory on the road. However, the Coyotes and Kings were pretty much even in their regular-season series, and the Kings' offense and power play gave me the same indigestion I had through much of the season, including the final weeks when victories over Minnesota and San Jose could have earned the No. 3 seeding and the Pacific Division title.

They failed, and then somehow found their way to where we are now in the playoffs. And it is much too late to revert into the team that needed some overtime points and shootouts to get into the postseason.

Will the Kings win tonight? Will they score tonight? Will I get indigestion tonight? I am hoping for two affirmatives and one negative.

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