Fini

Let it be noted that at around 10:30 P.M. EDT on June 26, 2022 they finally stopped dropping hockey pucks for face-offs for the 2021-2022 season as the Colorado Avalanche defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning in Tampa 2-1 to win the Stanley Cup in a final series that went 4 games to 2. 

Earlier, at a family gathering, it was noted by some of those present that the last time a team from Canada won the Cup was in 1993, when the Montreal Canadians defeated the Los Angeles Kings 4 games to 1. More accurately, it should be stated that the last time a team full of Canadian hockey players hasn't won the Cup long before that.

Have you tried to pronounce the names on the back of all those jerseys of the guys carrying sticks? The N.H.L. is full of Swedes, Finns, Serbians, Poles and Russians. This is not a bad thing, but rather part of a persistent wave that has introduced more players from outside Canada than from Canada into the league.

Bobby Clarke, that tireless center of the Philadelphia Flyers and centerpiece of the Broad Street Bullies, once commented that giving a job to someone not from Canada was just taking a job away from someone who was from North America. Welcome to global hockey.

And this was not Colorado's first rodeo. It is the third time in the 21st-century that they've won the Cup. With 32 teams in the N.H.L. and four rounds of playoffs, it is increasingly hard to advance all they way to Cup heaven.

The word dynasty doesn't get used these days. Tampa had won the last two Cups, and was now the rare team to make the Cup finals three years in a row. The blurb was that if they were to "three-peat" then they would be the first team since the early '80s to win three in a row, when the Islanders won what is now an improbable four in a row.

When I first became a hockey fan in the late 1950s there were only six teams in the league, employing  basically 120 individuals, all from Canada, with the occasional player making it to the N.H.L. from say Massachusetts for a brief period.

Of the two Canadian cities in the league, Montreal and Toronto, Montreal had the advantage of always being allowed to draft the No.1 French-Canadian top-tier Junior hockey player. The Montreal dynasty was baked in by a draft process that was unfair to the other teams. The league headquarters were located in Montreal, ruled by the imperious Clarence Campbell. The coaches were the general managers, and there was no such thing as iPads behind the bench.

The last time Toronto, an original Six team, won a Stanley Cup was 1967. Recently they've gotten a little closer, but no appearance in the finals. The waiting is not over.

Here are some of the names of the players from the completed series between Tampa Bay and Colorado: Nikita Kucherov, Gabriel Landeskog, Nathan McKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, Cale Makar, Steven Stamkos Andrei Vasilevskiy, Artturi Lehkonen, Darcy Kuemper, Josh Manson, Andrew Cogliano, Ondrej Palat...

This is not your grandfather's N.H.L.

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Judge Joseph Force Crater is Still Missing

It is hard for me believe there is yet another book written about the disappearance of Judge Crater, who got in a taxi in the theater district in New York City in 1930 and was never seen again. It might be the oldest missing persons case in New York City police history.

When I saw yesterday's Wall Street Journal book review on "Finding Judge Crater" by Stephen J. Riegel I thought maybe the Journal was way behind reviewing a book I read years ago about the good judge's disappearance. No, it is another book.

The 2010 book I read was titled "The Man Who Never Returned" by Peter Quinn. It is not referred to in the yesterday's review. Mr. Quinn's book is labelled a novel, in which the author recreates the case and offers a plausible ending for the long missing jurist. Apparently, Mr. Riegel also offers a plausible ending for what misfortune may have befallen the judge as well, for surely he was met with a Jimmy Hoffa ending. We just don't know what is was. Cement? Dismemberment? Burial? 

Since Judge Crater went missing in 1930 it almost seems impossible that there could be anyone alive who might be interested in the case, much less research and write a book worth publishing. But here we are again. Mr. Riegel is a litigator and former federal prosecutor, so of course missing judges might peek his interest.

I'm hardly old enough to remember the judge's disappearance, but I do remember all the jokes that floated around in the '60s and '70's on late night television when Johnny Carson would occasionally openly wonder where is Judge Crater? "Judge, get in tough with your answering service," etc.

Peter Quinn imagines a private eye who catches the bug to try and find out about the judge as the 25th anniversary of his disappearances approaches. It is 1955, and Fintan Dunne meets a director who tells him:

"In another 25 years, Crater will be little noted and not long remembered by the legion born amid our current idyll of purposeless prosperity and moral vacuity. In fifty years he'll best be a footnote to a footnote in the history of our time. But now, as we approach the silver anniversary of his disappearance. he lives in public memory, a touchstone and reference point. If the mystery of his disappearance is solved, the masses will be immediately entertained by the sheer showmanship of it. Most important, how many will gain a sense of the past being put to rest and turn their gaze to possibilities still ahead."

How wrong that fictional director was. Because here it is 2022 and someone has written another book about the judge's disappearance, using a different literary narrative to tell the tale, but to tell it anyway.

For those who aren't old enough to know anything about Judge Crater the simple backstory is that he was appointed a justice of the Supreme Court in New York by Governor Franklin Roosevelt, met two diner companions in the theater district, got in a cab that at the time was not a yellow cab, and was never seen from again.

It was the era of Tammy Hall in New York City, that vastly corrupt Democratic club that was responsible for so much graft and kickbacks in New York City. Judgeships were for sale, and it is believed Judge Crater was no exception to ingratiating himself with cash in the clubhouse to be appointed a judge.

Apparently the good judge was acting quite nervous on the day he disappeared. He cut short his vacation in Maine with his wife, telling her he had to return to the city to "straighten out a few people," came to his office, cleaned it out, emptied his safe deposit box, and had his law clerk cash two checks for him totaling $85,000 in today's currency.

His Honor was a Broadway playboy, much like the mayor of the time Jimmy Walker. There were always investigations into graft by the Tammany Hall machine by the New York DA, and 1930 was no exception. 

Theories abounded. The best one might be that Roosevelt had the judge offed because he was going to attract some serious legal scrutiny and it might blow back on Roosevelt. Who knows?

But here we are, with another book on New York lore that started on a hot August 6, 1930 evening when someone got into a cab and never returned.

I might even buy the book and learn what possible ending Mr. Riegel has envisioned for His Honor. It is completely unlikely we will ever truly know.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

Marjorie Tallman

My guess is, lots of us use some type of mnemonic device, or saying to help us remember something that we're always forgetting. Something like..."Thirty days hath September, April June and November..." always works for me.

Or, maybe it's something to help you name Santa's reindeer, or the seven dwarfs in Sleeping Beauty, or even Donald Duck's nephews. Comes in handy when there's a trivia question in the bar, I guess. 

For me, whenever I hear the expression Bull and Bear market I immediately know which one means up and which one means down by virtue of a pantomime my history teacher, Marjorie Tallman, performed in class one day in the middle '60s.

I completely forget the context of what made her tell us you can remember that a Bear market means "down" because you can think of a bear on its hind legs swatting down, hopefully missing you as you run away. Surely if the bear connects, you might not live long enough to care about any market.

Standing up, Miss Tallman made the motion with both arms of swatting down. As for a Bull market, meaning an "up" market she lowered her head as if to charge, imitating a bull with her hands alongside her head, index fingers pointing up, as if they were horns. A bull's horns point up, so therefore a Bull market means things are going up. I've never forgotten which is which thanks to Marjorie Tallman.

She was a fun history teacher, who was obviously animated. A home room classmate of mine had her in another period and distinctly remembers hers her climbing on top of the desk for some reason. Maybe she was acting out Custer's Last Stand. I have no idea, and my classmate doesn't remember either, since all this is nearly 60 years ago.

We had always heard Miss Tallman had written books, but were never curious enough to read any, and she didn't assign her own books to the class. Her books are still in print and range from  folklore definitions to guides on Civics. A Google search revels she was only the second female teacher at Stuyvesant, when she started in 1932, and was there for 40 years. She was born in 1907 and passed away in 2000. She was at the school when my father attended.

When I visited my high school in 2019 at what for me was the "new" building at 345 Chambers Street in lower Manhattan, I was surprised to see there was a plaque with her name on it on the floor that housed the history classes. Now that I know a little more about her, I can understand why.

I was reminded of the whole Bull and Bear thing when I read Ben Zimmer in last week's Wall Street Journal's weekend edition. Ben rifts on the origins of a word that seems to be popping up frequently in the news in the prior week. And last week, it was the Bear market, because by definition, when the Dow industrial average has a decline of 20% lasting two months, it's considered official that we've entered a Bear market. Conversely, a 20% increase denotes a Bull market. 

Mr. Zimmer traces the term Bear with regard to financial transactions as far back as the 16th-century from the expression, "Don't sell the bearskin before you've caught the bear."

Shakespeare, and Daniel Defoe all had phrases that translated to about the same thing, pretty much meaning, "don't count your chickens before they hatch."

Woven into the bear market is also the meaning of selling "short," selling stock you don't own, and then hoping that when you have to settle the sale three days later, you can buy the stock at a cheaper price because it's been going down. It's a gamble, because you might be forced to buy the stock back at a higher price, therefore losing money. There are all kinds of ways to make and lose money in the stock market.

As for the origins of a Bull market meaning a market on the ascend, Mr. Zimmer comes up short. He admits "the origins of the "bull market" are less obvious, with many competing etymological theories. (The bull may have been seen as a fitting counterpart for the bear because both were involved in blood sports pitting animals against each other.") Huh?

I like Miss Tallman's pantomime better. I've never forgotten it.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

The 154th Belmont Stakes

The 154th Belmont Stakes was run on Saturday before what looked like a decent crowd of 46,000 or so. Hopefully, NYRA and the LIRR were up to accommodating a crowd that was realistically not much bigger than a regular Saturday, "back-in-the-day." NYRA made a point of telling the world before the first Triple Crow race was run that attendance was going to be capped at 50,000, even if there was a chance at a Triple Crown, which it turned out there wasn't.

NYRA is in the process of making some infrastructure chances at the place, and not all sections are accessible when you go out for a routine day of racing. The 3rd and 4th floors are closed off, and there are scant places to get something to eat or drink. Hopefully, they set up some temporary things to accommodate Saturday's "crowd." There might even be some people from that crowd of first-timers that will come back. Maybe.  

My friends and I did after our first Belmont in 1968. I went out there for my first time at the races with the two Piermont brothers and their father's barber, James Kelly, who has to have been the rarity of Irish barbers.

Kelly showed us the ropes. Clubhouse. You needed a jacket to be there. Once upon a time there was a dress code at the races. Now, only in the Trustees Room.

Amazingly, it was $5 then to get into the Clubhouse, and it still is $5 to get into Belmont, any section during any non-Belmont Stakes day. 

Through Kelly we were later acquainted with his friend Les, our handicapping mentor. We called him "Mr. Pace." He was ahead of Andy Beyer's and trip handicapping. We even rode with Les to Liberty Bell to take in winter racing when there was none in New York.

The last Belmont I attended was in 1999, when Lemon Drop Kid took the classic. I was there with Johnny M., Fourstardave and Jose B. I had gotten us four reserved seats, because by then NYRA was just about auctioning off the place for seating. No more racing in when the doors opened and staking out a seat secured with pages from the Morning Telegraph and the masking tape I kept spooled on a short pencil. (I still have the pencil, with very dried out masking tape still attached.)

At some point NYRA figured they had an event that could be called a "Festival." In 2003 I went out to the track on the Friday before the Belmont expecting to find a seat. Attendance was sparse then, and there was no need for a reserved seat. Until there was.

NYRA had coupled Belmont seating with the requirement to also buy a ticket for Friday's card. There was no one there on Friday. Everyone was eating their Friday ticket. I threw a fit when I was turned away from all the empty seats. More ushers than patrons to seat.

My protest got so loud I was sent to customer service where they gave me a reserved seat. I was boiling. Ever since then NYRA has been careful to state that admission doesn't guarantee seating. They can be such sweethearts.

Ever since 1999 we've never gone back for Belmont Day, after years of consecutive attendance. Trying to leave the track that day took us an hour to get out of the parking lot because NYRA provided no traffic control. Their ability to accommodate patrons has always been questionable, and of course came to the fore when NYRA and the LIRR forgot to provide trains for the exiting patrons who just saw American Pharoah win the Triple Crown.

As my friends and I got older and had a little more jingle in our jeans, we used to opt for the dinning room, a buffet that wasn't cost prohibitive and allowed us prime "on the glass" seating. We felt like owners or trainers.

This didn't last long, because once Aqueduct was part of the casino, the food for the dinning area came from the casino, and came at an exorbitant price, usually $65 per person, plus a seat charge, plus tax, plus tip for whatever drinks you ordered and had brought to the table.

The price knocked us out, and even when Belmont reinstated their dining room they they've hung onto a $65 price tab for a multi-course buffet in what they're calling the Belmont Room, but is really the old Trustees Room. And anyone who knows anything knows anything about the Trustees Room knows this is hardly a great place to watch a race from. 

There once seemed to be plans to build better upscale, affordable dining with a sports bar atmosphere, but the efforts must have stalled. I was once invited to come to the track to comment on the plans. NYRA has consistently not built a sports bar/dining atmosphere at its downstate tracks. Saratoga yes; Aqueduct and Belmont no.

I always feel a little nostalgic when Belmont Day rolls around. I'll never have any intention of going because of past experiences, but I always wish I was there. Or could be, comfortably. 

Fourstardave passed away in 2021 at a very early age of 71 due to health issues he couldn't seem to control, or choose to. From that initial day in 1968 he proved to be the one who basically took to racing like a duck to water. He worked for racing publications run by the Bomze family. He would get high on a horse days before the race. I'll never forget the call at work during the week before the 1993 Belmont when he told me Colonial Affair was the horse. He also loved Lemon Drop Kid in 1999 and made it pay handsomely for him.

Saturday's Belmont was a local affair, won by the Repole and Donegal stables when Mo Donegal crossed the finish line with gas to spare. Mo Donegal is sired by Uncle Mo, a Repole sire and was expertly ridden by Irad Ortiz Jr. and trained by the redoubtable Todd Pletcher, a trainer who is no stranger to winning the Belmont. 

In fact, the second place finisher, Nest, a filly, trained by Todd Pletcher as well and ridden by Irad's brother Jose, acquitted themselves nicely. And who solely owns Nest? Repole Stable, with Nest and Mo Donegal sharing a common breeder Ashview Farm & Colts Neck Stable (KY). It's a racing version of All in the Family.

Mike Repole, or "Mike from Queens" as the NBC broadcaster Mike Tirico kept saying (as if Queens could hardly ever be expected to produce an owner of a Belmont horse) was a deserving winner. Mike Repole made a fortune selling Vitamin Water to another company, and since has pretty much followed his passion for horse racing and built a juggernaut of a stable, winning many classic races on the NYRA and Gulfstream circuits.

Mike Repole is from Queens, having gone to Holy Cross High School in Flushing, not far from where I used to live. He graduated from St. John's University in Jamaica, Queens. He and his buddies had horse racing fever at an early age, and spent many an hour at the track, often on small amounts of money borrowed from his family, always having to pay them back—quickly.

Mike is no longer from Queens. He lives quite nicely in a spread in East Norwich, NY, a wealthy enclave in Nassau County that requires lots of acreage per home.

His orange and blue silks are quite distinctive and are evocative of the New York Met colors, blue and orange. I wonder if he knows that Mrs. Payson, when she cobbled the deals it took to get a National League franchise back into New York after the defection of the Dodgers and the Giants after the 1957 season, purposely chose the orange and blue colors for the Mets because they were New York Giant and Dodger colors. Mike from Queens indeed.

Not only did the Repole connection win the Belmont with Donegal racing, he also won the Brooklyn Handicap with Fearless, a mile and a half race. There  is always a mile and a half race scheduled  on the Belmont card to in effect give the starting gate crew a rehearsal for positioning the gate square in front of the stands. Belmont is a mile and a half oval, the largest track in North America. 

Mo Donegal was generously priced as the favorite at 5/2. The Derby winner Rich Strike was nowhere, no factor in a dull effort, even after resting and skipping the Preakness. Rich Strike just might be one of those horses that can only wake up on a certain surface, and that surface just might be Churchill Downs. His only two lifetime victories have come at Churchill, winning his second race, a $30,000 maiden claimer by an astounding 17 lengths. He was claimed from that race, with Calumet Farm giving up on him after a very dismal first race at Ellis Park, a third tier track in Kentucky. He just might not be able to keep up with the big dogs, despite his Keen Ice, Curlin breeding from a Smart Strike mare.

Johnny M. and I will likely go out to Belmont this Saturday, when there will be no one there. We'll look at the Repole silks displayed in the infield, and smile. Johnny M. and I are like Mike, we're both from Queens.

One hundred fifty-four Belmonts. Forty-six more and they can celebrate the 200th running. That's what I've always loved about racing—the continuity.

http://www.onoffrmp.blogspot.com

Taps

My evenings have just been freed up. It is very hard to beat a hockey team that is always one goal ahead of you.

And that's how the Rangers found themselves, skating uphill against the Tampa Bay Lightning in their Eastern Conference Finals (semi-finals for the Cup round). A 1-0 game is the most difficult game to win, but when you make it 2-1 21 seconds after a 1-1 power play goal with little time left in the third period, it becomes a little easier.

The two Russian polar bear goaltenders stood 200' apart, each stretching their 6'+ frames to fill out an opening that measures 4' high and 6' wide. Of the two, Igor Shesterkin was the busiest last night, turning away so many shots that if even half of the great shots were goals, the Rangers would have been routed. Andrei Vasilevskiy is a giraffe on skates.

But it was an overtime game right from the first seconds of the first period. Few penalties; few power plays. Lots of checking; lots of hits, but the Rangers never got unglued and to penetrate Tampa's defense. There's a reason the Tampa coach Jon Cooper has been in four Cup finals in the past six years, winning two consecutive Cups. Teams that win two consecutive Cups do not suddenly become bad clubs when the personnel remains the same. They stay winners.

The Rangers had their chance after going 2-0 in the series after the games at MSG. And they had Tampa down by a score of 2-0 in the third game, until they didn't, with Tampa scoring two power play goals, then a very late third period goal in what became in effect an overtime game.

The hammer to nail the coffin against Tampa fell from the Ranger hands with that game. They lost the next three, letting Tampa beat them four games in a row. You can't win the series if you let the other team win four games. 

If the Rangers have John Brancy belting the Anthem, then Tampa has Sonya Bryson-Kirksey, with her blue lips, blue eye shadow, blue nails and blue-streaked hair. Sonya is a retired Air Force Tech Sergeant who can sing. She won't be going anywhere else soon.

Last night I just finished watching my 20th Ranger game, more games than I've watched in a decade. That's 20 games on top of an 82 game season. nearly 25%. And the Rangers only reached the semi-finals for the Cup.

I'll be heading to bed earlier now, not staying up for a three-hour hockey telecast that starts at 8:00  P.M. I may poke the remote at the Cup finals once they start against the Colorado Avalanche, but I won't linger long, just long enough to absorb the score and see how the teams are doing. I have no dog in the fight coming up.

Will Tampa hang a third consecutive, and fourth Stanley Cup banner from the rafters of Amalie arena? I had to look up what Amalie is: motor oil. They must sell a lot of it in Florida to sponsor a 19,000 seat arena that looks like it has three tiers. The Chavez Ravine of hockey arenas. I wonder how microscopic the players look from that back row. And how much will the fans be paying for those tickets?

What are some of my takeaways from watching all those games and pre-game shows? 

Henrik Lundqvist, former Ranger goaltender, has GREAT hair. His tailored suits and matinee idol looks insure he'll be around from a while to comment on games.

Lightning is spelled lightning, not Lightening.

TV coverage of hockey games has advanced greatly. There is of course the HD resolution, but there is also no "prissy" eye that Roger Angell referred to in his seminal mid-'60s New Yorker piece on Ranger hockey. Fights, scuffles, checks into boards and their sounds are nicely captured these days. TV is better than most arena seats. And of course cheaper.

Much will be made of the youth of The Rangers, 26.7 average age, the youngest collection of players since 1993. But that's just a number. Injuries, attitudes and other intangible factors will all play into the factors to determine if the Rangers can be at least in this position again next year. There are a lot more teams, and there are three rounds before the Cup finals. The road is long.

Tampa is poised to hang a fourth Stanley Cup banner from their rafters (all in the 21st-century) if they get past the Colorado Avalanche, a team I know little of, but one that is described as a "juggernaut."

My hockey season is over, having been thankfully extended by the Rangers this season. The rest of the year will be devoted to going to bed earlier, peeks at the Cup finals, and watching parts of Met and Yankee games where the fastest thing that happens is when the pitcher throws the ball and someone hits it. What do they call it, "exit velo?" God help us.

In the mid '60s when it was announced that there would be a new Garden built above Penn Station, there was model of the proposed arena in the lobby of the Old Garden as you entered from Eighth Avenue. It was one of those architectural models, under a glass or plastic dome. I can still see it in my eyes with its multi-colored seats as my father and I looked at it, looking forward to an arena that could be reached by the LIRR from our Port Washington line Murray Hill stop that didn't require you to even go outside. Nearby was a sign that rightly proclaimed hockey as "the world's fastest game."

It still is.  Any my favorite team sport.

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com

 

Ranger Backs Against the Wall

Friday was not a good morning for Ranger fans. Preceded by not a good night. A loss at the Garden's home ice to Tampa to give Tampa 3-2 lead in the series makes the Ranger task even more difficult in upending the consecutive year Stanley Cup champions. The Rangers were outplayed, and probably outcoached. If not for the width of metal goalposts, the Ranger loss would have been sealed even earlier in the game than late in the game. Once again.

Winston Churchill once commented after a failed assassination attempt "that nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result." Goal post clankers don't count as shots on goal. A shot on goal is one that would go in if the goaltender weren't there. When you hit the goalpost, it is not a shot on goal, but certainly a shot at goal.

The two heavy metal clankers that hit the Ranger goal posts early in the first period at one point left Tampa with the funny statistic at the moment of one shot on goal, and two posts. Not a good sign for the Rangers.

Rangers need a hero, as the back page of today's New York Post proclaims. They need a Mark Messier guarantee of a Game 6 victory like he guaranteed in 1994 over the New Jersey Devils—and of course got it with a hat trick.

The good luck charm of having baritone John Brancy heroically sing (and looking somewhat like what Messier looks like now) the National Anthem wore off Thursday night. Nevertheless, he should be used whenever his schedule allows.

So, Saturday night in Tampa. Do or die. Busy sports day with Belmont racetrack gearing up for its showcase Belmont Stakes day, the one highlight of its meets. The Belmont Stakes today marks my 54th anniversary of being involved in racing as I attended the 1968 Belmont with friends and saw Stage Door Johnny win and the owner Mrs. Payson in her Macy's house dress appear in the winner's circle. Mrs. Payson (Joan) was John Hay (Jock) Whitney's sister, the publisher of The Herald Tribune, and the guiding force on bringing a National League team back to New York in the form of the initially hapless, helpless Mets. She was known as a sportswoman.

Is this the last time I'll see a good Ranger team with a chance at the finals? Getting there is hardly easy, and at 73 years old  I might have seen the one championship they already delivered in1994. My father, born in 1915, saw three Stanley Cup wins; 1928, 1933 and 1940. But with as many teams as there are now, and the length of the playoffs, you might only get one Stanley Cup per lifetime.

But of course, someone might emerge tonight as the hero and force a Game 7 back at MSG. The crowd will register on Columbia's seismograph if that happens.

Let's Go Rangers.

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New York Ranger Impressions

Over 18,000 go to Rangers games at Madison Square Garden, and they spend beaucoup bucks to do so. Someone on Twitter who I know has Ranger season tickets in the upper reaches tells me her current playoff ticket price is in the Sutton Place neighborhood of $280! I really doubt there are any retirees who hold season tickets. You've got to making six figures to comfortably afford the games on a seasonal basis.

I don't know what MSG management calls the seats at the very top, but if they call them the mezzanine  seats then the Garden is really abusing the English language.

The Garden no longer prices their seats by colors. In my day of being a season ticket holder there were Red, Orange, Yellow, Green and Blue seats, with Red being the closest to the ice, and the blue being the upper rim. My own season tickets were in the upper row M of the Green seats. Not bad, but still a bit removed from the ice.

The Garden now has the Bridge seats that lets a select view the game from over the ice. No thanks. No idea how the pricing goes these days, but I think the upper rim might be a base price of near $80. It is over 50 years ago, but when I started with my season seats in Section 333 in the late '60s the base price was $5.00. And we thought that was plenty, being in sharp contrast to the $2 and $1.50 balcony prices at the Old Garden.

Am I really watching the Rangers play their 17th! playoff game this season? The Pittsburgh series was so long ago I forget what the coach of the Penguins looked like, and his name. (Mike Sullivan)

No one thought beating Tampa was going to be easy, but with a 2-0 lead in the third game the Rangers looked like they might roll over the Lightning. It didn't happen, as we know.

Power play goals re-energized Tampa, and a goal with less than a minute to go in the third period gave Tampa what amounted to an overtime win at 3-2, to climb back into the series.

Despite being outshot 51-30 for the game, the Rangers looked like they might pull it off and go 3-0 on Tampa in the series—a near death sentence for Tampa. The Rangers were introduced by the ESPN announcer Sean McDonough as the "red-hot Rangers" as they skated out for the start of the game.

Everything is possible once again with Game 4 in Tampa on Tuesday. It would be a shame for Ranger fans not to make the finals and see Mika Zibanejad not get the Conn Smythe trophy for playoff MVP. Mika has owned the right faceoff circle with his one-timer shots at goal, often resulting in his own goal, or assisting on Kreider's.

A new phenomena for me is to hear of "Watch" parties in cities that let the fans watch the televised game outdoors on giant screen TVs. Yesterday's game was a day game, and Central Park Wollman  Skating Rink was the NYC venue for a Watch party. And they were there. A sea of Ranger jerseys applying sun screen. Hard to believe you could actually see something on an outdoor TV, but who really cared if you can watch the game with others and wear your jersey. And despite massively being outshot, the Rangers nearly did win, at Tampa.

What's next? More hockey, and your guess is as good as mine.

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The Back Door Jeopardy Champion

I've held off on writing about the reigning Jeopardy champion, only because he has yet to attain anywhere near the heights of some of the recent champions. His wins have been impressive in number, but not necessarily dominant. They haven't been elegant; not by a long shot.

Ryan Long is a soft-spoken, affable, mountain of a man who is a "rideshare" driver from Philadelphia. You have to love how the producers strip away any mention of which "rideshare" he works for. No commercial names allowed; no free advertising through a contestant's employer.

As is the show's custom, the host asks some canned biographical questions of the contestants. The champion Ryan Long by virtue of  his winning streak has been able to tell a lot about himself. One endearing story he told was that his Dad was big into trivia. He was constantly asking his kids questions about current events and historical facts. It got so prevalent that the family started calling Dad "Cliffie" after the Cliff Klaven character in the show Cheers, who liked to quiz his stool mates at he bar.

Wednesday's show was a perfect example of Ryan Long's luck when it comes to continuing his streak. At the outset of the Final Jeopardy question he was in second place. The woman on the right was leading. The Clue of the Day, The Early 19th Century was:

Admiral Pierre Charles Villeneuve signaled "Engage the enemy" around noon & surrendered at 1:45 PM during this battle. 

Inside every final Jeopardy clue is a clue as well. If an admiral was involved in being defeated the battle must have been at sea, no?

The woman in the middle, despite her British heritage, answered Waterloo. Yikes! Ryan Long bet a conservative amount and answered Waterloo as well. I guess Dad didn't verse the kids too well on the Napoleonic wars. The woman on the right, leading in money was now sure to overtake Ryan, right? She's got to get the answer, right? She answers Waterloo, bets the full boat, and allows Ryan to live for another day in the pole position.

Okay, perhaps the word "water" in Waterloo threw them, but all three of them? Waterloo was a land battle, and was where Napoleon met defeat, not a French admiral. Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

The answer of course was "What is the Battle of Trafalgar," Lord Nelson's sea victory over the French that lead him to  being commemorated with a statue in London...in Trafalgar Square. What were the chances of that happening?

Thursday's show plodded along until the Clue of the Day was: UNESCO World Heritage sites. I will admit I had no idea of the answer to, "Known as the female Lawrence of Arabia, Gertrude Bell called this place a fairy tale city, all pink and wonderful."

Two contestants answered Jaipur, and Ryan answered Bagdad. Ryan retains the championship spot because everyone bombed, and he didn't shoot himself in the foot with his betting. The answer was "What is Petra." Who knew?

Friday's Clue of the Day was Technology, and this time Mr. Long had one of those leads where he couldn't be caught unless he shot himself in the foot with a wild bet and got it wrong.

"Upon the first use of this in 1844, The Baltimore Sun declared that time & space had been annihilated."

The clue within the clue is The Baltimore Sun. You have to use the fact this is a newspaper that benefitted from a 1844 technology. Gee, what could that be?

The middle contestant answered "steamboat," clearly not knowing the value of the imbedded clue. The fellow on the right answered correctly, but couldn't catch Ryan unless Ryan blew the bet and the answer.

He didn't. The answer was "What is the telegraph" and Ryan made the right bet and got the right answer. Still the champ.

So, at the end of the week Ryan retains his championship spot with 16 winning days and $299,400 in winnings. Eventually they all lose, but Ryan has been good as well as lucky, a combination that leads to success.

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