Unbalanced
The Unbalanced explores the world of sports and the culture surrounding it; from basketball to baseball, football, hockey, wrestling, and more.
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Stories in Unbalanced that you’ll love, handpicked by our team.
Lovin’ the PWHL
The inaugural season for professional women’s hockey is well underway and I, like many North American sports enthusiasts, have cottoned on to the excitement of the games and the fanfare. Most of the women playing are relatively well-known through previous media exposure during Olympic games, World Championships and Rivalry matches between Canada and the United States. Yesterday, March 8, being International Women’s Day, I decided that I would pay tribute to the women of the world in my own little sports-minded way, and watch a PWHL game between the teams from Toronto and Montreal. Casually observing the new teams since the start of the season, I had suspected that the Women’s league was somehow different from the NHL and other men’s hockey leagues around the world. Sometimes these differences don’t show up during the Olympic games or World Championships because of the media focus on winning gold medals and the like. However, during a regular season hockey game, be it a men’s game or a women’s game, one gets a chance to really notice what the respective games are all about. I would therefore like to weigh in on what have formerly been suspicions but now are being seen as true differences between men’s and women’s professional hockey.
John Oliver SmithPublished about a month ago in UnbalancedA Spirit That Fears Nothing
There are many sound reasons to repudiate professional sport in general and NHL hockey in particular. After all, the game has been as utterly defiled by cynical, avaricious late-stage capitalism as every other aspect of contemporary existence. The ordinary fan is incessantly encouraged by marketers and advertisers to gamble, guzzle alcoholic beverages and devour kilograms of fast food, which is a bald oxymoron if you contemplate it for a moment. Salaries are stratospherically inflated, as are ticket prices, and what passes for discourse generated by the participants in, and commentators upon, the game is so full of cliches and verbal false limbs that Orwell’s ghost will never stop screaming.
D. J. ReddallPublished 3 months ago in UnbalancedThe History of the Adams Division
I've followed the NHL in some form for 30 years, but I'm still learning about the league I enjoy watching. A long time ago, I did learn about the old divisions: Adams, Patrick, Norris, and Smythe. These divisions predated the geographical ones that we've known for the last 30 years, and the rivalries were immensely intense during that period. This will be the first of four stories focusing on those classic divisions, and I'll start geographically, even though the names had nothing to do with location. First off, the Adams Division.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished 3 months ago in UnbalancedA Look Ahead to Week 18 of the 2023 NFL Season
Week 17 kicks off tonight, but I want to take a look ahead to Week 18, the final week of the regular season. We all love the final week, don't we? We've really loved it since they changed the final week's schedule back in 2010. The final week always completes the league's playoff puzzle, it's do or die for a lot of teams looking to get in and even clinch divisions. However, a lot of games lacked a lot of drama, and even saw teams not give their all when they know that they can't move up in the standings. So in 2010, the NFL decided to make all of the final week's games divisional, because regardless of where a team is in the standings, that team wants to give their all to defeat a division rival.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished 4 months ago in Unbalanced63 Strikes, You're Out!
They did it, folks. They finally did it. The Los Angeles Chargers actually fired Brandon Staley as their head coach, with the firing coming after the Chargers suffered a very embarrassing loss on national television. The Chargers were on the road against the Las Vegas Raiders, and it was a game that saw the Raiders absolutely pour it on. 63 points. Nine touchdowns--seven of them by the offense. The 63 points fell just 10 short of the long-standing record set by the Chicago Bears, who scored 73 points in the 1940 NFL Championship Game over Washington. However, the Raiders' 63 points are the most in team history, and marked the second time this season that a team scored 60+ points--the Miami Dolphins scored 70 points in Week 3.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished 4 months ago in UnbalancedNFL Week 9 Recap: Nine Months
January 2, 2023. We all remember that Monday evening. The Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals faced each other in what was the final Monday night game of the season. Regarding the game and the storyline, it was two teams jockeying for position in the AFC, as they were both in position to possibly take the AFC's #1 seed. This was an important game for both teams, but before the 1st quarter ended, there was suddenly something much, much more important than the game of football.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished 5 months ago in UnbalancedFantasy Football is BACK!
Despite being English, I have found myself becoming more and more enamoured with the sport that the Americans call “football”. Watching American Football in the UK used to be a most difficult proposition, aside from the Superbowl the only way to watch any action was a highlights show at 1am on a Wednesday morning. During the nineties and early 2000’s I was school aged, but after that coverage started to improve. In recent years Sky Sports have added the Thursday and Monday night games, as well as three Sunday matches. Even then, the absolutely baffling decision to host games only on nights when most people have work confuse me no end. But as my interest has grown, I’ve put additional effort into trying to keep up with the games when I can. My wife has since joined me in this interest, but unlike me she is a reasonable person, who goes to bed at a sensible time rather than staying up into the night watching foreign sports and typing up nonsense for strangers to read (4th wall break! Hi, thanks for reading).
Luke FosterPublished 7 months ago in UnbalancedNFL Week 1 Recap: A New York Minute
The NFL is back, and this fan was ever so eager for the season to start. My reasons were simple. One, I had a good feeling about Fantasy Football this year, and two, I'm a Yankees fan who wants to forget about this disaster of a season. With every new NFL season comes new storylines and new questions, and one of the biggest new storylines of the debuting 2023 NFL season had to be Aaron Rodgers making his New York Jets debut on Monday Night Football.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished 7 months ago in Unbalanced
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2024 Division Semifinals Preview
It's here, folks! It's finally here! The 2023-24 NHL regular season is over and done with, and after six months and 1,312 games played, it's now time for the greatest championship chase in all of sports. Winning the Stanley Cup is absolutely difficult. Hell, just getting to the Final is a rough journey. Yet, for the 44th year, it will be sixteen teams fighting their way to capture the greatest trophy in sports: the Stanley Cup. Four of these 16 teams have never won it all, and one of those four hasn't even been to the Final. In addition, four of the 16 team teams in this year's playoffs are Canadian, meaning that there's a 25% chance that the three decades long Cup drought in that country will come to an end,
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished 38 minutes ago in UnbalancedJohn Jay Starts Season off with Two Victories
Please see pledge, tip and subscribe options below After opening the 2024 season with a 10-2 victory over Pelham, John Jay came home on Thursday March 28 and faced the Briarcliff Mighty Bears between the raindrops. But the intermittent nastiness of the precipitation was nothing compared to the biting sting of the John Jay offensive attack.
Rich MonettiPublished about 5 hours ago in UnbalancedAvalanche Game 82 Recap: We Are Ready!
When the 2023-24 NHL season began, one thing I wanted to do was write a game-by-game recap of the Colorado Avalanche's campaign. I was inspired by the "fan reaction" vids I've seen on YouTube, mainly Steve Dangle's "LFR" (standing for Leafs Fan Reaction) vids, which I had been watching for about five years, and really enjoyed during the pandemic-affected seasons. I wanted to do the same, and decided to use Vocal to spread my Avalanche fandom. I have really enjoyed writing these recaps, and I loved that I could bring a humorous spin to these stories. I do my best to be objective, but there are times where I have to put the Avalanche glasses on.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished about 16 hours ago in UnbalancedHouston, You Have a Problem...and No One Feels Sorry for You
As the old saying goes, "Whenever the Houston Astros suck, an angel gets their wings." We all had so much fun watching the Astros get swept in their season opening series against the New York Yankees, didn't we? I know I was enjoying it. I have immense schadenfreude when it comes to the team who has basically been baseball's equivalent of the Brady/Belichick Patriots. However, with that celebration came a reality: it's only the first four games. The Astros had 158 of these things left. It would be a matter of time before we'd be hideously annoyed by them again. They did pitch a no-hitter right after the Yankees punched them in the mouth, so that appeared to be the start of the whole "Oh no, not again" Astros returning.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished a day ago in UnbalancedHockey Night in Katonah Still Going Strong at Harvey
Please see Tip, Pledge and Follow options below 52 years ago a group of local first responders rented out the Harvey Hockey rink and began a Tuesday hockey night. “They called it the fireman’s game,” said Stu Hackle, and currently running what’s now called, Hockey Night In Katonah, he’s not ashamed to be a late comer by comparison.
Rich MonettiPublished a day ago in UnbalancedCapitals Win Four-Way Battle for Final Playoff Spot
There's nothing like a nice crowded playoff logjam very, very late in the season. I've seen quite a few of them in the NFL, and it was so nice of the NHL to provide one for this season. The Eastern Conference had a very interesting four team cluster in the Wild Card race, and the teams involved were the Washington Capitals, the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Philadelphia Flyers, and the Detroit Red Wings. They were all tight together, and they swapped the 2nd Wild Card position quite a bit. One day it would be the Wings in that position, another day it would be the Penguins, and the reason why the Flyers ended up in the Wild Card picture is because they fizzled in the last week or so.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished 3 days ago in UnbalancedSomers Stays Close in 19-6 Defeat to Clarkstown North
On Tuesday March 26, Somers opened the flag football season and helping to raise the banner on season two was visiting Clarkstown North. A one score game until the very end, Coach Katie DiChiara didn’t get ahead of herself and kept the 19-6 loss in perspective.
Rich MonettiPublished 3 days ago in UnbalancedAfter Competitive Start, Somers Falls 16-5 to Rye
On Monday March 25, the Somers Lacrosse team opened the season and faced a pretty tall order in their opponent. “Rye is a well coached disciplined team who support each other in every position,” said Coach Deb Daly. But a halftime 7-5 deficit didn’t look so bad - until it did.
Rich MonettiPublished 3 days ago in Unbalanced
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