South Florida, Saturday Night
As you may know, I flew down to Miami for the Virginia Tech-Miami football game this weekend. Post-game, I was kinda tired and didn’t really feel like going clubbing on South Beach, not to mention that it would be 9 PM before we ate dinner out there, so I decided to make a big sports weekend of it and go see the Florida Panthers-Edmonton Oilers hockey game.
And now, some thoughts on a South Florida Saturday night:
- If the Florida Panthers do not survive as an NHL franchise, it will be entirely due to arena location. The Office Depot Center is in Sunrise, a suburb on the edge of the Everglades. In terms of distance from Miami, it’s kinda like locating the Washington Capitals’ home arena in Leesburg, VA or Frederick, MD. Their primary population draw is probably from Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton and West Palm Beach, though, which makes it marginally more reasonable — it’s only about as far from those as Dulles is from Washington.
- Two musical notes (pun not intended) from the Panthers game. First, there is no song better guaranteed to kill the vibe at a hockey game than Faith Hill’s “This Kiss,” which Kiss Country radio uses as a promo during the game. But definite props to the sound guy for song selection after a four-man brawl in the third period: Elton John’s “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting.”
As for my real reason for being here? Well, I said after the first quarter that we never win shootouts. I think that’s as much psychological as anything; our team is so psychologically reliant on the defense that they think the game is already lost if the D fails. But I do see some good things out of this game and this season.
- Our offense can put points on the board in a hurry — and not just because of one or two guys (like Michael Vick and André Davis in the past). This will, however, require better defensive conditioning in the future; our D seems to be used to having long, grinding offensive drives in which to rest.
- We only lose two starters on offense, Lee Suggs and Shawn Witten. This will hurt, but it’s not like we’re losing half our team.
- Most of our defensive woes of November and December can be attributed to conditioning and fundamentals. We’ve got a lot of time to work on these things, and I have confidence that Mike Gentry and Bud Foster can get it done.
- Finally, this season looks a lot like 1998 to me. I said that in October, not really wanting to believe it, but now I’m convinced. The past six weeks have held lots of learning experiences for our very young team. We’ll be heading to a lower-tier bowl against a beatable team, much like the Music City Bowl against Alabama.
And you all remember that after 1998 came… 1999.
7 December 2002 / 0 Comments / Tags: travel, hockey, football