Penguins on the verge of extinction

One more win for the Philadelphia Flyers and the Pittsburg Penguins will begin their golfing season. There is no doubt that the Penguins have a difficult task that only three other teams have completed in NHL history; coming back from and 0-3 deficit. But if any team could possibly pull this off it would be the Pittsburgh Penguins.

The Penguins were the clear favorites going into the playoffs, picked by 10 of the 16 NHL.com Writers, International Staff, and Analysts to win the cup. Obviously they, and a lot of other people, underestimated the physical play and offensive force of the Flyers. The Flyers have out socred the Penguins 20-12 in the three games so far so it's clear that Marc-Andre Fleury has not been at his best. The Flyers continue to pepper him with shots keeping that offensive pressure. Goaltending has been a bit of an issue in these first three games but a bigger issue for the Penguins is their discipline.

When your down in a series the last thing you should be doing is getting penalties. The Penguins have been trying to start fights and have been in the box because of it. They're down in the series! They should not be trying to start fights, they should be trying to score goals. There is no doubt they should be physical but  the Penguins are being physically undisciplined. They should draw those easy penalties, get on the powerplay, and score goals. Simple as that. The only time they should be taking fights for the rest of this series is to protect such players as Crosby. Dan Bylsma, Pittsburgh Penguins head coach, will have to get that message through to his players. Be physical, be disciplines, and stay focused.

If the Penguins can't shot down the Flyers offensive force and spend this 4th and upcoming game trying to drop the gloves with every Flyer on the ice, then the Penguins will be putting away their sticks and pulling out the golf clubs early.

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Is Baseball too slow?

Slow is a word that many people who don't like baseball use to describe the sport. Is it fair for them to say that? Yes. Everyone is entitled to there own opinion but MLB games average around 3 hours, so you could call the MLB the tortoise and other sports the hare. Other sports such as hockey, basketball, and football are much faster while baseball games tend to be slow and ponderous. Slow and steady may win the race, but fast and speedy wins the excitment. In what way could we make baseball games faster so they become more exciting?

I've heard many concepts in finding a solution to speeding up the game of baseball. One of them is the batters and stepping out of the batters box after every pitch. Now I have never asked anyone from the MLB how valuable the act of stepping out of the batter's box is to refocus yourself, think about the next pitch, take a deep breath, and step back in the batter's box. I imagine they would say it's pretty important but it all adds up to making the game a whole lot slower and at times it can be taken to extremes. Let's do some math to see how much time this could take up. There is 9 batters on each team and each batter gets up to bat 4 times. Lets say the average is 5 pitches thrown to each batter and inbetween each of those 5 pitches he steps out of the batters box for 6 seconds. That would be 9x4x5x6 which would equal 1080 seconds. !080 seconds for one team, but theres two teams in a gem so that would be 1080 x 2. That's 2160 seconds which is equivalent to 36 minutes. 36 minutes of a batter just standing around. That is more than half a football or basketball game. Now I've heard a few people say and write about just completely getting rid of the rule so the batter will not be able to leave the batters box. I can't wrap my head around that. The batter not being able to leave the batter box? But that or shortening the time he has outside of the batters box seems like the only option to cut down or elminate the 18 minutes of batters standing around.

There are some other options I've heard about aswell but the one that has come up a lot and the option I like the most is limiting the amount of mound visits by a catcher in a game. Catchers visiting the mound slows down the game immensly. I've looked for stats on how many times the catcher visits the mound and how long he stays there, but I've had no luck. It's just shocking how many times you see catchers running to the mound and how long they stay there. It is necessary to visit the mound, don't get me wrong, but multiple times in innings, tremendous amounts of times in games for a substantial amount of time is unesscary and ultimatley makes the game move more slowly which makes it less enjoyable for the fans. This rule should be imposed where there is a limited amount of times the catcher can visit the mound in a game. It will make the game move faster.

Believe me, I love baseball, but research needs to be done into exploring ways to make the game move faster whether it is eliminating or shortening the time a batter has to leave the batters box inbetween pitches or imposing a limit on how many times the cathcer can visit the mound. Something has to be done to make the game move a little bit faster to make it more exciting and better for the fans.


This blogpost is from my all baseball blog, www.baseballbo.blogspot.ca 


Twitter: @BaseballBo