Getting To Know Your 2010 U.S. Men's Olympic Hockey Team: Chris Drury

The purpose of this feature is to familiarize our large audiences with the guys on the olympic-hockey roster. We're looking at forwards to start with, and I don't expect most folks to know who any of these guys are, but if you don't at least recognize the name Chris Drury, please e-mail me your address so that I might drive to your house and punch you in the guts, 'cause shame on you.

Drury won the Hobey Baker Award (top collegiate player) while playing at Boston University. He was selected in the third round of the 1994 NHL draft by the Quebec Nordiques, who, as you know, moved to Colorado and won a couple of championships fairly quickly. Drury was only with the team for the 2000 Stanley Cup Championship, but he won himself a Calder Memorial Trophy (most valuable rookie), and tallied 44 points for the team in the process. Soon after the championship season, he was traded to Calgary, but saw limited action, and spent the next three seasons as a huge offensive producer for the Buffalo Sabres, where he was eventually named captain.

Now with the New York Rangers, where he also sports the 'C' -- and is only the second American-born captain in franchise history -- Drury is one of three players slotted for American competition in Vancouver with previous olympic experience; both Drury and Brian Rafalski played for the team in both 2006 and the silver-medal winners of 2002, while Jamie Langenbrunner was on the '98 squad. Recent U.S. Olympic teams have tended to have a higher age average, as experience was tabbed an important aspect, but U.S. Olympic Head Coach Ron Wilson had different ideas than his recent predecessors (Peter Laviolette in 2006, the late Herb Brooks in 2002): at 32, Drury is the club's oldest forward. In 11 professional seasons, the Ranger has nearly 600 points, he has played in all 82 games in a season three times, and is known as a go-to guy in key situations, evidenced by his 47 playoff goals, 17 of which have been game-winners.
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Getting To Know Your 2010 U.S. Men's Olympic Hockey Team: Ryan Callahan

We're down to 18 days until the puck drops in men's olympic hockey in Vancouver. The women's games will get underway a few days prior, but we'll let our, uh, sister site cover those games. Meantime, we're getting familiar with the U.S. Men's roster, and we've started things off with the forwards. Once we've wrapped them up, we'll examine the defense, and finally the netminders.

Ryan Callahan is pretty much a badass, what with his Irish name and stature similar to mine. He's a 24-year-old native New Yorker, and as things would have it, he plays for the Rangers, specifically right wing. He's averaging just under 20 minutes of ice time per game this year for New York, and in that time, he's managed 13 goals and 15 assists. In just over three short seasons with New York, Callahan has scored a number of key goals for the Rangers, including a few game-winners that had post-season significance. While we don't know much about Callahan's endeavors with the lady, we can at least have a look at the contestant from "The Bachelor" that hooked up with the one-time producer of the same name, an endeavor that cost that Callahan his job.
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Lineup Against the Wall: New York Mets

Another team I can't stand. The late '80s incarnation of the franchise was dominant, particularly over my Cubs--who, we would have imagined in '84 & '85, might have at least been competitive over the next few years, but no. The Cubs managed to take the East in '84, two games ahead of New York, but that was it. After that, The Strawberry GoodenDarlings steamed ahead to a World Series in '86 and general excellence regardless, while the Cubs backslid to suck.

So I'm carrying a grudge. Which might have been why I picked the Marlins to make a huge leap forward and take the division, rather than this ultra-talented group. More after the coding--which doesn't look like coding, but try to think HTML for once.

Given that time is becoming an issue with these, no more pussyfooting. Here's the Amazins' lineup:

Catcher -- Brian Schneider
First Base -- Carlos Delgado
Second Base -- Luis Castillo
Third Base -- David Wright
Shortstop -- Jose Reyes
Left Field -- Daniel Murphy
Center Field -- Carlos Beltran
Right Field -- Ryan Church

Starting Pitchers:

Johan Santana (L)
Mike Pelfrey (R)
Oliver Perez (L)
John Maine (R)
Livan Hernandez (R)

Relief Pitcher:

J.J. Putz (R)
Pedro Feliciano (L)
Sean Green (R)
Brian Stokes (R)
Carlos Muniz (R)

Closer:

Francisco Rodriguez (R)

Bottom Line: I have no defense for last night's pick of the Marlins. I know that the Mets have choked the last years--and mightily so, it should be mentioned--but you can count the teams with that kind of power, speed and overall hitting ability on the fingers of no hands. Plus, they roll out a starting lineup led by arguably the best pitcher in the game, even if the guys behind him are pretty average. They spent a lot of money on F-Rod to shore up a recent weak spot, they have pretty good middle relief...not a lot of weaknesses.

So, naturally, I'm picking them to finish behind the Marlins. You have to go out on the occasional limb.

Projected Finish: 2nd in the NL East

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More Monday Miscellany

Time for one more quickie here inside the House of Georges walls. I hadn't really spent much time in the CyberSpaces yet today, but when I did, there was a thing or two I couldn't pass up. So after the jump, get a mini-fix of 'Tubes, 'Nails.

The diamond deejays over at Bugs & Cranks have put together this pleasantry of Tommy Lasorda:



From Deadspin comes two newsworthy notes of interest:

1) The NY Daily News says that Gang Green wants its fans to yell "Jay-E-T-S Jets! Jets! Jets!"



We're anticipating this move to happen, and we're also going to start taking running bets on how long it takes Screamin' Jay to tell Suzy Kolber he wants to kiss her.

(Editor's Note: Speaking of SK, meant to link to this KSK post several days ago, since it has their second Todd Haley rant, and I'm sure there are many, many more to come. While the post, and frankly most of their content is pretty hilarious, I must mention that we, of course had that StubTube up first. Pricks.)

2) Apparently Curt Schilling has retired,



and apparently ESPN ran the story with a blockquote, all neat and tidy with Jose Canseco's picture in it.

That's about as unfortuneate as the Raiders opening their season on Monday Night Football for the third time in four years. Good gravy...
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Baseball In The Daytime: 8-9-07

Thursday arrives once again, with its smorgasbord of matinee baseball, and I'm struck by how quickly these weeks run together in the summertime. During the fall and winter, when your favorite football team plays once a week, you can't wait for the days to pass and get back to Sunday. But these days of sunshine and bikini tops are burned up in a flash. Enjoy these games anyway.

Batting leadoff are the Braves and the Mets at 10:10 Mountain on XM 186 and DTV 734. It's the rubber match of a three-game set, and the New York lead in the NL East sits at 4 1/2 over the Braves (with the fightin' Phillies sandwiched in between). This game also gives us our best daylight pitching battle, as Tim Hudson hurls against John Maine.

At 10:35 the Dodgers attempt to staunch the bleeding of their once-promising season in Cincinnati. The boys in blue have dropped six straight to fall five back in the NL West, with the last three defeats having come via shutouts. LA hasn't scored a single run in 28 innings. Perhaps they should have acquired a bat at the deadline after all, eh? Those three shutout losses came to starting pitchers Brandon Webb, Bronson Arroyo and Aaron Harang, so there's not really any shame involved. Crossing the plate should be a little easier today, as Phil Dumatrait is charged with stopping the Dodgers. His counterpart will be Brett Tomko, on XM 189 and DTV 735.

At 11, the Devil Rays visit the Tigers on XM 180 and DTV 736. Detroit has taken two of three already from the Rays following a season-long six-game skid. They could close their half-game deficit in the AL Cenral, at least temporarily, with a win. That burden falls to Jeremy Bonderman, who takes on fellow young laser rocket arm Scott Kazmir.

From the shoulder of I-70 comes a game between the Twins and the Royals at 12:10. Even if you wanted to watch this game outside the metropolitan areas of KC and the Twin Cities, DirecTV is having none of it. Which is a good thing, because games broadcast from the Kauff generally look as though the camera lens was smeared with Vaseline. Feel free to upgrade at any time, Mr. Glass. At least you can listen to newly minted Hall of Famer Denny Matthews describe the duel between Matt Garza and deadline acquisition Kyle Davies on XM 181, should you so desire.

Finally, the Nats and Giants wrap up their ballyhooed series next to McCovey Cove at 1:35. I'm fairly certain that Barry will take a pass on this one, what with the whole day-game-after-a-night-game arrangement. So "Joel Hanrahan" and "758" will most likely never appear in the same sentence, except the one you just read. Some kid named Patrick Misch gets the nod for San Francisco, on XM 184 and DTV 737. Cheers!
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Baseball in the Daytime: 8-3-07

The bigs kick off the weekend with only one afternoon match today, and it's the October-hungry Cubbies of Chicago hosting the non-gay New York team known as the Metropolitans. Fondling the rosin bag for the National-League-East-leading Mets is none other than Orlando Hernandez. He'll face the 14-7 Carlos Zambrano, who's club finds themselves knotted with the Brew Crew for first in the NL Central.



El Duque boasts a 3-0 record since the All-Star break while the wily Zambrano has earned four victories since. In the non-pitching department, the hot bat of former Kansas City Royal Ruben Gotay and infield help of former Minnesota Twin/Florida Marlin Luis Castillo should help fill some of the void left by the ailing Carlos Beltran.

Catch this matchup at 1:20 Central on the old standby WGN, or see for yourself if it's on any of them new-fangled satellite doohickeys. I'm too lazy and it's time to play ball.

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