Examples that show goalies are the best, part nineteen
1. Hunter Virostek with this beauty of a save
2. I love it when goalies are a part of the goal celebration (Kolby Hay)
3. What are you even doing? (Jacob Otto)
4. A classic, Ken Dryden taking out his French-English dictionary on tv (SRC's eight gala 1973)
5. Just warming up (Martin Brodeur
(30) & Patrick Roy (33))
6. Gloveless saves are my love language (Charlie Lindgren)
7. You have already seen it, but I just love it so much (Marc-André Fleury)
8. Zoning out or getting dialed in? (Left: Martin Jones, right: Stuart Skinner)
9. The Swedish national team is too precious
{part 18}
>part 19<
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A poem by Brian Brodeur
THE CARPENTER'S TALE
There's going to be an accounting. And it'll be the weird stats that come out of somewhere.
And this is one of the stranger ones.
—Kerry Breen, This American Life, 8/13/2021
Most of us laughed at being called "essential"
in those first weeks of New York's quarantine.
We'd grease a hinge or patch a rotten sill,
replacing sunk beams under a snack machine,
painting classrooms. Though it felt like cheating,
I'd never seen the schools look so pristine.
Then, in April, at our team meeting,
our boss clears his throat and his voice softens.
Putting down the cruller he's been eating,
he says, "Next week, we start building coffins."
One of us laughs. Another spills his coffee.
I tell my boss, "Get out of here. Build coffins."
He looks up from his clipboard and glares at me,
then gives us all the plans his boss gave him:
"We'll be building coffins for the city."
On Monday, I show up at this school gym
outfitted as a shop. On cinderblocks,
beside the bleachers with the lights turned dim,
our prototype: a six-foot plywood box
standing on its end where the feet would be.
Above the prototype and scoreboard clocks,
a championship banner's "Victory"
had begun to sag where flags of UN nations
cling to the ceiling. Under Germany,
we set up cutting and assembly stations,
a place where we can urethane the boards.
Electricians rig fans for ventilation
and 10 of us plug in extension cords.
We stack up drafts of plywood on the floor—
a draft is 50 sheets. Our only words
concern the lack of Mets and Yankees scores,
how hot the gym gets, who brought Gatorade.
We run through 2x4s and they bring more—
wash, rinse, repeat. I mean, we're getting paid,
but after so long it occurs to me:
My god, they really need this many made?
No one gives us an end. We build 150,
stacking them from one side of the gym
to the other, five coffins high—no one can see
above the shrink-wrapped freight pallets of them.
I back the forklift into the elevator
and drive down Concourse near the stadium
and down another street to a tractor trailer.
The forklift's so slow people honk at me.
Honk at a guy carrying coffins—or
scream at me to move. This goes on three weeks.
I find it—I don't know—bizarre, I guess,
not one person ever stops to ask me
what I'm doing, everyone obsessed
with toilet paper. Then, passing on foot,
a guy who speaks Spanish stops to zip his vest
and says, "Morte," finger-slicing his throat.
"Sí," I say, and he just shakes his head
and walks away. I slam the trailer shut.
Our team built 450 in the end,
and there were other teams in other districts
across the whole Department of Ed.
No one I tell has ever heard of this.
Why would they? Not exactly good PR—
Guess what we used schools for. You'll never guess. …
But now that things are waning, more and more
I feel alright, like I can let it out.
It wasn't war—if it had been a war
we'd know what happened, what it was about,
how much we'd lost, what people did out there.
I'm sure someone will make a final count,
and we'll deal with each last expenditure,
but that's years off, and this is not a war.
Brian Brodeur
More poems by Brian Brodeur are available through his website.
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First, relax. Pretend you can feel the earth
press down on you in darkness as you lie.
Try counting how long you can hold your breath
until sleep heals the gashes of your eyes.
That’s me, pressing down on you as you lie,
tucking your blankets taut at either end.
Once sleep has healed the gashes of your eyes
and your lids twitch, it’s easy to pretend
the pressure of my tucking either end
is greater than the snugness of the grave.
It’s easy math. You’ll twitch, and I’ll pretend
to mourn you as a bored gravedigger might have—
head bowed in smug respect beside your grave.
You’ll see. Asleep, you’ll sink into a dream
of another morning digging graves that have
the smoothness of a surface without seams.
Then, you’ll see them sink into your dream—
the dead who swear they’re not dead. Even those
whose faces have melted smooth will start to seem
to titter in the dust like song sparrows.
You’ll swear you’re not dead, too, but even those
who hear you won’t believe the cries you make
mean much. Can you decode the song of sparrows?
You’ll keep insisting there’s been some mistake.
You won’t believe their rusty cries. You’ll make
a last attempt to claw out of the earth.
You’ll keep insisting, but there’s no mistake.
Try counting how long you can hold your breath
Brian Brodeur, Playing Dead
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share with us your list of goalie greats?
Ooooh, okay, I need more clarification on this question – greatest all time? My personal favorites? Something else?
I think the greatest all time is soundly: Hasek, Roy, Brodeur. I would also give Sawchuk a nod, with the caveat used for all players of that era, which is that it's wicked hard to compare it to the modern game.
I'm not willing to put Rask into the conversation with those three, because I don't think the stats quite bear it out, but I think he's as close as you can get without being them. The Messier to Gretzky, the Park to Orr. Plus he's one of my personal favorite goalies and players of all time, and is a beloved Bruin, so I do adore him. If there are some homer goggles here, forgive me. And I'll always be grateful for Tim Thomas's winning the Bruins a Cup in 2011.
I like Flower just as a player. He's entertaining, he's incredibly talented, and I enjoy when I get the chance to see him do media things because he usually makes them quite fun.
Thank you anon! A+ question, love and respect thy goalie – me, former defenseman
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From the January 10, 2024 article:
A Florida Republican’s bill aims to silence accusations of racism, homophobia, sexism, transphobia, or any other allegations of discrimination, making them “defamation” under the law and potentially costing the person who made them up to $35,000 in the state known for its “Don’t Say Gay” law.
The sweeping legislation also appears to void journalists’ right to not reveal sources, and, chillingly removes the long-standing requirement that a public figure needs to show “actual malice” to win a defamation lawsuit.
...
The legislation is being sponsored by Republican state Senator Jason Brodeur, who last year “introduced a bill that would require the registration of bloggers who are critical of the state’s government,” leading a columnist at the right-wing National Review to call him a “moron” and an “idiot.” It’s unclear if that would be considered defamation under Sen. Brodeur’s new bill.
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