It’s early in the season, but that’s ok if you’re the Chicago Blackhawks and were hoping your off-season transactions would yield immediate dividends. Just four games into the season, the Blackhawks are sitting in fourth place in the Central Division. With two wins and as many losses thus far, the team is certainly not starting out as hot as its star winger, Martin Havlat. Havlat, who came to Chicago from the Ottawa Senators, has blazed through his first four games, tallying 10 points—sitting atop the league lead in goals (six) with the New York Rangers’ Brendan Shanahan, and tied for best in points with Shanny’s teammate Jaromir Jagr.
Havlat, who turned 25 last April, exemplifies the speedy- and finesse-style of play that the NHL had hoped to facilitate and celebrate when it altered the rules prior to last season. However, Havlat didn’t have much of a chance to shine last year; he missed 58 games to a shoulder injury, along with five more from a suspension. But when he did play, he produced, scoring nine goals and sixteen points in a shortened season that saw the Sens ousted by the Buffalo Sabres in the second-round of the 2005-2006 playoffs.
This is the year Havlat needs to prove to the Blackhawks and the rest of the NHL that he can deliver league-leading points consistently, under pressure, and is worth the three-year, $18 million contract he inked in July. The Czech native, a restricted free-agent, had initially hoped to sign a one-year deal with Ottawa so he could test the free-agent market next summer. Unwilling to accept that as a reasonable request, Ottawa shipped Havlat to Chicago in a three-way deal that included the San Jose Sharks. San Jose traded defensemen Tom Preissing and Josh Hennessy to Chicago for Mark Bell, culminating with the Blackhawks moving Preissing and Hennessy, defenseman Michal Barinka, and a 2008 second-round draft pick to the Senators in exchange for Havlat and forward Bryan Smolinski.
Even though Havlat missed two-thirds of last season, the Senators’ proclivity for ceaseless scoring from stars Dany Heatley and captain Daniel Alfredsson, and up-and-comers Jason Spezza and Patrick Eaves, hardly diminished during last year’s campaign; it is doubtful the Sens will suffer severely from Havlat’s departure. (Even though they’re currently below .500 in the Northeast Division.) Chicago, conversely, will certainly reap the benefits from a player who has a penchant for highlight reel goals. Acquiring a pure offensive talent like Havlat will deepen the Blackhawks’ shallow scoring pool.
The Blackhawks have only reached the post-season once in the last eight seasons, losing in the conference quarterfinals in 2002. Havlat will be a vital component in breaking that streak, and he’s already proven he can put points on the board when it counts. (His 13 points in 10 playoff games last year, and 23 career game winning goals are evidence of that.)
Since his rookie year in 2000-2001, Havlat’s scoring has increased steadily with each season—with the exception of last year, of course. It is unlikely he’ll continue the offensive pace he’s kept so early in this season, but if he can stay healthy, Havlat’s production will surely evade heavy scrutiny. Regardless of his offensive consistency, the real wager rests on Havlat’s explosive temper. Not one to think about his actions prior to committing them, Havlat has routinely been penalized for retaliating and has a steep history of suspensions.
He was criticized in the 2003 playoffs by Philadelphia Flyers coach Ken Hitchcock for his stick-work. In an incident later the next season, Hitchcock said that "somebody is going to make him eat his lunch"—clearly displaying the frustration that Havlat can create even when he doesn’t have the puck. During the 2003-2004 season he was suspended twice, once for kicking and once for high-sticking the Flyers’ Mark Recchi. Havlat was then suspended again on October 17, 2005 for five games after another kicking incident involving Boston Bruins defenseman Hal Gill.
If Havlat doesn’t avoid overreacting, taking cheap shots and retaliatory penalties, he’s going to have a tough time finding a team who will offer the money he wants when his deal with Chicago expires. If he fails to calm down during the interim, he can simplify his opponents’ game plan—antagonize Havlat until he takes a stupid penalty. But after only four games, Havlat has just six penalty minutes (compared to that of NHL penalty-in-minutes leader Matthew Barnaby’s 30)—not too bad for a player averaging more than 20 minutes of ice time per game. It’s probably safe to assume that Chicago GM Dale Tallon addressed those concerns when negotiating for Havlat.
Still, another factor that may play a role in Havlat’s success in his new home is how he handles being Chicago’s go-to guy. In Ottawa, there was such abundant offensive talent that no one player had to provide the bulk of the scoring. Even the Sens’ defense had offensive power in since-traded-to-Boston Zdeno Chara and the contract-extended Wade Redden. The same is not so in the Windy City, where big names are as scarce as the Blackhawks’ recent post-season appearances.
Yet, if he can curtail his volatility and injury woes, the only hindrance that could prevent Havlat from having a career year will be the Blackhawks’ lack of depth, which was not ameliorated when they dealt their leading scorer from last season, Kyle Calder, to the Philadelphia Flyers. (Calder had 59 points in 05-06 versus Michael Handzus’s 44, who came over from Philly.) Their other top scorers are Handzus and Radim Vrbata, both Havlat’s linemates. If the rest of the team struggles to produce, coach Trent Yawney may have to dilute that line to balance out the scoring, a move that could backfire if Havlat proves to be the only reason Handzus and Vrbata are scoring in the first place.
In the end, Havlat has all the requisites to be Chi-town’s finest: the speed, the scoring touch, a keen awareness of his teammates on the rink, and respect in his locker room. How Havlat operates with such a burden remains to be seen. And at this point, no one can know if relying on Havlat alone will translate into a playoff birth. But if he plays like he has throughout the next 78 games, Havlat might get a first-round match up at the United Center as a birthday gift next April.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Wednesday, October 4, 2006
Steven Kotler, a myth and some waves: A review
Peppering the backsides of hardback covers are to-be-expected applauses lauding a piece of riveting literature as the next best thing since the last book about the same subject. Steven Kotler’s newest page turner, West of Jesus: Surfing, Science and the Origins of Belief (Bloomsbury; 261 pages), is not altogether different. The rear end is lined with quotes from people who may know what they are talking about. But the difference is in the story; Kotler’s isn’t one that has been told before. Certainly, books have been written about how triumph over disease has lead to miraculous transformations in physical, spiritual and mental strength, it’s just that none of them have been for surfers.
From the onset, Kotler—whose Lyme disease, loss of a perfect job and lady has mired him in a stuck-in-a-rut mentality—does not hide his borderline apathy towards life. “I was little amazed that life was nothing more than an accumulation of days,” he opines, in what shouldn't be misconstrued as whiny or trivial. Others might relinquish the same shame if they had to carry a notebook filled with reminders and instructions about how to turn on a computer and not jump out of windows. Yet, after quickly disclosing the premise of the author's heavy mileage surfing trip, you might expect the rest of the book to be a self-indulgent reflection of spirituality and mortality that will leave you asking what makes this guy’s problems so damn important. Until the unexpected arrives.
Sure, it can easily be argued that Kotler’s reasons for writing about a venture taken for himself are innately selfish. But his dives into surfing's mysticism involve the types of experiences that surfers have been having for years. Kotler simply has the chance (and the budget) to explore the questionable spirituality that thousands of wave riders before him never articulated clearly. His story is our story, really, as surfers looking for answers to the unanswerable. Is it a religion? If so, beneath what deity? Do surfers have a keener understanding of, a more developed relationship with, Mother Nature in all her otherworldly splendor? Who knows? Kotler doesn’t and neither do we, which makes his pursuit easy to follow. His attempt at answers is made for all of our questions.
West of Jesus begins with Kotler’s acceptance that his life sucks, at least recently. Defining himself as “the kind of person who went to places hard to get to and far away,” Kotler boards a plane and a bumpy car ride to Costa Azul, Mexico, in a proactive step to start living the life he had been “choosing not to live.” In between almost drowning and answering calls from editors, Kotler wrote, surfed, and had three articles denied. In what had ideally been an escape for the better, he’s sent to the back of life's line, again, “wondering where [his] life had gone.” After his return from Mexico, however, calls are made, waves are ridden, the Conductor’s story is heard twice in as many locations, and the search for the source of this surfer’s myth begins.
The Conductor’s is a story of two bros “on an epic surf quest who get lost near the ass-end of nowhere and meet some guy who could control the weather and conduct the waves with some kind of baton made from human bone.” That is merely Kotler’s abridged version, expanded upon for pages and pages later in the text. He treks across the globe in hopes of rooting out the origins of the myth. It seems perplexing until readers remember that the guy’s life was a wipeout. At that point, any motivation was good reason. And traveling around the globe to world-class surf spots and getting pitted in waves that most surfers can’t even fathom, all under the guise of research for an article about potential hearsay, doesn’t seem like a bad reason to say "fuck Lyme disease."
Kotler tells a good story, colorfully adorning what may sound like scientific droning. The man clearly did his homework for the other two-thirds of the book’s content: science and religion, seasoned with flavorful history. His explanations of the alluvial sandbars that form from out-flowing rivers that create the perfect barrels at pointbreaks like Rincon in Santa Barbara, California, are accompanied by surfer jargon (“Reefbreak is a fancy way of saying lots of rock underwater”), random historical references (“[In 1988] a man named A.J. Hackett opened the world’s first commercial bungee jump operation”), and religious inferences (Siddhartha, Moses and Jesus were all unhappy, apparently). Surfers or not, readers are going to close Kotler’s book knowing more odd shit than they did before they opened it.
For all the marvelous knowledge and detail that spews like the whitewash of a closeout wave, West of Jesus’ main flaw is that it can be tiresome. Whether it’s the somewhat excessive use of quotes—be it Joan Didion, Ernest Hemingway, Tom Waits, or the efficacious Hunter Thompson—or the lengthy commentary on out-of-body experiences and Dr. Melvin Morse’s research on the topic from 1982, Kotler loads the book with so much to retain that it can harbor fleeting focus. It’s not that it shouldn’t necessarily be included—indeed, the opposite helps Kotler avoid the apocryphal—it’s that more of Kotler himself would make all the sporadic intervals of facts easier to regurgitate at a dinner party. Including more forgettable rambling (just a little) may help us remember the unforgettable. Nonetheless, Kotler diminishes the tediousness by smoothly returning to the exposition that launched him on his tangent.
Ultimately, West of Jesus's lasting quality will be its satiability: calming landlocked surfers frustrated from what Kotler defines as acute “surf-withdrawal.” The book strikes all the subtitles with attention to detail and sufficient relevance. Surfers will find its value in the life and death accounts of Kotler surfing some of the world’s premium breaks. Others will find it in the plethora of random facts and mythical interpretations that involve peoples, places, and cultures from unfamiliar parts of the world. Some may even emerge questioning their spirituality. (A subtle goal of Kotler’s?) Regardless, West is 260 pages of reading that, although targeted to a specific sect of enthusiasts, easily satisfies the intellectual palate of those without access to junky waves on random coasts but have ready links to Amazon.com.
Find Kotler’s book here, also access the book's own Myspace site.
From the onset, Kotler—whose Lyme disease, loss of a perfect job and lady has mired him in a stuck-in-a-rut mentality—does not hide his borderline apathy towards life. “I was little amazed that life was nothing more than an accumulation of days,” he opines, in what shouldn't be misconstrued as whiny or trivial. Others might relinquish the same shame if they had to carry a notebook filled with reminders and instructions about how to turn on a computer and not jump out of windows. Yet, after quickly disclosing the premise of the author's heavy mileage surfing trip, you might expect the rest of the book to be a self-indulgent reflection of spirituality and mortality that will leave you asking what makes this guy’s problems so damn important. Until the unexpected arrives.
Sure, it can easily be argued that Kotler’s reasons for writing about a venture taken for himself are innately selfish. But his dives into surfing's mysticism involve the types of experiences that surfers have been having for years. Kotler simply has the chance (and the budget) to explore the questionable spirituality that thousands of wave riders before him never articulated clearly. His story is our story, really, as surfers looking for answers to the unanswerable. Is it a religion? If so, beneath what deity? Do surfers have a keener understanding of, a more developed relationship with, Mother Nature in all her otherworldly splendor? Who knows? Kotler doesn’t and neither do we, which makes his pursuit easy to follow. His attempt at answers is made for all of our questions.
West of Jesus begins with Kotler’s acceptance that his life sucks, at least recently. Defining himself as “the kind of person who went to places hard to get to and far away,” Kotler boards a plane and a bumpy car ride to Costa Azul, Mexico, in a proactive step to start living the life he had been “choosing not to live.” In between almost drowning and answering calls from editors, Kotler wrote, surfed, and had three articles denied. In what had ideally been an escape for the better, he’s sent to the back of life's line, again, “wondering where [his] life had gone.” After his return from Mexico, however, calls are made, waves are ridden, the Conductor’s story is heard twice in as many locations, and the search for the source of this surfer’s myth begins.
The Conductor’s is a story of two bros “on an epic surf quest who get lost near the ass-end of nowhere and meet some guy who could control the weather and conduct the waves with some kind of baton made from human bone.” That is merely Kotler’s abridged version, expanded upon for pages and pages later in the text. He treks across the globe in hopes of rooting out the origins of the myth. It seems perplexing until readers remember that the guy’s life was a wipeout. At that point, any motivation was good reason. And traveling around the globe to world-class surf spots and getting pitted in waves that most surfers can’t even fathom, all under the guise of research for an article about potential hearsay, doesn’t seem like a bad reason to say "fuck Lyme disease."
Kotler tells a good story, colorfully adorning what may sound like scientific droning. The man clearly did his homework for the other two-thirds of the book’s content: science and religion, seasoned with flavorful history. His explanations of the alluvial sandbars that form from out-flowing rivers that create the perfect barrels at pointbreaks like Rincon in Santa Barbara, California, are accompanied by surfer jargon (“Reefbreak is a fancy way of saying lots of rock underwater”), random historical references (“[In 1988] a man named A.J. Hackett opened the world’s first commercial bungee jump operation”), and religious inferences (Siddhartha, Moses and Jesus were all unhappy, apparently). Surfers or not, readers are going to close Kotler’s book knowing more odd shit than they did before they opened it.
For all the marvelous knowledge and detail that spews like the whitewash of a closeout wave, West of Jesus’ main flaw is that it can be tiresome. Whether it’s the somewhat excessive use of quotes—be it Joan Didion, Ernest Hemingway, Tom Waits, or the efficacious Hunter Thompson—or the lengthy commentary on out-of-body experiences and Dr. Melvin Morse’s research on the topic from 1982, Kotler loads the book with so much to retain that it can harbor fleeting focus. It’s not that it shouldn’t necessarily be included—indeed, the opposite helps Kotler avoid the apocryphal—it’s that more of Kotler himself would make all the sporadic intervals of facts easier to regurgitate at a dinner party. Including more forgettable rambling (just a little) may help us remember the unforgettable. Nonetheless, Kotler diminishes the tediousness by smoothly returning to the exposition that launched him on his tangent.
Ultimately, West of Jesus's lasting quality will be its satiability: calming landlocked surfers frustrated from what Kotler defines as acute “surf-withdrawal.” The book strikes all the subtitles with attention to detail and sufficient relevance. Surfers will find its value in the life and death accounts of Kotler surfing some of the world’s premium breaks. Others will find it in the plethora of random facts and mythical interpretations that involve peoples, places, and cultures from unfamiliar parts of the world. Some may even emerge questioning their spirituality. (A subtle goal of Kotler’s?) Regardless, West is 260 pages of reading that, although targeted to a specific sect of enthusiasts, easily satisfies the intellectual palate of those without access to junky waves on random coasts but have ready links to Amazon.com.
Find Kotler’s book here, also access the book's own Myspace site.
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