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Deep Diggers Unite In Attempt To Actually Lower Standards

by IwoCPO on 09/18/07 at 06:32 AM ET
Comments (4)

Exhibition season opens tonite in The State of Hockey and with it Mike Babcock heads into his third year of playing “Mess with the Diggers’ Heads.” If there’s a bigger lying liar than Babcock, prove it.  He’s spent his first two years shaking his head in amazement as the Wing beat writers take everything he says as actual fact. 

April 2006, according to my notes.
Babcock: “It may look like Hank’s back is hurting but it’s really a migraine thing that makes him walk funny, which isn’t funny, but it still isn’t a back, which would be bad because backs are a bitch.”
Khan(!): “Word for word Mike?”
Babcock: “Word for word. Every last b-word Ansar. Every one of them, all in a row just like the pretty maids on Hotel California.”
Khan(!): “Done.”

Filppula and Cleary, hurt Sunday but amazingly healthy now because Babcock said so, will practice today according to Helene St. James.  And Our Czech Miracle of Insanity made it through a period unscathed last night.  1 down, roughly 240 to go.

Because you enjoy it, a quick tour.

Apparently, the kids are making life tough on Uncle Mike and his coaching staff.  Difficult decisions.  Stress.  Healthy anxiety.

“Our young guys, compared to the two previous years I’ve been here, are better. They’re growing up. We have a lot of tough decisions. We were going to break into an American league and NHL group tomorrow—we’ve got too many tough decisions.”

Made a Farrell reference the other day but none of you elitists caught it.  Apparently “Old School” isn’t the type of film you guys admit to enjoying.  Me?  I’m all over it and I’ll tell you something: every time I read a quote like the one above from Babcock, it sounds like Frank The Tank.  “Big day tomorrow. Bed, Bath and Beyond.  Can’t break the into American and NHL groups. Too many tough decisions so we’re going streaking instead.”

Kinda like this T.F.C deal the Free Press has going on.  Every day a gaggle of their young buck staffers get together over juice boxes and compile some stray tidbits from the Detroit sporting world.  They’ve got lists, links, images, quotes.  All the fun stuff you and your family can enjoy.  Unfortunately, out of the roughly 30 different items they mention in today’s edition, there is exactly one Wing mention.  Plenty of Sparty paranoia, Kitna “miracles”, Zumaya failures, UM suicide watches, etc.  Good stuff, just very little Wings. I’m sure they’ll come around, right?  Riiigggghhhhht.

Shocking.  St. James and Khan each wrote stories on Derek Meech today, bringing the number of consecutive days Deep Diggers have written practically identical stories on the same player to 27.  The creativity of this group continues to make my head spin.  Aggressive, inquisitive, eager, unbelievably mediocre.

Thankfully, Ted Kulfan is always there to pick up the slack when his peers get tired and sweepy.  Because he’s creative, he waited a full two days to work the now redundant “keeps the flies off” quote from Babcock into an Aaron Downey story.

“Keep the flies off,” said Babcock, referring to the ability to keep opponents from roughing up offensive players such as Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg.

Good stuff Ted.  Unfortunately, we’d already seen it...at least twice.  Thanks to George Malik for the assist on this one.  Mike Babcock must have laughed when he saw the pens start scribbling when he described Downey as a player who could, yes, “keep the flies off.” Why so funny?  Because he threw that one out there one year to the day that he said the exact same thing about Wing legend Brad Norton.

“He’s a huge man,” commented Babcock. “Having somebody to keep the flies off of us is a good thing.”

Our Diggers.  Clearly in mid-season form.

Filed in: | Abel to Yzerman | Permalink
 Tags: Babcock, Babcock, Cleary, Deep+Diggers, Downey, Filppula, Hasek,

Comments

Slightly off topic:

I know I shouldn’t take pleasure in this but I do; does that make me evil?

http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/news/story?id=3023646

Posted by srt on 09/18/07 at 08:01 AM ET

They’re mailing it in already, and that’s bloody sad, innit?

Posted by George James Malik from South Lyon, MI on 09/18/07 at 08:30 AM ET

It’s pathetic.  You’ve got forty guys to choose from, 25 of them have a great chance of heading to Detroit, and all they do is go for the guys Hahn trots out in front of them.  There is no effort whatsoever.

I kid around about the Diggers quite a bit, but this is complete laziness.  I feel a rant coming on.

Posted by IwoCPO from Washington, DC on 09/18/07 at 08:36 AM ET

srt:

The German word is “schadenfreude” (spelled something like that), for taking pleasure in the misfortune of others.

Snickering because he seems to have caught Kronwall’s brittle bones is human.  Wishing him a painful death would be evil.  I think you’re all good.

Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 09/18/07 at 11:34 AM ET

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