Live From Winnipeg: Jets-Penguins Review

My friend Christian and I are attempting to attend a National Hockey League game in every city with a team. While our annual hockey road trips haven’t been as annual lately (thanks to kids and Covid), we’re closing in on our goal. This year, joined by our friend Jason, we visited Winnipeg along with North Dakota. I already wrote about our dining experience in Winnipeg and will write a separate post about being a tourist in Winnipeg, our time in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and how we confused both American and Canadian border agents. This post focuses on the Winnipeg Jets-Pittsburgh Penguins hockey game. Please note that there are plenty of non-hockey related items, so please continue reading even if you’re not a hockey fan.

Let’s start with scheduling this trip. Our initial idea was to attend a Jets game as well as a University of North Dakota hockey game. Unfortunately, the timing didn’t work out for a UND hockey game though we did incorporate a visit to a University of North Dakota football game instead. Because why wouldn't you go to a UND football game when you have the chance? Fortunately, the timing matched up with seeing the Jets face my hometown team, the Pittsburgh Penguins. I figured out that it's been over a decade since I attended my last Penguins game. In the pre and early Alexander Ovechkin era in Washington, it was really easy to get tickets to Pens-Caps games. That changed when the Caps started being good, and ticket prices got a lot more expensive. And while I go back to Pittsburgh at least once or twice a year, I haven't been to PPG Paints Arena, except to see the Harlem Globetrotters. This is a long way of writing that I was very excited to see Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin in person again.

Trying to be a gracious tourist, I didn't want to walk around Winnipeg and the arena wearing Penguins gear. However, I wanted to show that I am from Pittsburgh for people who might understand.

Even though there were a lot more people in Penguins gear than I expected (I forgot that Crosby is a national hero in Canada), exactly zero people commented on my shirt. 

Going with the Jets (and Top Gun) theme, I liked that the home team hits the ice to Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins.

That's Kenny Loggins!

For no apparent reason, the Jets have two mascots. The first is Benny, who served as the team's mascot in the 80s and 90s before the team moved to Arizona and is now the secondary mascot. Benny is named for the former team owner Ben Hatskin and for the song Bennie and the Jets because nothing represents Sir Elton John's longstanding ties to Winnipeg like a blue mascot with a giant red nose and mohawk.

The second mascot is Mick E. Moose, which may be one of the worst names in mascot history and seems like a Disney lawsuit waiting to happen. The silhouette of Mick E. visiting our section might give you nightmares!

When the Jets score a goal, the arena blasts Takin' Care Of Business by Bachman-Turner Overdrive (along with the goal horn). Fun fact: the band is from Winnipeg, so this song makes perfect sense. The mascot really should be called BTO rather than Benny. Anyway, after the initial playing of the song, the arena staff figure out who scored the goal, and each player has their own individual song. It's a very cool idea that I haven't seen before. While one player had your standard AC/DC goal celebration song and the others weren't very memorable, Adam Lowry's goal song is Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter which is certainly a choice. 

The Jets have a house band called Mach 10 that perform between periods. At one point during one of their sets, the lead singer announced that they were going to play a song that is a fan-favorite and represents Winnipeg. Was it a BTO song? Bennie and the Jets? If you guessed Bon Jovi's Livin' on a Prayer, you win!

I appreciate Winnipeg making me and others from Pittsburgh feel like home.

Mid-way through the second period, a chant of "Where is Rutger?" emerged throughout the entire arena. Rutger McGroarty was the Jets 1st round draft pick in 2022. While I don't know the entire story, it seems that Rutger never wanted to play in Winnipeg, so the team traded him to the Penguins over the summer. The one thing you can't do as a player is say that you don't want to be there. Fans hate that more than anything else, so even those wearing Penguins gear joined the chant. I tried to answer the question by explaining that Rutger is currently in Wilkes Barre-Scranton, home of the Penguins top minor league affiliate, but no one seemed to acknowledge my response.

Before the game, the team had a nice tribute to forward Bryan Little who had one last pregame skate with the team. I didn't realize that Little played his last game in 2019 but only formally retired recently. He is a fan favorite in Winnipeg.

This is the best jersey I saw at the Canada Life Centre:

If you really want to see highlights from a game that occurred a month ago, please check out the video below. The game recap is here too. You might notice that Pittsburgh center Lars Eller had two goals for the Pens. I think he is a solid veteran that the Penguins would want to help the team win. (Sean's note: The Penguins traded Eller to the Washington Capitals last week, so never mind.)

A month after this game, the Penguins are near the bottom of the Eastern conference standings and like this game in Winnipeg, regularly lose leads. Meanwhile, the Jets are 16-3 with the best record in the league. If the Penguins aren't going to win the Stanley Cup, I'm going to support the Jets especially since I can say that I attended one of their games during their championship season. And here are a few more pictures.

Steelers Win, But How?

The Steelers faced off against their division rival the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday and somehow prevailed 18-16. Here are some key stats from the game:

The goal in football is to score more points than your opponents. To do this, you usually need to score touchdowns. The Steelers scored the same amount of touchdowns as me on Sunday with 0.

Wide receivers Van Jefferson, Calvin Austin, and Mike Williams combined for 1 catch for -1 yards. Again, that's one less than my cat Lucy.

Baltimore rushed for 124 yards on 19 carries for 6.5 yards per carry. With that type of success, many are asking why the Ravens didn't run the ball more. Derrick Henry, arguably the best running back in the NFL, only had 13 carries.

The Steelers were 4 for 16 on 3rd down conversions. That's a lot of failed 3rd down conversions. 

The Ravens scored two touchdowns in their two red zone attempts, while the Steelers went 0-4 in their trips to the red zone.

Based on these stats, you would definitely think the Steelers lost. Again, they scored no touchdowns against the highest scoring team in the league! However, the Steelers forced three turnovers and kicker Chris Boswell went 6 for 6 on field goals and that was the difference in the game.

8-2 is nice. Go Steelers!

Finally, I need to give credit to Taco Bell for using Harvey Danger's Flagpole Sitta in one of its newer commercials. Love this song. 

Much better than Davante Adams looking miserable that he has a Taco Bell in his house. (Just ignore everything other than the commercial in the video.)

The Oldest Trick In The Book

Late in the fourth quarter of the Pittsburgh Steelers-Washington Commanders game, the Steelers had the ball with a slim 28-27 lead. The Steelers ran three straight running plays with Washington using all of its time-outs to stop the clock after each play. The Steelers had 4th-and-1 with 1:02 remaining on Washington's 49 yard line and chose to bring out its offense instead of punting. I said to my kids that the Steelers were going to try to draw Washington offsides because there was no way they would go for it and risk giving Washington the ball only needing about 15 yards to get into field goal range. (I only said the first part.) Everyone knew this. Well, maybe not one person. Let's go to the video.

As the Steelers celebrated the win, all I thought of was this:

My Thoughts on the 2024 Presidential Election

I watched a lot of TV over the last few days, and I've come up with this conclusion: There is too much coverage of the Dallas Cowboys. Seriously, they are a mediocre to above-average team and have been that way for nearly 30 years. While I stand by my opinion of the Cowboys and the media obsession with this team, that's obviously not the point of this post. 

I created Sean's Ramblings as a diary of sorts. The purpose of some posts is to share something entertaining or interesting with people who read this, but there are other posts that are more for me. I like being able to look back at posts I wrote about major moments of my life over the last 20 years. Big things like the birth of my kids and the passing of my parents. I also see this blog as a bit of a time capsule for me. Because of that, I want to write my thoughts on the 2024 presidential election in real time. 

Let's start with this. I'm disappointed with the results. I wanted Kamala Harris to be the 47th president of the United States and not just because I predicted in January 2020 that she would be president on January 1, 2030. (My prediction of the Kansas City Chiefs winning the most Super Bowls in the 2020s is looking good right now.) Obviously, this is 20-20 hindsight, and I'm not trying to play the blame game (though it may sound like it). Joe Biden never should have run for reelection. Back when he was running for president in 2020, he talked about being a 1-term, transitional president. At some point during his term, probably when he saw that Trump was going to be the Republican nominee, he changed his mind. Many believe that Biden thought he was the best (or only) person who could defeat Trump since he did it before. However, it was clear during his debate with Trump over the summer that Biden could no longer serve as president and campaign for re-election at the same time and then do the job for another 4 years. He should have bowed out a year ago, allowing for a Democratic primary. Again, I'm really not trying to blame Biden. I think he is a good person and should be remembered as someone who dedicated his life to serving Delaware and America.

Unfortunately, Biden's late decision to bow out of the race left Kamala Harris little time to organize. Again, this is hindsight, but even after her time in the Senate and as Vice President, she's not that well known to many Americans. I'm writing this acknowledging that I follow politics rather closely and understand that many people don't. At least by polling data, Biden isn't considered popular with the majority of Americans, and Harris struggled to show where she differed from him. For many people, illegal immigration was one of the most important issues in the election. Even though a vice president has little to do with the policies and actions of the president, by being part of the Biden administration, she became the candidate responsible for any real or perceived border crisis. Sure, border crossings are down and a bipartisan deal to provide increased border security was killed by Trump telling House and Senate Republicans not to support the legislation, but that wasn't the message much of the electorate heard. Same with the economy. Inflation in America was and is lower than most of the world and the unemployment rate is down, but people see higher grocery bills and higher interest rates on homes and vehicles and blame the current administration. 

So even though Trump started campaigning for president nearly a decade ago and doesn't seem to have much interest or ability to formulate specific policies (see the concept of a plan for a new health care system) other than making bold statements (see ending the war in Ukraine in 24 hours), Trump appears to have won more votes based on the issues. Fine. I mean, not fine, but fine. I'll get more to the issues momentarily.

Character needs to count for something. Even Trump's biggest supporters admit that he needs to get off social media and tone down his rhetoric. That's being generous. He's a bully who constantly insults people. He's a terrible example for kids. He's a sore loser who never admits defeat or that he is wrong.

He was found guilty of 34 felonies for falsifying business records. A jury found him liable for sexual abuse. 27 women have accused Trump of sexual assault. I'm sure that there are some MAGA members who think that everything is a big conspiracy against Trump. Do they truly believe that ALL of this is made up? That's like believing that Cleveland Browns QB Deshaun Watson just likes getting massages from different massage therapists each time. 

It really says something that VP Mike Pence, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, and many other members of his administration refused to endorse or support Trump.

Okay, back to issues. Deport criminals? Assuming there is some type of proof of crimes and/or due process, no one is going to argue with this. Get em outta here.

Mass deportation for all undocumented migrants including those who have been in the US for years, pay taxes, and contribute to society? Not so fast my friend. Trump also wants to pardon the January 6th rioters. But I thought it was antifa or government operatives who rioted. So why exactly is the "tough-on crime" Trump going to pardon those convicted? Oh, it was actually Trump supporters that rioted, and he wants to show his support for them.

This post is too long already. I haven't even touched on abortion, LGBT rights, the fact that Trump wants the licenses of CBS and ABC revoked, and that he will go after political opponents. I haven't included the role of Elon Musk (whose companies have billions of dollars in federal contracts; hello conflict of interest!) and Robert Kennedy Jr. (with years of experience as an environmental lawyer but will be in charge of health and have nothing to do with the EPA) in the administration. There's just so much. Maybe Trump will try to be a president for all Americans like he said in his speech after winning the election. Based on his history, I'm not counting on it, but I'm trying to be positive. I'm hopeful that Trump will be good for Israel in getting the hostages home and helping to end the conflicts between Israel and the Iranian proxies.   

I guess I'll end with this. My parents were both government employees. Yes, they were in stable jobs with good benefits, but they both wanted to help people. We grew up directly across the street from a parkway exit. Over the years, friends and neighbors wanted us to put campaign signs in our front yard due to it being a high visibility location, but my parents refused to do so because they couldn't as federal employees. They took this very seriously. This is a big part of why Project 2025 scares me. Mass firings of good civil servants doing their jobs just because they don't share the same political affiliation of the administration is not the way to make America great again. It's the exact opposite.

Photo of Harris by Alex Brandon (AP). Photo of Trump from Getty Images.

Pictures And More Pictures

Sure, there's a pretty big election tomorrow, and I still want to write about my Winnipeg-North Dakota trip, but today, I feel like sharing pictures. Warning: Some of these are not very recent.

I had no idea there are large groups of people who thought Honey Nut Cheerios are too big and need to be smaller.

I found a Wegmans-mobile in the wild (assuming you consider a Wegmans parking lot the wild).

Here's a fresh and current picture. While I knew that the Nathan's hot dog eating contest on July 4th wasn't aired live, ESPN really killed any suspense by showing that Miki Sudo won with the number of hot dogs eaten in the middle of the telecast.

For any of my Ithaca friends, my parents kept a bowl full of matches in their home. While we didn't keep any while cleaning out their place, I enjoyed coming across this one from Simeon's on the Commons (now called Simeon's American Bistro)

From a Nationals game this summer, I liked the look of these Japanese heritage jerseys.

Deer (and geese) really like "my" golf course at dusk.

It's a rainbow!

At the end of his time in first grade, Luigi drew George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Pretty good!

When I first saw The Moose's socks, I questioned why we bought him a pair with the picture of some type of angry bird

Turns out, that it's actually the Under Armour logo. 

Finally, how about a few sunset pictures?

Really finally. Here's one picture from Winnipeg.