Unbalanced
The Unbalanced explores the world of sports and the culture surrounding it; from basketball to baseball, football, hockey, wrestling, and more.
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Stories in Unbalanced that you’ll love, handpicked by our team.
Lovin’ the PWHL
The inaugural season for professional women’s hockey is well underway and I, like many North American sports enthusiasts, have cottoned on to the excitement of the games and the fanfare. Most of the women playing are relatively well-known through previous media exposure during Olympic games, World Championships and Rivalry matches between Canada and the United States. Yesterday, March 8, being International Women’s Day, I decided that I would pay tribute to the women of the world in my own little sports-minded way, and watch a PWHL game between the teams from Toronto and Montreal. Casually observing the new teams since the start of the season, I had suspected that the Women’s league was somehow different from the NHL and other men’s hockey leagues around the world. Sometimes these differences don’t show up during the Olympic games or World Championships because of the media focus on winning gold medals and the like. However, during a regular season hockey game, be it a men’s game or a women’s game, one gets a chance to really notice what the respective games are all about. I would therefore like to weigh in on what have formerly been suspicions but now are being seen as true differences between men’s and women’s professional hockey.
John Oliver SmithPublished 2 months ago in UnbalancedA Spirit That Fears Nothing
There are many sound reasons to repudiate professional sport in general and NHL hockey in particular. After all, the game has been as utterly defiled by cynical, avaricious late-stage capitalism as every other aspect of contemporary existence. The ordinary fan is incessantly encouraged by marketers and advertisers to gamble, guzzle alcoholic beverages and devour kilograms of fast food, which is a bald oxymoron if you contemplate it for a moment. Salaries are stratospherically inflated, as are ticket prices, and what passes for discourse generated by the participants in, and commentators upon, the game is so full of cliches and verbal false limbs that Orwell’s ghost will never stop screaming.
D. J. ReddallPublished 4 months ago in UnbalancedThe History of the Adams Division
I've followed the NHL in some form for 30 years, but I'm still learning about the league I enjoy watching. A long time ago, I did learn about the old divisions: Adams, Patrick, Norris, and Smythe. These divisions predated the geographical ones that we've known for the last 30 years, and the rivalries were immensely intense during that period. This will be the first of four stories focusing on those classic divisions, and I'll start geographically, even though the names had nothing to do with location. First off, the Adams Division.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished 4 months ago in UnbalancedA Look Ahead to Week 18 of the 2023 NFL Season
Week 17 kicks off tonight, but I want to take a look ahead to Week 18, the final week of the regular season. We all love the final week, don't we? We've really loved it since they changed the final week's schedule back in 2010. The final week always completes the league's playoff puzzle, it's do or die for a lot of teams looking to get in and even clinch divisions. However, a lot of games lacked a lot of drama, and even saw teams not give their all when they know that they can't move up in the standings. So in 2010, the NFL decided to make all of the final week's games divisional, because regardless of where a team is in the standings, that team wants to give their all to defeat a division rival.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished 4 months ago in Unbalanced63 Strikes, You're Out!
They did it, folks. They finally did it. The Los Angeles Chargers actually fired Brandon Staley as their head coach, with the firing coming after the Chargers suffered a very embarrassing loss on national television. The Chargers were on the road against the Las Vegas Raiders, and it was a game that saw the Raiders absolutely pour it on. 63 points. Nine touchdowns--seven of them by the offense. The 63 points fell just 10 short of the long-standing record set by the Chicago Bears, who scored 73 points in the 1940 NFL Championship Game over Washington. However, the Raiders' 63 points are the most in team history, and marked the second time this season that a team scored 60+ points--the Miami Dolphins scored 70 points in Week 3.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished 5 months ago in UnbalancedNFL Week 9 Recap: Nine Months
January 2, 2023. We all remember that Monday evening. The Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals faced each other in what was the final Monday night game of the season. Regarding the game and the storyline, it was two teams jockeying for position in the AFC, as they were both in position to possibly take the AFC's #1 seed. This was an important game for both teams, but before the 1st quarter ended, there was suddenly something much, much more important than the game of football.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished 6 months ago in UnbalancedFantasy Football is BACK!
Despite being English, I have found myself becoming more and more enamoured with the sport that the Americans call “football”. Watching American Football in the UK used to be a most difficult proposition, aside from the Superbowl the only way to watch any action was a highlights show at 1am on a Wednesday morning. During the nineties and early 2000’s I was school aged, but after that coverage started to improve. In recent years Sky Sports have added the Thursday and Monday night games, as well as three Sunday matches. Even then, the absolutely baffling decision to host games only on nights when most people have work confuse me no end. But as my interest has grown, I’ve put additional effort into trying to keep up with the games when I can. My wife has since joined me in this interest, but unlike me she is a reasonable person, who goes to bed at a sensible time rather than staying up into the night watching foreign sports and typing up nonsense for strangers to read (4th wall break! Hi, thanks for reading).
Luke FosterPublished 8 months ago in UnbalancedNFL Week 1 Recap: A New York Minute
The NFL is back, and this fan was ever so eager for the season to start. My reasons were simple. One, I had a good feeling about Fantasy Football this year, and two, I'm a Yankees fan who wants to forget about this disaster of a season. With every new NFL season comes new storylines and new questions, and one of the biggest new storylines of the debuting 2023 NFL season had to be Aaron Rodgers making his New York Jets debut on Monday Night Football.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished 8 months ago in Unbalanced
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2024 Division Finals Preview
We have now arrived in the second round if this year's Stanley Cup Playoffs. The Elite Eight. The Division Finals. The first round of any playoffs is always special, especially that very first game, because...well...that makes it real. The second round is amazing, because it's usually the last stop before things get really serious. The winners play for their respective conferences, with each series winner representing their respective divisions. This year's first round didn't give us any true upsets, as all of the Wild Cards were ousted, while only one third place team advanced.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished about 8 hours ago in UnbalancedElegy of Cheaters and Rogues
At least you'll have WrestleMania, Vegas, because you're not getting another Stanley Cup. It's fitting that the Vegas Golden Knights suffered a first-round exit, because it was this fate that led me to start despising this team in the first place. We all remember this. In 2019, the Golden Knights, in their second year in play, were up 3-1 over the San Jose Sharks. Sharks won Games Five and Six, but in Game Seven, Vegas was up 3-0. Then Joe Pavelski's head was targeted. Five minute major. Four goals scored by the Sharks. Vegas tied it, but SJ won it in OT. The Knights fans bitched. The Knights themselves bitched. Over a rightfully called major penalty.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished about 10 hours ago in UnbalancedWhat Went Wrong: What Happens Now?
This was their best chance. Their best chance. When the Toronto Maple Leafs won a playoff series last year, their first in 19 years, I saw this as the beginning of good things happening for this team. Lord knows, they deserve good things. The second round fizzled for them, but hey, they made it there. They still had the talented players. To me, I saw a Leafs team that could go far.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished a day ago in UnbalancedSomers Drives Home 16-6 Victory Over Mahopac
On Friday April 12, Somers met Mahopac at home and scored twice in the first two minutes. But the early offensive outburst was not the most foretelling aspect of the 16-6 Somers victory. "Our riding was awesome today,” said Ryan Brush, and the overdrive went into gear right away.
Rich MonettiPublished a day ago in UnbalancedPitcher’s Dual Puts John Jay on the Downside
On Wednesday April 10, John Jay and Hen Hud got a good day for some softball, and the starters definitely matched the weather. Through five, Emma Barbelet and Riley Foote mastered the opposing lineups to a 1-0 pitcher’s duel. They didn’t let up the rest of the way either. But the sun had to go down, and so did a final stat line that left one on the losing end.
Rich MonettiPublished 2 days ago in UnbalancedWhat Went Wrong: Predators Out in Six Games
You know, I was pretty happy when the Nashville Predators qualified for this year's Stanley Cup Playoffs. I still remember their surprise run to the Stanley Cup Final back in 2017, getting there as the lower of the Western Conference's Wild Cards. Since then, the playoff appearances came, but advancement didn't, and the worst of it came in 2022, when they were dominated and swept by the eventual champion Colorado Avalanche.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished 2 days ago in UnbalancedFixing The WWE Draft
The 2024 Draft Did not live up to expectations. Triple H moving the draft to the actual sports draft season was a smart move that made WWE seem connected to the sports world. Bringing back legends to announce draft picks also made the draft feel even more authentic. However, WWE isn't a sport. It's sports entertainment, which, at its best, allows WWE to play out athletic competition in the most entertaining way imaginable.
Niko BanksPublished 4 days ago in UnbalancedWhat Went Wrong: 3rd Time Was Not the Charm
You know, this is getting monotonous. I said this before when the Los Angeles Kings clinched a playoff spot this year. Two years ago, their playoff appearance was a happy accident. It came two years after they failed to qualify for the modified bubble playoffs in 2020. The Kings were happy to be there, but they managed to make it to Game Seven against the Edmonton Oilers. A team could build on that. A year later, the Kings got back in. They could take what they did a year prior, learn from it, and possibly advance. However, they would be ousted by the Oilers again, this time in six games.
Clyde E. DawkinsPublished 4 days ago in Unbalanced
Creators We’re Loving
The creative faces behind your favorite stories.
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