It’s that simple. After a very big shutout win last night over the Flyers in Detroit, the Red Wings go on the road tonight in Boston with the opportunity to extend the longest active playoff streak in all of professional sports.
The Bruins, Flyers, and Red Wings are fighting for the Eastern Conference’s two remaining playoff spots. Detroit and Boston each have two games left, including one against each other, while Philadelphia has three games remaining. The Eastern Conference standings currently look like this: Continue reading
It’s an overcast February day at Clemente Park. The late winter thaw has melted the snow revealing the dull, listless grass. A young man in sweats pulls up in a faded black Nissan Sentra and begins to pull some gear out of the back seat. Ernesto Pulido is tall and lean with flowing wavy hair, cut close on the sides and in the beard. He pulls out some ragged pink Nikes and meticulously laces them up. “I really don’t like to change shoes,” he explains. Typical of many athletes, he’s particular about keeping his gear unchanged.
You’d see guys toward the end of a game, maybe getting ready for their final at bat, double-back into the locker room to chug a beer to “re-kick the bean” so they could step to the plate completely wired and focused and dialed in. They had it down to a science, with precision timing. They’d do that thing where you poke a hole in the can so the beer would flow shotgun-style. They’d time it so that they were due to hit third or fourth that inning, and in their minds that rush of beer would kind of jump-start the amphetamines and get back to how they were feeling early on in the game—pumped, jacked, good to go. How they came up with this recipe, this ritual, I’ll never know, but it seemed to do the trick; they’d get this rush of confidence that was through the roof and step to the plate like the world-beaters they were born to be. … 
ALDLAND 