NHL Playoff Picks: Jonah from Fucked Up Vs. a Southern Stathead: Round II, Part I

The first round of the NHL playoffs are over and not a damn thing has been settled. Chronologically, we're nearer to knowing who will win the Stanley Cup, but, epistemologically, we're still at square fucking one. We simply do not and cannot know. Back on the eve of round one, two experts in dissimilar fields sat down with us to proffer guidance. One was Sam Page, a US-born statistics wonk and Nashville Predators blogger; the other was Jonah Falco, a Canadian-born punk-rock drummer and guitarist of considerable renown who, if asked how many NHL teams there are, would probably miss the correct figure by at least six. Sam correctly predicted six of the eight first-round matchups and Jonah, who got five, was only slightly less clairvoyant. Today, they're back. I'm counting on Jonah to win the overall prognostication war because it would prove my prior contention that Canadians, though out of their depth on the subject of hardcore music, are preternaturally more hockey-smart than Americans.

May the best stereotype win.

VICE: Nashville and Phoenix, two redheaded stepchildren of the NHl, have risen to prominence and find themselves squaring off in the second round. Not a lot of history to go on here, but who do you like?
Sam Page: I'm going to make the homer pick again, but think I’m more justified this time. The Coyotes don’t really have a statistical advantage anywhere. This season, Nashville boasted the league’s best power play; Phoenix’s was the second worst. The ‘Yotes had a slight edge in penalty killing (eighth-best versus 10th-), but the Predators’ unit has been much improved since trading for two elite short-handed specialists in the league—Hall Gill and Paul Gaustad—at the deadline. Maybe goalie Mike Smith steals a couple of games, but expect Phoenix to get outplayed by an all-around better Predators team. Preds in six.

Jonah Falco: I'm sticking with Nashville. That's where you go to get your song broken. That's where things happen. Maybe not so much now, and the Grand Ole Opry is a shadow of its former self, but Nashville as a city is important enough that they should win. But, then again, betting against Phoenix and The Feederz—maybe not a great idea. What happened last round? There was confrontation. There was tension. Everybody tried to call Phoenix's bluff, like, "Are you really going to kill the rat on stage, Frank Discussion?" That really happened, by the way. You know, everyone let their guard down: "He's not going to do it, he's not going to do it." Then—thwack!—good night, rat. But I don't think they have a trick up their sleeve this time. I think they burned their one opportunity at misdirection and now nobody is going to be fooled. Nashville is going to take it.

The LA Kings have a stifling defensive squad in the Blues to contend with. Can they win?
Sam: Who can stop the Kings? Coming into these playoffs they outshot 13 straight opponents, 451-302. Well, unstoppable force, meet immovable object, in the form of the league’s best shot-suppressing defense. Were the Kings going up against a goalie tandem inferior to LA’s Jonathan Quick, I’d call for an upset. But Jaroslav Halak and Brian Elliott were every bit as good. Quick’s 1.95 goals against average, second in the NHL, was far behind Elliott’s 1.56. And Elliot’s the backup! It’s weird, this two-seed versus eight-seed matchup is statistically the closest of the playoffs so far. Blues in 7.

Jonah: LA hardcore, at least in my favorite era of the early 80s, is surprisingly sparse. There were certainly things happening, but it's really all over the map. I think it's going to come down to the Stains LP. It came out on SST. SST, of course, is a very famous label: Saccharine Trust, Black Flag, Meat Puppets—every band in the world. But then there was also the Stains. There was another Stains from Texas; they became MDC. But these Stains were from East LA and they were completely crazy. “Sick and crazy” is what they called themselves. I think that LP is the most cutting, exceptional example in that whole SST catalog of something that's just, like, dragged into the middle of a lot of other things that made sense—the bands I mentioned earlier—and just sliced it all apart. It had the crazy looseness of the SST sound, as if Greg Ginn were playing guitar. It also had the feel of Suicidal with the whammy bar and the fuzzed-out guitars and the self-referential, "I'm fucking nuts" vibe. But I'd say it's more believable than "Institutionalized." They're saying, "Sick and crazy, sick and crazy/Mom and Dad, I'm sick and crazy." It's kind of the same message as "Institutionalized" but it's slightly more desperate. Now the Kings… How have the Kings been doing in the last decade?

Well, for years, post-Gretzky, they were totally in the weeds. And then, about six or seven years ago, they had a change in management and started to draft well. And now it's all coming to fruition.
Jonah: That's exactly what I'm saying. Now's the time for sick and crazy. LA's time is now. I mean, St. Louis, there's a city that desperately needs a hockey title to feel good about itself. The fellow who ran the City Museum in St. Louis died while trying to build Cementland. I mean, that's a big blow. Do you know what the City Museum in St. Louis is?

Absolutely not.
Jonah: It was one man's pet project. He bought a former hat factory and decked it out into a crazy adult—not as in XXX, but just like, adult—playhouse. It has a slide that goes ten stories in a spiral. There's a set of prehistoric caves that he built. There's a space shuttle. There's a bus that's driving off the roof. So, after that, his next project was Cementland. He was driving a bulldozer trying to sort out Cementland. He was doing it in the middle of the night because he'd had an idea. And the dozer flipped and he died. Now that's a big loss. And I mean that with all due respect. So the hockey needs to happen for them. Every person has a Blues badge, a Blues hat. Unfortunately, though… “Sick and crazy.”

Previously - Round 2, Part I

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