Don't Look Back In Anger

No, this isn't a post about the Rangers' season ending, although I suppose I should say a few things about that too...let's make it quick.

- There was a reason I didn't want to see Pittsburgh in the conference semis. Of course, I also thought it would have been great for the NHL to have Pittsburgh play Washington and have Crosby vs. Ovechkin. However, Pittsburgh has an amazing array of talent, and was truly the better team. If Hossa re-signs this summer, that's going to be one scary team for a long time. Of course, that could be what's needed to elevate the level of talent in the Eastern Conference as a whole, to have teams like the Rangers, Canadiens, etc. chasing Pittsburgh. Whether or not Crosby, Malkin, Sykora, Hossa, Staal et al (heh, that rhymes) raise the Cup this year, they're the best team the East has seen in years, and will be chased in a way that no top eastern team has been chased in years. The better team truly did win.

- Now, all of that said, the fatal flaw of this Rangers team is that the best defenseman was a rookie. You could make an argument that Paul Mara was the best defenseman on the team, I suppose, but Staal is going to be a mainstay on the Rangers' blueline for years. That said, he's not quite there yet. The Rangers could really stand to shore up their blueline this offseason, and while there's going to be a spot for Bobby Sanguinetti (adios, Marek MaWeak), the Rangers need an experienced top four defenseman to balance out the youth of Staal, Sanguinetti and Dan Girardi.

- Finally, a quick note on Jarmoir Jagr. I've been very critical of him in the past, and suggested that it took the youthful energies of Sean Avery and Brandon Dubinsky to make him work. In these playoffs, and the tail end of the regular season, Jagr did more than play like an All-Star. He played like a captain, and if he can play like a captain, then I'd be more than happy to see him spend the last two years of his NHL career in New York.

Now, to the real topic of this post. I'm in my second week of my new employment, and I think that it's finally time for me to write a thing or two about my former employer.

CSTV gave me a tremendous opportunity, and you will never, ever hear me say any different. Not many people get their first job out of college as an editor on a website and wind up producing segments for television, getting opportunities as on-air talent, and getting to any number of other things that I wound up doing in three and a half years there.

More than that, though, CSTV was where I really learned to love college hockey. Covering Dartmouth hockey as a student was fun, and Thompson Arena (STUPID WOODEN BOX and all) will always be home, no matter how many Agganis Arenas and Kohl Centers and Lynah Rinks I've worked in.

However, when I was a student covering Dartmouth hockey, I only saw the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the passion and tradition that makes our college hockey community so special. CSTV gave me the chance to see the fish fly at Lynah, feel the KurtCenter pressbox shake during "The Song" at the Beanpot, try to decipher the "Seeya" chant in Yost Arena (I've read it written down, but I never remember it), learn to sing "In Heaven There Is No Beer" (and for the record, it was in Mankato, at a game against Alaska-Anchorage), and

I also got to hear George Gwozdecky come out of left field (no pun intended) to compare Adrian Veideman to Cesar Tovar, Blaise MacDonald realize that he was watching a major sporting event on TV in Hanover for the first time since the 1986 World Series (and see the Patriots lose the Super Bowl to the Giants minutes later), Jack Parker jokingly question Brandon Yip's assessment of "probably, the biggest goal of my career" after Yip scored the overtime winner against BC for the Hockey East Championship, listen to Rick Comley make a snappy comeback after Tim Kennedy unwittingly call him old, and hear Mike Eaves try to find the right words after Wisconsin won the national championship. I even grew to appreciate some of Don Lucia's posturing, insofar as he was sticking up for his players and/or his program, deserved (defending the quality of the program in the wake of Kyle Okposo's departure) or not (calling Jeff Frazee's career save percentage "good" after the Ice Breaker).

Of course, it's really about the players, and I had the opportunity to work with some really extraordinary ones, on and off the ice. Whether it was Nathan Gerbe scoring a hat trick against BU (with two shorthanded goals, no less), Chris Lawrence winning a national championship in his last game of organized hockey, Eric Ehn becoming the first Hobey Baker finalist from a service academy or Nicole Corriero expressing no regrets about choosing her Harvard education over a future with Hockey Canada, John Curry and Matt Gilroy rising from walk-ons to All-Americans or Danny King getting his one chance to play for Denver - and seriously, I could go on for quite a while - I've been privileged to get to know some tremendous players and tremendous people.

I really have two major regrets about my time at CSTV, and they're kind of tied together.

The first real regret is that when the 2007-08 season began, I had set out to see all 59 men's Division I teams. I sat down with the schedules over the summer, looked at who was playing where and when, and submitted a schedule that would allow me to see all 59 teams. Until the end of January, I was basically on pace. There were some crazy things that I was going to have to do (including taking a train to South Bend to see Notre Dame play Ferris State, then stop in Buffalo on the way back to see Canisius play RIT...and wouldn't that have been an interesting game to see?), but I could have done it.

It was also how I intended to end my time at CSTV. I was going to leave after this year anyway, and wound up starting my new job right around the time I had intended to, only that I hadn't intended to be out of work for two months. It's a silly fantasy, but I had this Willy Wonka type fantasy...you know, "I can't go on forever, and I really don't want to try." There was at least one of the students I met along the way who expressed an interest (unsolicited) in doing what I was doing, and I had hoped that he or someone else would pick up where I left off.

Of course, that's not going to happen. CSTV is now CBS College Sports, and the online presence is obviously going to be different going forward (how different, I'm just not sure). But that said, if things were working as they were, this would be a much different blog post.

I suppose it'll sound hokey, but I felt like I had a mission when I was working for CSTV. There's something a lot more personal in college sports, and having covered football, basketball, baseball, gymnastics, field hockey, lacrosse, softball and wrestling in addition to hockey while I was at CSTV, there's a spirit that transcends the individual sports that was very tied in to what I felt CSTV was all about. To me, that spirit was a big part of what drove CSTV, and to the extent that many of the wonderful people I worked with at CSTV are still there now at CBS College Sports, it will continue to be part of the renamed network. Just not in the same way.

Of course, at the end of the day, no matter how many hockey games are or aren't on CBS College Sports, or what's online, or anything else, that spirit belongs to us. And CSTV allowed me to become part of that us; it's the reason you're reading this right now. That's something I don't ever intend to lose, and it's something that CSTV gave me.

That's a lot for me to try to put into words, and I hope you'll understand why it's taken me this long.