Wilco, without a doubt the best band in the world at this moment, released their latest album last week.  Titled Wilco (The Album), it was eagerly anticipated by a legion of fans and music media who, for the most part, have shared a similar sentiment about the new release…

While the album’s good, it’s not necessarily up to the high standards of past Wilco offerings. 

Which is unfair, and probably inaccurate, to already have decided the fate of a release a scant seven days into its public life (yes, it was available earlier on the band’s website).  Still, take your pick of some of their earlier work…Being There, Summerteeth, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, A Ghost Is Born, Sky Blue Sky.  All fine albums, with each one setting up massive expectations for the next release.  And so far, Jeff Tweedy and crew have managed to scale those self-inflicted peaks, though in each case, it’s taken some time for fans and critics to have their eyes opened to the gems contained within.

In an earlier life, I reviewed new releases by a wide spectrum of bands.  What always bothered me was the need, due to the magazine deadline, to pass judgement on an album after only, at the most, a half-dozen listens.  Some records/CD’s require time to reveal all their hidden beauty; a cursory listen may turn up the radio-friendly hits, but not the real gold underneath.  If anything, a music reviewer/magazine should be required to revisit a reviewed album six months later.

While listening to Wilco’s latest offering on the way to work today, the immediate lukewarm reaction to it reminded me of much of the hockey world’s reaction to what GM Bob Gainey has done with the Montreal Canadiens in the past two weeks.

After watching his team take a nosedive after the All-Star break, firing head coach Guy Carbonneau, taking over behind the bench himself, and getting swept by the Boston Bruins in the first round of the playoffs (all this during the overblown 100th anniversary celebrations), Gainey is understandably under considerable pressure to improve the lot of the Canadiens for the 2009-10 campaign.

He’s cast his lot with underachieving goaltender Carey Price, which might, in part, explain why Jacques Martin was brought aboard as head coach.  Gainey was facing a summer of significant roster turnover, as a number of players were set to become unrestricted free agents on July 1st.

While many in the media, and fans as well, were curious as to how Gainey would manage this off-season, most pointed to the fact that the Habs would benefit from having a lot of cap room to play around with.  Surely they’d be able to land the big stud centre the team has lacked since…since…Pete Mahovlich???

What about the Vinnie rumours?  How about Gaborik or Hossa?  Should they keep Komisarek or go a different direction?  And what about Kovalev and Kaptain Koivu?

So many questions, and Gainey began to answer them by engineering a pre-July 1st trade with the similarly underachieving New York Rangers.  Suddenly, Scott Gomez was a Hab.  That deal seemed to knock over a series of dominoes, which ended up revealing the names of Hal Gill, Mike Cammalleri,  Brian Gionta and Jaroslav Spacek, not to mention Perry Pearn.

Almost immediately, the reviews on Montreal Canadiens (The Album) were mixed, at best.  Were the Habs a better team now than they were in April?  Did they address any of the myriad of issues that faced this team going into the summer?  Are all these players too small?  Okay, Hal Gill excepted, but in his case, is he too slow?  Where’s that stud centre we’re all been clamouring for?  Why allow Kovalev to leave…and for Ottawa of all places?  Has he ever spent any real time there?  (To butcher Sinatra…I wanna sleep in the city that never wakes up).

Some have noted that Gainey and his Canadiens have moved neither forwards nor backwards with all these free agent signings and trades, but rather they have moved sideways.  As in, yes, things have changed, the team sports a new face today, but to what end?

This past weekend, a few of us from NHL Home Ice made the 10-hour car trip from Toronto, down over to Chicago (the home of Wilco), to catch the Cubs and Milwaukee Brewers at Wrigley on July 4th.  Being baseball season, there are White Sox and Cubs stuff everywhere in that town.  The NFL Bears were well represented, as were the Bulls.  Even noticed a couple of guys wearing Blackhawk caps, and more than a few shop windows displaying Blackhawk jerseys.

Regardless, for all the justified hype about the re-emergence of the Chicago Blackhawks, the Windy City is first-and-foremost an NFL town, then a baseball town, then the Bulls, and then the Hawks, make no mistake about it.

While we were there, the scandal involving possible contract errors by the Blackhawks were all the buzz back in hockey country, meaning Canada.  It was on the general sportscasts, as each and every hockey-related story is.

Nary a peep in Chicago, and I was monitoring the local television stations, and had my AM radio with me to listen to 670 The Score.  They had a brief mention of it, before going back to discussing the pennant chances of the Cubbies, and what Jay Cutler meant to the Bears.

Yet in Montreal, a hundred or so fans of the Canadiens held a rally to demand that GM Bob Gainey re-sign Alex Kovalev.  Have they seen Kovalev actually play these past few seasons?  Madness, I tell you.

Blackhawks’ GM Dale Tallon can screw up by signing over-priced over-rated free agents Brian Campbell and Cristobal Huet, and the hardcore fan base in that city will pillorize him for it, but he doesn’t have to face the same degree of pressure as a Bob Gainey, or a Brian Burke, or a Ken Holland.  While it’s on the radar, hockey gets lost in cities such as Chicago.  Let’s face it, hockey gets lost in almost every American city.  Make no mistake about it.

Yet in Canada, where apparently we have nothing better to do, every story is magnified, often far beyond its relative importance.  But that’s the way it is up here in Hockeyland.  Which helps to explain the overwhelming number of thumbs down reviews about Gainey and his moves so far this off-season.  We all think we know better up here.  There’s no allowance to actually see what these new acquisitions might do come October, we’ve already passed judgement.

50,000,000 critics can’t be wrong, but like all those stellar Wilco albums, this one will take some time to see if Gainey has engineered a masterpiece, or if all those signings were just the thrashings of a desperate man.

- Mick Kern

With all due respect to Gary Green, who I recall uttering the phrase “That’s Hockey” a lot during his TSN days in the 1990’s, I hope he’ll be alright with me borrowing it, (in fact, he’s probably saying it himself tonight), after a throughly entertaining Game Four of the Stanley Cup Final.

It took four games, but finally we had delivered, to our door, piping hot, a number of highlight reel goals.  Took long enough, particularly when you consider how many top-notch players are involved in this series.

Before we get to all that, there is a symmetry developing in this series.  The Red Wings take the first two games at home 3-1 both times.  The Penguins turn around and take the next two games at their barn 4-2 each time.  Okay, it should have been 5-2, but referee Bill McCreary didn’t see fit to award an obvious empty-net goal that was negated by an obvious infraction, probably reasoning that the puck was bouncing when it was shot towards the net, thus the player didn’t have control of the puck.  C’mon Billy.  That one was going in.  What if I needed it in the pool?

Another trend; the visiting team has outshot the home team in each of the first four games, yet comes out on the short end of the one stat that trumps all other stats…the total number of goals scored per game.

Back to the second period.  The three goals the Penguins scored in that frame were all nice efforts, each one building on the one before, and the last two coming after Pittsburgh killed off back-to-back penalties.

Jordan Staal reminded everyone he hasn’t been in the press box with Tie Domi for most of this series, as he scored a beauty of a shorthanded goal to tie the game at 2 apiece.

Just under two minutes later, the Terrific Two stormed down the ice after a Detroit turnover, and Malkin showed again why he’s an amazing, gifted hockey player, as he kept the puck in front of him, and after his first pass attempt to Crosby didn’t work, he calmly regrouped, and sent it over to 87, who calmly deposited it into the net.  Very nice to watch.

And then, ladies and gentlemen, just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, the Penguins storm the Red Wings’ zone once again, this time completing a perfect tic-tic-toe play into the back of the net.  Bee-u-ti-ful.  One of those goals that brings you out of your seat, whether you’re at the arena, seated outside the arena with all those other Penguins’ zealots, or at home on your lumpy couch.

It was the type of goal that if you’re not cheering for a particular team, it enabled you even more so to savour the moment.  It was gold.

And it meant a 4-2 lead the Penguins would not relinquish, which means we’ve officially got a series now, folks.  It’s different from last year.  Oh, the Red Wings may still wrap things up in six games, very, very possible.  But this year, the Penguins have made it clear that they have every intention of winning the Cup, and intend to battle for it.

Detroit fans will take to their keyboards and unleash a torrent of smarmy comments upon reading this, but come on, with a bounce here or there, it’s the Penguins that could easily be up three games to one.  I still think, overall, Detroit was the better team in the first two games, but we all know how Lady Luck don’t give a damn about fairness.

The best thing is, in spite of the fine June weather, we are guaranteed at least two more games.  If they’re anything like tonight, then that’s a very fine thing indeed.  The two days off between Game Five and Game Six will provide even more time for Pavel Datsyuk to ride in on his white horse, and that might prove to be the tipping point.

The thing is, the young Penguins don’t appear to be too worried about what’s thrown in their way right now.  They managed to manufacture more odd man rushes against the mighty Red Wings tonight than I’ve seen in recent memory.  While Chris Osgood was his usual steady self in net, Marc-Andre Fleury matched him, and he’ll have to do that for the rest of the series in order for there to even be a chance of a new Stanley Cup champion.

But what do I care?  This was exciting hockey tonight.  Jacques Martin, are you watching?

- Mick Kern

Eric and Mick are at it again, this time dropping the gloves about Game Three of the 2009 Stanley Cup Final, the Conn Smythe Trophy, Driven (the film), hockey movies, Canadian movies, the Avalanche cleaning house, the Canadiens hiring Jacques Martin, and the fact The One Percentile is now on itunes.  And, for the record, Eric is the one person, outside of the Martin household, excited about the hiring of Martin as the new head coach of the Montreal Canadiens.