Lowetide is my favourite hockey blog, by far. He writes in a style reminiscent of classic Bill James (of whom he’s an acknowledged fan), and his mix of opinion, analysis, prospect-tracking, and historical perspective is unparalleled. He also attracts some superb commenters and his game day threads are epic (300-400 comments, oftentimes).

He’s also, like myself and at least a couple of the regulars here, an erstwhile fan of the Montreal Expos. Yesterday’s post used Bryn Smith as a jumping-off point to discuss a puzzling Oilers prospect. It’s good stuff, and even if you’re not an Oilers fan, it’s worth a read.

UPDATE: The Bryn Smith link is dead, unfortunately. Looks like LT is having Blogger issues.

UPDATE 2: Rescued from my RSS reader cache:

This is Bryn Smith. He was a very unique major league baseball pitcher before the sport died in 1994. Smith had several things that made him unusual: his big pitch was a palmball (take a baseball and hold it back in your hand, covering the entire ball with your hand like you would a little red rubber ball if you were going to squeeze it) and he often won throwing what he called a “BP” (batting practice) fastball.

He also looked very calm and relaxed on the mound. In fact, Bryn Smith often didn’t look interested. When the third out was recorded (if he was still on the mound), Smith would walk to the dugout with little emotion. For all the world his body language said “this is my job, I’ve got my 3 outs and I’d like to sit a spell.”

You can go years without seeing players who stand out like Smith did, and because he stood out in ways that had little to do with force or muscle, he was a subtle odd-fellow.

JF Jacques is the exact opposite. What makes him unqiue is his size (6.04, 220) and speed (he’s a fast man) and his effectiveness as a hitter (the people he hits make faces that tell us it hurts quite a bit).

I’ve been on about JF Jacques since he was drafted, and I think it’s down to me, Dennis and Tyler in terms of fan club. I understand he’s an acquired taste, like jazz or Bryn Smith. However, he’s recovered from surgery, he’s 1-5-6 and minus one in 7 AHL games and he’s close t getting recalled to the majors.

He’s played 50+ NHL games without scoring a point, and I keep thinking about Bryn Smith and the day he was going to be released by the Expos. It came in Triple A when he was pressing and his choices were back to Double A (where he’d dominated) or his release at season’s end.

So he went out to the mound and relaxed to the point of indifference. And that was the day Bryn Smith started doing the things he’d need to accomplish in order to get major league hitters out. Palmball, batting practice fastball, arms and legs and groundballs to the shortstop.

I don’t know what playing with indifference looks like at the NHL (Dustin Penner?) level but here’s hoping Jacques finds that happy place and finds his way. Crazy Train is too good a nickname to stay obscure.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 9:44 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.