Ryan Miller is an NHL Goalie

I am not a hockey expert by nature, but I have twenty minutes or so to kill, so I'll try my best.

People defending Miller's playoff performance aren't wrong. They're just missing the point.
— John (@johnjf125) April 26, 2014

Ryan Miller is, in 2014, a good enough goalie to win a Stanley Cup. Just as Marc-Andre Fleury was a good enough goalie to win a Stanley Cup in 2009, and Jimmy Howard was a good enough goalie to win a Stanley Cup in 2008, and so on and so forth. He just isn't good enough to win the Stanley Cup by himself.

Jaroslav Halak, Miller's predecessor as goalie for the St. Louis Blues, is in a similar camp, and their statistics for the Blues this season have been astonishingly similar. Both are perfectly capable goalies with occasional runs of transcendence and typical stretches of utter competence. I was a huge Halak fan, as he was a considerable upgrade over the previous decade or so of Blues goaltending, but even as such, I really have no interest in arguing whether or not Ryan Miller is a better goalie. He might be. Hell, he probably is.

But that isn't the point.

The point is that Ryan Miller was acquired in a definite win-now situation. And what happened, once he emerged from the hellish hockey situation of Buffalo, was something that should have been reasonably expected--playing behind a defense loaded with Olympic-caliber stars in St. Louis, Miller lowered his Goals Against Average but, in turn, suffered a dip in his save percentage. The problem with save percentage, viewed by some as the only hockey stat that matters, is that Ryan Miller's number was much higher when playing with a horrible defensive unit incapable of blocking basic shots. His save percentage was phenomenal in upstate New York and in St. Louis, it is merely serviceable.

It was absurd for anyone to believe Miller was still an elite-level goalie. It's like baseball teams acquiring a pitcher before the Trade Deadline--if he were truly a transcendent, once-in-a-generation talent, no team would be in a position where they would be willing to give him away. But as such, the Blues dealt not only a comparable goalie in Halak (who is five years younger, no less), but also received a notably worse forward in the exchange (Chris Stewart has the ability to score goals, something which seems to evade Steve Ott) and traded away a prospect and a first round draft pick.

I've used the analogy before and it's probably a flawed one, but this feels very early 2010s Phillies to me. This is a team that has a core of players which it really likes and is convinced that its window for competitiveness is right now--not that the window will close next year, but that they are closer to the end than the beginning of a run. Just as the Phillies gave huge extensions to Ryan Howard and Chase Utley and Cole Hamels and Jimmy Rollins that were arguably superfluous, the Blues have extended good players who may not be good by the time the contract runs its course. Additionally, just as the Phillies traded the entire top of its farm system in 2011 for a few months of Hunter Pence, the Blues traded future parts (granted, not as many) for a few months of Ryan Miller, whose contract is nearly up (whether he re-signs or not is mostly irrelevant--the Blues could have signed him in the off-season regardless).

I hope I'm wrong. I often am, particularly about hockey. But in the meantime, I think I'm done blaming Ryan Miller. He's fine. It's not really his fault. This series against the Blackhawks, freakishly similar to last year's against the Kings, isn't a reflection on one player, just as it wasn't last year. It's a reflection on the team as a whole. A team that, while above average in the NHL, has some work to do.

Audio Johnapedia 38--A St. Louis Blues preview

Five Lessons I Learned on the Path to Weight Loss

On November 24, 2013, I hit a wall. Like, not literally hit a wall, with my fists or my car or something. But I came to an important realization. That realization was that I wanted to make a change in my lifestyle. At the time that this occurred to me, I did not own a scale, and I am abysmal at estimating the weight of anybody, but I would estimate that I weighed at least 260 pounds. Whatever my precise weight was, there was no denying that I was considerably above what my weight as a 6'0, 24 year old male should have been.

This afternoon, I stepped on the scale that I now do own. I weighed 199 pounds.

Now, the scale I use was the cheapest one I could find at Target on the day that I happened to decide that I wanted to buy a scale, so I'm not taking the results as gospel truth, though I have enough faith in the scale to assume that it is providing me with at least a decent estimate. Regardless, this is the first time since God knows when that my weight was under 200 pounds. Again, weighing myself has been an irregularity for my entire life (I suspect this is about 75% shame and 25% pure and adulterated laziness), but I do remember how much my weight was when I had a physical done before my senior year of high school. And it was more than 199 pounds.

But enough about me. You don't give a shit about that (and if you do--have you been on the internet before? Go to YouTube--you have access to pretty much every non-Prince song of the 20th and 21st centuries. It's fucking excellent. It's way better than me talking about losing a bunch of weight). Plus, it's not like I'm exactly an Adonis physique-wise anyway. But I figure that I can at least share some advice for people looking at methods of weight loss. I'm not an expert (important disclaimer: This is just based on my own experiences and not based on any kinds of extensive medical research) but I do know that there was an awful lot I picked up upon that would have been nice to know about and brace for in the process.

5. Weight loss goals are arbitrary and stupid

As I said, I hit my breaking point on November 24th, which was a Sunday. On Monday, November 25th, I contemplated what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to make a change, but I really hadn't extensively researched what I was going to do. I wanted to lose weight. I didn't have any idea as to how much weight. And this was probably a blessing in disguise. 

I didn't tell myself "I want to lose five pounds a week." I didn't tell myself I wanted to drop down to 220 pounds. I just told myself I wanted to lose some weight. In some cases in life, you want to set specific goals, but it's not like the process for weight loss really differs depending on your specificity.

So rather than setting my diet at a certain number of calories, I just decided to consume fewer of them. That simple. I didn't decide to eat 1500 calories a day because if I had done that, I'd be damn sure that I would be eating 1500 calories a day, whether I wanted to or not. And throughout the last several months, I've had days where I ate way fewer than 1500 calories and I've had days where I ate more than 1500. Fewer of the latter than the former by a wide margin, but I wasn't beholden to any specific threshold. And I didn't buy a scale until a few months into the process so I didn't worry about how much I lost. If you're 260 pounds and not, like, a center in the NBA, I can pretty well guarantee you will notice if you're losing weight. It's abundantly clear.

4. Getting complimented about weight loss is always fun

Let me be clear about this one: There is a difference between getting complimented and being put into a position where you're bragging about your own accomplishment. This post is far and away the most that I have expounded upon losing weight because, frankly, it's a kind of boring story. God bless you if you do, but I cannot even fathom somebody who hasn't gone through a similar experience and has no intention of going through a similar experience caring about any of this.

But compliments about it? I can't get enough of that shit. People will lie to you and say that they do not like receiving compliments, but they are goddamned liars.

And it doesn't matter who the person giving the compliments is. They are all fantastic. Co-workers? Friends? Family? Love it. Pretty girls? Guys? Don't care. Now, if you try to compliment me, I will brush it off and act cool about it, but it's all a lie. I suspect it's a lie for everybody.

3. Not eating is deceptively easy

Perhaps the strangest thing about my current diet is that, between the time that I wake up and the late afternoon, I generally consume more calories than I did before.

I formerly would always skip lunch and would often skip breakfast. The problem is that, pretty much as soon as I got home, I would fucking BINGE. I would eat a ton and often would rationalize how much I was eating, as well as rationalizing future snacks (which occasionally evolved into all-out meals), by reminding myself how little I had eaten before. 

There was a logic to this, and there still is, but the problem is that there is a degree of diminishing returns while eating a meal. For instance, I start my morning with a 200 calorie Slim Fast chocolate shake (which, if you've never had one before, is DELICIOUS--I would drink these things for pure leisure if it came down to it) and it satisfies my hunger for a few hours. At dinner, let's say hypothetically I go to Taco Bell (which I haven't done during this diet, but hear me out here) and order a Crunchwrap Supreme with a Crunchy Taco.  710 calories, according to their nutrition guide. Now, this meal will keep me full for longer than a 200 calorie shake...but not 3.5 times longer, as the math would imply.

So while I am forced to abide by a slightly regimented meal plan during the day during the week (constraints of work and shit), I otherwise have a pretty simple philosophy: Eat when I'm hungry and stop eating when I'm not hungry. For instance: Lean Cuisine has turkey dinners that are about 200 calories. Plenty filling for the time being, though not quite a Thanksgiving feast. Now, eating one of these babies at 5 p.m. may not satisfy my hunger for the night. Kind of depends. But they will, every single time, satisfy my hunger for the moment. Maybe later in the night I'll pull out some cereal (Kashi with Vanilla Graham Clusters is excellent and absurdly nutritious for a cereal that genuinely tastes good) and have a little bit of that. But I'm not eating it right away after the turkey dinner because 1. I'm not sure if I'll need the extra food; 2. I'll probably end up hungry for one reason or another later anyway.

2. Clothing become an obnoxious situation

This sounds like the most unsubtle humblebrag ever recorded, but this is a legitimate nuisance.

Now, my weight pre-dieting wasn't some sudden uptick that came out of nowhere--it was a gradual process and I was very much familiar with my relative size. And thus I owned a bunch of clothing that fit me comfortably.

A couple months in, my blue jeans were getting obnoxiously large (they were kind of big on me from the beginning, and then it got absurd) so I bought a new pair. Fine, no problem. But then that pair got too big. And what am I going to do? Buy a couple sizes lower? Eventually, I will stop losing weight, but I don't really know when I will stop losing weight. I don't know what size to buy. So in the meantime, aside from the one pair of jeans, my clothes are the same clothes I was wearing before. And since I kind of liked loose fitting clothing before...I all of a sudden look like a slob. Not that I was especially debonair before, but previously unheard of levels have been reached. The struggle, man. The struggle.

1. It turns out that eating a lot is really, really boring

So on November 24, 2013, I ordered and ate a medium Papa John's pizza for dinner after having eaten a not-insignificantly sized lunch. And I thought to myself, "Why am I doing this? Was I really hungry, or was I just bored?" And the answer is more the latter than the former. Maybe I was a little hungry, but I wasn't so hungry that I needed to eat a whole damn pizza.

When I started dieting, I did okay up until about 8 p.m. Around that time, I would think to myself "Hey, I'm kind of hungry." But rather than eating something, I pulled a bottle of water out of my refrigerator and started to drink out of that. And then I'd head back to my couch and watch TV or play video games or do something else. And I was good. As it turns out, I just wanted something to do. Even if "something" was something as boring as drinking water. Literally, that was it.

Now, sometimes this doesn't work. I'll start drinking some water and then I'll realize that I actually am genuinely hungry. And then I'll eat something small. And then I'll move on. You see, I live alone, so I'm bored A LOT. I'm not looking for sympathy on that count: I like being bored. I like being able to relax. This is just a drawback--that without considering the ramifications of my actions, I might continue poor habits. But these were habits I was able to break.

And if I fall back on these habits, send me a link to this post because then I will remember that these habits can be avoided. See, I had a reason for writing this all along! It just so happens that the reason wasn't particularly to entertain you. Sorry.

The Greatest April Fools Day Prank of Them All

The only good April Fools joke ever is the one @JesusHoodstar did to me our sophomore year.
— John (@johnjf125) April 1, 2014

I was asked earlier today to explain this tweet. It would take a large number of tweets, so I decided to just post the story here.

But first of all, it is important that I give some information to properly set the stage for the story. @JesusHoodstar is a good friend of mine whose name is not actually Jesus Hoodstar--since he elects to not use his real name on Twitter, I will refer to him within this story as "Bobby".

(Side note: How genius would it be if his name actually were Bobby and I called this his alias because it is always assumed that an alias is a name other than one's own actual name? God, that's a good idea. But seriously though his name isn't actually Bobby but that is the name I will call him in this story)

So anyway, I met Bobby during the first week of my freshman year of college and have maintained regular contact with him ever since. And as a result of spending large quantities of time with each other during our first years of life independence, we are obnoxiously good at getting under one another's skin. Hell, we've known each other for almost seven years and his Twitter account is still mostly an elaborate joke to troll me.

Two years in a row, April Fools Day of 2009 and of 2010, Bobby played an April Fools joke on me. The  aforementioned sophomore year prank, in 2009, makes for a far better story so I will save that tale for last. I'll start with 2010.

In Spring of 2010 (which, side note, was far and away the shittiest semester of my time in college, but that's another story for another day), Bobby and I lived together in a house. We had a third roommate who transferred in between the Fall 2009 and Spring 2010 semesters, which was unfortunate because he was far and away the responsible one of the three. Our house became a decrepit mess. For reference, here is an actual picture of my bedroom from the day I moved out of the house (the stuff on the bed was not there before, though most of it had been on my floor--this is a relatively accurate depiction of what gigantic idiots Bobby and I were as twenty-one year-olds in college.

Jesus Christ, I disgust me. But this is all tangential and pointless. Anyway, April Fools Day 2010 was on a Thursday. During that semester, I didn't have any classes on Tuesdays or Thursdays, which generally meant that I would sleep in as late as I damn well pleased and then matriculate to campus to do homework, to hang out with people, or just because I was bored. I woke up that day at around 10 a.m. (which was arguably a little bit early for me). Bobby had left long ago, having class at 9 a.m. Anyway, I opened my bedroom door and saw this.

Yep, that is pretty much what it looks like. It's 100+ plastic cups, filled about half-way with water. I don't know how long Bobby spent filling cups and I don't think Bobby considered the decent possibility that I wouldn't look down and would step on some of the cups, easily spilling water. But...I didn't step on the cups. I took a picture, knowing damn well that I would want one in order to most easily explain the situation to future audiences. And then I slowly started filling up cups with the contents of other cups in order to make a path to the bathroom (the door on the left of the above picture). Then, after quickly going to the bathroom (I don't know that Bobby considered that I'd probably really have to go upon waking up), I began grabbing cups and then pouring out the water in the bathroom sink. A logical end to an illogical prank.

I give Bobby full credit for his efforts. He bought the cups (we were just about the only college kids of legal drinking age who didn't have a huge stash of red Solo cups) and spent what I only assume was a long time filling up the cups with water and tiptoed around quietly enough that I never woke up and never suspected a thing when I opened the door. However, this prank works the same pretty much regardless of the receiving party. My intolerance for pouring out a bunch of water from plastic cups is really no higher or lower than anybody this side of the Wicked Witch of the West. But in 2009, Bobby came up with a brilliant prank which was perfectly tailored towards its target.

I took a nap after classes (I swear to God I spent occasional moments in college not sleeping) in the afternoon and when I woke up, I checked my e-mail. I had received one from the e-mail address used by dormitory's front desk which said that I had received a package. I thought it was a somewhat strange, since I wasn't expecting anything, but I headed downstairs to the desk. A girl I did not know was at the desk, inattentively sitting at a computer. I will call the girl Andrea because, I mean, it's plausible that her name was Andrea so why not. Certain details may be hazy to me at this point but I stayed as true to the actual events as I could (and if you like my ability to set a scene with dialogue, download my novel for free.

"Hey, I'm here to pick up a package."

"Sure," Andrea said. She then swiped my student ID to verify which packages were registered to me. She walked into a side room which held the mail, in addition to vacuum cleaners and board games and whatnot. She emerged holding a magazine and, not breaking stride, nonchalantly said, "Here you go."

A magazine? I didn't have any magazine subscriptions nor had I been anticipating that any magazines would arrive but...okay. Sure. I grabbed the magazine and took a step back towards my dorm room when I glanced at the magazine I had been handed. Penthouse.

Penthouse? Why the hell did I have Penthouse? Now, I've never purchased a copy of Penthouse in my life. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is that I was born after 1980.

"Excuse me?" I said to Andrea. "Uh, this isn't mine. This must be some kind of mistake or...something. But this isn't mine."

Andrea looked at the magazine, seemingly noticing for the first time what kind of magazine I had received. She then looked back at me. She then dismissively asked, "Are you sure this isn't yours?"

Clearly, Andrea didn't believe me and assumed that I was just embarrassed about receiving a Penthouse. I'm not sure why she would think I would try to cover this fact by further drawing attention to the magazine itself, but that didn't really cross my mind at the time. Even though I knew the magazine wasn't mine, I was embarrassed about it. Talking to women was probably my worst life skill at age twenty (I'm not great at it now but by comparison, I am a master orator), and even though it was a stranger to whom I was speaking, the topic at hand freaked me out.

"How about," I asked, "How about I leave the magazine here and if it's somebody else's, they can come pick it up."

Andrea was still not buying it but she acquiesced. I went back to my dorm room, still somewhat mortified by the situation. I turned the light on, turned the TV on, and sat down at my desk. And then it hit me what had happened. I couldn't recall seeing an address label on the magazine, so how could the mail have been registered to me in the first place? Pretty simple answer, really. Bobby worked at the hall desk just an hour or two before.

When I next saw Bobby, I coyly mentioned what had happened. "You know, Bobby, I got a magazine at the hall desk today."

Bobby didn't even try to deny responsibility. Then again, he didn't accept responsibility either. He simply started to laugh his ass off. About a minute later, we moved on.

Bobby had won. April Fools Day pranks are rarely perfectly executed and perfectly designed. But for April Fools 2009, Bobby had pulled off the greatest April Fools Day prank of them all.