real good

This has defintely been a season of adventure in Vancouver with Willie Desjardins. Under his tutelage he has created a new way of doin the bizniss. He has found a way to get Zack Kassian beastin with the Sedins, he turned Ronalds Kenins into a guy that PLAYS like he’s two people but then benched him for a few games, not sure there. Willie D said nice things to Alex Edler and got him back to being a top defensman and he has said on many occasions the team and its players are “real good”.

Recently, there was a great little clip of the real good’s Willie D has busted out this season and he just kills it. On the twitters Monday night, I revealed the scale of really good by Willie D. This was a first draft and probably won’t be the last.

So after thinking about the scale’s meaning, there is actually some relevance to it. What classifies “real good?” Is it a hit of Sedin wizardry? Is it Bo Horvat flipping the puck over Antti Niemi after burning, Brent Burns? Maybe it’s Eddie Lack stealing the show night after night when the team in front of him decides 1 or even no goals is a pretty good buffer.

So I think there needs to be some substance to this scale so I bring to you the ….aw crap I need a new line to make this important:

– THE WILLIE DESJARDINS “REAL GOOD” SCALE –

It ranges from 1-10 (1 being real good, 5 being really good and 10 being unreal) The 10 is pretty much like a Unicorn, affordable parking, or a setup pass from Ryan Kesler. These simply do not exist. But that’s fine. OK we could maybe say a Stanley Cup win would be unreal, that would be fair.

So let’s break this down:

1-3) Real Good – This is basically your typical WD comment on any prospect, someone that scored a goal that night, a good hustle on a shift or really anything that resembles something we all classify as alright. It can cover anything that happened in a game.

This is a regular occurance as we hear “real good” a lot.

4-6) Really Good – Also known as really well or real well. This area is something along the lines of maybe a shutout, a two or more goal performance by a player capable of such feats, Zack Kassian getting a GWG and a big hit in the same game, getting that free drink at Starbucks, a sunny day in Vancouver or snagging the first Bryan Adams compact disc hot off the presses. Any reference to WD’s Medicine Hat Tiger days or the organization in general can be labelled Really Good.

“Really good” isn’t something that is just thrown out there. Its the hockey equivalent of saying the L word to a woman. You don’t just say it, you gotta mean it. You and I can say really good all we want, it’s not the same thing. I said my frozen yogurt was really good, The Departed was really good, deep fried chicken wrapped in bacon is really good. Say it right now, I’ll wait……..see? Great isn’t it. But not the same thing.

7-8) REAL Good – not to be confused with real good. Sure, they’re spelt the same way with some capitalization on REAL but they mean completely different things. REAL Good is on a level of its own; a win where the Canucks actually scored first and beat a hard team like the Ducks or Penguins, the decision to un bench Ronny Kenins and he gets a 1st or 2nd star and maybe bumps up a roster spot in the lineup, or any player on the team that hockey’d out of his mind that night.

This hasn’t happened really much at all this year so we know it’s going to be good when a REAL Good gets dropped.

( Just to clarify what hockey’d or hockeying or hockeys means; it’s basically anything productive in hockey. It doesn’t correlate with Corsi or Fenwick but it can be used to describe pretty much any hockey play. Goals, assists, fights, hits, being fast, good passing, etc. These are all hockeys. )

OK nitty gritty time!

9) REAL GOOD – Sooooo, you can see this is the all caps real good version. Willie is most likely furious, uncontrollably excited, possibly just won a playoff round as an underdog or his wife just told him he gets a man weekend and when he gets home she’ll be waiting….

And finally,

10) UNREAL – So far, Eddie Lack is the only recipient of UNREAL. As I stated before this is reserved for the most epic of real goods. Its basically untouched. This is grandpas 80 year old scotch, its the first edition Spiderman comic in your safe, its borderline the Kesler beast mode in 2011, the Burrows goal against Chicago, Pavel against Calgary, Luongo arriving in Vancouver, Luongo leaving Vancouver, the first time you played Nintendo, its a fresh Willie D haircut and moustache trim.

Its basically the Stanley Cup being hoisted in Vancouver for the first time with no riot. There isn’t a better feeling than UNREAL. We can all relate to this in one way or another but you won’t see it anytime soon. Now was Eddie’s UNREAL like all these things? No, I believe Willie had a slip of the tongue and probably meant to say Real Good or REAL GOOD.

So now you know the Willie D “Real Good” scale. Keep it in your records, bring it out if you can’t quite figure out what kind of real good WD is describing and make sure you haven’t mixed them up when you’re drinking with your buds. This is real good stuff guys, take it to heart.

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