"Nystrom was offsides!"

Contrary to the majority of my posts here, the purpose of this post isn't because it's commonly brought up in SoSH, although it was brought up in P&G last week. For those unfamiliar with SoSH, it's a Red Sox forum site and P&G is a separate miscellaneous section of the site. The purpose of this post is for whenever I talk to Philadelphia Flyers fans who get mixed up about plays from Game 6 of the 1980 Stanley Cup Finals between the Flyers and Islanders.

As an Islanders fan who has lived in the Philly area since '92, plus a couple of years in college before then, I'd be quite rich if I had a dollar for every time a Flyers fan was mixed up and thought that Bobby Nystrom was offsides when he had scored the overtime goal that won the first Stanley Cup ever for the NY Islanders. The Islanders did score an offsides goal during that game, but it wasn't the OT goal. For those who don't believe me, you can take a look for yourself.



At 1:33-1:36 if you keep hitting the play/pause button, you'll see at 1:35 that Tonelli had the puck in the zone before Nystrom was in the zone.

Now look at this clip.



The offsides goal was late in the 1st period, 33 seconds into this clip. It gave the Islanders a 2-1 lead. Leon Stickle, the official who blew the call, will forever live in infamy among Flyers fans, whether or not they remember on which goal he made his blunder.

As much as Flyers fans might say the Flyers would have won this game had Stickle called the offsides, we'll never know. Nystrom was interviewed about the game on Classic Sports Network (now ESPN Classic). He said when the Isles had a 4-2 lead after the 2nd period, they were in the locker room congratulating themselves that they were about to win the Stanley Cup. I highly doubt they would have done that with only a 3-2 lead.

"Command" vs. "Control"

It's extremely easy to confuse a pitcher's "command" and "control". Many people think they have the same meaning. They're similar, but there's a small difference. Unfortunately it's extremely difficult to determine the difference, even if you Google it, partly because many people have different interpretations of it.

The difference was explained in SoSH here, courtesy of SoSHer absintheofmalaise, and further discussed in the thread for a little bit.

For another explanation, I asked former SoSH mod mabrowndog for his thoughts on the difference. Here was his response, which he had garnered from chats with Cape League players and coaches:

Control deals specifically with the location of a pitch, and the pitcher's ability to put the ball where he wants; the degree to which he can nail the target shown by the catcher's mitt, and "hit his spots".

According to most, command deals not just with location but with other aspects of pitches -- their rotation, break, and velocity. Depending on who you talk to, command can also refer to a pitcher's confidence level in throwing his full arsenal of pitches; knowing that he can throw any of his pitches at the right time and that the ball will do exactly what he wants, and that each will feel just right coming out of his hand.