Sports, in my opinion, is the forebearer to "reality" TV as we know it today. We view many of our sports heroes as being close to super human. And yet with today's access to information we find ourselves readily identifying with the Clark Kent side of Superman. This is exactly the allure of the reality TV genre. Regular folks doing extraordinary stuff for our viewing pleasure.

Now Chris Neil of the Ottawa Senators isn't exactly a sports hero. He's more Peter Parker than Spiderman. More Bruce Banner than Hulk. More Calvin than Spaceman Spiff. More Luigi than Mario. (Oh you better believe I could keep going...) But in his own way, Neil has developed a mythos about him. Be it when he ripped Buffalo captain Chris Drury's head off, or when he attempted to rip Andy McDonald's head off, the guy is a beast. That's his mythos: Beastly. (This entry could very easily descend into a discussion on D&D if I'm not careful.)

But even beasts have back stories. We now know that Chris' wife gave birth to their first child on Friday. And then on Saturday he goes to work and scores a huge goal that helped propel the Senators to their first win over the Ducks. That's a story line right there. A common thug finds salvation and glory within a 24 hour period.

Of course, he did also try to take McDonald's head off in that same game. When I write up the Hollywood script for this series, I'll just edit that part of the story so we don't piss off Disney. Emilio can be a little touchy.

Going into Game 4 tonight you still have the series on the edge of knife. If Ottawa goes down 3-1 to the Ducks, then the only chance Ottawa has of winning the series is if Chris Neil's wife magically gives birth to triplets. With Chris Pronger (looking quite remorseful pictured above) out for a game, we could very well see us starting from scratch in Game 5 back at the Honda Center.

I'm going to stick to my guns though and say Anaheim wins this game and brings the circus to town on Wednesday. Anaheim won the last time Pronger mashed some dude's head, so we know they're capable. Maybe whenever Chris Pronger mashes a guy's head his teammates become inspired. Hockey players are kind of batty that way.

What does this all mean? Well like I said, this is the original reality TV. If you want to know how it all turns out you're going to have to tune in.

5 pm on NBC.

Alanis sings the anthems. No word on whether she'll be doing it topless. Thank you India indeed.

Reuters photo by Mark Blinch