The Two-Line Pass

The Lead

You may or may not have gotten the memo on this, but Jarome Iginla is a pretty decent hockey player.

Tonight he almost singlehandedly willed the Flames to a 6-3 win over the St. Louis Blues on the strength of a two-goal, two-assist performance. One goal was lucky, one goal was scary, one assist was beautiful and the other was heads-up. If there’s a more complete player in hockey, I’d like to know about him.

Iginla opened the scoring with what can only be described as a goalscorer’s goal, as a bouncing shot from Cory Sarich deflected off the inside of a falling Iginla’s glove and in just 4:14 into the game. His second goal, which came at 17:38 of the first, was one of those vintage Iginla plays where he finds himself in acres of space for some inexplicable reason and loads up a trillion-mile-an-hour snapshot off one foot. How does any team allow Iginla to find himself with a puck on his stick and no defenseman within 10 feet of him? Note to NHL defenses: Giving Iginla this kind of space is not conducive to winning hockey games.

It should be noted, before continuing, that were it not for the play of Chris Mason during that first period, things could have been a LOT worse for St. Louis than 2-0. He made 13 first-period saves and a great many of them were of very high quality. He certainly prevented Iginla from having a hat trick in the opening 20, that’s for sure. And for a while, Miikka Kiprusoff, who had far less work to do than did Mason in making eight saves in the first, made it seem like this game would end up being a goaltending battle. But once Iginla got that second goal, the Flames were off to the races.

Matt Lombardi scored his third of the year early in the second before the Flames defense decided to take 10 minutes off and let the Blues cut it to 3-2 — and Adrian Aucoin’s giveaway on the Patrick Berglund goal was so good he should’ve gotten an assist — before Iginla hefted the Flames onto his back again, setting up consecutive goals from Mike Cammalleri (and what a beauty this feed was) and Aucoin, via an ahead pass to Lombardi that sprang them for the 2-on-1.

From there, the game was academic and Iginla had career points Nos. 796, 797, 798 and 799. To give you an idea of just how important Iginla is to the Flames, he has scored at least one goal in 12 games this year and the Flames are 11-1-0 in them. That’s a .917 winning percentage! When he doesn’t score, they’re 6-10-3 for a winning percentage of .395. That’s an awful big swing, obviously, and it points to both the Flames’ frustrating inconsistency and Iginla’s inherent value to the team. He may be on pace for “only” 44 goals and 98 points now, but if he shows up, the Flames are nearly unstoppable.

As a Flames fan, I wish he’d shown up to more than just 12 of 31 games this year.

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Jet Magazine is usually not one in which you’ll find much hockey talk, but the Winter Classic is such a big to-do that even the purveyors of the latest news on Lil Wayne’s Grammy hopes and a Black History quiz took the time to cobble together a brief preview on Dustin Byfuglien’s participation in the Jan. 1 super-event, in a brief entitled, “Dustin Byfuglien Stars in NHL Winter Classic.”

“Stars?” Let’s not go too crazy.

He will be the only player of color in the Classic, which is the second regular season outdoor NHL game played in the United States.

“There aren’t too many that are played outdoors, and to be a part of that is something special,” Byfuglien tells Jet Magazine. “It’s not going to be a normal hockey game … you just never know what to expect out of a game like that.”

…

A team player, Byfuglien is active in the community as well. He visits various charities and speaks with young African-American hockey players that are looking to follow in his steps.

“You just have to tell them to stick with it and when you’re out there working with them, you just have to have fun and make sure they’re having fun.”

How insightful. I have no link for you to prove that I’m not making this up, so feel free to pick up a copy of Jet later this month and read the four paragraphs I opted not to transcribe.

Of course, Byfuglien isn’t the first “player of color” to play an outdoor NHL game. Georges Laraque, who played in both the Heritage Classic as a member of the Oilers in 2004 and last year’s Winter Classic as a member of the Penguins, and has every right to be pissed that his involvement wasn’t worth mentioning for the editors of Jet in previous years.

The Lead

If this had been 1997 or so, tonight’s game would have been an outstanding one to put on national television.

But given that it’s not 11 years ago, and almost no one from either team in those fabled Detroit/Colorado games that featured so much violence and drama and hatred still remains, only the shadow of a dead rivalry, rather than palpable tension, remained hanging over the Versus broadcast.

Those games, complete with line brawls and goalie fights and probably four or five of the best players in the world, leave fan, media and player alike hoping for something that is impossible to achieve. What remnants may have remained of the rivalry have been rendered obsolete and irrelevant by passage of time.

As a result, tonight’s 3-2 Avalanche win, even though it was a perfectly good hockey game that was ultimately decided by a penalty shot in the third period, was more or less dramaless. Where the Wings/Avs games of old were circle-this-on-your-calendar, not-to-be-missed events, this was in just about every way one of 82 of the schedule.

Maybe it’s because Detroit has positively owned Colorado over the last few years, winning each of the last eight and 16 of the last 18. Maybe it’s because Claude Lemieux and Patrick Roy aren’t around to stir up passion and anger from the strangely emotionless Red Wings, who have spent far too much time playing from behind of late thanks to slow starts and the expectancy that they’ll win simply because they’re the best team just about every night. Or maybe it’s because there isn’t one person on the Red Wings anyone is afraid of.

In any event, the Avs came out completely unintimidated and beat up on Detroit with the counterattack. Both Wojtek Wolski and Paul Stastny scored first-period goals that capitalized on Red Wing mistakes and it was 2-0 Avs just 4:34 into the game. Detroit was punchless and seemed disinterested in the game. The Red Wings only blocked two shots all night, while the Avs blocked 16. There wasn’t a tremendous amount of checking (except for Brad Stuart, who led everyone with six hits), and there wasn’t a tremendous amount of inspired play from the Detroit bench.

Any time Andrew Raycroft completely shows up your team, for instance, you had a bad night. Raycroft stopped 34 of 36 shots in the win, and Detroit didn’t exactly make him earn it either. Lots of shots came from the perimeter, and Detroi’s shot selection in general (as evidenced by the high number of blocked shots) was poor.

Jordan Leopold’s eventual game-winner that came on the aforementioned penalty shot at 1:51 of the third was very nice, and a dagger to the Red Wings, who had been composing themselves a bit for the latter part of the second period. Marian Hossa’s goal to close the scoring was largely unimportant in the grand scheme of the game.

It was pretty sad, really. Versus spent most of the lead-up screaming, “RIVALRY GAME!” and the general malaise in the game from both teams was disheartening. It would have taken Tomas Holmstrom spontaneously combusting at center ice to make it even remotely interesting to someone who remembers watching that Detroit/Colorado game live.

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If the IIHF has its way, the opener to the German-hosted 2010 World Championship would be seen live by more fans than any hockey game ever.

The German Ice Hockey Association, working with the IIHF as well as the German soccer team FC Schalke 04, who would host the game, hope to push 75,976 people through the doors for the opener that will see the host team take on one of Canada, Finland, Russia, Sweden or the Czech Republic.

Apparently the idea came about when Germany hosted the World Championship in 2001 and had 80,000 requests for the first game, but obviously turned more than 75 percent of them down.

The cheapest tickets are 19 euros, but if you want to actually sit down, it’ll cost you 29. Tickets, shockingly, are on sale now even if the game is almost 18 months away.

It at least looks like the seats will be better than the ones at the Winter Classic this year, but it’d be funny if the 2009 NHL outdoor game was in an 80,000-seat stadium just to stick it to Schalke. They were Hitler’s favorite club after all.

Because this blog is quickly becoming the clearinghouse for all sick college hockey videos, here is a goal from Denver’s Joe Colborne that was set up by an audacious little pass from Toronto Maple Leafs draft pick Tyler Ruegsegger on Friday against Minnesota State.

That was more than a little disgusting by Mr. Ruegsegger, and if the related videos are to be believed, he does this ALL THE TIME. Somehow he only has 8-4-12 in 19 games this year though.

Because I tend to not blog on the weekends, here is a feature that will run through the entire season. It aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact about each team that played. And hell, there’s a ton of other crap for me to blather on about too. And yes, I’m totally ripping off just about every other blogger ever’s weekly column, but that’s something you’ll have to deal with on your own time.

Danger: This post contains language that some people might not like. This will be the only thing on the site that regularly does so.

I have very little idea what’s going on in hockey right now.

While I attended two games this weekend and tried to keep up with news and scores as best I could, it was awful hard to stay up-to-date with all the events that conspired to happen between 11 p.m. Thursday night when my electricity went out until roughly 5:30 p.m. Sunday when it came back on.

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Here is the Good night I wrote on last night’s Canes/Flyers game after my power went out, as my computer battery was dying, and without an internet connection. Thus, all opinions on this game are not fact-checked and therefore should not be expected to be anything approaching what experts would call “accurate.” Enjoy your weekend.

The Lead

Paul Maurice and the Carolina Hurricanes deserve eachother.

In the few games since Maurice has taken over the ‘Canes’ coaching duties, they have, like the Toronto teams he coached before getting fired, not played a full 60 minutes. The fact that they had a four-goal lead on the Flyers early in the second period and still lost 6-5 in a shootout tells you everything you need to know about where this team is going to be once the playoffs roll around. Hint: Not in them.

The ‘Canes got a goal from Eric Staal just 61 seconds into the game and had additional scores from Sergei Samsonov, Matt Cullen, Joni Pitkanen and Staal again all wrapped around a Scott Hartnell tally and the game seemed, for all intents and purposes, to be over very, very early. Anterro Nittymaki was fighting the puck, and had been all night, and was getting no help from either his defense to turn aside the great number of shots he was facing, or the offense to at least chip away at the lead.

But when Staal scored his second of the game to make it 5-1, Carolina just stopped playing. They sat and watched as Hartnell scored again to make it 5-2 in the third period and then completed his hat trick mere minutes later to cut the Hurricane lead to two. When Scottie Upshall scored not long after that, someone should have been been begging Maurice to use his timeout. The Flyers, on their home ice, were surging and the crowd, which had been pretty much silent right from the first Carolina goal, was now alive. They and their team had sniffed blood on the Hartnell hattie, but tasted of it when Upshall shoveled it past Mark Leighton.

But Maurice just stood there behind the Carolina bench, arms folded as ineffectually as his team’s play. That signature “I am gravely disappointed in this team” look was creeping onto his face once again. So when the Hurricanes gave Philly a late power play and Simon Gagne chipped in a garbage goal from the side of the net to even the game, it’s hard to imagine that anyone in the building was shocked. The Hurricanes, after all, had not only let a team that had lost just once in regulation in its last 10 games up off the mat, it performed a full-on necromancy of that team and the entire crowd along with it. Where once there was death, there was now nothing but life, and the only astonishing part about it was that the ‘Canes didn’t give up the game-winner soon after and lose in regulation.

They at least got it to overtime and, despite Philadelphia taking a penalty to make it 4-on-3 for the final few moments, failed to at least salvage an overtime win. The shootout, obviously, was a no-doubter. Both of Philadelphia’s first two shooters scored, and Niitymaki fittingly stopped both Hurricanes shooters.

There might be a little bit of talk in the papers about how the ‘Canes played well enough to win, but they didn’t. It was just another game where they, like Eric Staal often does, didn’t play a full 60. Heck, a full 40 might’ve been enough to win the game given how lifeless Philadelphia looked for half the game. The point is that no team in the NHL should ever, ever lose a game it leads by four goals. Drop all five guys behind the blue line if you want, who cares? The Hurricanes need wins and this has to have been worse than any loss Peter Laviolette went through this year. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a Hurricanes fan right now. This team is not only getting bad breaks off the ice (the ineptitude of the front office, the injuries, etc.) but now they can’t even win a game where they put up a five-spot and lead by four? That’s mortifying.

Just take the flag on the front of those hideous black jerseys and paint the whole thing white. Your season’s over.

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So a giant ice storm has pretty much knocked out power for 600,000 people north of Boston. This, of course, includes me, because why wouldn’t it? They’re saying we may not have power until Monday, which is great news because I didn’t want heat or the ability to check my e-mail this weekend. I’d MUCH rather live like a pilgrim.

Earlier this week, when Joe Sakic severely injured his hand in a snowblower accident, it may have come as a shock to many.

But to true historians of the game, it was just another in the long list of Hockey Hall of Famers who have injured themselves in some way thanks to some common and avoidable household injuries.

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No Good night tonight due to my cable going out around 6pm or so. I feel much worse about this horrible turn of events than you do. Use the comments to vent your obvious and understandable frustration.