The Two-Line Pass

Because I tend to not blog on the weekends (or in this case, almost a week), 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 read an article today from the Canadian Press about the NHL’s responsibility to the youth of Canada to protect them from getting concussed.

I was, as you can imagine, pretty fucking shocked. More of that bullshit about how video games and bands are a bad influence on kids and if they see the guy from GTA4 rape and murder a prostitute, they, too, will rape and murder a prostitute in real life just as soon as they get the chance. It’s a stupid, buck-passing argument. We can all agree on this.

But the examples in this article are difficult to read without laughing yourself into a coma. For instance, KIDS TODAY would love to wear helmets, but:

[They] see players like Gretzky wearing ‘a piece of Kleenex on his head,’ Tator said there is little incentive for youngsters to play safe. Many young players also imitate the head-checks they see in professional hockey - with tragic consequences, he said.

Others watch players like Eric Lindros “tough it out” and return the ice after suffering numerous concussions, he added.

Kids don’t see Wayne Gretzky do anything but make hilarious faces behind the Coyotes bench when a call doesn’t go his way. They don’t see Eric Lindros at all.

Now if you want to make an argument against checks to the head, I’m sure everyone’s going to line up with you on that. No one wants to see stuff like that. But fighting? How many career-threatening or -ending head injuries have been sustained in an NHL fight? According to this article from two years ago, five in the past 12 years. An astounding amount. But if you want to cherry-pick, we’ll cherry-pick.

So who were these five brave pugilists?

• Matthew Barnaby, veteran of 200-plus regular-season NHL fights. This doesn’t count juniors or preseason or postseason. The guy played 834 NHL games. So don’t let your kid fight more than 200 times over 18 years in the NHL or else he’ll end up as a hockey analyst for ESPN.
• Stu Grimson. He had 199 career fights over 12 seasons. He’s also one of the more articulate former hockey players you’ll find. After his playing career, he became a fucking lawyer. So don’t let your kid fight almost 200 times in 12 years or you’ll become a lawyer.
• Adam Deadmarsh had only 57 fights in his career, but he played pretty goddamn hard. And his career didn’t even end because of the concussion he got during a fight with Ed Jovanovski. It ended several years later because a TEAMMATE accidentally kneed him in the head.
• Trevor Halverson. Never heard of him? Me neither. But HockeyDB says he played 17 NHL games in a pro career that spanned nine years. And sure, he got into four fights in the NHL during the 1998-99 season before getting in three fights in ONE preseason game the next year. So don’t let your kid play nine years in the minors and get in three fights in one game.
• Nick Kypreos. Another 13 pro seasons here, and 80 fights in the NHL. He got K.T.F.O.’ed on one punch by Ryan Vandenbusche in a preseason scrap. And that career as a hockey analyst ain’t goin’ so bad neither.
  

What do all these guys have in common besides head injuries? If you guessed “they were paid good money to be enforcers,” you are correct. Now, I don’t have the most experience in the world with youth hockey (go ask David Frost about that lolol) but I can’t imagine the “enforcer” role is too prevalent among junior mite circles, no matter what the Mighty Ducks series would have us believe (sorry, Bash Brothers).

It must really bother these everybody gets a trophy-types that fighting is way, way up this year. We missed the exact number that Ron McLean dropped on us on one of the later Hockey Night in Canada breaks. He said fighting’s up something like 70 percent from last year. Last year, Calgary led the entire league in fights with 70. This year, at roughly a quarter of the way through the season, 14 teams (Anaheim, Vancouver, Calgary, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Edmonton, Colorado, Columbus, New York Rangers, St. Louis, Nashville, New Jersey and Phoenix, to be precise) are on pace to just about hit or surpass that mark. Both the Devils and Coyotes are .5 fights short of the requisite 17.5 or so needed to hit 70 through 20ish games.

Hell, Tito Ortiz says hockey’s the second-toughest sport behind MMA. Seems like he’d be an authority on that kinda thing.

I think it’s awesome, of course. Fighting is as much a part of hockey as hitting and defense, and is, of course, a natural deterrent to running a team’s star players. That is, when said stars aren’t fighting themselves.

Everyone, it seems, is getting into fights. Dainius Zubrus, Jonathan Toews and Martin Hanzal, Nik Zherdev and Steven Stamkos, Corey Perry, Shawn Horcoff, Ilya Kovalchuk, Guillaume Latendresse and Joffrey Lupul, Glen Metropolit and Pat Eaves. These aren’t guys that are normally near the top of HockeyFights.com’s list of busiest brawlers. By their count, in fact, 203 NHLers have already gotten into a fight this year compared to 318 last year through a full season. Last year’s top fighter was Jared Boll with 27. Brandon Prust has 10 so far.

Watch this fight between Dan Carcillo and Derek Dorsett and tell me this isn’t good for the sport on a purely aesthetic level.

And what’s that? Hockey ratings are up this year? No kidding. Fighting has never been a problem in hockey. Not once. Not when bench-clearing brawls were a regular sight, not when the Bruins were climbing into the stands to pummel fans, and certainly not now.

Know what the problem is? Parents. Lighten the fuck up and let your kid catch a beating. It’ll make him a better person. If not, he could end up as the next Wayne Gretzky.

What We Learned

Anaheim — So I wanted to check out the Anaheim/Carolina game earlier today. No dice. Wasn’t on TV. Happens a lot with the southern teams no one cares about like Florida and Atlanta and occasionally it happens to Carolina. But how does a team in the No. 2 media market in the country not get a fucking game on TV? Who broadcasts the Ducks? FSN?

They don’t have an NFL contract or anything and there were no other conflicting pro games. What did they show instead? UCLA College Hoops Preview, then a high school football game.

Jesus Christ, the NHL’s TV contracts eat dicks. How do the fucking Ducks have NINE GAMES that don’t get on TV?

Atlanta — It’s probably time to fire Don Waddell, right? I mean, it has to be. I don’t know how he’s kept his job this long, to be honest. Apathy? It’s probably apathy.

Boston — Boy does everyone in the hockey media have a giant hard-on for the Bruins all of a sudden. Even the great, and usually reserved, Kevin Paul Dupont was falling all over himself to gush about the team’s greatness in the Globe this morning. Welcome to the bandwagon, boys. I’ve been driving by myself for a while now.

Buffalo — The Sabres are shopping Maxim Afinogenov, and no one wants him. Shock and dismay abound for people who haven’t followed hockey since they played as Buffalo in NHL2002. Everyone else has a real “Yeah so?” attitude about it.

Calgary — The Calgary Stampeders won the Grey Cup and were duly honored at the Flames game against the Canucks on Saturday. The guy that won the game’s MVP award called Calgary the greatest sports city in Canada (which, ehhhh not so much). But then they cut to Jarome Iginla smiling on the bench. I could watch that man smile forever.

Doesn’t it just light up your otherwise dismal life?

Carolina — Killa Cam Ward picked up the dreaded “lower-body injury” in the first period of today’s game with Anaheim. If he misses any amount of time whatsoever, the Canes’ playoff hopes are finished.

Chicago — The Daily Herald’s Tim Sassone wondered if it was possible for the Blackhawks to go 6-0 on their road trip, which included a three-game swing through California. Not so much. The Sons of Hiawatha went 0-3 against the California teams, conceding nine goals and scoring just four. That’s pretty much the opposite of going 6-0.

Colorado — This is a team that’s won three games without the need for a shootout in November (and those against the Bolts, Blues and Predators). They’re not scoring a lot, they’re not getting great goaltending, and they’re tied for last in the Northeast. Oh, and Joe Sakic is now out indefinitely with a back injury. Good news all around, then.

Columbus — There are a lot of things I like about Thanksgiving. Being good with computers in the eyes of my relatives is not one of them.

I went over to my grandfather’s house to pick him up for dinner at my parents’ house (he doesn’t drive so much), but first was asked to install a “new” computer that is running Windows 98. I’m not bullshitting you. “You’re so good with computers,” they tell me. The one guy you never want to be in your grandparents’ eyes is the one that’s “good with computers.” The amount of shit with which you have to put up is mindboggling, and they ask you a lot more questions than if you are “the serial child murderer.”

So I fire this thing up and it is, obviously, running slower than Dustin Penner. Why wouldn’t it be? The desktop is cluttered with shit like AOL 5.0 (for real) and a bunch of desktop publishing stuff like Print Shop Pro. Who the fuck did they buy this computer from?

“The reason this is running so slow is because there’s a bunch of garbage programs on here you don’t need,” I tell them. I know that’s not the reason, but explaining RAM usage and the fact that the computer says it hasn’t been turned on since 2003 seemed far to complex a concept for the people that asked me in all seriousness if it was the computer or the monitor that housed the machine’s memory.

So I sat there for more than an hour and uninstalled every one of the 37 shitty, useless programs. This was how I wanted to spend my day. “Oh thank you for helping us out with this. We were going crazy not being able to play solitaire and hearts and freecell.” Turns out that was all they used their old computer for. The stupid Microsoft-loaded games.

But I wasn’t done there. “Before we go, can you fix my DVD player? It’s been broken for a year.” A year. They didn’t call anyone about this. Or buy a new one. They just sat there believing that their DVD player didn’t work for a full 80th or so of their life. So I turn just the DVD player on. Seems to be working fine.

Turn on the TV, but the TV’s input is on cable. Switched it to Input 2. There’s the DVD signal, playing Flags of Our Fathers. My grandfather looked at me as though I was a conquistador bringing horses and firesticks to the New World. I had to write down exactly what I did, which is press the same button on his television remote control twice.

It was a delightful two hours.

Dallas — How bad of a team do you have to be to want to trade for a Tampa Bay defenseman? Seriously, that’s brutal.

Detroit — Can we finally just admit that this whole “the Red Wings don’t need a real goalie” thing is a load of shit? They’ve skated for too many years with Chris Osgood and Manny Legace/Dominik Hasek. Now that it’s Chris Osgood and Ty Conklin, things are not going quite so well for the Wings, who deserve to be in a much better position than the one in which they currently find themselves. The goaltending stats, in a word, blow.

Edmonton — What a mess this is turning into. Steve Tambellini gave Craig MacTavish a vote of confidence, which everyone knows is a bad thing for a coach’s future. He says the team has been working hard, but MacTavish disagrees. Never a good thing when a player says: “Maybe a trade, then the coach. After this long, a change might be good.”

Florida — Not a bad month to be David Booth. Kid’s got 9-1-10 in 13 games this month AND he just made a donation of $300 million to the University of Chicago Business School. Quite a guy.

Los Angeles — Turns out that Visnovsky trade was forced by the Kings’ ownership as part of a mandate to reduce payroll back when the Celtics’ ownership group was considering buying the team.

“It was all money, we couldn’t keep his $7 million (salary), and that was when there was talk that we might be selling to the (Boston) Celtics. That’s when I got my marching orders (to reduce payroll),”said Kings general manager Dean Lombardi, who took Jarret Stoll and Matt Greene back. “I wanted guys in a certain age group (25ish), who could grow with the others.”

That’s actually kind of shitty then.

Minnesota — Mikko Koivu should be a serious contender for a starter at the All-Star game. He was a monster Saturday for the Wild and completely took over the game with two goals and an assist. He also ate almost 25 minutes on the back-end of two games in two nights, and scored the game-winner prior to that.

Montreal — The Kostitsyn boys were playing like shit, so Guy Carbonneau dropped them to the fourth line. Their responses to the move were, uhh, different. Andrei responded by scoring a goal and an assist. Sergei responded by taking three shitty penalties. Guess which one will be playing the next game and which will be dining on press box hot dogs.

Nashville — They traded for Wade Belak. Awesome. I like Wade Belak.

New Jersey — I have to wonder if Nicklas Bergfors ran over Brent Sutter’s dog. Kid’s dominating for Lowell in the AHL but in his eight games up with the big club he’s pulling 5:47 of ice time and Barry Tallackson, another AHL call-up, has more PP time in one game than Bergfors has in eight. Poor, poor Bergfors.

New York Rangers — As if we needed further proof that the Rangers were a swirling cesspool of shit, they coughed up three points in two games to the Panthers, and looked like hell doing it. Hope the clods over at ESPN are taking note that their boys aren’t doing so hot.

Ottawa Senators — Luke Richardson, veteran of 1400-plus NHL games and a man who never spent a day in the minors, has retired. Happy trails, Luke. You did a hell of a job for a very long time. Best of luck with that coaching gig.

Philadelphia — I bought some Sour Patch Kids today. Every time I do, I regret it within six Kids. Those things are fucking hideous, but for some reason, they’re phenomenal in my mind. After you eat them, it makes you feel like you blew a gingerbread man. Just terrible. Sell them in groups of four, though, and I’ll buy one a day.

Phoenix — Enver Lisin is back up! He’s got 2-2-4 in seven games and is shooting the puck a lot. Outstanding. Let’s hope he’s up to stay.

Pittsburgh — Behold the majesty that is the Sidney Crosby hat trick.

San Jose — Pretty good team. I’d go so far as to say that.

St. Louis —Not only is David Frost not guilty, but he’s got a blog. This has to be a joke, right? I mean, no guy that literally JUST got off on sexual assault charges is billing himself as “Hockey’s #1 controversial bad boy.” Can’t be. The fact that Mike Danton will apparently be checking in every once in a while? That’s too good to be true, jack.

Tampa Bay — Yeah that coaching change has worked out real well. The Bolts are 1-3-3 since Rick Tocchet took the lead role. What an awesome team!

Toronto — The media’s lovin’ Burke already. They’re calling him Pope Brian. He hasn’t done a goddamn thing! Oh wait, he’s asking for permission to hire Dave Nonis. Forget I said anything. It’s all gonna work out great.

Vancouver —Cory Schneider played admirably in his NHL debut against the Flames, and Calgary’s three goals don’t indicate how well he played, including getting a glove on a lightning-quick one-timer from Mike Cammalleri from about six inches away. The kid’s reflexes are amazing and he’s gonna be a good one for a long, long time.

Washington —Saturday’s shutout against Columbus was the first time Alex Ovechkin hadn’t picked up a point in like three weeks. The kid had 11-11-22 in a scoring streak that stretched 10 games. I guess that’s alright.

Play of the Weekend

Tom Vanek, that was fucking nasty.

Gold Star Award

Keith Tkachuk, it’s all you, big man. Congrats on picking up your 1,000th career point.

Great, too, to see his teammates all come over the boards to congratulate him. Hell of a goddamn accomplishment.

Next week’s game I’m totally going to watch on Center Ice if I’m home

Pens-Rangers on Wednesday at 7 p.m. Watch as Crosby and Malkin torch the Rangers defense. Watch as I laugh and yell, “I TOLD YOU SO, MOTHERFUCKER!” every time they do.

Event that should replace the shootout and would be just as relevant to hockey skill

Chili Cookoff. That Rick Nash thinks he’s the pope of Chilitown.

Soccer update only I care about

Liverpool play Monday, so no update to give you. Come on you Reds.

College hockey update only I care about

Lowell played like shit against both Merrimack and RIT, not the staunchest of opponents by any means. So the resultant 3-1 and 6-3 wins were no surprise. The lack of effort was though.

The No. 1 DVD I own and kind of want to watch this week but likely will not

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.

George Clooney’s directorial debut, if I’m not mistaken, and a goddamn entertaining script from Charlie Kaufman. Sam Rockwell crushes it as Chuck Barris. Crushes. It.

Not the best movie in the world, but I love it so.

An update on last week’s “No. 1 DVD I own and kind of want to watch this week but likely will not“

JFK and the Last Waltz. Nailed both of ‘em. With one pristine bullet. That dog don’t hunt.

Perfect HFBoards trade proposal of the week

From “Sens mile” comes a trade involving three of the sexiest names currently being bandied about on the ol’ HFB:

To Wild:
Ryan Whitney
Evegani Malkin

To Penguins:
Marian Gaborik ( After contract extension)
Brent Burns

Because Gaborik signing the extension makes it reasonable, see!

Signoff in a language that’s not English

This entry was posted on Monday, December 1st, 2008 at 4:33 am and is filed under What We Learned. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.