The Two-Line Pass

So not only did the Oilers drop a 10-2 decision to Buffalo the other night, but they also would prefer it if you didn’t write songs that make this point repeatedly.

After that hilarious eight-goal loss, Calgary’s radio station, the FAN960 produced a parody version of The Kinks’ “Lola” (it appears to have been yanked, for some reason) that interspersed clips of Craig MacTavish talking about what an unmitigated the game was, refering to the amount of times the puck got past an Edmonton goalie, and, as a finale, simply repeating the word “losers” over and over. Obviously, laughs all around.

But, according to my buddies over at OilersNation (p.s. FlamesNation starts Sunday, a day that people surely will not have their minds on a sport other than hockey!), this song didn’t sit so well with some of the Oilers front office folk.

According to Robin Brownlee, a longtime member of the Edmonton press and OilersNation contributor, Oilers VP of communications and broadcast Allan Watt got all upset when Brownlee and host Jason Gregor had a good chuckle over the song on Edmonton’s TEAM 1260.

Not long after, we got a call from producer Will Fraser at TEAM 1260 and he told us Allan Watt, the Oilers vice-president of communications and broadcast, had phoned to complain and that he’d also contacted several other stations demanding they not play it.
Last time I checked, the Oilers didn’t have a rightsholder agreement with Astral Media and have no right to try to dictate what goes on the air at TEAM 1260 and other Astral stations.

Which, of course, proves that not only are the Oilers an horrendously bad team, they also can’t take a joke. What a bunch of clowns.

Why should the Oilers not be subject to criticism and mockery JUST BECAUSE they lost a game 10-2?

The Lead

Uhhhhh… what happened to Montreal?

Around this time last month the Canadiens were in a stretch in which they won nine of 11 and had just one regulation loss. Now, they’re on a four-game losing streak to teams like Atlanta, New Jersey (not so embarrassing, but more on the Devs later), Tampa last night and Florida tonight, the latter by a 5-1 margin.

How’s that even happen? It’s not like they’re unhealthy, though Alex Tanguay’s going to be out another two weeks or so, and there doesn’t seem to be any real reason for this mortifying skid. They’re just playing awful hockey.

Does this underscore the need to trade for a guy like Lecavalier to shake up a stale dressing room and light a fire under everyone’s ass? Does it say something about the improvement of the East in general that the team which was so dominant last year is so, I dunno, “blah” now? Christ, they’re only six points above the ninth-place Hurricanes and Florida and Pittsburgh seem to be gaining fast too.

Maybe the problem is that Carey Price gave up five goals on 36 shots tonight, five on 24 last night and four on 33 on Jan. 21.

Yeah. That’s probably it.

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The Lead

Calgary is maybe the most versatile team in the NHL. I think that much is pretty clear.

And because Buffalo is a team that, as proved by their eight-goal win over the Oilers last night, can pose some problems, coach Mike Keenan had them approach the game pragmatically. The game in Edmonton had wrapped up about 9:30 p.m. local time and the first puck dropped tonight at 6 p.m. So the Flames came out and did what any smart team would do against a team playing its second game in 21 hours: worked the boards. And they did it masterfully en route to a near-effortless 5-2 win.

The confusion caused by the early cycling led directly to Calgary’s first-period goal from Mike Cammalleri, who ended the night with a hat trick. Buffalo’s defense looked so gassed by the end of the first period that Calgary saw the opportunity to use the transition as a weapon, which it did to great effect on Dion Phaneuf’s second-period goal and, after Buffalo worked it back to 2-all, Todd Bertuzzi’s shifty little backhander on a partial break that stood up as the game-winner.

After that, the Flames did what any team with a one-goal lead and a solid defense would do against a worn-down, demoralized team: go back to the boards. It was here that the Bertuzzi-Langkow-Bourqe line did the night’s most impressive work, ruling the endboards with a despotic iron fist. Such play yielded the back two goals of Cammy’s second hattie of the year.

Not that Lindy Ruff didn’t give the Flames a ton of help. for some insane, bizarre reason, Ruff pretty much began using just four defensemen after the Flames went up 3-2 and that was why Calgary dominated in the corners so convincingly.

But this game illustrated perfectly just why Calgary, when it’s playing well, is such a force against a number of different teams. You wanna play mean hockey, the Flames’ll hit you hard and repeatedly. You wanna play a speed game and they’ll blow your goddamn doors off in transition. You wanna play a skill game and they’ll even get Todd Bertuzzi to score embarrassingly picturesque goals on you. If they could play like this every night, they’d easily be mentioned in the same breath as Boston, San Jose and Detroit.

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So this is happening soon.

I’ll be contributing over there. Visit it 50 or 60 times a day or I’ll actually come to your house and sort you right out.

The Lead

The Bruins hadn’t beaten Washington yet this season in their prior two meetings and, in fact, had scored only two goals while allowing an appalling five(!). So the much-anticipated tilt between the two titans of the Eastern Conference, which was to be played in Boston for the first time this season, seemed kinda important.

Not just for the, y’know, points and whatever, but also to prove that Boston could, in fact, have a good offensive game against Washington. In the two earlier games, the Bruins scored once despite 34 shots on goal and then saw Tim Thomas outdueled (by Jose Theodore of all people) and the offense outgunned.

Boston, surprisingly, started nervily. Washington drew a power play just seven seconds into the game and Mike Green bombed one just one second after it expired to give the Caps a 1-0 lead. Shawn Thornton’s nasty backhander at 9:26 that tied the game seemed to catch everyone in the building by surprise, including the aforementioned Theodore, but Michael Nylander put the Caps up again just before the end of the period. Marc Savard eventually leveled with a power play goal midway through the second on a gorgeous feed from the returning Patrice Bergeron, who did not look out of place on David Krejci’s wing.

And Krejci? He bounced the overtime game-winner in off a defenseman’s leg.

So I guess that settles the whole “Boston can’t beat Washington” thing. Sure, they still can’t stop Green or Alex Semin, who assisted on the former’s goal, but at least they have that pesky Alex Ovechkin situation squared away. Apparently the key is to hook him in such a way that he falls awkwardly into the boards and has to go to the dressing room to get his shoulder looked at, as Zdeno Chara did tonight. After that, Ovie looked flustered and had little impact on the game. He was relatively silent (for Ovie) save for a secondary assist on the Green goal and had only one shot all night at even strength, that in overtime.

The Bruins have now failed to beat only two of their opponents this year: the Wild, to whom they’ve somehow lost twice, and the Rangers (somehow), to whom they lost in a shootout in their only meeting.

The ultimate test, of course, comes two weeks from tonight, when they host the only other truly great team in the league: San Jose. They’ll beat San Jose. I don’t doubt that.

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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.

Yeah, yeah, All-Star Weekend, right? Big to-do. What am I gonna say, “Boy that game sure was boring as piss, huh?” Well obviously. Who cares?

The most interesting hockey event of the weekend didn’t happen in the NHL, the AHL or even Major Juniors. Instead, that event is the gutless, appalling attack (there’s no other word for it) by Michigan State’s Andrew Conboy and Corey Tropp on Michigan’s Steve Kampfer late in the dying moments of Saturday night’s game, in which the Wolverines were beating the absolute piss out of the Spartans for two straight games.

Video’s after the jump if you haven’t seen it:

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The Lead

Mike Cammalleri’s had a pretty decent two weeks.

Coming into tonight, in his last five games, he had six goals and two assists. So the fact that he bailed Calgary out from an horrendously bad defensive game, one which it eventually won 5-4 in a shootout, with another two goals was both fortuitous and somewhat expected.

Twice tonight, Calgary scored a goal that tied the game and surrendered another go-ahead marker within roughly 30 seconds. RJ Umberger opened the scoring for Columbus almost right away and Jarome Iginla answered with his first goal in eight games a while later. And just 31 seconds after that, Umberger scored again because Calgary just decided to let its entire defensive system break down and Miikka Kiprusoff simultaneously opted to ignore the rules set forth by conventional positional goaltending.

In the second, it got real wacky. Cammalleri scored a power play goal at 17:40 that was the result of a beautiful rush that collapsed the Columbus box while the puck was still in the neutral zone. It was glorious. Literally 10 seconds later, Jakub Voracek answered to put Columbus back up 3-2, and 40 seconds after that David Moss leveled the game again.

In the third, both teams had the decency to space out the goals from Rick Nash (a pretty shorthanded breakaway goal) and Cammalleri by about 10 minutes. Todd Bertuzzi ended up winning the game with the only shootout goal allowed by either Kiprusoff or Steve Mason, neither of whom impressed tonight.

Games like this are exactly why I don’t think the Flames will get too deep into the playoffs. They can’t stop the counterattack and, with increasingly enfuriating frequency, they can’t get Kiprusoff to show up and keep the friggin’ Blue Jackets from scoring four goals on 33 shots. Blerg.

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Hoo boy did Eric Duhatshek go a little overboard this morning in the Globe and Mail.

Separated at birth?: IGINLA: HOCKEY PLAYER, OBAMA: PRESIDENT

The Calgary Flames captain has a lot in common with the new U.S. commander-in-chief, including leadership abilities, respect and never backing away from a fight

Uhhhhh.. okay? One plays hockey (and hasn’t scored in seven games god dammit), one could blow up the entire world with the push of a button. Makes perfect, borderline-racist sense. You see, both Jarome Iginla and Barack Obama are half-black(!).

The parallels in their personal histories are startling, remarkable even.

They are both products of an interracial marriage. Their fathers, black, hailed from Africa, one from Kenya, the other from Nigeria. Their mothers, white, hailed from the hinterland, one from Kansas in the American Midwest, the other from Edmonton in Canada’s frozen north.

STARTLING! But there a number of other hockey players that remind Duhatshek of Barack Obama, including but not limited to: Dustin Byfuglien, Kevin Weekes, Kyle Okposo, Grant Fuhr, Mike Grier, Manny Malhotra, Anson Carter and, of course, Manute Bol.

If there wasn’t a 16-year gap in their respective ages - Obama is 47, Iginla 31 - you could almost argue they were separated at birth.

No, you really, really couldn’t.

I just imagine Duhatshek meandering around the dressing room at the Flames’ practice rink yesterday going, “So that Barack Obama, huh?” until finally Craig Conroy, who will talk to anyone about anything for any length of time they like, said, “YEAH! I’M FROM AMERICA!” and talked at a rapid pace for 45 minutes straight. Kudos to Duhatshek for pulling any type of story out of this, I guess, but it has to be the most asinine piece of front-page news ever.

The Lead

Lately I’ve been trying to tone down the Jack Edwards bashing on this blog. It’s beyond going after the low-hanging fruit; it’s more like picking up the half-eaten fruit that’s already fallen on the ground and, frankly, looks a bit shabby.

But what he did today has to be considered inexcusable. With about eight seconds to go in a one-goal game and St. Louis’ goalie pulled, Carlo Colaiacovo picked up a dump-in and began to rush up ice in a last-ditch effort to salvage overtime.

“Eight seconds left,” said Edwards. “It’ll take a miracle now.”

Well David Backes swatted a puck out of midair and somehow kept his stick below the crossbar to level the game with 0.8 seconds remaining, so I guess that qualifies. St. Louis went on to win 5-4 in a shootout. Here’s a video of the frantic final seconds that includes the Bruins missing on two tries at the empty net:

But seriously, what kind of an idiot says something like that as the opposing team is carrying the puck with speed through the neutral zone? Knowing Edwards as I do, it’s not a stretch to say he is the most hilariously biased, repetitive, annoying, awkward play by play guys in hockey (maybe even professional sport), and as much as I would prefer the Bruins not give up points to any Western Conference team, I was filled with such glee that Edwards had seemingly jinxed his team that I couldn’t believe it.

And that final goal in regulation was just the cherry on top of probably the best single period of hockey this year. The Bruins entered the third trailing 2-1 and scored three goals in the space of 1:39 thanks to a 5-on-3 power play during which they scored twice and a goal just seconds later by Zdeno Chara right off a draw. The game looked well in hand. But then St. Louis scored on a power play of its own with 1:20 or so to play to cut the lead to one before that remarkable tying goal.

So as much as the Blues can thank David Backes’ ability to somehow not play that puck with a high stick, I think Andy Murray should be wrapping up a nice fruit basket for Edwards right about now.

And by the way, this game wasn’t even aired in St. Louis, which is at once sad and hilarious.

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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.

It would be a hell of a goddamned idea for the Tampa Bay Lightning to get out from under the weight of the Vinny Lecavalier contract.

Let’s be honest: they’re probably not going to be good enough to win a Cup under the current management, even with Lecavalier, who’s one of the best players in the world. Plus the time to move him, should they want to do so, is now. That big 11-year, $85 million contract seems a little silly and unwieldy now that the team is going broke and also sucks a great deal.

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