The Two-Line Pass

The Lead

It’s been 11 months and one day since the Sharks last lost a regular-season game in regulation at HP Pavilion. That night, Feb. 14, 2008, they dropped a one-goal game to Edmonton before reeling off a home record 28-0-2.

Until tonight. Calgary went into HP Pavilion and did what had seemed impossible, beat the Sharks in just 60 minutes, by a score of 3-2. And really, it wasn’t anything the Flames did especially well that punched the Sharks’ ticket. Rather, the Western Conference frontrunners didn’t take care of the puck, were often ineffectual on the transition and failed to capitalize on any of the five power plays afforded them by Calgary and that includes a 5-on-3 opportunity.

But before the game, Mike Keenan had quipped that SOMEONE had to snap the Sharks’ home winning streak, so why shouldn’t it be Calgary, which kicked the Sharks’ balls in 5-2 just over a week ago.

Ryane Clowe, who, it seems, has had 114 percent of his career scoring come against the Flames, drew first blood just a minute into the game and I quickly began thinking of Calgary’s last trip to San Jose this season (a brutal 6-1 loss). Craig Conroy answered early in the second before Calgary surrendered a turdy goal a few minutes later to Joe Thornton thanks to Dion Phaneuf’s hesitance to take the body as Jumbo Joe cut into the middle of the ice.

But then Daymond Langkow answered on the power play when he found himself inexplicably open in front of the net for a tip-in. And when I say open, I mean he could have taken a quick nap and fixed himself a sandwich before Doug Murray, the nearest defender, got within a stick’s length.

Phaneuf made up for his Thornton-related miscue (and admittedly Joe was the best player on the ice tonight) by scoring the game-winner off the stick of Marc-Edouard Vlasic. Memo to Vlasic: Don’t block shots with your blade. It never works out how you’d like.

Big win for the Flames, huge loss for the Sharks, at least mentally. It wasn’t like Calgary came in with a perfect road game and outplayed them. On the contrary, the Sharks were dictating play. But apart from the Conroy goal, the rest of the Flames scoring was the result of a bad play by a Sharks defenseman, and San Jose was just awful on the power play. That one’s gonna sting for a while, and give the already surging Flames a very nice boost going into a stretch in which they play seven of their next 10 at home, where they haven’t lost in regulation since Dec. 2. That’s a big chance to make up some ground right there.

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So yesterday, NHL COO John Collins was interviewed by Bloomberg News about the possibile locations of future Winter Classics. He threw out the usual, standard-fare options that would be great (Fenway, Yankee Stadium, Penn State). Everyone would love to see outdoor games in those cities. It would be awesome.

But then the interview headed to Weirdsville in a goddamn hurry.

NHL representatives recently visited Las Vegas in part to gauge the feasibility of staging a Jan. 1 game on Las Vegas Boulevard South, the area known as “the Strip,” Collins said.

“Logistically, it could happen,” he said.

Could it? Could it really? When I read this, I phoned a friend of mine who lives in Las Vegas. Midday temps in Vegas on New Years Day: 45 degrees. Midday temps in Vegas right this second: 70. So what logistical circumstances, outside the construction of a super villain-type weather machine (surely to be built in Gary Bettman’s Lab for Desecration of the Sport that I’m convinced exists), would allow for the game to be played in these conditions?

I’m pretty sure I remember people in Chicago flipping the hell out when it was like 50 out and they were worried about that affecting ice quality. Imagine Shane Doan taking a header into the boards because he hit a puddle caused by a week of 65-degree days in the lead-up to the game. Ridiculous, stupid idea.

Oh but you wanted to hear a worse one? Take it away, Collins:

A Jan. 1 date would likely make for better playing conditions. Prior to this year’s game, the NHL also spent more than $1 million on a custom-made refrigeration truck and other equipment, allowing for better control of the ice surface.

“The new rink opens up a lot of opportunities,” Collins said. “We might even be able to have a night game out at the Rose Bowl.”

Yeah it was 70 in L.A. on New Years’ Day. And I’m pretty sure the Rose Bowl is all booked up on Jan. 1 anyways. I believe they’ve played something called THE F’N ROSE BOWL on it every New Years’ Day for the past 95 years. Collins has to be talking out of his ass.

What is with the NHL’s obsession with taking something special and widely regarded as “good” (Outdoor games! Big crowds! Record ratings!) and changing it for no goddamn reason whatsoever?

But because the Rose Bowl might not be feasible, I have come up with several places that will serve as suitable substitutes for an upcoming Winter Classic:

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The Lead

It takes a special player to clown out a guy like Evgeni Malkin. That’s why Alex Ovechkin is a special, special player.

While Malkin spent much of the run-up to the Pens/Caps game, which Washington handily won 6-3, braiding his best friends’ hair and wondering why Ovechkin didn’t like him, Ovie was apparently crafting an immaculate gameplan that allowed him to score two goals and add an assist on Tomas Fleischmann’s game-winner.

I really couldn’t believe Malkin’s quotes before the game. “Ovechkin is a great player, but every time he hits me, I don’t know why,” he said. Are you serious, Geno? You don’t know why Ovechkin hits you? Maybe it’s because Alex Ovechkin starts every game wondering how he can steamroll every single person on the opposing team and goes from there. Maybe it’s because Ovechkin is on a team that has a shot of winning a playoff round, or, indeed, a better-than-decent chance of even making it. MAAAAAAAYBE it’s because Ovechkin is just a bad dude.

Let’s just put this out there: the Penguins suck, and I refuse to believe that the addition of Sergei Gonchar instantly turns this team from the steaming pile of crap it’s been over the last couple months into a Cup contender. Gonchar is a lot of things, but the lynchpin that makes the whole system come together ain’t one of ‘em.

And things only got better for the Penguins as Sid Crosby left the game early with an injury… of some sort. Pittsburgh would offer no explanation as to the type of injury he had sustained, let alone the extent of it, but he was not made available to reporters after the game, so you gotta figure it’s more than a bump on the noggin. That’s fine, though. Not like the Pens are tenuously holding onto TENTH place in the Eastern Conference.

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The Lead

For those that missed the Bruins/Canadiens game tonight, you missed, without hyperbole, probably the best game of the season to date.

Despite being an essentially meaningless mid-January game (insofar as the Bruins and Habs ain’t exactly jockeying for position in the standings), this matchup had all the drama, pace and excitement of last year’s outstanding playoff series. The Garden was packed and rocking from the time the first puck dropped to the final whistle when the Bruins emerged with a fairly convincing 3-1 victory over the hated and red-hot Habs.

Tim Thomas and Jaroslav Halak were both outstanding, making 34 and 26 saves respectively, but the true star of the game was Zdeno Chara, whose big, power play point shot beat Halak twice and who ate up nearly 32 minutes of ice time for Boston.

There was a fight, pretty little passing plays and there were hits. Lots of hits. On paper, the Habs actually won the physical battle, outhitting the Bruins 28-23 thanks to Mike Komisarek’s ridiculous 11 checks.

I don’t know if there’s a way to watch the entire game online through some kind of NHL game archive, but this is a game you need to see. It was so good that even Jack Edwards was tolerable.

If this had been Game 7 of a late-round playoff series, people would be raving about this game for years to come.

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The Lead

Whatever the opposite of a goaltending battle is, Versus viewers were subjected to one tonight.

Sure, you can argue that there were a few highlight reel saves and that as a result it’s reasonable to surmise that despite allowing nine goals on 79 shots, both Chris Osgood and Marty Turco weren’t quite so bad as perhaps the statistics would lead one to believe.

You, of course, would be horribly wrong, because both the goals AND the ridiculous stops were the result of neither goalie participating in anything resembling sound positional goaltending. Go look at the highlights. What’s Turco thinking on that first goal? The announcer says it was a deflection, but it wasn’t. On the second goal, Turco overcommits to the puck carrier, Pavel Datsyuk, who once again owned him in a consistent and thorough manner all night. As for the Red Wings’ goaltending, the first two Stars goals were through screens, so no fault of Osgood’s there, but the rest of them.. yeesh.

I have never been a goalie at any level of competitive hockey, but I have to assume that, if I were, it would be a bad thing for me to be lying four feet outside of my crease when the opponent scores an overtime game-winner against me. Right? Maybe any readers out there who are goalies can fill me in.

This game would make a perfect instructional video for every goalie under the age of 10 to learn what not to do. “See, Billy, unlike Marty Turco, you DON’T want try to glove a weak wrist shot and have it hit you in the mask twice in one period.”

Man, I’d make such a good peewee coach.

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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. 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 got a couple of e-mails about the lack of posting this week, and I can see why. Not one non-Good Night post. Not one. This is not because I was especially busy. It wasn’t because nothing interesting happened in the world of hockey. Actually, it was pretty much the craziest news week in the sport since the season began. I just couldn’t bang out anything even resembling entertaining, interesting writing. Worst case of writer’s block I’ve suffered through.

This is by no means intended as excuse-making for general laziness. To help confirm this, I have decided that this week’s What We Learned will not be about any particular subject. Rather, it will be the actual, unedited things I had written up in Word and saved in the hopes of returning to it when I could rub two brain synapses together and maybe communicate a cogent, interesting opinion that someone would look at and then not say, “What a collossally stupid piece of shit.” In this, I have obviously failed.

(And just so there’s no confusion, yes, this is being done in lieu of actual content because I’m still not over this stupid goddamn writer’s block and I hate myself for it.)

Enjoy, and feel free to laugh at my expense.

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The Lead

MATS SUNDIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

VANCOUVER BEATS EDMONTON 4-2!!!!!!!!!!

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH!!!!!

MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATS!!!!

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The Lead

San Jose has had its problems of late. No one would deny that.

While the Sharks have earned points in eight of their last 10 games, they’ve also been handed 40 percent of their regulation losses and 60 percent of their shootout losses for the entire in that space. And while the two regulation losses were to very good teams in Detroit last week and Calgary tonight — both of which are closing the gap between the Sharks and the rest of the West in second and third place, respectively — the Sharks have been thoroughly outplayed in both.

The embarrassing 6-0 loss to Detroit was about as heavily-discussed as you’d imagine, tonight’s 5-2 loss to the Flames might go under the radar because, frankly, San Jose ain’t exactly San Jose any more.

Calgary opened a 3-0 lead in the first and Daymond Langkow added his second of the game early in the middle period to make it 4-0. San Jose just kinda skated around for most of that time, turned the puck over in the neutral zone, and hoped Evgeni Nabokov would somehow enough saves to erase the deficit. The rest of the Sharks, meanwhile, totalled four shots in the time it took Calgary to score its four goals.

There’s something seriously wrong with the Sharks now. They shouldn’t be settling for loser points against Columbus, St. Louis and Minnesota. A little over a month ago, they were in the middle of winning nine in a row and 17 of their last 20. Now look at them. Eight teams have more than or as many points from their last 10 games. One of those is Dallas.

The Sharks just aren’t playing like the Sharks any more, and maybe it’s because Todd McLellan looks like the game show host in Slumdog Millionaire.

(Yes I acknowledge that this is a five percenter.)

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The Lead

Why did Canada ever doubt its World Junior Championship team?

Playing at home against an admittedly stingy but not overly-flashy Sweden team, it seemed like there was a general gnashing of teeth and lamenting of horrible events to come. Even the well-respected James Mirtle was seriously downplaying the idea that Canada, the team that struck goals four times in a row, might actually pull this one out.

The underdog? Please.

Canada positively romped to an almost effortless 5-1 victory. The idea that they would do otherwise, having watched most of both team’s games in this tournament, was ridiculous. So, too, was that idea considering how easily the Canadians handled the Swedes in their pre-tournament matchup which featured John Tavares scoring that goal.

I suppose that the fear that perhaps Jacob Markstrom’s remarkable performance in the lead-up to the final spurred some of the fears, as did Dustin Tokarski’s shaky play in Canada’s goal — his giving up five goals to Russia must have still been fresh in everyone’s mind. But all those worries must have been asuaged when Canada capitalized on an early (and not very smart) penalty to Calgary pick Mikael Backlund gave way to a PK Subban goal that was the result of nothing more than good, ol’ fashioned hard work around the net just 38 seconds into the night.

From that point, Canada had to win. Simply couldn’t have failed. The Swedes never stood a chance. And when Canada saw its lead doubled by three-time Team Canada cut Angelo Esposito just over 3:30 later. It was in the bag then, as Markstrom resorted to diving all over the ice in an hilarious attempt to draw penalties (none of which worked) and Sweden began to lose all manner of composure.

The parade to the box continued unabated throughout the game, but the score remained the same until Cody Hodgson extended the Canadian lead to three early in the third period and send Ottawa’s ScotiaBank Place into a joy bordering on apoplexy. Sweden eventually scored on the power play before surrendering a pair of empty net goals, but this was over well before the second period even began.

It was the freakin’ World Juniors championship game. Canada simply doesn’t lose on that stage. Not to a bunch of Swedes that take too many penalties and put too few shots on net, regardless of how good their defense and goaltending is. Any game Canada would have lost, or indeed even come close to losing, would have been similar to the Russia semifinal: an offensive slugfest. Sweden, luckily, opted to go the trench warfare route, hunkered down in their own zone and played the body rather than the puck. Shockingly, the Soft Europeans quickly found this didn’t work against those Good Canadian Boys (these phrases ™ and © Donald Stewart Cherry). They had to throw that game plan out posthaste and stick to what they were doing back when they were actually successful: getting the puck to the net.

But the Swedes were never going to beat Canada. Of course not. Canada had too much of everything EXCEPT “consistent” goaltending. The offense was never a question and the defense proved itself more than equipped to deal with the only-occasional Swedish attack via physicality or finesse. So if Kotarski, who ended up making 39 saves, was the only question mark, one needed only look back at last year’s Memorial Cup, where he posted a 4-0-0 record thanks to a 1.72/.953 line for Spokane, to see how he plays in big-game situations.

So that’s five straight golds for Canada, and that’s not especially surprising. Neither will the sixth in Saskatoon next year.

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Flyers prospect James van Riemsdyk closed the USA’s World Juniors tournament with a pretty awesome goal to give the Americans a 3-2 overtime win against the Czech Republic in the fifth-place game. If you remember the move Marek Malik used to win that long shootout against Washington in 2005-06, it’s like that, only during real game action rather than a silly skills competition.

Video quality right now isn’t the best (it’s just of the replay on the jumbotron), but the goal was disgusting. Sadly, it’s still only the second-best goal of the tournament.