The Two-Line Pass

The Lead

Tonight’s 6-0 loss by Anaheim to the mighty Boston Bruins featured just about every reason to possibly hate the Ducks that you could come up with.

They were taking cheapshots at Boston players, there were two boring-ass fights (if you stayed awake during that George Parros/Shawn Thornton tilt, you were either Shawn Thornton or George Parros), Corey Perry spent much of the night diving all over the place, they took a ton of penalties (two guys had over 10 minutes each), and people acted like they were a good team despite their lack of anything resembling solid play.

The good news, of course, is that the Bruins f’n steamrolled them. A six-goal shutout win is always nice, but it’s even better when the Ducks drastically outshoot their opponent and get outscored by a multiple of INFINITY. Plus, the turdiest troika in all of hockey — Perry, Ryan Getzlaf and Chris Pronger — were a combined minus-6.

If only Zdeno Chara had checked Perry in such a way that he landed in the third row of the premium seats, this would have been a perfect game for someone that hates the Ducks.

And boy do I hate the Ducks.

Elsewhere…

New Jersey 4, Colorado 0

So tonight the New Jersey Devils finally showed off the hot new talent they seemingly acquired out of nowhere: Martin Brodeur. I’m not sure where they got him or how, but this guy made 24 saves tonight against the Avs to earn a shutout and get the Devs back on track. To be fair, though, it was only Colorado.

Toronto 5, New York Islanders 4 (SO)

Well well, the Leafs have won two in a row in shootouts. I guess you boys don’t want that lottery pick after all, eh? Ah, actually I guess that’s not a fair assessment.. they DID give up three third-period goals to the friggin’ Isles, so maybe it’s just more that the Islanders are so bad they gave up two third-period goals to the Leafs to get there in the first place. Or maybe… no, I can’t sit here and try to figure out which team outsucked which. Chicken or the egg and all that.

Florida 2, New York Rangers 1

Speaking of third-period meltdowns, the Rangers gave up two goals to the Panthers a minute apart. All according to plan, Tortorella! All according to plan. Muahahahaha! *lightning* *low-angle shots of maniacal laughter*

Washington 4, Atlanta 3

Y’know, Evgeni Malkin should really get traded to one of these two teams so we can just have all four Russians Worth Watching in one game and be done with it. Kovalchuk, Semin, Ovechkin. These are giants! And there’s Malkin up in Pittsburgh, fartin’ around with Sid Crosby. Waste of time. Go to the Southeast Division, Geno. Because nothing says Mother Russia like a team from Atlanta.

Carolina 2, Buffalo 1 (SO)

Patrick Lalime did his job about as well as could be expected. He made 31 saves after all and.. oh Anton Babchuk scored for Carolina? Yeesh, never mind. That’s almost as bad as Cam Ward letting Patrick Kaleta score on hi.. oh that happened too. Jeez, maybe neither team deserved to win this.

San Jose 2, Ottawa 1

What’s with San Jose? Beating Ottawa by only one goal? That doesn’t seem right. I mean, I expect the Senators to only sneak one past Brian Boucher (Mission accomplished, Mike Fisher!), but Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau and.. all those other guys only put two behind Alex Auld. That should at least count as a shootout loss.

Nashville 4, Phoenix 1

In the battle of two teams whose cities don’t deserve them, the real losers were the Predators, whose home game was blacked out in the local market for WOMEN’S COLLEGE BASKETBALL. Oh yeah, they should definitely NOT move to Hamilton. That would be a terrible idea, Gary Bettman. Just awful!

St. Louis 3, Dallas 1

The first of two very solid nights for the Not-Brothers Mason. St. Louis’ Chris made 41 saves to help the Blues beat Dallas. That’s a lot of saves! And one of my favorite college players of all time, TJ Oshie (The Oshie, as he’s known), scored. Stars lose, The Oshie scores. Solid-ass game.

Columbus 1, Edmonton 0

Ah the other Mason is very good, isn’t he? His league-leading eighth shutout of the year for the guy, sure, but he only made 19 saves. And those were 19 saves against the Oilers. That’s like 12 saves against teams that are, y’know, good. Can there be any doubt at all now that this kid is your Calder Trophy winner? Who else even comes close to entering into the discussion? Mason is the ONLY reason the Blue Jackets are in the playoffs right now. You heard me, Rick Nash.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 2:46 am and is filed under Good night. 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.