The Two-Line Pass

The Lead

I remember that, like, split second when everyone was like, “Man the Coyotes could end up being good this year.”

Those halcyon days are long gone. Today they sent Kyle Turris to the minors and then blew a two-goal, third-period lead and lost 4-3. To Vancouver.

Ah, a team that once had such great promise. Your Turrises, your Michaleks, your Muellers, your Tikhonovs. Good young core. It’s amounted to crap. The Coyotes are now sitting in 13th in the West after sitting in the middle of the playoff picture for a nice little while there. They’re 2-8-0 in their last 10.

Interestingly they’ve won three games in a row once this season, and apart from a six-game losing streak in November hadn’t lost more than two in a row all year until this most recent skid. I don’t know what gets into this team. They were reportedly awesome last night against Dallas.

Know who’s still great, though? Enver Lisin, baby. After he scored the game’s only goal last night, he netted a real pretty one by creating a neutral-zone turnover and walking the puck through a pair of defenders and beating Luongo clean with a nasty wrister. He also finished a plus-2 to lead all players. Kid can play.

But man, who would want to buy a team that plays like this? Note to Coyotes players: This is not how to keep yourself in a very nice part of the country with attractive women and nice, warm weather. Keep playing like this and your asses are getting shipped to Winnipeg or Hamilton or Nunavut so fast it’ll make Shane Doan get a nosebleed like that redhaired Australian girl from “Lost.”

(P.S. I chose the above picture because it looks like Willie Mitchell might be attempting to take a dump in his hockey pants.)

Read the rest of this entry »

The Lead

Admittedly, I thought the Bruins would walk in this game.

But the Sharks, who took an alarming amount of penalties (and inexplicably got away with a few others), had a plan. And in a battle of the league’s two best teams, they took an alarmingly easy 5-2 win.

The San Jose penalty kill, which went 5 for 5 and barely let the Bruins set up their 5-on-4 attack, was unstoppable. It controlled the boards, it controlled the center of the ice, it controlled the high-traffic areas near the faceoff dots. Boston had eight shots on the power play, but most were from the perimeter and Evgeni Nabokov, the game’s undisputed No. 1 star who collected 28 saves on 30 shots against a Boston attack which was among the best in the league and had a home power play running around 30 percent, had little problem with the few shots he faced from the perimeter.

Milan Lucic might have scored a pair of first-period goals to stake Boston to a 2-1 lead after the opening 20 minutes, but the Bruins had little answer for the Sharks’ defense, which blocked 12 shots and outhit Boston 39-25. Simply put, San Jose wanted this game more.

Garbage goals from Rob Blake, Patrick Marleau, and Milan Michalek, all of which came either on rebounds or deflections, allowed the Sharks to jump out to the lead they never surrendered, and insurance goals from Joe Thornton (who exorcised whichever demons you’d like to bring up regarding his Boston days) and Mike Grier (into an empty net) locked the game up late.

San Jose never looked like “The Team To Beat” in the NHL, but certainly in handing Boston its first loss of the seaosn by more than two goals, it made an emphatic statement as to the legitimacy of its claim that it would not go quietly into the night once it had met the second round of the playoffs.

If it could make Boston look this bad on the power play (and the Bruins had trouble even gaining the red line on its five man-up chances, putting just eight shots on net during its five power plays), and beat it by three goals, then surely the Sharks are a for-real, legitimate, no-joking-around contender for the Stanley Cup in a way that it had never been considered before. This wasn’t just a good regular-season team. This was a good all-the-time team.

It handled the best team in the league no problem. Winning on the road, on a Tuesday night, when they were in the midst of a three-game losing streak? Please. The Sharks could handle it. And win by three. What more qualification could need?

In maybe the most entertaining hockey game of the NHL schedule so far this season, the Sharks were not only winners, they were emphatic winners. Those fears about a second-round exit? Stop it. No.

The Sharks are legit. And that was all the evidence anyone should’ve needed. Beating the Bruins in the biggest regular-season game since the lockout? Yeah, that’ll square that away.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Lead

And with that, the staunchest of Blueshirt supporters officially began to abandon ship as well.

In reading a couple of message boards since the Rangers wrapped their ugly 3-0 loss to New Jersey, it’s become pretty evident that even the promise of Sean Avery’s triumphant return to Broadway will not be enough to stop the rivers and rivers of blood flowing from the vast number of holes in this Rangers team.

The bad news for this team: those holes are here to stay.

Scott Gomez’s $7.357 million cap hit will be on the books until 2014. Chris Drury’s $7.05 million hit will stay there until 2012. Markus Naslund’s ineffective ass will be weighing down the Rangers next year as well, to the tune of a $4 million cap hit.

But that’s not the worst of it.

Like Drury, Michal Roszival’s on the books until 2012, but at a more modest but somehow seemingly-worse $5 million a year. And Wade Redden, he of the 2-15-17 line and minus-11 in 53 games, including a minus-1 tonight, will cost the Rangers $6.5 million against the cap until 2014, when he will be 36 years old.

(A friend of mine that’s a lifelong Rangers fan sent me a text midway through the game. “Wade redden is the worst play in nhl history,” it read. “I cant imagine how he was once considered good.”

Yeah, it’s pretty tough to figure.)

Fun fact: The Rangers have $36.782 million committed to just six players on the roster (the above five plus Henrik Lundqvist) for next season, when the cap will go down and when they have to re-sign seven regular players that just happen to be restricted free agents this summer. Of the six signed players, only Gomez and Lundqvist are going to be under 30 next season.

In all, the Rangers have $40.159 million tied up in existing player salaries next year, with all those players to re-up, and the cap will almost certainly be going down.

Right, that’s good news.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Lead

When you watch as much hockey as I do (I’ll ballpark it at 20 games a week), it’s kind of easy to get jaded. Almost every goal, with a few notable exceptions, has been done before. That goal Drew Stafford scored last night was gorgeous, but we’ve seen Rick Nash and Alex Ovechkin and Jon Toews do it better. Mike Legg’s famous goal in the NCAA tournament has to have been one of the first of its kind, but every once in a while some cheeky junior player (like Sid Crosby) will try it again.

Every highlight reel goal you’ve ever seen has been attempted and many have been scored. It takes a very rare confluence of perfect speed, positioning, and line combinations for any number of players and both teams for the circumstances surrounding all-time classic goals (like Ovechkin’s against the Coyotes) to even be created.

But this goal by Richard Zednick tonight.. I’ve never seen anything even a little like it. I mean, just look at that. The fact that it ended up as the game-winner too, that’s awesome.

So many little things on that goal are very, very pretty. The chip-around on Radek Martinek, the presence of mind to pull it back around Brendan Witt, the ability to clear Witt at full speed, the ability to corral the puck while still in midair and somehow put it on net.

Stop the fight. This one’s over. Who could possibly top that? How?

Richard Zednik, congratulations on scoring the Goal of the Year.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Lead

Gotta think the only reason Michel Therrien has a job at all at this point is because every time he’s on the brink of getting fired, Sid Crosby or Evgeni Malkin engineers some miracle comeback, such as the latter did tonight against, well, only the Tampa Bay Lightning, I guess.

But still, if I was Therrien I would watch this comeback of comebacks and, knowing there must certainly be at least a few sets of eyes on me at all times, smile and nod knowingly every time the Penguins managed to pump in another goal against, well, only Mike McKenna, I guess.

If I was Therrien… hmm…………….

~~~~~~~~~~ dream sequence ~~~~~~~~~~

I am, obviously, quick to remind well-wisher and detractor alike that I had had of course drawn it up that way. You see, Malkin was to be the focal point of our attack all game! It’s GENIUS! Surely, I made it evident that I had put on a master class in coaching tonight. “Geno,” I said when I felt the time had drawn nigh, “Go shoot the puck until you score or a linemate scores.” Some wags among you may have scoffed at this plan.

“Foolhardy!” came the cries, I imagine. “Too centrally-concentrated on one man!”

But then Evgeni Malkin would go and put up two goals and an assist in just over 20 minutes, and who would be foolhardy then? Why, it would be those who dare oppose me and my remarkable coaching prowess! Not just anyone could tell one of the best players in the world to do their job and then have. them. do. it. No, it takes a special kind of man.

And that’s why I, Michel Therrien, am among the best coaches in the world. Why do you think I still have this job? Because I have this team right where it needs to be. My plan for the remainder of the season is not unlike my in-game plan was tonight, dear friends. We have sat back, biding our time while the untalented bottom feeders of the league have grown fat and happy with their meager 12-point leads and games in hand.

But when we reach the final 20 games, “Geno and Sid,” I will say, “go win us all our remaining games until we make the playoffs.” Again the wags will scoff.

“Too little, too late!” the decriers will decry. “You’ll never catch the Rangers now!”

But this is Sid and Geno we’re talking about. They have enough talent to win every single game on their own no matter how bad Max Talbot and Matt Cooke are. I’ll play them 40 minutes a night if need be.

If this plan worked tonight against the Lightning, it cannot fail down the stretch!

*Maniacal laughter*

*is fired soon*

Aww heck.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Lead

I can’t believe they actually went through with it.

Obviously by now it is well-estabished that I consider the Adam Graves number retirement to be an hilarious, misguided travesty of the “proud” “tradition” of the New York Rangers. But watching the highlights of it tonight on NHL.com (like I could have stomached a full hour of that crap live), it kind of occured to me exactly what this all was.

1) A shameless money grab on the part of the New York Rangers.

The whole thing reeked of a “Hey guys, we know we’re not really all that good any more, but remember how awesome 1994 was?!” sentiment. Not that the Rangers don’t sell out every night, but this was a way to get disenfranchised fans back into the fold in a way that their boring, mediocre hockey team never could have. Some jerkoff from Queens might have heard about this and went to his buddy, “‘Ey Vinny you remembuh this Adam Graves guy? Yeeah, they’re retirin’ ‘is numba ova at the Garden,” and that’s all the Rangers were looking for. There’s a reason the franchise retired two numbers prior to Mike Richter’s, and six since: brazen, cheap opportunism.

2) A slap in the face to Andy Bathgate.

Bathgate was a guy who actually had a very good career and had his number retired by the Rangers earlier this year. He’s in the Hall of Fame, for chrissakes! And now he has to share a No. 9 banner with this, let’s face it, mediocre player. This is like if Patrick Roy had to share a banner with Ryan Walter (who, by the way, had more career points than Adam Graves) or if Steve Yzerman had to share one with Keith Primeau (who also has more career points than Adam Graves). It’s insane to think that this is being allowed to take place. Jesus, Todd Bertuzzi is only two points away from knocking Graves out of the NHL’s top 250 leading scorers, and they had the GALL to actually call him “One of the greatest Rangers in team history.”

3) A chance for the NHL to once again celebrate the 1994 Rangers as though they mean anything to anyone who isn’t a Ranger fan.

Yeah, it was a great team full of great players. So was the ‘89 Flames team but I don’t expect anyone outside of Calgary (and myself, of course) to give a rat’s ass about Hakan Loob (who also scored 50 goals in a season once, so face to you, Adam Graves). ‘Course the Flames wouldn’t have the unmitigated audacity to retire his number either, so there’s that. Meanwhile the NHL — and more specifically Gary Bettman, I’m sure — wants everyone to get geared up for next year’s Esa Tikanen Night.

Let’s face it, there are a lot of guys out there who are “great teammates” and “great in the community.” They don’t deserve to have their numbers retired. Craig Conroy is one of the best teammates in the league. So is Tim Thomas. Don’t think we’ll be seeing Connie or Timmy ever hoisting their numbers up into the rafters anywhere, and if they did everyone would rightly call it ridiculous.

I read a Rangers blog today that said Adam Graves should have his number retired because Clark Gillies is in the Hall of Fame, except that Gillies, of course, won FOUR Cups, not one, and had more points in fewer games than Graves. So there goes that argument. Can’t retire a number every time a journeyman has one great year, or the Orioles will have to put Brady Anderson up there next to Ripken.

Adam Graves sucked then and he sucks now. So do the Rangers, who fittingly lost their stupid game tonight. Good. That’s what Graves would’ve done.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not made of stone. I’m a man just like you, dear readers.

And so when I heard they were remaking Slap Shot, I said to myself, “This is literally the worst idea anyone in Hollywood has ever had.” And I said that as someone who had recently seen M. Night Shyamalan’s two latest films.

Now, sure, the guy who directed the Fun with Dick and Jane remake is directing it (unwatchable), the guy who wrote Analyze That (cat turds) is writing it, and the executive producer of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (abortion) as well as the producer of Mr. 3000 (so bad it killed Bernie Mac four years later) are producing it.

But I’m not worried about this one bit. I realized it would be nearly impossible you screw up something as simple to write and fall-down funny as a simple remake of the classic Slap Shot. But as a person who, at 11 years old, won a Slap Shot trivia contest hosted by the Hanson Brothers in a bar full of men between 2.5 and three times my age, I think it would be prudent to allow me to make a few suggestions for casting.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Lead

Okay sure they won in a shootout, but that was an embarrassing performance by the Detroit Red Wings.

In no single period did they crack a double-digit shot total, and had just two shots on goal in the first period. Two! They were 0 for 3 on the power play and only 4 for 7 on the penalty kill. They let a pretty middle-of-the-road, injury-riddled St. Louis team not only hang around but actually dictate most of the game. They were careless with the puck and the only reason they scored three goals was that Manny Legace gave them up on Detroit’s first eight shots, a total that Detroit took 31:21 to reach.

It was truly an appalling game to watch, and frankly the Wings don’t deserve to have snapped their five-game losing streak. They haven’t played like anything resembling one of the four best teams in hockey, and if tonight’s game wasn’t further evidence that Chris Osgood should be bundled off to Uzbekistan for a bag of third-hand pucks and a mule carcass, nothing is.

The Blues, by the way, rolled the formidable defensive unit of Barret Jackman, Carlo Colaiacovo, Jeff Woywitka, Mike Weaver, Steve Wagner, Tyson Strachan and Jay McKee. It’s a wonder that it took the Detroit freakin’ Red Wings an overtime period to get to 20 shots against that. You and your beer league team’s fourth line could put up 20 against them in 60 minutes. No problem.

What a joke.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Ed. note: I wrote this two years ago (and updated it a bit for this posting) after being inspired by the absolute insipid pointlessness of attending another boring Beanpot, which begins anew for the 57th time tomorrow night on NESN and Rogers SportsNet. I like to repost it every year just ahead of the Beanpot because, well, it’s the worst tournament in sports. Enjoy. Or don’t. I couldn’t care less either way.

Read the rest of this entry »