The Two-Line Pass

The Lead

Mike Keenan sure is a retard.

His Flames are absolutely beating the christ out of Vancouver, outshooting them something like 42-22. Despite this, they trail 2-1 on goals from Rick Rypien and Mattias Ohlund, who hadn’t scored in 20-something games.

But no matter: Shane O’Brien, who has been having an absolutely atrocious night, gets whistled for holding Todd Bertuzzi early in the third period. Then, 54 seconds later, Willie Mitchell, who has been having an absolutely magnificent night opposite Jarome Iginla, puts a rolling puck over the glass.

At this point there’s still like 17:30 or so to go in the game. Prudent to sit on that timeout even if the power play is 0-fer on its last 32 or so chances. And indeed, that Flames do a great job pressuring the Vancouver net, putting three shots on net. In over a minute of 5-on-3 time.

About five and a half minutes later, Rypien runs Kiprusoff and that’s another Calgary power play. So Keenan rolls out the top power play unit which, for some inexplicable reason, includes Bertuzzi, who turns it over twice in the resultant man advantage and Calgary is held without a shot on goal.

Still seems like a bad time to take a timeout, huh?

So then Matt Pelech gets called for a hold. Fine, no biggie. Keenan rolls a PK unit that includes Jordan Leopold who, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you at this point, was pretty much directly responsible for both Vancouver goals. Shock of shocks: Leopold takes a penalty by cross checking Alexandre Burrows into the net from behind and gives Vancouver a two-man advantage.

Now would be a truly terrible time to use a timeout and settle your team, which is playing for the division title on the road in the second night of a back-to-back.

Calgary kills the Pelech penalty despite a pretty threatening Vancouver attack, and nearly has the Leopold penalty squared away as well when… Curtis Glencross slashes Ryan Kesler, which prompted me to say this on a popular sports message board: “mike keenan should really take a timeout at the next stoppage cuz the flames look like [sex word]ing idiots right now.”

Shockingly, he did not heed my advice.

Just 74 seconds later, Ohlund put another one in the net. That’s 3-1 Canucks with 5:09 to play. Ballgame. Actually, not really. Because Henrik Sedin scored 2:37 later. And that’s when I heard Canucks play by play announcer John Shorthouse say this: “And Mike Keenan is shuffling his lines now.”

Yes.

AFTER IT’S FOUR TO F’ING ONE WITH TWO AND A HALF MINUTES TO GO IN A GAME THAT COULD HAVE CLINCHED THE DIVISION, MIKE KEENAN DECIDES THAT THE LINES THAT CAN’T GET MORE THAN ONE GOAL PAST ROBERTO LUONGO ON FORTY-SIX SHOTS NEED TO BE MIXED UP!

His solution, and I’m not making this up, was to put Bertuzzi on the ice again. With Daymond Langkow and Jamie Lundmark.

What an idiot.

Elsewhere…

Toronto 4, New Jersey 1

Sight unseen, you tell me which Martin was which: Brodeur or Gerber. One Martin made 47 saves on 48 shots. The other made 14 saves on 18 shots. The answer may surprise you.

New York Rangers 3, Montreal 1

The win for the Rangers ensured that we’d still have to hear about the f’n Rangers being in the playoff race despite their best efforts to cock the whole thing up, and also denied Montreal the chance to clinch a playoff spot. Really, a win either way was going to annoy me.

Philadelphia 2, Florida 1

Poor Panthers. The Rangers win plus this loss makes it awful tough for them to get into the playoffs now. That makes me sad. I knew they should’ve traded Jay Bouwmeester when they had the chance.

Carolina 9, New York Islanders 0

Wow. Final shots were 57-12. No joke. Big story of the game was Eric Staal’s hat trick. You knew it was coming because he was playing a terrible team and he’s now the official garbage man of the NHL since he cleans up so well against trash. A full 13, or one-third of his 39 goals this year, have come in FOUR games against teams Nos. 26 (Coyotes), 27 (Thrashers), 29 (Bolts) and 30 (Isles) in the league. It’s a pity the ‘Canes don’t close with Colorado so he could’ve had hat tricks against all five of the worst teams in the league to justify his insanely retarded contract next year.

Washington 4, Atlanta 2

Big shock here.

Ottawa 3, Boston 2

Manny Fernandez is so atrocious it’s difficult to put into words. If I told you how much he made to lose this game, you would choke. Okay I will tell you anyway. This was his 27th game of the year, and his salary for 2008-09 was $4.75 million. Thus, his takehome pay for this game: $175,925.93. Mhmm.

Pittsburgh 6, Tampa Bay 4

Sid Crosby had two goals. He also finished minus-4. Against the Lightning. That’s somethin’.

Chicago 4, Nashville 2

And my dream of all five Central teams making the playoffs this year fades even more. Interestingly, Chicago has locked up home ice before either of the two teams from the Northwest locked up their crown. Somehow the NHL rules make it so that they cannot finish third in the conference despite now having 99 points. Seems rather unfair.

Minnesota 3, Dallas 1

Rather, that should read “Marian Gaborik 1-2-3, Dallas 1.” Yes, Gabby did it again. Five games in a row with a goal, and eight in nine since coming back on March 22. He also has five assists in that span. Season total: 11-7-18 in 15 games. And that’s with absolutely no help on his line. The other Wild goalscorers were Eric Belanger and Owen Nolan.

Los Angeles 2, Edmonton 1

Oh thanks, Kings. The last thing Calgary needed to do was play a back-to-back home-and-home with a PISSED OFF Edmonton team with the division title on the line. Thanks. Really that’s super helpful. So thank you. Sincerely.

St. Louis 5, Phoenix 1

Al Montoya started out with such promise. Now he’s allowed seven goals on 35 shots in his last fourish periods. So much for the future of American goaltending.

San Jose 1, Colorado 0 (SO)

I forgot this game was happening. Because it’s between the second-best team in the league and the third-worst. Apparently the Sharks almost did the same thing.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 at 1:21 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.