The Two-Line Pass

We all know that if you take a penalty, you go to the box for two minutes, ya know, by yourself, and you feel shame.

But according to some Canucks, that feeling apparently doesn’t last the entire two minutes. Alex Burrows has the experience down to a much more regimented science.

“The first 30 seconds or so I probably think about what I did wrong, that I should not have done that,” Burrows says in a French-Canadian accent reminiscent of Lemieux’s.

“Then I spend about 30 seconds praying for the guys to clear the puck and then the last minute is just getting ready, drinking some water and toweling off. With about 30 seconds left, I’m getting ready to go back on. I usually stand up with around 10 seconds left.”

There is apparently little variation from box to box around the league, but Kevin Bieksa found out that when there is, it’s usually best to ignore it.

“They are all pretty much the same, although some arenas are tougher in terms of the people sitting around you,” Bieksa says. “I had a beer dumped on me last year in Phoenix.”

Bieksa does his best to ignore the taunts of fans while sitting in the box, but sometimes he can’t help himself.

“I maybe just squirt them with the water if they are getting a little too mouthy,” he says. “But that’s how I ended up getting that beer dumped on me. Some rinks are tougher on you than others.”

I don’t know what’s cooler, that Brad Ziemer from the Vancouver Sun came up with the idea to do this article or that Burrows and Bieksa were so forthcoming and awesome about sharing some of their stories and feelings on the subject.

But what about that part at the end, where you get free?

“I’m always thinking about getting a breakaway as soon as I get out of the box,” Bieksa says. “That still hasn’t happened, but if it ever does I am prepared.”

So today I’m just looking around at old college hockey teams and I come upon a name I vaguely recognized: Ben Lovejoy. Kid went to Boston College and was pretty good from what I remembered, but I kind of lost track of him after he transferred to Dartmouth and out of Hockey East.

Well turns out he’s playing for the Baby Pens now and has his own blog, which is seemingly independent of the team’s website. That’s awesome. I wish more players would do that so we can get stories that are actually funny or interesting, rather than some middle-of-the-road defenseman saying, “Went to practice today. It was really hard but we’re playing good hockey right now and we’re just focused on doing our jobs.” No one cares.

But Lovejoy, in his two posts this season, has been pretty funny. The story he posted Friday was a riot.

A fan made a mixtape called “Songs about Love(joy)” full of songs where the word “love” is used in the title.

Every time the word love was mentioned for the rest of the CD, the song would cut out and a voice would come on and say, “joy.” For the next 8 tracks on the CD, they all did this. It was one of the funniest, and creepiest, things I had ever heard. I was almost embarrassed that someone had taken the time to make a CD like this for me. After listening to the CD (not the whole thing, just skipping from track to track) I took it out and put it in the side panel of my car door where it stayed for a month or two.

Eventually, a teammate found the CD by accident and brought it to the dressing room, much to the delight of all of Lovejoy’s teammates. Danny Richmond has since burned a copy of the CD for friends and family and put it on his iPod.

We really, really need to get some audio of this mixtape.

So the other day, Kris Chucko and Carsen Germyn, both members of the Quad City Flames, went on the Dwyer and Michaels Morning Show and, from what I can ascertain, fired t-shirts at passing with a compressed air gun for no good reason.

There has been no reasonable explanation that I can find for why they were doing this, what they were promoting or what the Dwyer and Michaels Morning Show is (besides, presumably, “unlistenable.”)

I haven’t heard this show, but with two “wacky” middle aged guys and a mildly-attractive slightly younger woman, you know this show is an absolute chucklefest in U.S. market No. 146.

The goal, apparently, was to try to get them into the open window of consenting motorists (notice the double beep). Not only did they go 0-fer, but they also drew the attention of both a policeman and local business owner, who no doubt were bribed away with a free t-shirt of their own.

Check out these hilarious hijinks.

So Sharks center Torrey Mitchell has a weekly blog on the San Jose website. It’s two weeks old and it already stinks because it tells you appallingly little about anything to do with the sport of hockey.

But it does open the window on the weird relationship that Mitchell and roommate Devin Setoguchi share. Last week, Setoguchi had put on Mitchell’s flip flops and stretched them out or something. It is also worth pointing out that both of these guys have girls’ names.

Here’s Mitchell with the update:

I gave Seto grief about my flip-flops last week and I think he felt guilty. He cooked lasagna this week and brought it to me in bed. He hasn’t cleaned the dishes yet though. He did leave and get me ice cream the other night. It was actually a milkshake and exactly what I wanted.

I just can’t relate to this insane story at all. I can honestly say that I’ve never worn flip flops, but wouldn’t be mad if my friend wore mine if I did. Nor would I want my friend to serve me Italian food in bed and get me a milkshake. It’s all too weird.

Was Setoguchi sitting at the foot of the bed while just watching Mitchell while he ate it? Did the milkshake come with two straws? These are questions that need to be asked, but are better left unanswered, I think.

Just a couple of odd guys.

Here is your absolute, no-one-close surefire Quote of the Week and early Quote of the Season favorite, courtesy of the Canucks’ Kevin Bieksa.

Bieksa, in his first game back after spraining his MCL against the Flames last weekend, played somewhere between 12 and 14 minutes, depending upon who you believe, in the FIRST PERIOD of Sunday’s game with Chicago.

Said Bieksa, when informed of the stat:

“It [expletive] felt like it.”

Presented without comment: Patrick Kane helps two guys make cheesesteak.

Umm, what?

From the DC Sports Bog, which you should really be reading every second of the day anyway:

Nicklas Backstrom painted this for charity. Apparently it’s John Holmqvist. I only see Jason Voorhees and his love of the number one.

I wonder if he farmed the work out to Chris Bourque (get it because he basically flunked out of BU?).

Jason Gregor shares a wonderful story over at Oilers Nation about the Oilers’ days training in Jasper, Saskatchewan. There’s a lot of regular-ol’ hockey talk, but then there’s also the heartwarming tale of Dustin Penner’s desire to scare the living piss out of all of his teammates.

And that’s where you get the No. 1 sure-fire untoppable Quote of the Year, at least until Sean Avery says something about a Sportsnet anchor.

“I dressed up as the guy from Saw. I was grocery shopping at Save On Foods and saw the mask at the check out counter. It was $14.99, but when I swiped my card I got it for $13.99. I couldn’t afford not to buy it,” said Penner.

I mean, how do you top that?

The reactions reportedly ranged from the understandable (Ethan Moreau flat out tried to strangle him) to the hilarious (Ladislav Smid screaming for roommate Denis Grebeshkov, “Grebby, Grebby, help!”).

That Dustin Penner is a real yukkster. An overpaid yukkster, but a yukkster nonetheless.

If Chris Chelios can still go, anyone can.

That’s why Claude Lemieux has been intensively training for the last two and a half months to make a return to either the NHL or AHL (FYI it’s an RDS link, so it’s in French). What he fails to realize, I think, is that he’s 43 years old and fat.

(Choppy translation follows)

“Most people will think I’m crazy, but I miss being with the players and the feeling of being on the rink. We only have one life and if we feel something in our heart or in our head, we have to go for it.”

Yes Claude, I think you’re crazy. A full 10 weeks of training, even if it’s with the Coyotes, won’t prepare a 40-plus guy that hasn’t played professional hockey since 2003-04 (in Switzerland, mind you) for the NHL or even the AHL. This is a terribly misguided thing to do, no matter how much you miss the sport.

Here’s Lemieux’s appearance on the SpikeTV show Pros vs. Joes. He shows up about 40 seconds in. First, he looks terribly out of shape before he even hits the ice, more than a few pounds heftier than the 230ish he was playing at in his prime. Once he does get on the ice, he looks terrible even for someone that isn’t skating particularly hard. Then, to win a puck battle, he high sticks his opponent in the mouth. Circus crap like that will go over real big in the AHL, where some 22-year-old, 245-pound thug is going to beat your old head into a bloody pulp the first chance he gets.

Lemieux, and try to contain your disbelief here, does not — repeat, does NOT — have an agreement with any NHL team at this time. If one would like to contact him, it may do so through his retirement home.

Better solution: I know old people don’t play video games, but Lemieux should really just give NHL09 a whirl. That Be A Pro mode is incredible.

During this summer’s Olympic Games, much was made of the diets of both greatest-swimmer-ever Michael Phelps and the fastest man that ever lived, Usain Bolt.

Phelps, of course, eats close to 38 trillion calories per meal. Bolt eats nothing but yams and Chicken McNuggets.

Inspired by their stories, Kyle Wellwood spent the entire offseason living with that guy that’s eaten 23,000 Big Macs. Not surprisingly, he has shown up to Canucks camp out of shape.

Sunday, after the conclusion of the NHL team’s two-day training camp, head coach Alain Vigneault revealed that Wellwood’s fitness tests on Friday were not up to standard.

This is one of those “we told you so” things for the Canucks, who claimed the promising but doughy 25-year old off waivers from the Maple Leafs. The complaint with Wellwood in his Toronto days was that he was often fat and lazy. When you google anything nowadays, one thing that happens is Google completes the phrase that you’re typing and gives you the number of hits it finds. When you type in “Kyle Wellwood,” the second term that comes up, and thus the term most often searched as it relates to Kyle Wellwood without just being his name, is “Kyle Wellwood fat.”

For a professional athlete, I bet that’s a bad thing. This post, from a Maple Leafs-centric blog, is full of all kinds of mean (and accurate) things about Wellwood’s Buddha-like physique.

Of course, Wellwood has also cooked up a host of excuses, some of them legitimate. He has had several hernia surgeries and broke his foot playing indoor soccer early in the offseason. As a result, he missed a bunch of time he would have allegedly spent training (driving through Tim Horton’s counts!) and his fitness level started well behind the rest of the team.

There was a sequence Sunday where Wellwood won a battle for the puck on the side boards, stick handled around two defenders and created a quality scoring chance. But there were other moments this weekend when Wellwood was seen huffing and puffing and looking as though he wouldn’t make it through practice.

Wellwood has a week to get his fitness tests to an acceptable level. If he doesn’t, he’s out.. the Canucks’ one-dimensional offense notwithstanding. He can’t hit and he can’t play defense, so his worth to the team without being in shape is nil.

“If he can’t be an offensive player, he can’t compete here. So, he has to play to his skill set,” Gillis said.

One assumes that, should he get bounced from the team, Wellwood’s career will be on its last, pudgy hippo legs.