The Two-Line Pass

Even though his team lost 5-4 to the Blues last night, Johan Franzen was not jokin’ around. Yeah, he scored a goal while being legchecked by MIke Weaver, but look at the velocity he gets on on the shot despite being in midair.

My god.

Maybe Detroit will also try to sign him to a $6 million dollar contract that hamstrings the team for when the cap goes down to the mid-40s in two years. Marian Hossa, Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg simply wouldn’t be enough in terms of high-skill talent up front.

Ron Wilson has taken a few. shots at the Toronto media over the course of the season, but this is his first major blow-up, the one we’ve all been waiting for.

Granted, it’s because Howard Berger asks him a dumb-ass question (”ARE YOU ANNOYED WHEN YOUR TEAM TAKES PENALTIES?”), but it’s hilarious because Wilson, who has always had a contentious relationship with the media, was bothered by a question Berger had asked him the night before.

By the way, if you ever wondered just who Ron Wilson considers the smartest person in the room, this video proves that he has two thumbs and coaches the Maple Leafs.

So not only did the Oilers drop a 10-2 decision to Buffalo the other night, but they also would prefer it if you didn’t write songs that make this point repeatedly.

After that hilarious eight-goal loss, Calgary’s radio station, the FAN960 produced a parody version of The Kinks’ “Lola” (it appears to have been yanked, for some reason) that interspersed clips of Craig MacTavish talking about what an unmitigated the game was, refering to the amount of times the puck got past an Edmonton goalie, and, as a finale, simply repeating the word “losers” over and over. Obviously, laughs all around.

But, according to my buddies over at OilersNation (p.s. FlamesNation starts Sunday, a day that people surely will not have their minds on a sport other than hockey!), this song didn’t sit so well with some of the Oilers front office folk.

According to Robin Brownlee, a longtime member of the Edmonton press and OilersNation contributor, Oilers VP of communications and broadcast Allan Watt got all upset when Brownlee and host Jason Gregor had a good chuckle over the song on Edmonton’s TEAM 1260.

Not long after, we got a call from producer Will Fraser at TEAM 1260 and he told us Allan Watt, the Oilers vice-president of communications and broadcast, had phoned to complain and that he’d also contacted several other stations demanding they not play it.
Last time I checked, the Oilers didn’t have a rightsholder agreement with Astral Media and have no right to try to dictate what goes on the air at TEAM 1260 and other Astral stations.

Which, of course, proves that not only are the Oilers an horrendously bad team, they also can’t take a joke. What a bunch of clowns.

Why should the Oilers not be subject to criticism and mockery JUST BECAUSE they lost a game 10-2?

Hoo boy did Eric Duhatshek go a little overboard this morning in the Globe and Mail.

Separated at birth?: IGINLA: HOCKEY PLAYER, OBAMA: PRESIDENT

The Calgary Flames captain has a lot in common with the new U.S. commander-in-chief, including leadership abilities, respect and never backing away from a fight

Uhhhhh.. okay? One plays hockey (and hasn’t scored in seven games god dammit), one could blow up the entire world with the push of a button. Makes perfect, borderline-racist sense. You see, both Jarome Iginla and Barack Obama are half-black(!).

The parallels in their personal histories are startling, remarkable even.

They are both products of an interracial marriage. Their fathers, black, hailed from Africa, one from Kenya, the other from Nigeria. Their mothers, white, hailed from the hinterland, one from Kansas in the American Midwest, the other from Edmonton in Canada’s frozen north.

STARTLING! But there a number of other hockey players that remind Duhatshek of Barack Obama, including but not limited to: Dustin Byfuglien, Kevin Weekes, Kyle Okposo, Grant Fuhr, Mike Grier, Manny Malhotra, Anson Carter and, of course, Manute Bol.

If there wasn’t a 16-year gap in their respective ages - Obama is 47, Iginla 31 - you could almost argue they were separated at birth.

No, you really, really couldn’t.

I just imagine Duhatshek meandering around the dressing room at the Flames’ practice rink yesterday going, “So that Barack Obama, huh?” until finally Craig Conroy, who will talk to anyone about anything for any length of time they like, said, “YEAH! I’M FROM AMERICA!” and talked at a rapid pace for 45 minutes straight. Kudos to Duhatshek for pulling any type of story out of this, I guess, but it has to be the most asinine piece of front-page news ever.

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:

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

In the dying moments of 2008, roughly three hours before the ball dropped in Times Square, the United States and Canada were playing in a rollicking back-and-forth game in the group stages of the World Junior Championships in Ottawa, and Dustin Tokarski made the unequivocal save of the year.

With the Canadians up 5-4, USA forward Colin Wilson, who has three goals and three assists in three WJC games to go with the 7-14-21 line he’s amassed in 16 games so far this year at BU, picked up a loose puck in the middle of the slot and had Canada’s Dustin Tokarski dead to rights.

Except not.

Canada went on to win 7-4 after a pair of empty-net goals.

I think Pierre McGuire may have had an orgasm over this save. Not that I blame him.

I was reading the Calgary Sun this afternoon when I stumbled upon this story about the contents of the basement of Brent Burns’ house. While the subject struck me as odd, the basement’s inhabitants are even odder.

He’s got birds, huskies, cats and a big saltwater fish tank that includes a shark and poisonous lionfish — the only venomous creature in his house. The snakes are locked away safely in an escape-proof basement at the 9,100-sq.-ft. home in which the 23-year-old has lived for more than a year.

Creepy as hell. If you want to see someone else who had an escape-proof basement, pick up a copy of Silence of the Lamb or read a book about a certain Chicago-based clown.

Up to 40 snakes were in his basement last spring, but he’s also breeding his pets.

After a little bit of digging, I found out that it gets even weirder.

“I love being in there,” Burns said. “I could be in there all day. [Susan] yells at me. On days off, I’m down there like eight, 10 hours just feeding them, cleaning their cages.

I guarantee that Brent Burns becomes the snake-owning male equivalent of a crazy cat lady before he turns 30, and one day 30 or 40 years down the line we’ll hear about how he was eaten whole by a boa constrictor while trying to force it to have sex with a Burmese python.

Jet Magazine is usually not one in which you’ll find much hockey talk, but the Winter Classic is such a big to-do that even the purveyors of the latest news on Lil Wayne’s Grammy hopes and a Black History quiz took the time to cobble together a brief preview on Dustin Byfuglien’s participation in the Jan. 1 super-event, in a brief entitled, “Dustin Byfuglien Stars in NHL Winter Classic.”

“Stars?” Let’s not go too crazy.

He will be the only player of color in the Classic, which is the second regular season outdoor NHL game played in the United States.

“There aren’t too many that are played outdoors, and to be a part of that is something special,” Byfuglien tells Jet Magazine. “It’s not going to be a normal hockey game … you just never know what to expect out of a game like that.”

…

A team player, Byfuglien is active in the community as well. He visits various charities and speaks with young African-American hockey players that are looking to follow in his steps.

“You just have to tell them to stick with it and when you’re out there working with them, you just have to have fun and make sure they’re having fun.”

How insightful. I have no link for you to prove that I’m not making this up, so feel free to pick up a copy of Jet later this month and read the four paragraphs I opted not to transcribe.

Of course, Byfuglien isn’t the first “player of color” to play an outdoor NHL game. Georges Laraque, who played in both the Heritage Classic as a member of the Oilers in 2004 and last year’s Winter Classic as a member of the Penguins, and has every right to be pissed that his involvement wasn’t worth mentioning for the editors of Jet in previous years.

If the IIHF has its way, the opener to the German-hosted 2010 World Championship would be seen live by more fans than any hockey game ever.

The German Ice Hockey Association, working with the IIHF as well as the German soccer team FC Schalke 04, who would host the game, hope to push 75,976 people through the doors for the opener that will see the host team take on one of Canada, Finland, Russia, Sweden or the Czech Republic.

Apparently the idea came about when Germany hosted the World Championship in 2001 and had 80,000 requests for the first game, but obviously turned more than 75 percent of them down.

The cheapest tickets are 19 euros, but if you want to actually sit down, it’ll cost you 29. Tickets, shockingly, are on sale now even if the game is almost 18 months away.

It at least looks like the seats will be better than the ones at the Winter Classic this year, but it’d be funny if the 2009 NHL outdoor game was in an 80,000-seat stadium just to stick it to Schalke. They were Hitler’s favorite club after all.