The Two-Line Pass

Last night during the Oilers/Avalanche game, Ian Laperriere and Zach Stortini got into a bit of a tussle over the fact that Craig MacTavish kept sending thugs like Stortini and Steve MacIntyre out there just to cause a problem.

Laperriere didn’t like Oilers coach Craig MacTavish taking a shot at him either. “He kept sending those guys out there when it was 4-1 and I don’t think it was to score goals. Cracked me up a bit. It’s kind of funny a guy who never fought, sends those guys out there.”

So Laperriere eventually dropped the gloves with Stortini and you can see the result here.

As is usually the case, Stortini wanted no part of actually trading punches (Calgary fans call him “Huggy Bear” for a reason), and Laperriere took exception to that.

“He’s (Stortini) 240 pounds and he comes after a guy like me who’s 195. I have a hard time with that. And he keeps punching when guys are down. He’ll learn, he’ll find his match,” said Laperriere, who got a counter-punch from Stortini. He also was stung by the verbal roundhouse right.

This has been the argument against Stortini almost from the time he broke into the league with Edmonton. If you’re going to fight, great, someone has to. But what Stortini does most of the time isn’t fighting so much as it is tryouts for the more romantic scenes of movies like The Notebook. For similar fights, look here, here, here, here, here, and here. And also worth noting is that I wrote all those “here”-s without actually searching out Stortini’s huggable fights. I went in knowing I could find half a dozen no problem.

So Jason Blake is a healthy scratch for the Leafs’ game with the Bruins tonight.

In his place: Ryan Hollweg.

Hard to figure what Ron Wilson’s thinking here. He says Blake’s game lately has been flat, and that’s certainly true. But I don’t see how replacing him with Hollweg helps the fact that the Leafs can’t put the puck in the net.

“It’s a challenge for me,” he said. “I had a lot to think about [during the suspension]. I just have to be careful.”

Uh huh. You’ve had a lot of suspsensions to think about this though, so I don’t know that this talk of contrition exactly rings true. The good news is that, unlike the Blues (against whom Hollweg has gotten his last two suspensions), the Bruins have guys like Milan Lucic and Zdeno Chara who’ll actually, y’know, beat the piss out of Hollweg if he so much as looks at a star player the wrong way.

For the record, I have nine minutes of ice time before he really tries to run somebody.

Two things on Sarah Palin in one post today so I can try to consolidate the hate mail right-wing nutjobs send me when I talk about her:

Sarah Palin story 1: Not a nice mom

We’ve all heard the kooky new age names Sarah Palin has for her kids. Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, and Trig (I’m hoping Bristol’s kid is named something awesome, like Tree Fort) are all suitably awful. But in this brief in the Washington Post this morning, in which Palin oddly refers to herself as an “intellectual” — she’s probably one of the few that believes dinosaurs were alive 4,000 years ago, but I consider “intellectual” to be up there with “elitist” and “arugula-eating” on the scale of terms that are not patriotic or Real American — Palin revealed that any forthcoming sixth child, should it be a boy, would get a very hockeyish name:

“I always wanted a son named Zamboni,” she said.

The full interview will be in an issue of Time Newsweek US World and News Report The Brown Journal of World Affairs The Christian Science Monitor USA Today Mad Magazine People that comes out later this week. What, was Us Weekly all booked up?

If we can’t stop her from becoming vice president (although…), can we at least stop her from doing this to poor Zygote Palin?

Sarah Palin story 2: More like St. Louis Boos

This story came out yesterday. Another “swing state” that’s leaning blue, another puck drop, another season to ruin.

Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska and candidate for Vice President of the United States of America, will be the guest of the St. Louis Blues on Friday, Oct. 24, when she will drop a ceremonial pregame “first puck” prior to the Blues’ game vs. the Los Angeles Kings.

Palin today confirmed that she will make the stop at Scottrade Center in St. Louis following a previous visit to Springfield, Mo., during her campaign trail in the state of Missouri.

Palin is a self-described “hockey mom” who is running with Sen. John McCain on the Republican ticket for President and Vice President of the United States.

Not quite so wordy or glowing as the Flyers release, is it? Of course, she’s showing up in the city where 100,000 people showed up to see Barack Obama speak last week, so I’m anticipating a reaction that’s eerily similar to the one she got two weeks ago.

Didn’t notice anyone bring this up before today, but apparently Theo Fleury used to have some personal problems?

Yeah, in an article in the Globe and Mail last week, which excerpted his forthcoming tell-all book (set for release in Fall of ‘09, and thus no Amazon link for you), Fleury reveals he used to party a lot. Who knew!

“I knew I was crazy insane and so did everyone else. I didn’t hang out on the surface. I would go five, six, seven, eight levels below the streets of New York and party with people I didn’t know. Freaks, transvestites, all kinds of shady people. Or I’d be walking home from a game dressed in my custom-made suit from Giovanni’s in Montreal and I’d stop and buy three or four bottles of wine. Then I’d head for the Chelsea Piers between 23rd Street and the Hudson River and hang with homeless guys around a burn barrel shooting the [breeze]. I would ask them how they got there. I’ve always been interested by that kind of stuff.”

Theo Fleury: man of the people (and possibly C.H.U.D., if that “eight levels below the streets of New York” crap is true). Where was he partying? The Area 51 set from Independence Day?

The book is titled “Overcoming Obstacles,” which is a title that’s more about assonance than selling books, it seems. What about “Doing Lines on the First Line” or “Bright Lights, Dull Reading?” Theo revealed on the Fan960 this morning that this book isn’t even about hockey. He will also be a columnist in the Calgary Herald this season and possibly beyond.

Interestingly, the company that’s putting out the book is also a VERY Christian one (and if it’s publishing Dapo Ogunsina’s masterwork, “Overcoming Demonic Trademarks and Embargoes,” you know it’s good), which leads me to wonder if they’ll excise the parts about a gakked up NHL player coming down from a six-day coke binge while serving a 10-minute misconduct major. I mean, that’s the type of reading even Jacques Demers can get behind.

On the heels of Joel Quenneville coaching one of the best games Chicago’s played in years, the Blackhawks announced he’d gotten signed to a three-year extension.

It wasn’t finalized until Wednesday, but new Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville has signed a three-year contract, according to general manager Dale Tallon.

Quenneville’s deal is through the 2010-11 season and he celebrated by watching his team go out and dominate the Edmonton Oilers 3-0 at the United Center.

Well-deserved, one supposes.

I was working on a long, well thought-out, hilarious post on the NHL’s Board of Governors discussing the relocation of a current team to Toronto, to be the area’s backup Maple Leafs.

“Why shouldn’t we put another team in the best and biggest market in the world?” one of several NHL governors who spoke anonymously said of the Greater Toronto Area.

Makes sense to me. Hell, they sold out every seat in Hamilton and those guys didn’t even HAVE a team.

Ah the jokes I was making. “The CBC can finally live out its dream of an all-Toronto Hockey Night in Canada.” “I hope the new Toronto team wins a Cup the first year out of the box.” “For all those fans who think the Leafs are just too good.” You get the idea (and yes, I acknowledge that none of those could even begin to fit the average person’s definition of funny).

Well, turns out I had to delete the whole damn thing.

“The story is nonsense,” one highly placed NHL source told the Star. “Perhaps the musings of one team representative. Expansion to Toronto has never been discussed with the board, the executive committee or any other league committee.

“And its never been considered internally.”

So much for that. You’ll have to make TSN2 and Cliff Fletcher jokes for yourselves now.

Athletes sometimes attach themselves to very odd products.

Baseball superstar Fred McGriff has the Tom Emanski videos (back to back to back to back national champions!), a shirtless Bill Clement has Deep Woods Off!, and OJ Simpson has double murder Hertz Rent-a-Car. But it takes a rare athlete indeed to come out with his own personal line of products. These are players whose names are synonymous with success and athletic excellence.

Jordan.

Tiger.

Beckham.

Wisniewski.

That’s right. James Wisniewski. The currently injured guy on the Blackhawks, and, according to the banner at the top, “your favorite Chicago Blackhawk.” He’s got his own clothing line. WizWear43. Who wouldn’t want a $20 t-shirt with a goalie mask wearing sunglasses? Just $15 bucks for the girls’ shorts? Is there a way to send my money faster than my cable modem will allow?

This is possibly the worst idea in the history of sports marketing. Not only is this a player that wouldn’t be in the top 10 current Blackhawks named by any Chicago sports fan (and even then, ehhhhh), but “Wiz Wear” sounds like the rubber underpants you give a kid that can’t hold it during a spelling test. Terrible name for a terrible product, alliteration aside.

On the plus side, the site allows you interact directly with the Wiz through a Q&A form. Feel free to ask him such questions as, “Do you think anyone is going to buy this?” or “Seriously, what the hell were you thinking?” or even “Can you get me Jonathan Toews’ autograph?”

Besides, my general rule is that I don’t buy things that cost more in dollars than that player’s career goal total, which effectively prices Wisniewski out of everything that’s over 11 bucks.

In the wake of the Red Sox entirely predictable 3-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays in the American League Championship Series, the Boston Globe asked its readers a question:

With the Red Sox now in offseason mode, what are you most looking forward to?

The answer was astonishing.

The Bruins
	34.7%
The Celtics
	31.8%
Nothing. I miss the Red Sox already!
	19.3%
The Patriots
	9.3%
College sports
	3.6%
The Revolution
	1.0%
High school sports
	0.3%

The Bruins? Of all the things I would have guessed that the result would be, the Bruins leading the defending world champion Celtics by three percent, and taking over a third of the total votes was not among them.

Granted, the Pats would likely have the vote in a runaway if Tom Brady hadn’t had his knee demolished in Week 1, but still. This is pretty crazy, even if the Boston sports media won’t even bother to give it a second thought.

Buried deep in a Pierre LeBrun blog on ESPN.com was this little gem, which frankly scares the hell out of me.

2. Blues GM Larry Pleau will submit a rule change idea regarding delayed penalties, and it’s something that has generated support from other GMs. The idea is to only whistle after the penalized team actually clears the puck out of their defensive zone. So, instead of possession, they would have to totally get the puck out. That could create more offensive chances for the team that’s about to go on the power play with extra attacker out. Also, if the puck is in the offensive zone and the offensive team gets called for a penalty, then the team in the defensive zone, if they have the puck, can carry the puck up and shoot it into the zone; but, this time, the goalie stopping it behind the net won’t stop play. His team will need to clear the puck out of the zone.

This is what I hate about the NHL nowadays. There’s this belief that somehow there still isn’t enough offense in the game, and that somehow, if we start seeing 7-6 games with great regularity again, ESPN will start going “Yeah, hockey IS pretty awesome.” I don’t understand it. Doing some real quick math right now, it looks like the NHL is averaging a little over six goals per game (6.05 to be exact), though admittedly the season is very young, and both Marty Turco and Miikka Kiprusoff are doing their best to keep that number up on their own. The NHL feels it can grow its audience by scoring more goals at the expense of the sport’s tradition and rules that have stood for more than a hundred years, but the statistical evidence behind the idea is, in my mind without doing any prior research, flimsy.

So I looked at past seasons.

The concept of the New NHL that valued speed and skill over size and trapping worked right out of the game. From 2003-04 to 2005-06, the average NHL game saw its goal total increase from 5.14 to 6.17, which is a significant jump. It was the largest such improvement (if you want to call it that, and the NHL head muckitymucks certainly do) in the HISTORY of the NHL. Goals steadily declined over the next two seasons (5.89 in 06-07 and 5.57 last year) and are back up this year, as I said.

Now, I’m not sure what the NHL’s golden age was as far as television ratings, but I’m going to go ahead and assume it’s when most of the people I know got into hockey: in the 1993-1996 range. Back then, the NHL was pulling down about 6.25 goals a game, but I think there’s more to the NHL’s TV problems than .2 goals a night. Being on Versus is Nos. 1-1,282,836.

But I believe last year’s Cup Final’s US ratings were up significantly from the previous X number of years and I’m going to assume it has more to do with the fact that the league is at last cultivating its stars like Sid Crosby as national celebrities after letting their mid-90s stars (Gretzky, Lemieux, and to a lesser extent Roenick) grow to unreasonable ages where their status as superstars was not matched by their on-ice performance. Now that the NHL is doing it again, ESPN is talking about hockey slightly more (0.1 being “slightly more” than 0) and ratings are going up. Funny how that all works.

Maybe Larry Pleau should just worry about making Brad Boyes a household name and leave the stupid rule changes at home, eh?

After an incredibly underwhelming display in his only regular season game of the year, the Canucks have officially placed Kyle Wellwood on waivers. That’s the second time in four months.

Maybe it was the fact that his only game was part of Tuesday’s pathetic offensive display in which the Canucks put 10 shots on net in 60 minutes. Maybe it’s that he turned the puck over several times even if the NHL’s official stats don’t show that (giveaway/takeaway stats are notoriously iffy, just like hits). Maybe it’s that he’s too injury-prone and afraid of contact, just like everyone in Toronto said he was.

Whatever the reason, this could be it for Wellwood’s NHL career, and he’s just 25 years old. The Canucks brought him in because they were worried about offensive production, but they’ve scored 16 goals in four games, so it’s not like that’s a huge concern any more either. They have no use whatsoever for a player that doesn’t hit, doesn’t work hard, and doesn’t score.

But the cruelest insult of all came in this CBC release:

Never the most toned player even at full health …

Ouch.