The Two-Line Pass

The Lead

For a while there it was pretty cute.

“Ha ha ha,” the hockey world said, “Chicago sure is playing pretty bad.”

But we were saying that two weeks ago, when Chicago had been playing badly for a week. At the time, they’d won just one of their last five, and needed OT to beat the Kings (and we all know how crap they’ve been of late). But now? It’s officially time to start fretting.

Chicago lost tonight. To St. Louis. And gave up four goals on 30 shots. The sad part? That’s almost an average goaltending performance for them, at least of late.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Lead

So the Bruins lost to the Sabres tonight. Not really that surprising.

Not that big a deal either. The Bruins have a supercomfortable two-point lead on the Thrashers for the eighth spot in the East and so why not lay down against a team that’s got the Northeast Division pretty much wrapped up by now?

Lots of blame to go around in this loss, as you’d expect. The first two Sabres goals went in off stupid Dennis Wideman who’s been complete crap this year. The third one was also his fault because he turned the puck over and went back to the bench instead of playing the guy to whom he’d just given it, because his stick was broken (or so he’d have us believe!).

Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t forget about the prizes!!! It’s the last day you can win them. Winners will be notified around noon so if you aren’t notified then be funnier next time I have hundreds of dollars worth of prizes to give away, which will be never.

The Lead

Man the Sharks have been drizzling cat turds lately, huh? Oh the laughs we’ve shared.

An overtime loss to the Panthers. They put 39 shots on net and lost 3-2. Hahaha! A 4-2 loss to the Ducks. Dany Heatley goes minus-3. Oh ho ho! An 8-2 loss to Dallas. Evgeni Nabokov and Thomas Greiss stop 23 of 31 shots. Tee hee! A 3-2 loss to Vancouver. Ryan Johnson scores the game-winner for the Canucks. Haw haw! A 4-3 loss to Calgary. Doug Murray finishes minus-4. Loff loff loff! A 5-1 loss to Edmonton. Devan Dubnyk actually gets a win. That’s just pathetic!

And then, for an encore tonight, the Sharks… oh they beat the absolute piss outta Dallas.

Well, it had to happen sometime.

Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t forget about the prizes!!!

The Lead

For those of you unlucky enough to have actually sat through James Cameron’s epic “Avatar,” who then found yourselves additionally luckless to have suffered through tonight’s Ranger game, which was broadcast in 3D, you probably noticed some parallels.

When Avatar begins, there is a single blue speck floating apparently nearer to you than the screen. You can almost touch it. As the hero, whose name I forget, pulls himself from some sort of cryogenic sleep pod and out into the cabin of the ship, the full scope of the movie’s groundbreaking film-making is made apparent. You’re overcome with a definite sense of wonder at what you’re experiencing.

Likewise the first period of the Rangers/Islanders game. The Rangers came out flying, particularly and not surprisingly driven by the Gaborik line, pouring 15 shots on net, getting a little physical and generally outplaying the Islanders. They paid for every mistake they made. For most of the 20 minutes, it looked as though the visitors were standing still while Gaborik picked up a pair of first-period points, and it was 3-0 by the first intermission.

Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t forget about the prizes!!!

The Lead

The Edmonton Oilers have won three straight games.

I’ll say that again: the Edmonton Oilers have won three straight games. Against NHL teams.

And not just any NHL teams either, if that’s what you’re thinking. They’ve beaten the Sharks, Red Wings and now the Canucks. From last Friday until right this very minute, the Oilers have picked up literally 1/8th of their entire win total.

I don’t know why this is happening. Every day, another Oiler seems to come down with some sort of crazy injury — I think I read Andrew Cogliano contracted a case of Fisherman’s Madness or something — and another tragedy, beyond even living in Edmonton, befalls the squad itself. Today’s hysterical mishap saw Devan Dubnyk (who has a girl’s name) get an “infectious gastrointestinal disorder” which in my medical opinion basically means his butt is infected.

Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t forget about the prizes!!!

Thee Lead

October 1, 2009:

Dear Diary,

The NHL season is starting soon and all the so-called “experts” on the internet are trashing my beloved Colorado Avalanche. Sure is going to be an awful year. You remember that Sakic guy? The one who stuck his hand in a snow blower and retired? Yeah, HE RETIRED. Now I can’t think of a single player on the 2001 Avalanche who wasn’t long-time member of the team Ray Bourque (we retired his number!). Anyway because he retired the oldest guy on the team after Milan Hejduk is Chris Stewart and also our starting goalie was the backup on the Panthers like six months ago. Also we have a rookie head coach. And our best player is Wojtek Wolski.

Sincerely,
Some idiot.

Read the rest of this entry »

Friends and family,

Things have been going well on this stupid internet site for a little while here and I think you’re all swell people now (I used to think you were all blithering idiots, you see). And with this in mind, please get excited for the first ever TLP Giveaway Extravangza Contest.

At first I was worried that this might make me come off as a bit of a scumbag trying to monetize my dumb blog, but then I was like, “Wait a minute I get nothing out of this, and only the smelly ingrates who enjoy my work for some reason are the real winners here.”

So here’s the deal: The very nice people at Warner Home Video have offered some DVD sets for me to give away to you goobers, totally and absolutely free.

What DVDs, you ask? Well these are some pretty rad ones.

First is this nice 10-disc set with 10 of the Washington Capitals’s greatest games, helpfully titled the “NHL Washington Capitals 10 Greatest Games Collector’s Edition DVD.” I have no idea what is on this besides Alex Ovechkin scoring many, many goals, but I bet Rod Langway comes up once or twice. Maybe Olaf Kolzig too! It comes out tomorrow for regular people to buy for like $50, but you can just win it for free from me if you wanna wait a couple extra days.

Second is this six-disc set all about the ol’ Chicago Blackhawks, imaginatively titled “The Chicago Blackhawks Great Moments and Classic Games.” Stan Mikita is likely featured, not so much the middle part of this decade. Like the Caps DVD, it comes out tomorrow and is 40 smackeroos unless you win it from me FOR FREE!!!!!

Is there a catch? You know there is.

You have to continue to read this website (sorry). Every day this week I’ll post a Good Night, and the six people I deem to be funniest in their commenting on the previous night’s transpirings will win a DVD set. I have three of each to give away, and funniest person gets first crack at what they want, and so on down the line. That’s just how it goes. It’s my contest, my rules.

And hey remember, quantity is not the same as quality, no matter what the Calgary Flames’ current forward depth chart would have you believe.

Please note: if you don’t leave your actual email address in the comments I can’t get in touch with you to send the DVDs, so leave your actual email address. Or don’t. Whatever, I don’t care.

I’ll let you know who won by Friday.

Be reading, be funny, be telling your friends or get the hell off my website!

The Lead

The fans chanted for it. The radio talk show hosts blathered over it. The newspaper reporters wrote about it. The bloggers tweeted about it. The players surely discussed it. Everyone ravened for it.

Revenge.

Bloody, swift revenge. Matt Cooke had to pay for his transgressions against Marc Savard. After all, you don’t rattle another team’s best player’s brain around in his skull without paying for it. Certainly not the way Cooke did it: an unprovoked, deliberate ambush designed to do exactly what it ended up doing.

So no sooner did Cooke hop over the boards for his first shift to a chorus of boos from every corner of the arena than Boston’s resident tough-guy Shawn Thornton asked him to answer for his dastardly deed as though this brand of justice ripped straight from the last 10 pages of every awful black-hat-bad-guy Western would somehow lift the fog that crept into Savard’s brain cavity in the immediate aftermath of last Sunday’s blatant headshot du jour.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Lead

We were given a whole slew of reasons to think the Ducks are the most revolting franchise in the NHL tonight.

As though we needed more.

Tonight, of course, saw James Wisniewski up and run Brent Seabrook, a former teammate, in retaliation for an innocuous hit on Corey Perry who, let’s face it, deserves any hit he takes.

Now, before all you Ducks fans start crying about it being a headshot and boo hoo Corey Perry’s just playin hard out there, let’s keep two things in mind. First, it could only technically a headshot because Perry put his head down around crossbar height (and even then, his arm got in the way of the Seabrook hit) and second, Seabrook had already committed to the hit but Perry turned at the last second and it otherwise would have just been your standard shoulder-to-shoulder check.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Lead

Ah the tantalizing mystery of the Orient.

It’s been a long time since even hardcore hockey fans here in North America have seen Jaromir Jagr play. Two years ago, he took his ball and went home — well, “home” — to the KHL and has literally spent those seasons playing in freaking Siberia for Avangard Omsk.

How far away from his last NHL team, the New York Rangers, is Omsk? Well, to give you an idea of how remote it is, the nearest semi-major Russian city appears to be Kurgan (pop. 345,000 or roughly the size of Santa Ana, California), a 325-mile drive down M-51. Whatever that is.

So I figured it’d be interesting to see how this once-great superstar was playing in what must be the dying years of his career. If his skills had deteriorated in the intervening time since his last NHL season, in which he scored 71 points in 82 games, how bad was that erosion? By the look of things, it had to be considerable, right? I mean, he hasn’t yet scored at a point-a-game pace in a league that plays on that offense-increasing, 200-by-100, international-sized sheet of ice in a league that unironically considers Kevin Dallman to be its best defenseman. He had to be crap at this point, which would be understandable since his NHL debut came when Sid Crosby was three years old.

Read the rest of this entry »