The Two-Line Pass

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One thing I’ll never understand about hockey fans is how much cognitive dissonance it takes for them to get through their everyday lives.

Guys who try to cripple other players are the scourge of the league unless they happen to play for the team for which a fan roots. All stars are divers, except their stars. The All-Star Game doesn’t matter at all but if their favorite players don’t get in then it’s a total miscarriage of justice. The shootout is really stupid unless something cool or bad happens in it then it’s the best or worst, depending.

And that latter bit of stupidity arose once again last night when Ottawa’s Kaspars Daugavins tried to do some kind of wacky shootout move on Tuukka Rask and failed. His failure should, in and of itself, been enough to say that what he attempted was kind of dumb if not outright condemn it (though it could be argued that Rask could have just as easily stopped a wrist shot or traditional deke to the backhand and attempt to tuck it through the five-hole as he did this spin-o-rama puck-topper).

But that didn’t stop David Krejci from complaining about it to the media after the game — though that might have been the result of one of those direct “What did you think about that whole thing?” questions — saying, “I wouldn’t like it if someone on my team tried that move.” That’s obviously not true, or at least wouldn’t be if his Bruins teammate (say, Tyler Seguin) had actually scored on it. Even Daugavins admitted that the move’s failure to work made him look “like a fool.” And that, in the end, is enough to prove it was all stupid and a waste of time.

But somehow people used this incident to talk once again about how important it is to respect one’s opponents when entering into as sacred a competition as the NHL’s shootout, which has been a part of this grand sport lo these last seven and one-half years. Remember when Linus Omark did that spin-o-rama as he picked up the puck around center ice and then scored on Dan Ellis with a fake shot then soft wrister? The Bolts were pissed; Ryan Malone called it “a … joke”. Ellis said it’s “not a very classy thing.” Mattias Ohlund said it was “absolutely” disrespectful.

Ah yes, the sanctity of the shootout. How dare Daugavins and Omark — who, need I remind you, are both young guys from Europe!!! — be so disrespectful as to defame this gimmicky, ridiculous way to decide games for no reason other than ties are somehow bad? It’s disgusting. Why don’t they be more respectful of their opponents, like Chris Neil, who went knee-to-knee on Chris Kelly in this game, or Adam McQuaid, who ran Neil from behind in this game, and about whom their teammates had little in the way of criticism?

Those guys would never try to show up a goalie by using their high skill levels to try to score pretty shootout goals. They play the game the right way.

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(Ed. note: This is a sponsored post for Sarah Barnett (Happy birthday!). If you want me to write about any old thing in hockey, all you have to do is donate $50 below. It’s easy and fun. Bye.)

Hi! I’m writing these posts to benefit 826 Boston, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for area kids at which I volunteer. If you want to make a donation, you can click right here. Thanks!

In the NHL today there are many famous rivalries. Bruins and Canadiens always gets interesting because of how much those two teams seem to legitimately hate and want to seriously injure each other. Blackhawks and Red Wings will always have a place in the hearts of Original Six fans and those who currently like seeing Chicago beat up their ancient rival. The Battles of Ontario and Alberta have a certain colloquial charm even if those four teams have generally been unwatchable in the last several years.

But I think that the hockey world at large has largely seized on the somehow-still-burgeoning Battle of Pennsylvania between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and said that yes this is definitively the best rivalry in the league. Any arguments to the contrary seem rather silly.

Let’s put it this way: That insane series the two played last year, which only went six games but somehow contained 56 goals — a number I had to look up and then quadruple check because it doesn’t seem like it could be in any way correct — and featured suspensions and controversy and guys in bear suits and all that acrimony, was only in the first round. Hell, the Senators played in the first round. Who cares about the first round? Imagine if there was actually a lot on the line besides getting some tee times squared away before the beginning of May. If this series had been, say, the Eastern Conference Final instead of one of eight first-round matchups, someone might actually have died. I mean that. Zac Rinaldo or someone would have pulled a knife out of his sock and stabbed someone on a defensive zone faceoff.

This series, and this rivalry, takes on such import that it led Peter Laviolette, who when he isn’t blindly defending the borderline criminal acts of his team’s dirtiest players seems like a fairly rational fellow, to proclaim that after a single series in which he had 6-8-14 against the Penguins’ defense that Claude Giroux was the best player in the world, usurping the crown held by Sidney Crosby, who himself had a paltry 3-5-8 in the same stretch. Much was made of this proclamation, which a short time later was brushed under the rather lumpy-looking rug under which all embarrassing things related to embarrassingly wrong statements from members of the Flyers organization are banished once Giroux went 2-1-3 in a four-game sweep by New Jersey in the next round.

And now these two teams face each other once again tonight in a game that probably won’t feature between 10 and 13 goals, but then again it looks like Marc-Andre Fleury and Ilya Bryzgalov get the go tonight, so I also wouldn’t want to totally rule out that exact thing happening. Giroux, after a dreadful start, has 19 points in his last 16 games, and Jake Voracek has a team-leading 27 in 24. Meanwhile, Crosby leads the league with 36 points in 23 games (no fair) and Evgeni Malkin is on 23 points in just 19 games. James Neal is at 22 in 23, including 14 goals, and somehow Chris Kunitz has 12-16-28 in 23 as well.

These are teams that can score, and do it a lot. And they can also beat each other up. After a kind of disappointing opening game of the season, their last matchup, on Feb. 20, featured 11 goals and 48 penalty minutes. So, you know, something entertaining is probably going to happen.

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Hey guys let’s say you’re an NHL player. You’re wearing lots and lots of armor these days, aren’t you? Well, it didn’t always used to be that way.

People talk about Gump Worsley with a lot of fondness. Gump Worsley was a moron. He was the last goaltender in the National Hockey League to play without a facemask. Meaning that while he and his counterparts were regularly catching sticks and pucks in the face, and all the rest of them said, “Enough of that,” Worsley hung on and continued to play without a mask, and it was only after he was hit in the face with a puck and knocked unconscious by it that he said, “Hey a thing on my head that would make it so I didn’t get KOed in the middle of a game is not such a bad idea after all.”

Here’s a real quote from Worsley, who I swear to god was the stupidest person alive: “My face is my mask. If goaltenders were afraid of being hurt, they wouldn’t be out there at all.” And on soldiers who wear helmets , Worsley probably would have said they were big stupid babies and why were they fighting the god damn Jerrys in the first place if they didn’t wanna get shot at.

But at least Worsley ultimately relented. You can’t say the same for Craig MacTavish, who played his entire NHL career without a helmet. Craig MacTavish, too, was an absolute dumbass. Even after the league said, “Jeez I think maybe all these guys should be wearing helmets so their brains don’t spill out all over the ice the second someone accidentally knocks them onto the ice. It seems like ice and all these boards and this plexiglass are all really hard,” he kept right on not-wearing it.

Why did MacTavish play 16 seasons in the NHL, where there are sticks and skates and pucks and guys trying to knock you down at really high speeds, without a helmet? Because screw it, that’s why. ”It was just a comfort thing for me,” he said. I’m not a doctor, I admit, but it seems to me that wearing a helmet and being slightly uncomfortable is probably preferable to getting your skull cracked open and being extraordinarily uncomfortable and also dying, but again I have no medical training.

That MacTavish and Worsley escaped with their health — Worsley didn’t die until 2007 presumably from natural causes like being hit in the face with a frozen rubber disc, and MacTavish still has enough of his mental faculties left to work for the Edmonton Oilers (though quantifying those faculties, given the circumstances, may prove a bit tricky) — but people still talk about them with their chin rested on upturned hands. It’s romantic, isn’t it, that these dinosaurs were allowed to walk the earth along with real people who figured out that playing without a helmet or a goalie mask was remarkably stupid and they shouldn’t have been doing it all that time. Ahhh, those were the days, when catastrophic head injuries were, y’know, just one of those things. The occasional on-ice death. Who cares?

Now the latest front in this war against players being willfully stupid and putting themselves in incredibly dangerous positions has been visited upon the New York Rangers’ Marc Staal (and by the way, both Worsley and MacTavish were also Rangers so maybe that’s A Thing). He got hit in the eye with a puck just last night when a shot deflected off another player and rose up into his face. Wow that’s crazy and scary and sad and probably really dangerous.

And would it surprise you to learn that the reason he got hit in the eye with that puck is that a thin piece of plastic which adorns the helmets of a healthy percentage of the NHL’s players these days was somehow notably absent from Staal’s own headgear? It wouldn’t at all, you say? Hmm that’s interesting because it seems to me like if you had the choice between putting a little clear thing on your helmet so very few things could hit you in the eye, and not doing that, you’d choose the former option. Maybe I’m just being naïve. When asked about that kind of thing, lots of players who don’t wear visors say stuff pretty similar to what MacTavish said about helmets. This after AHL players in 1999 and 2006 both lost their eyes to on-ice accidents which could have easily been avoided had they just been wearing the right, and readily-available equipment. Or how about when pretty much the same thing happened with Bryan Berard and Steve Yzerman?

I know, it’s a real bold stance to go out and say, “Gosh I think these players should be wearing visors.” Daring stuff by me. And there are fears that if the NHL starts mandating them that this somehow constitutes paternalism, and boy you’re not even tough if you wear a visor and isn’t this a man’s sport? I don’t know, though. As cool as it would be to see NHLers skating around wearing eye patches I feel like blindside hits would go through the roof, and damn if the NHL Department of Player Safety isn’t trying to legislate those out of the game.

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(Ed. note: This is a sponsored post for Steve Dangle. If you want me to write about any old thing in hockey, all you have to do is donate $50 below. It’s easy and fun. Bye.)

Hi! I’m writing these posts to benefit 826 Boston, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for area kids at which I volunteer. If you want to make a donation, you can click right here. Thanks!

Noted video blogger (”vlogger”) and dumb Canadian idiot Steve Dangle proposed perhaps the most interesting of the sponsored topics yet. It’s one I’ve subsequently been thinking about a lot.

“Maybe [write about] who the next Calgary Flames are going to be. And by that I mean the next team to be totally screwed.”

Damn, that’s one hell of a good thing to think about. The obvious answer would be the Buffalo Sabres, who seem hellbent on turning Thomas Vanek and Ryan Miller into the next Jarome Iginla and Miikka Kiprusoff circa 2008 or so, the only good players on a team, surrounded by detritus and with their own skills fading slowly at first, and then with alarming rapidity.

Another pretty good answer would probably be the San Jose Sharks, who tried as the Flames did to force their way back to Stanley Cup contention with greybearded veterans and in doing so not only missed the boat on that, but also cost themselves several years worth of good draft picks.

You might even be able to say it’s true of the Carolina Hurricanes, treading water in mediocrity forever after one totally shocking and perhaps undeserved Cup run (the difference being they won and Calgary didn’t). The ‘Canes have since drafted Jeff Skinner, and probably won’t be so foolish as to trade him as Calgary did with Dion Phaneuf, but otherwise have a relatively bare cupboard and an aging-but-not-good-enough core, led until only recently by a bad coach.

But then last night, I figured out the perfect candidate for which team will be the next one to be as hopeless as the Calgary Flames are currently. It’s the Calgary Flames. Yesterday was perhaps the most embarrassing day in that franchise’s history, which, given the quality of the franchise’s management in the last several years, is really saying something.

It all began bright and early on Thursday morning in Calgary, when Jay Feaster pulled the trigger on the trade the brought ex-Flame Brian McGrattan, who is awful, back to Calgary for a minor league prospect in an attempt to become “tougher to play against.” Normally, this would be fine. Except McGrattan was on waivers one day earlier and cleared because no one claimed him. Baffling stuff, except that adding McGrattan would have pushed Calgary up to the league’s 50-contract limit. I conjectured that this was a precursor to some other kind of move that would necessitate them taking on an additional deal, and well hey look at that I was right.

Jay Feaster, of all people, was finally the one GM in the league smart enough to give Colorado’s Ryan O’Reilly the $5 million a season he wanted and deserved, and he did so through an offer sheet after apparently trying in vain to pry O’Reilly away via trade (astronomical asking price for a division rival, and all that). This was something that wise fans of a number of teams league-wide had been clamoring for since the O’Reilly situation turned truly acrimonious in Denver, and that Feaster jumped on the grenade was a bit of a surprise given how judicious such a move — which would only have cost Calgary a first- and third-round pick — was. With that having been said, the way Feaster structured O’Reilly’s contract also allowed the center to get a massive qualifying offer when the two-year deal expired, but that was less of a concern, largely because everyone was still sitting somewhat agog at the fact that Feaster made a pretty shrewd managerial move, as is generally the opposite of his wont.

However, the CBA certainly allowed Feaster to sign O’Reilly to that offer sheet, just as it allowed Colorado to match that offer and get all mad, which GM Greg Sherman did within a few hours.

In fact, that decision to match came midway through the Avalanche’s game that night, which rather coincidentally was being played against Calgary at the Pepsi Center. But hey, at that point, things were going very well for the Flames, as they were up 3-0 and looking like they would cruise to a win that would catapult them to a tie for 12th in the West with Edmonton. Instead, they gave up five of the game’s next six goals and lost 5-4 in regulation because the Flames are an embarrassing conflagration of a disaster.

That capped a pretty ugly night for the franchise, which has had too many of those to count on a couple dozen hands in the last calendar year. And then it got worse.

What most people, including the Flames organization, didn’t realize (or at least forgot) is that Jay Feaster is constantly skirting the borderline between incompetence and outright negligence. This morning it came out that what Feaster apparently didn’t know was that it also stated that if he had to bring the center onto the roster, he would have to first put him through waivers, where someone would have almost certainly claimed him. (Colorado was under no such restriction because he was their own restricted free agent and therefore had no waiver requirements.) So Calgary would have lost both those two picks and Ryan O’Reilly in the space of a day, for no reason at all other than Jay Feaster not knowing how the CBA works. Which, I am to understand, is a pretty large part of his job.

Now, that this didn’t happen is entirely a function of Sherman also not being a very smart GM. Because while he would certainly love to have O’Reilly back on his team (though perhaps not at that price point) having the opportunity to not only get two free draft picks, which were likely to be quite high, while also completely screwing a division rival that you now had a pretty decent reason to dislike.

But at least he got something out of the deal, and that something is a very good young center. Calgary got nothing but another regulation loss, a player no one wanted on waivers, and a whole lot of derision.

No one’s knocking them off the perch as the NHL’s most miserably-run franchise any time soon.

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(Ed. note: This is a sponsored post for @67sound. If you want me to write about any old thing in hockey, all you have to do is donate $50 below. It’s easy and fun. Bye.)

Hi! I’m writing these posts to benefit 826 Boston, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for area kids at which I volunteer. If you want to make a donation, you can click right here. Thanks!

The prospect of losing a defenseman of the quality of, say, I don’t know, a Chris Pronger, just as a for-instance, must be terrifying to a few GMs around the league. I say that it’s only concerning to a small number because defensemen of Chris Pronger’s quality aren’t exactly the most common sight in the NHL these days, or indeed, league history. Chris Pronger, you see, is very, very, very, veryveryvery good.

But that’s what happened to the Flyers, and it wasn’t a Pronger-quality defenseman they lost to a concussion, it was Pronger himself. Which is probably worse because that guy has a tendency to forcibly drag bad teams by the hair into Stanley Cup Finals pretty regularly. That’s how it went with the Oilers in 2006, that’s how it went with the Flyers in 2010. The 2007 Ducks, it should be noted, were a good team.

That left Paul Holmgren in a sticky situation, as did his losing Matt Carle to Tampa on a not-so-great contract that he was probably right in not attempting to match. The Flyers blue line last year, after the Pronger injury, was famously thin, and given the number of goals the team scored last season (264, third-most in the league), it must have occurred to Holmgren that he could trade from one of his positions of strength to bolster one of his positions of weakness.

And so it was that he resolved to swap out freshly-extended James van Riemsdyk, who had a disappointing season in 2011-12, for a defenseman around which he could begin rebuilding his tattered blue line. Instead of doing that, though, he traded the former No. 2 overall pick for Luke Schenn.

Right now, that decision constitutes one of the most immediately-lopsided trades in recent NHL history, potentially ahead of James Neal and Matt Niskanen going to Pittsburgh for Alex Goligoski (there is some debate because it took Neal, now a 40-goal scorer alongside Evgeni Malkin, about half a season to find his legs in the Eastern Conference). After scoring 11 goals in 43 games all of last season, van Riemsdyk now has 11 in 19, but the shocking part is that it comes with an at least semi-sustainable shooting percentage of 15.9; at least he’s not like Brad Marchand shooting in the high 30s and low 40s all season.

This is, it should be noted, quite the departure for van Riemsdyk, whose career high in three prior seasons was just 21 goals in 75 games, and really only received his six-year, $25.5 million deal on the basis of his being electrifying in the Flyers’ run to the Cup Final. But that, one supposes, is the inherent risk of trading an extremely high draft pick who is entering the prime of his career for, well, Luke Schenn.

Schenn has been, hmm, there’s got to be a word for it… terrible doesn’t cover it, nor does disappointing. Okay, I guess Schenn has been upsetting for the Flyers so far this season. It’s tough to saw what he was brought in to do, exactly, but suffice it to say he hasn’t been doing whatever that was. This was most evident when the Flyers and Maple Leafs met two weeks ago, and van Riemsdyk’s new team torched his old one 5-2, and in which he blew Schenn’s doors off to score his then-eighth of the season. You can see that pictured above.

The two teams meet again tonight and with Toronto playing as well as it has (7-3 in the last 10, comfortably in a playoff spot) and Philly currently ninth in the East with 19 points from 20 games and a minus-4 goal differential to the Leafs’ plus-9, well, you can’t exactly expect good things for the defenseman in that deal.

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Hi! I’m writing these posts as part of a Write-A-Thon to benefit 826 Boston, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for area kids at which I volunteer. If you want to make a donation, you can click right here. Thanks!

There is, apparently, a fate worse than being drafted by Edmonton. It’s not having anywhere to play after that first horrible thing happens to you.

Poor Nail Yakupov. Locked out of the NHL, and not yet a pro. As such, he can only play for the junior team that currently holds his rights, the OHL’s Sarnia Sting. I don’t know why. He doesn’t either. Yeah, a contract exists with Sarnia, but that shouldn’t, you’d think, preclude him from signing with the team for which he wants to play this season, the KHL’s Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk, the name of which I had to copy and paste because holy hell.

Anyway, Yakupov signed with (that KHL team) when it became apparent he would not have a job in the NHL. Seems fair enough. Other guys are doing it too. Except now Sarnia is kicking up a stink about it, because he’d really help them win a lot of hockey games. In furtherance of that argument, other highly-rated players in the CHL who have not yet played in the NHL are staying with their major junior clubs.

Except it’s Hockey Canada that’s actually interceding here. They don’t want Yakupov going back to his native country to play in its domestic pro league because, which again, is fair. Sarnia holds his rights.

Yakupov is too good for the OHL. Simple fact. In 107 career games there, he has 80 goals, 90 assists, and 170 points. As a 19-year-old, after a summer of working out with There is no reason whatsoever for him to go back there. From a developmental standpoint, he would do far better to head to the KHL, and play against grown-ass men. This is especially true given the number of NHLers who have flooded the league and generally improved its quality as a result.

Not that Hockey Canada, or the Russian federation, or the IIHF for that matter, have ever let what’s best for a player, any player, get in the way of their absurd posturing. Plus, lost in most of this is that Yakupov already played two games for (the KHL team in question). Do Sarnia and Hockey Canada think they’re going to get him back, even with an IIHF ruling?

“Suddenly it came to our attention that he was playing,” said CHL president David Branch, who has a habit of not exactly being forthcoming.

Suddenly? Really? His signing in Russia was reported on Sept. 19. His first game there was the 22nd. The news of the CHL complaint didn’t come out until the 26th. This didn’t exactly unfold at a rapid pace. I bet this has nothing whatsoever to do with Sarnia going 0-1-1 in its first two games of the season, which by the way very coincidentally took place on Sept. 21 and 23.

But that’s the problem with all of this. It’s just another pissing match between hockey superpowers. The Russian federation holds a lot of sway in the IIHF, as does Hockey Canada, and caught in the middle of all of it is Nail Yakupov, who likely just wants to actually go play hockey.

Don’t forget to donate to 826 Boston. Thanks again.

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So it would appear that Darryl Katz is hellbent on holding his city and its fanbase’s love of the team he owns ransom for tens of millions of dollars more than Edmonton is kicking in to fund the man’s grandiose visions for a downtown arena district and, more importantly, arena for his losing, horribly-run hockey team.

This report from October, before Katz went to the city council with the air of a man who was not begging for an additional 1ish percent of his total net worth, says that the city will kick in $125 million for the arena and district up-front, with its taxpayers and attendees to the new arena ponying up an extra $125 million in ticket fees, which will come in at between $6 and $7 per seat.

On average, that’s about 19.23 million seats’ worth of tax, or 1,039 home dates with the arena in its hockey layout (given a proposed capacity of 18,500). That’s 25.34 years of sold-out home games. Of course, that doesn’t take into account other events at the new arena, of which there are more than a few, so let’s call it, what, 20 years of sold-out engagements? Or even 18 if you figure the new arena will draw more top-quality acts, which it likely would. Sure.

All of this, by the way, goes without mentioning that the deal still hinges on another $100 million coming from… somewhere. Federal or provincial government, probably. But that’s a bridge to cross when we come to it.

Which may be never, because now Katz is going on visits to Seattle, ostensibly to scope out if that city’s new dual-use arena would be a suitable venue to which he could move his team when the lease at Rexall Place is up. He won’t, of course, everyone sees the visit, acknolwedged on the Oilers’ website, for what it is: a terribly-acted bit of posturing.

People have noted that without an NHL team, some cities, like Hartford, can quickly lose their civic identity, and that therefore it is vital for the City Council to just give Katz the extra $25 million he wants. But the thing is, there’s nothing that says the Oilers have to be the NHL team in Edmonton. Call Katz’s bluff. Let them go to Seattle, and become the fifth-most-popular team in the city, where sports culture is currently dominated by football of the American and global varieties. The Oilers could slide in just two spots behind whatever NBA team they get, and right behind the Mariners. But they’d still be ahead of the WNBA’s Seattle Storm, so that’s something, right?

Instead of now giving Katz $275 million on the backs of taxpayers, why not put it to a vote? If everyone says they want to keep the Oilers, then that’s fine. If they vote no, let ‘em walk, then swoop in and buy the Coyotes. That solves everyone’s problems.

Don’t forget to donate to 826 Boston. Thanks again.

Hi! I’m writing these posts as part of a Write-A-Thon to benefit 826 Boston, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for area kids at which I volunteer. If you want to make a donation, you can click right here. Thanks!

Ales Hemsky is likely the least-healthy non-Rick DiPietro in the league today, having played just 559 NHL games despite having been on the Oilers’ gameday roster since he was 19, in 2002-03. Nine seasons, 559 games. A little more than 62 a year if my math’s right, and it is, because I used a calculator.

The reason this history of being as brittle-boned as a particularly weak baby bird is important is not because Hemsky, might actually be able to play a full season when this one is shortened (not that I’d count on that), but rather because like most European-born NHLers, he’s looking for a deal to return to his home country and get regular paychecks while all this whatever-it-is gets sorted out Stateside. Instead, it’s important because it is part of a consideration might prevent him and others from signing overseas.

Two things are important to note first: One, there’s a team in Hemsky’s hometown in the Czech Republic, and his dad is its general manager, so it seems very likely that he’ll pull a contract out of it, but others might not be so lucky.

“I don’t think there will be a lot of open jobs,” Hemsky told QMI. “The KHL is only taking a few guys, Sweden isn’t taking anybody. The Czechs will just take Czech guys, and maybe a few others, because they don’t have the money for the insurance.”

Oooo, that last part. How much does it cost to insure Hemsky, you might be wondering? How about $25,000 per month? And that’s not even life insurance! That’s “Oh hell Hemsky’s shoulder fell off again” insurance. Granted, that’s not much considering what he’s earned in his career, or what his upcoming two-year, $10 million contract will pay him, but 25 grand? Gee whiz.

This is a very common thing: If NHLers, whether they’re typically ultra-durable or injury-prone, go overseas, they need to be covered by an insurance policy. Most teams provide them, but some don’t. Already, as many several dozen NHL agents, on behalf of the players they represent, have sought quotes on this kind of coverage. Basil McRae — yeah, what? — alone has advised between 50 and 100 NHL players on the matter. The kind of cost involved might lead a lot of players to just stay the hell home and work out with their buddies or something.

As for whether that kind of insurance covers having your being kidnapped in Magnitogorsk or the bail money needed when your KHL team plants drugs on you, I don’t know.

But this might be just what Hemsky needs. He played in 47 of Paradubice’s 52 games during the last lockout, and that’s only like 10 percent of the season missed, compared with his usual almost-20. So playing overseas might actually be an improvement.

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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 »

The Lead

Last Friday, the Flames and Oilers played at Rexall Place and the hosts, though they’d spotted the Flames a few leads, fought back every time, including a determined third-period effort that saw them pull level with their hated rivals inside of six minutes to go. But then Nikolai Khabibulin dashed his own team’s hopes of heading to overtime by mishandling a soft dump and allowing a Flames forward to poke the puck into the net inside of a minute to go.

A devastating loss? Maybe. But what the hell, right? It’s early yet and the Flames are a very good team.

So then what are we to make of tonight’s 4-3 shootout loss to those same rivals in the same building, especially since it came about in a very similar way. Tonight, it was the Oil that found themselves up 2-0 and dominant through the first period, and the Flames that scrapped and gritted their way, partly through the energy gained from an inspirational donnybrook between Jarome Iginla and Ethan Moreau, back even. And this time, it was the Oilers that got the late lead off a fortuitous bounce and fancy move from Ales Hemsky.

But once again, the Oilers proved why they’re going absolutely nowhere this season. The Flames pulled the goalie and used their time out with less than a minute to go, and the game looked all but lost with three ticks on the clock. That’s when Dion Phaneuf slid a puck across the blue line to Jay Bouwmeester, who fired out of desperation, and saw his shot get tipped (just under the crossbar, as a review showed) past Khabibulin by Rene Bourque. With 1.6 seconds to go.

In overtime the Flames took an early penalty and tried to give the game to the Oil, but even that wasn’t enough. They went on to lose in the shootout, 2-1, which seemed appropriate enough given the way they frittered away their opportunities in the dying minutes. They simply didn’t deserve the win.

Didn’t the Oilers say something about needing to win more at home? Was that just me that heard that?

Oh well, there’s always next year.

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