The Two-Line Pass

So yesterday Ryan Hollweg was suspended another three games for boarding Alex Pietrangelo (this is in addition to the other games he was already suspsended for boarding someone else this year).

Thing is, Hollweg doesn’t feel like he’s in the wrong here. At all. Know whose fault it was? Pietrangelo, that’s who!

“I really don’t think the hit was worth a game misconduct to begin with, so for them to [add] any more games would have been a little bit over the line,” Hollweg said of his hit on Pietrangelo. “Now, they’re trying to make a point but like I said, the player was up on the power play the next shift. He wasn’t injured.

“It was a play where, if [Pietrangelo] continued to skate forward, it doesn’t even happen. So I think other players have to be accountable as well for putting themselves in vulnerable positions.”

That’s true, Ryan. If only Pietrangelo had been smart enough to not catch a stick in his back by a repeat offender and then be driven face-first into the glass. Pietrangelo’s only mistake was allowing himself to be on the ice while a TOTAL piece of garbage like Hollweg was also out there. If Hollweg had been, y’know, suspended for more than just the two games he had already faced, this never would’ve happened.

“With that kind of speed, with that momentum, it’s hard to change gears within a split second like that,” Hollweg said.

And that’s why Alex Pietrangelo had to have his head bounce off the glass like a ping pong ball. Makes total sense.

Earlier this morning I read an article about how Ryan Hollweg wanted to get back to his physical game in the Leafs’ Thanksgiving afternoon game with the Blues.

So I’m watching the Leafs/Blues game just now, and exactly four minutes of ice time after he returned from a two-game suspension for picking up three game misconduct penalties for boarding in his last 41 games, Hollweg got a five-minute major and a game misconduct for boarding.

He PASTED Alex Pietrangelo, St. Louis’ first-round pick in this past draft, well after the play. It was a revolting play from a revolting player. Incidentally, the boarding call that got him suspended last time also came against the Blues in an Oct. 1 exhibition game.

This will result in his third suspension since March 26 of last season, when he got three games for (you guessed it) boarding!

A couple things occur to me here.

1) Tom Renney is a saint for keeping this guy under control as long as he did. There is clearly something wrong with Ryan Hollweg if he’s offending this much. Like “Chris Simon” wrong. He has almost no control over his aggression, and he’s going to seriously hurt somebody one of these days.

2) The League has to do something more than a two- or three-game suspension here. Giving up two games and $5,000 in fines clearly means nothing to him, and the NHL has to take a much harder tack to send the message that this type of play is COMPLETELY unacceptable. Both of the first two suspensions of the NHL season will have been dealt to Hollweg, and both for the same offense. It’s ridiculous.

3) I retroactively support Chris Simon.

I usually go out of my way to avoid mentioning piece-of-garbage, no-info, no-contacts hack hockey rumormonger Eklund around here (he is the Voldemort of the Two-Line Pass), but this was just way too much.

Here’s something from HFBoards today that, as a hockey writer, made me want to punch You-Know-Who right in the you-know-what (penis).

Basically, YKW cited his L.A. “source” regarding the Matheiu Schneider trade rumors. The post from his awful website follows:

According to an LA source: “Anaheim’s Mathieu Schneider is the one the Kings are seriously considering. Other names under consideration would be San Jose’s Kyle McLaren, Florida’s Karlis Skrastins, Nashville’s Greg de Vries, St. Louis’ Jay McKee and Pittsburgh’s Darryl Sydor. There’s one more name out there that might surface as a real option in the next couple days, but as always these talks are pretty fluid.”

That source, by the way, was the blog of Los Angeles Daily News beat writer Dan Hammond, who does a hell of a job. Says Hammond:

Lombardi and Hextall made it clear at the GM breakfast that the Kings are still actively pursuing a veteran defenseman. From what I’m hearing, those talks could get particularly intense this week, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a deal get done.

The names? Anaheim’s Mathieu Schneider is one the Kings are seriously considering. Other names under consideration would be San Jose’s Kyle McLaren, Florida’s Karlis Skrastins, Nashville’s Greg de Vries, St. Louis’ Jay McKee and Pittsburgh’s Darryl Sydor. There’s one more name out there that might surface as a real option in the next couple days, but as always these talks are pretty fluid.

I mean, that takes balls to straight word-for-word copy and paste someone else’s work and pass it off as your own. I mean, it’s not even an OBSCURE blog. I read Hammond’s blog several times a week and I really don’t care very much about the Kings one way or another. It’s just a good blog and, obviously a great source of information.

But what YKW did next was really gutless. Instead of, say, apologizing and admitting total fault for committing one of the biggest journalistic crimes one can commit (granted, he is not a journalist, but rather some jerkoff from Philly), he does the following:

It has been pointed out to me that my source emailed me the LA Kings rumour from Rich Hammond’s article found here…
http://www.insidesocal.com/kings/2008/09/defense-options.html

I apologize for this not being corrected as a family emergency has had me out of touch since my update. I have also emailed Rich apologizing directly to him, as I had no idea that he had written the same thing. I have removed it and suggest that you read Rich’s Article here.

http://www.insidesocal.com/kings/2008/09/defense-options.html

I have never had this happen before and I will be sure to do my best to not allow such a thing to happen in the future.

So yeah, a “family emergency” is the reason it’s okay to plagiarize. I’ll be sure to let college students in on the big news.

Professor: “Bill, this paper you handed in…”
Bill: “Yeah?”
P: “It’s literally just a paperback copy of The Brothers Karamazov with Dostoevsky’s name crossed out and ‘Bill Stevens’ written on it.”
BS: “And?”
P: “That’s plagiarism.”
BS: “Well my dog was sick.”
P: “Why didn’t you say so? A+!”

As though it hadn’t been repeatedly proven enough that YKW is a total fraud. This is just sickening, even by his low standards.

Make sure to send him pictures of big black “NHL rumors” at eklund@hockeybuzz.com.

"And when Jeremy's not onscreen, everyone should be asking, 'WHERE'S JEREMY?'"

Jeremy Roenick has always felt that there’s one thing the hockey-loving public doesn’t get enough of: Jeremy Roenick.

As a result, he is more than happy to let everyone know he will be in the pilot of the new TNT show “Leverage,” which permiers this December.

Roenick already had done some on-camera work, listing previous appearances with “Hack” and “Ghost Whisperer,” and this week he will begin shooting a scene in “Leverage”, a new TNT production.

The show stars Oscar winner Timothy Hutton (pfft, for Ordinary People. Raging Bull got screwed.) as, and this is an actual plot to an actual television program on an actual network, “he leads a highly-skilled team of thieves, hackers and grifters who act as modern-day Robin Hoods.”

That doesn’t sound unwatchable at all. But what role will JR, an NHL thespian if there ever was one, have on the show?

“I’m pretty proud that’s the first scene of the series opener,” Roenick said. “I play a security guard who gets duped by a woman. I have five, six or seven lines.”

…

“The tricky part is finding the right roles and to look natural. You’ve got to get the mannerisms and facial expressions down. If you’re too stiff, you’re not believable. The best actors are the most believable. They completely change their personality. My role is smaller, but it’s still difficult.”

Truth be told, JR is really looking forward to an acting career once he’s done with hockey, because any time spent away from the precious, precious glow of the limelight makes his innards slowly rot.

“I’m good friends with producer-director Paul Bernard and he wants to turn me into an actor when I’m done with hockey,” Roenick said. “He and his brother Tom are big producers in Los Angeles.”

Wow, THE Paul Bernard! Best of luck, JR. And if you ever need acting advice, Teemu Selanne’s just a phone call away.

At this weekend’s American Century Championship golf tournament, it fell to Jeremy Roenick to rescue a hapless victim of circumstance.

Dallas Cowboys starting QB and Tony Romo (Mr. Jessica Simpson), of all people, fell into a pond after a particularly arduous swing of the iron. But the ageless J.R. was still spry enough to prevent further trouble.

“I was two feet from the water with a delicate stance, almost on my tip toes,” said Romo. “I had to hit the shot to the right, and I did, and as I followed through the ground gave way.

“I swung my arms three or four times trying to regain my balance, but it was too late. I fell on my backside and got wet up to my belly button. The pants drip-dried, but I did change my socks. I ended up making bogey for zero points after Jeremy fished me out.”

Roenick, ever self-aggrandizing, painted it as though he lifted a car off a newborn then flew him to the hospital in a private jet. Wait. He didn’t? Shocking.

Said Roenick: “I came running at him and I pulled him out. I think that was the difference between him getting all of his pants wet and his whole body wet. So it was kind of funny.”

Roenick finished the day in a tie for first with brother in loudmouthed jerkdom, Brett Hull. And for those of you that have ever watched a single Canucks game that featured Rippin’ Rick Rypien, you’ll be pleased to know that his infinitely more famous and talented cousin, former NFL QB Mark Rypien, also had a strong showing.