Poor, poor Cam Ward. He makes THAT stop and in doing so not only keeps his team within one, but also basically sparks the Hurricanes to a comeback in a game in which they were being pretty well handled by the defending Stanley Cup champs. And his boys can’t even pull out a W for him?
The Canes may have forced OT, but the Pens won in a shootout because Carolina got one goal from its SIX shooters. Too bad, really. That’s probably going to stand up as save of the year.
And there it was, the first gigantic hit of the hockey season. Dion Phaneuf on Kyle Okposo.
But given the time of year, this hit has already sparked a good amount of debate (covering several topics) among the Twittering and Facebooking and Messageboarding folks that care far too much about this stuff.
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.
Old hockey adage: “Good things happen when you shoot the puck.”
Oh look here’s Rick Nash.
God Cristobal Huet sucked tonight. Four goals against on 27 shots, including that one, which was not only embarrassing, but also the game-tying goal that sent it to overtime, and the Blackhawks dropped another incredibly winnable game, this time 4-3 in OT.
That makes four losses in a row for Chicago, and they’ve won only once in regulation in the last 12 games. Those footsteps they hear belong to the Vancouver Canucks, who are now just one point back of the fourth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference.
This is now officially Chicago’s longest stretch without a win since they fired Denis Savard four games into the season. Good to see them picking it up at the right time, and good to see Huet’s worked out so well for them.
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 that Sharks game last night was going just fine and dandy. San Jose was up 3-2 on Minnesota with 7:40 or so remaining in the game.
Then Marek Zidlicky turned at the red line and put a soft, backhand dump in on goal and… well look at that he scored.
That’s now three straight games without a win, the Sharks’ third such streak since the end of January. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Todd McLellan was tanking it for his old team, the Red Wings, to take the No. 1 spot in the West. That can be the only logical explanation for giving Brian Boucher three straight starts.
Yeah, Nabokov misses three games with the flu and now has a quote-unquote lower body injury? Who’s buying that?
(Big ups as always to reader DayWalk3r for the top-notch video.)
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.
Because this blog is quickly becoming the clearinghouse for all sick college hockey videos, here is a goal from Denver’s Joe Colborne that was set up by an audacious little pass from Toronto Maple Leafs draft pick Tyler Ruegsegger on Friday against Minnesota State.
That was more than a little disgusting by Mr. Ruegsegger, and if the related videos are to be believed, he does this ALL THE TIME. Somehow he only has 8-4-12 in 19 games this year though.
This is what caused Jason Arnott to beat the hell out of Alex Burrows last night.
That might be a charge. Actual quote from the Sportsnet color guy at about 1:18 of the video: “The question the Predators are gonna ask as we take a look at the hit here is, ‘Did Burrows leave his feet?’ Ehhhh, it… I don’t THINK so. Well, maybe.”
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