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    What We Learned: Ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges

    December 8th, 2008

    Because I tend to not blog on the weekends, here is a feature that will run through the entire season. It aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact about each team that played. And hell, there’s a ton of other crap for me to blather on about too. And yes, I’m totally ripping off just about every other blogger ever’s weekly column, but that’s something you’ll have to deal with on your own time.

    Danger: This post contains language that some people might not like. This will be the only thing on the site that regularly does so.

    Yet another coaching change this week caused me to wonder just how many coaching changes we’ve gone through since the end of last season. The answer was, shockingly, 11. Exactly a third of the league has turned over its coaches in just seven months. Some, like Ottawa and San Jose, made the playoffs last year but bowed out after predictably early exits. Most were actually above .500. But not every change has been helpful, or even anything like it.

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    What We Learned: Let your kids beat the piss out of eachother

    December 1st, 2008

    Because I tend to not blog on the weekends (or in this case, almost a week), here is a feature that will run through the entire season. It aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact about each team that played. And hell, there’s a ton of other crap for me to blather on about too. And yes, I’m totally ripping off just about every other blogger ever’s weekly column, but that’s something you’ll have to deal with on your own time.

    Danger: This post contains language that some people might not like. This will be the only thing on the site that regularly does so.

    I read an article today from the Canadian Press about the NHL’s responsibility to the youth of Canada to protect them from getting concussed.

    I was, as you can imagine, pretty fucking shocked. More of that bullshit about how video games and bands are a bad influence on kids and if they see the guy from GTA4 rape and murder a prostitute, they, too, will rape and murder a prostitute in real life just as soon as they get the chance. It’s a stupid, buck-passing argument. We can all agree on this.

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    What We Learned: Got them Broadway Blues

    November 24th, 2008

    Because I tend to not blog on the weekends, here is a feature that will run through the entire season. It aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact about each team that played. And hell, there’s a ton of other crap for me to blather on about too. And yes, I’m totally ripping off just about every other blogger ever’s weekly column, but that’s something you’ll have to deal with on your own time.

    Danger: This post contains language that some people might not like. This will be the only thing on the site that regularly does so.

    I remember just a few weeks ago when everyone was talking about the New York Rangers being the team to beat in the East.

    “Oh man,” fans of the Blueshirts were saying, “Look how good the Zherdev-Voros-Dubinski line is playing! Just wait until Naslund, Drury and Gomez come around! We’ll be UNSTOPPABLE then.”

    But since the start of November, the Rangers are only 4-5-1 with two of those wins coming in shootouts? So what could have POSSIBLY happened to this top-three-in-the-league team to see them tank so badly?

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    What We Learned: Why you shouldn’t use NHL.com for scouting

    November 17th, 2008

    Because I tend to not blog on the weekends, here is a feature that will run through the entire season. It aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact about each team that played. And hell, there’s a ton of other crap for me to blather on about too. And yes, I’m totally ripping off just about every other blogger ever’s weekly column, but that’s something you’ll have to deal with on your own time.

    Danger: This post contains language that some people might not like. This will be the only thing on the site that regularly does so.

    So when I saw on Friday that Barry Melrose got fired, I was a little surprised and, frankly, disappointed. It obviously wasn’t because he didn’t have the credentials to be an NHL coach to begin with and not because the Lightning are a puddle of drizzling liquid shit. He doesn’t and they are. This piece of news had me upset because 16 games was four short of the 20 I had in the Barry Melrose Firing pool. Hell.

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    What We Learned: Don’t blame me, I voted for Biron!

    November 10th, 2008

    Because I tend to not blog on the weekends, here is a feature that will run through the entire season. It aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact about each team that played. And hell, there’s a ton of other crap for me to blather on about too. And yes, I’m totally ripping off just about every other blogger ever’s weekly column, but that’s something you’ll have to deal with on your own time.

    Danger: This post contains language that some people might not like. This will be the only thing on the site that regularly does so.

    I understand that in the NHL there’s a certain amount of politics and that the league will always screw up even the freest lunch, but Jesus tapdancing Christ, who does Tim Thomas have to kill to get some respect?

    How the rockheads at NHL HQ left Thomas, an injury replacement at the All-Star Game last year who as of Sunday night was leading the NHL in both save percentage and was second in goals-against average by .01, off the ballot for the All-Star game is not only an insult to Thomas as one of the league’s better goalies, but also to fans of the sport.

    What this ostensibly says is that the NHL doesn’t believe Tim Thomas is one of the 10 best goalies in the Eastern Conference.

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    What We Learned: Steve Ott is a douche

    November 3rd, 2008

    Because I tend to not blog on the weekends, here is a feature that will run through the entire season. It aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact about each team that played. And hell, there’s a ton of other crap for me to blather on about too. And yes, I’m totally ripping off just about every other blogger ever’s weekly column, but that’s something you’ll have to deal with on your own time.

    Danger: This post contains language that some people might not like. This will be the only thing on the site that regularly does so.

    (Sorry for the lateness of this post. My internet was out pretty much all day yesterday, right up until 4 a.m., and you can only write so much of this mediocre garbage without internettery to check facts and so forth. Also it’s so hurried that I made no attempt to be especially funny. A thousand apologies.)

    There’s a fundamental difference between an agitator and a punk. The line is very fine, of course, but such a line does, in fact, exist.

    An agitator is someone who goes out and mouths off every shift, tries to get guys to take stupid retaliation penalties, and whose game teeters on the edge of gamesmanship rather unsportsmanlike horseshit. The perfect example of this is obviously Sean Avery.
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    What We Learned: That’ll teach you to keep your head up

    October 27th, 2008

    Because I tend to not blog on the weekends, here is a feature that will run through the entire season. It aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact about each team that played. And hell, there’s a ton of other crap for me to blather on about too. And yes, I’m totally ripping off just about every other blogger ever’s weekly column, but that’s something you’ll have to deal with on your own time.

    Danger: This post contains language that some people might not like. This will be the only thing on the site that regularly does so.

    Why is it that every time someone gets cleaned out in the neutral zone on a perfectly clean hit that everyone has to get up in arms about protecting players’ heads?

    It’s especially mindboggling in the case of the latest cause célèbre, Doug Weight’s pummelling of rookie Brandon Sutter in Saturday’s Isles/Canes game. Sutter was chasing a loose puck in the neutral zone and leaned forward quite a bit to try to corral it. Doug Weight, being a smart player, saw the opportunity to teach Sutter that trying for plays like that in the neutral zone are often bad ideas.

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    What We Learned: Now with wildly unpopular opinions

    October 20th, 2008

    Because I tend to not blog on the weekends, here is a feature that will run through the entire season. It aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact about each team that played. And hell, there’s a ton of other crap for me to blather on about too. And yes, I’m totally ripping off just about every other blogger ever’s weekly column, but that’s something you’ll have to deal with on your own time.

    Danger: This post contains language that some people might not like. This will be the only thing on the site that regularly does so.

    There was quite a bit of discussion in the hockey blogosphere this week.

    Basically, it centered around this post from DMFB at Covered in Oil that detailed the way in which he was bullied out of a job and apparently his passion for the sport by some Oilers media people because he was liveblogging a game from the press box while there for another reason (to get quotes for an unidentified employer). Here, by the way, is a cached version of the post. You can see what all the furor was about.

    The reactions to this have ranged from bewilderment at the Oilers’ ludditistic views on new media to flat outrage, both of which are understandable.. ish.

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    What We Learned: Me and Ronnie are getting testy already

    October 13th, 2008

    Because I tend to not blog on the weekends, here is a feature that will run through the entire season. It aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact about each team that played. And hell, there’s a ton of other crap for me to blather on about too. And yes, I’m totally ripping off just about every other blogger ever’s weekly column, but that’s something you’ll have to deal with on your own time.

    Ron Wilson’s head is seriously going to melt by the end of December.

    The first question he fielded about Saturday night’s 6-1 slaughter at the hands of the Montreal Canadiens was, “Where does that one fall between ‘learning experience’ and ‘embarrassment?’” If you could have looked inside Wilson’s head at that moment (a la Homer Simpson in the earlier seasons of the show’s run), and seen a visualisation of what he was thinking, it would have been Ron Wilson stabbing the reporter to death with a medium-sized pair of scissors and using his blood as war paint to discourage any further questions along those lines. It also would have been set to Lipps Inc.’s 1980 hit “Funkytown.”

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    What We Learned: You probably couldn’t watch Opening Weekend edition

    October 6th, 2008

    Because I tend to not blog on the weekends, here is a feature that will run through the entire season. It aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact about each team that played. And hell, there’s a ton of other crap for me to blather on about too. And yes, I’m totally ripping off just about every other blogger ever’s weekly column, but that’s something you’ll have to deal with on your own time.

    Yes, I acknowledge this will get quite wordy once the full schedule gets underway, but that’s what I get for taking weekends off.

    We only had four games this weekend, but in both, we saw more or less the same things happen to both teams. The Rangers swept the Lightning, winning both games of their series in Prague 2-1, and the Senators took three of four points from the Penguins, losing in overtime 4-3 on Saturday and winning 3-1 on Sunday.

    We’ll start with the more successful teams right after the jump.

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