New England Hockey Talk

[MGB Boy]

Can't believe you're calling your starting goalie a girl...



-Ricardo

[bethandlouis]

If you can't beat them, join them.

[geowit]

Flyers lost to their AHL club, Phantoms last night by a score of 4-1. Maybe Nittimakki was ticked about being sent down.

[bethandlouis]

Who did the Flyers pick up?

[MGB Boy]

Aubin is apparently the Flyers back-up now. And as a further bizarro twist, they're gonna have Sarah Palin drop the puck at their home opener. The Flyers website is even touting her as "the nation's most popular hockey mom". Flyers boss Ed Snider is a big donor to the Republicans, and apparently he thought it would be keen to use his team's opening night as a free campaign stop. Wonder what the crowd reaction will be. Philly generally runs 70%-80% Democratic in national elections (that poli sci degree is finally coming in handy), so I wouldn't be shocked by boos. Then again, it's Philly, they booed Santa, so there really wouldn't be anything new about that...

And in other wacky opening week news (don't even get me started on the Def Leppard thing), the Thrashers have unveiled their new third jerseys. I can only speculate that they had some kind of "design the ugliest jersey" competition.



Looks like an Arena Football jersey with long sleeves.

-Ricardo

[bethandlouis]

Philly is a fickle bunch, I guess we'll see what happens. Aubin dethroned Nittimakki? Bummer. I like Nittimakki. He always ran a little hot and cold but when he was on he worked hard.

The Flyers had a regional Ultimate Hockey Mom contest and they will be dropping the puck with Sarah Palin. Which begs the question, is stupid contagious?

Do we want to extend our peeps night out tradition to minor league hockey? Monarchs v. Bruins Dec 13th, interested?

[MGB Boy]

Quote: Originally Posted by bethandlouis (original)

Philly is a fickle bunch, I guess we'll see what happens. Aubin dethroned Nittimakki? Bummer. I like Nittimakki. He always ran a little hot and cold but when he was on he worked hard.

The Flyers had a regional Ultimate Hockey Mom contest and they will be dropping the puck with Sarah Palin. Which begs the question, is stupid contagious?

Do we want to extend our peeps night out tradition to minor league hockey? Monarchs v. Bruins Dec 13th, interested?

What do tix cost? I could probably be convinced...

-Ricardo

[bethandlouis]

Hockey starts today!

[geowit]

Wow, I watched the Caps/Canucks last night and the Caps sent Luongo packing. They were so focused on shutting down Ovechkin that everyone else had a field day. Semin may be as dangerous as Ovechkin. Johnson looked pretty good in goal but he really wasn't tested much. I think the Canucks only had 3 shots in the 2nd period. The announcers also commented on the size of the Caps. They're big, fast and pretty gritty. Sounds like an exciting combo to me.

[MGB Boy]

Random hockey thoughts...

Best save % in the league? Mike Smith of Tampa. Because he's had to. Save percentage cellar-dwellers (all are ranked out of 37); Biron (36th), Turco (35th), Budaj (33rd), Nabokov (32nd), Leclair (31st), Kipper (30th), Osbad (28th). Even Luongo (22nd) is toiling away at .890 and has looked pretty "meh" in the games I've seen. Timmy is at .918 and Theodore is at .897. Kolzig is at .920 but hasn't actually made enough saves to qualify for the NHL leader-board.

Other stats of note; Rod Brind'Amour has managed to compile a plus/minus of -6 in just six games. Which would put him on pace for... -82. Vanek leads in goals with 8, with One-Ball Kessel not to far off at 6 and UVM alum Patrick Sharp at 5. The Flyers are still waiting for a win. Ouch. Lightning have one win. One win in twelve games for the two participants in the 2004 Eastern Conference Finals. Wonder how long Melrose will last.

Kessel had 30 goals in his previous 152 games, so 6 in 7 is a nice step up. There had been some in the Boston scene (some media and fans) who had already given up on Kessel's potential and were already making noise to ship him out. Kid just turned 21 at the beginning of the month. How 'bout dialing back those expectations just a shade? If a kid isn't Crosby or Ovechkin by the time he's 20 these days, people start to jump ship. Marty St. Louis had his first 30 goal season at what, 28? Won the scoring title and MVP the next year? Patience, people.

-Ricardo

[MGB Boy]

Randomness...

Every year NJ plays Brodeur into the ground, starts him for 70+ games and he's got nothing left by the time the playoffs roll around. Every year they say they will cut back on his workload. Every year they don't. Looks like they are going to have to now, with that 3-4 month break. If Weekes can keep them in playoff contention, I'll be interested to see what a fresh Brodeur in the playoffs can do.

Glen Murray is finding a way to come back to haunt the Bruins. They bought his sorry over-the-hill ass out this summer. He spent the summer/fall working out to shop himself for other teams and declared himself to be fully healed from last season's ankle injury. Then he injured the same ankle again. In the immediate aftermath, his agent characterized it as a new/different injury, and really bad timing. Now they've changed their tune and claim the original injury never really healed, this is a pre-existing condition, and since the NHL prohibits buying out the contract of an injured player, the Bruins should still have to pay him his full salary. He's doing a pretty good job of wiping out many years of hard-earned good-will with Bruins fans.

Timmy was an all-star last year, and currently has the best save % in the NHL and the second best GAA. So naturally, when the NHL was deciding what goalies to put on the Eastern Conference all-star ballot, he was not among the ten goalies listed. What a joke. Looks like time for a write-in campaign. The goalies the NHL listed on the Eastern Conference ballot:

Martin Biron, Philadelphia Flyers (currently rocking a .874/3.79 line)
Martin Brodeur, New Jersey Devils (timely!)
Rick DiPietro, New York Islanders (really?)
Marc-Andre Fleury, Pittsburgh Penguins
Kari Lehtonen, Atlanta Thrashers
Henrik Lundqvist, New York Rangers
Ryan Miller, Buffalo Sabres
Carey Price, Montreal Canadiens
Vesa Toskala, Toronto Maple Leafs (how did ANY Leaf end up here?)
Tomas Vokoun, Florida Panthers

Hawks new third jersey is the same black one they wore pre-Rbk Edge. Meh, inoffensive enough, but never seemed necessary.

Canes third jersey is okay, at least it doesn't have the swirling toilet logo, the hockey stick/flag logo is better. Only problem there is the team name is "the Hurricanes", but the signal for a hurricane is TWO red flags with a black square. One red flag with a black square just means "storm warning" (generally a tropical storm). So does this mean they are the Carolina Tropical Storms?

Both Habs goalies are breaking in brown "retro" style pads for wearing with the fifty-nine bazillion different throwback jerseys they are wearing this season;



Bruins third jersey:



Pretty basic. At least it doesn't have all the usual Rbk piping and underarm panels and all that crap.

Can't wait to see the Kings third jersey. They've got an awesome tradition of hideous jerseys, they've got a high standard to live up (down) to...

-Ricardo

[bethandlouis]

The fog is finally lifting and it's time for me to find out what I missed in the week I was absent. So there was a lot of talk of the Mike Smith hit on Voros. I decided to search youtube to find out what all the hub bub was. Well it looks like he was taking some liberties. I know that goalies do pokes and punches when the players are "up in their grill" but that just started getting silly. Looks like they were in a 5-3 situation (could be wrong but announcer said that when Lundqvist was on the bench it was 6-3) and you don't take stupid penalties when you are down 2 men. He took exception to Voros being in the vicinity you poke him push him. He whacked him in the outer leg with his stick then pushed from behind and punched him. Then Voros had enough. Now if I'm the TB D I think I'm going to intervene in that situation. That's my goaltender.

While on YouTube I saw Andrew Ferrence vs. Sean Avery Nov 1 2008. I started thinking, what was I doing Nov. 1 when someone finally got to beat the snot out of that Avery kid? Then I remembered. I was at UVM hockey. Well I saw that fight and the hit that lead up to the fight Ferrence vs. Ott. Then I saw another youtube Bruins Line Brawl Nov. 1, 2008. Well that looked interesting so I took a gander. Ott apparently started with the cheap shots and the B's were just responding. At some point the blame for this had to go to the refs. Why couldn't they do something before it got so out of hand? It was like the Stars were begging the officials, please take us out of this game. Finally Ott got a 10 minute misconduct with 8 minutes to go but the damage had been done already. I'm one of those people that think that fighting has a place in the NHL. I think that it helps to solve a lot of the problems on the ice. If you think that I cheap shotted you or someone on your team and didn't get a call for it I expect someone to come over and give it to me. It's a message, and it has to be sent. There isn't room in hockey for these kind of shenanigans though.

[m2smith]

Quote: Originally Posted by bethandlouis (original)

So there was a lot of talk of Mike Smith

Yeah - That happens
...and now that it looks like the Bruins might actually have a team worth watching I might be here more often - So watch it!

[MGB Boy]

Done any All-Star game voting yet? Polls opened a couple days ago. Current count:

Forwards:
KOIVU, Saku (Montreal): 181069
KOVALEV, Alex (Montreal): 180192
TANGUAY, Alex (Montreal): 178182
--------
SEMIN, Alexander (Washington): 71111
OVECHKIN, Alex (Washington): 54092

Defense:
MARKOV, Andrei (Montreal): 193847
KOMISAREK, Mike (Montreal): 180273
--------
GREEN, Mike (Washington): 46329
CHARA, Zdeno (Boston): 41859

Goal:
PRICE, Carey (Montreal): 195378
--------
LUNDQVIST, Henrik (NY Rangers): 51661
THOMAS, Tim (Boston): 21781
FLEURY, Marc-Andre (Pittsburgh): 20404

In case you haven't guessed, some "enterprising" Habs fans have written a short script which, when executed, will automatically vote for the Habs on the ballot endlessly. Go to the website, open a dozen windows or so, fire up the script, and go get a coffee. While you're gone, your system will vote for the Habs a few thousand times. Of course fans of other teams have noticed this, googled the Habs message boards, found the script (Habs fans posted it online so all their peeps could use it), modified it, and started running it for their own teams. So it remains to be seen if the Habs will continue to lead by idiotic margins or if EVERYONE will start to have insane vote totals. For a frame of reference, last year Crosby led all players with 507274 votes. Total. This year's voting has been open for two days. At the current rate, Carey Price will pass that sometime this weekend.

That's really weak. Under other circumstances, I'd expect the League might step in and invalidate the results and/or put in better safeguards against bots and script routines. I say "under other circumstances" because the NHL is pretty much spending the whole season on their knees "servicing" Montreal about this 100th anniversary stuff, so I expect they wouldn't be disappointed with an all-Habs starting six. Who knows.

-Ricardo

[snid]

I saw the Stanley Cup on Sunday.

That is all.