Dustin Brown, The Flyers, The Preds

Did you see the Kings/Flames highlight package from last night?  Mark Giordano pwned Dustin Brown so many times I thought they accidentally clipped one highlight and ran it on loop.

Brown’s a fantastic player, but by the third time he was in the neutral zone trying to hustle around a forward wide with the puck all I could think was ”…dude, even a puppy learns from a few newspapers to the snout…”

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Villains always lose in the end...

Not sure if you saw the Deadspin article about the Flyers yesterday, but it was stirring the pot about rumours than Jeff Carter is, um, affiliated with Scott Hartnell’s wife.  TMZ stuff aside, I actually learned a few things about the Flyers in it, and I was wondering what was true.

Do Pronger and Richards actually not get along?  Does the team party too much?  Do they simply hate each other?  I gotta call some people.

I will say this about the Flyers (especially in the wake of Neil’s Flyer-hating comments on the “sports hate” blog) – it feels right that they’ve resumed their role in the league as the WWE-like heel.  Just bad guys being bad guys, villains that every team wants to destroy.  After going through their roster, I can tolerate four players.  I like Gagne and van Riemsdyk, while admiring the skill of Briere and Carle.  That is all.

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The Predators of Nashville have accumlated a record of 235-6, or something.  (21-11). Say wha now?  I’ve been doing Power Rankings every two weeks and was utterly oblivious that they were doing so well.  And you know who else is still rocking the party that rocks the party?  The Phoenix Coyotes.  Tell your friends.  Go buy tickets.  Do something.  The West is chaos!  The East is chaos!  THE NHL IS CHAOS THIS YEAR!

"*sob* it was horrible *tear* ...they made me wear 17!"

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Our rec league team has accpeted the challenge to play a local midget team (not little people.  High school juniors/seniors.  I wish it was little people.)  Full contact.  I’ll post pictures of the black eye I have from fighting some kid who had the audacity to hit me.  Or of my collapsed lung, from having to actually hustle.  Whichever happens first, I’ll take a picture of it.

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Dear Flo, from Progressive commercials:  I loved you, we had our fling, but it’s over.  Stop making commercials now, please.

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(The clipped line is: “But is having this minor skill worth being so unattractive?”  …all jokes people, just jokes.)

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Big ups to Islander not great Nate Thompson, for reaching number one on ESPN’s Not Top Ten.  Here’s bad footage that doesn’t do his empty net shot proper (in?)justice:

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“…and SOMEHOW Thompson missed!” — Gotta admire that hustle though.

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Have a great weekened everyone!  Thanks for reading!

103 For MB, Groundhog Year For The Flyers

Marty Brodeur tied Terry Sawchuk atop the all-time shutout list at 103 against Buffalo on Monday.  That’s more than an entire seasons-worth (playoffs included) of shutouts.  A mind-boggling accomplishment.

Brodeur is simply a great talent who was put in the best possible situation to accomplish feats of goaltenderly greatness.  New Jersey in the ’90′s?  I could’ve taped magazines to my shins and used a baseball glove and put up a couple doughnuts.

So kudos to the guy.  Everything he does is so likable that it’s easy to forget he once had his own Tiger Woods moment on the way to winning one of his cups….  Doing his sister-in-law?  That blew over quick, didn’t it?

I recently read this article in TIME (sprouted from Tiger’s fiasco) that explains how, if an athlete is still able to make the fans cheer, they tend to be willing to forgive, forget, or both.  Loosely paraphrasing the article, Mark McGwire was done hitting home runs, so when the scandal broke, we were done with him.  Same with Pete Rose and anybody else who’s sins were discovered after their playing days.  But with people like Kobe Bryant and A-Rod, their sins have been “buried under the confetti of their latest championship”.

Marty has proven time and time again that there’s reason to root for him, from his talent to his personality.  I guess we all have our faults, and I really want to end this with “so I still love Marty”. ….but your sister-in-law?  Thats a pretty big hurdle for me to clear, there, “fatty”.

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A winner that hasn't won yet.

 I tweeted something last night along the lines of “Being a Flyers fan is similar to being the chef that fights Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber. It seems like everything is going well TIL YOU GET YOUR HEART RIPPED OUT.”  …I stand by that.

To me, they seem like they’d be the hardest team to suit up and play, yet they can’t seem to get over the “pretty good team” hump.  (Every year they wish for another Sharks collapse to take the spotlight off them.)

Richards is a beast.  He can score, and he’s mean.  Carter, Briere, (and now Van Riemsdyk), these guys are deadly.  And a d-corp that has Pronger, Carle, Timmonen?  Seems like a team nobody would want to play.  

And yet, it seems like we’ve been here before, and seen this already.  Haven’t they already tried the “good team, playoff four-seed, question mark in net” second/third round elimination thing?  They must be making money as an organization, so that’s cool, but don’t they wanna win a Cup?  You can’t stop the bleeding with Ray Emery.  He’s good, he’s just not enough. (note: Emery is out six weeks to have ab surgery)

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We’re that house.

As of December 6th, we had lights up.  We have tree scented candles rockin’.  Santa is up.  And apparently, we’re tree shopping in the next day or two.  It keeps getting earlier.

This is my first year in a warm place for Christmas, sans snow.  Seeing as how I’m not sure what to expect, I thought I’d solicit some first-hand accounts from people who celebrate the season in warm climates.  Does no snow suck?  Awesome?  Does it feel as Chrismassy?

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Hockey Greats Camp

With Christmas on the horizon, it’s always a little more nerve-wracking financially than the usual grind.  Throughout the past couple months, I’ve received a few donations to the blog, and they make a huge difference to me.  It buys me time to legitimately pursue my new goal of writing, without having to sell Big Macs from 9 to 5 (or having to join the legion of people the Coyotes hire to dress like seats at home games).  Or sometimes, it simply buys me one of those Big Macs. So thank you to those gracious people, and thank you to my regular readers.  I always look forward to the comments.

(I just feel like putting this picture up – my brother is a travesty of a human being when trying to get the lime to the bottom of his Corona.  I mean disaster-level, call-in-FEMA-for-cleanup style situations occur.  On the right is Jeff’s buddy, Isles trainer Shakey, doing a little heckling.)

The Players of Playoffs

A few short hockey thoughts prior to today’s action:

1.  Let me preface this thought by saying this is completely unfounded, it’s my own speculation, and it’s not rooted in any fact. 

The first thing I saw when I saw Shawn Thornton running around in the Habs/Bruins game was: “that guy’s on steroids”.  NHL steroid testing is slightly better than non-existent, and I played with a couple kids who openly used while I played.  Don’t think guys don’t - we’re not baseball by any means, but I’d speculate a guy per team.

And in all likelihood, Shawn isn’t one of them.  In fact, as a reader recently pointed out (and not in the kindest way), I was thinking of (and comparing him to) Scott Thornton in his early days.  Totally different player.  But it doesn’t change facts.  Players use, and the league’s testing policy is not all that stringent.

2.  Just cleaning out a few hockey notes here:  Are you serious with that Fleury save on Carter?  It’s not even like Fleury got all the way across the net, it looked like Carter took a moment to savour it, which let Fleury get halfway there (which was an exceptionally feat in itself).  Then Carter compounded the nightmare (score and the series is 1-1) by sliding it mid-net.  That was the series turning point.

3.  Okay, Scott Hartnell, the hair isn’t exactly trendy or cool now that you’ve done it long enough for us to think you’re serious.  Now you’ve just been making a bad decision for way too long.  You look like Sideshow Bob.  Or Anderson Varejao.  Which brings me to today’s picture comparison center:

, Mats Sundin’s eerie Terminator black eye: , And Luongo / Jon Decaro (my college goaltender, both 6’4” and Italian):

3.  Lastly, for now, I saw Marty Havlat’s interview yesterday, and thought he sounded like a Newfy pirate.  Great player and all, and more than likely just French, but yeah.  Newfy pirate.

Okay!  Caps/Rangers is underway, battle of the Red, White and Blue!  See you back here tonight!