Game 20: Sabres 4, Sens 2 -- The Creamy Middle: Roadkill Edition

Gentlemen, you will kneel before the scheduling gods and do homage. Render unto them thanks and praise for their mercy and wisdom. Why? Because you have a game to play tonight. Oh yes, verily, be ever grateful that Sid and the Kiddie Korps are in the House. Why, you may ask? Had this been an open date between last night's disgrace and Saturday's rematch with the Flyers, you would have had to answer for your "performance". You would have answered for it with the longest, most grueling, downright evil and quite possibly fatal bag skate of your careers.

How bad would it have been? Plenty. Coach P. would have established a twenty-mile perimeter around the Bank into which no puck could venture and still hope to survive. He would then, bullwhip in hand, had you dress in full gear, and strapped weights equivalent to a Volkswagen to your backs to run you through one hundred wind sprints, red line, to blue line, to hash marks, to goal line until the weaker among you were slicing open your own jugulars just for the excuse to stop. First man to fall would reset the count AND have to clean the puke from the ice afterward. Then how about a two hour "cool down" session on those pretty stationary bikes Brenden Shanahan thinks are so funny to top it off? Gentlemen, Coach P. would have ensured that if any of you had somehow survived the ordeal to go on and procreate, your future grandchildren would still be in pain. Okay, maybe Coach P. wouldn't have done any of that. Aren't you glad I'm not your coach? You have tonight's game to redeem yourselves gentlemen. I would suggest you take full advantage of the opportunity and perhaps not suck the moose cock quite so enthusiastically.

The Lipstick On The Pig:

• Hello, Leon's? About that don't pay a cent thing...: My television somehow made it through the first 29 minutes and 27 seconds of this exercise in craptacular with most of its major components intact. At 29:28, Alfie scored to make it 3-1, and I put my hammer away.

The Lowest Of The Many Many Lows:

• Lost puppy, free to a good home. Answers to "Rayzor": Ray, I don't know where that horse went, but you'd best find it and get back on it and right smartly. 3 goals, one of them a soft floater from the top of the circle, on 9 shots after losing your last game to the worst team in the league (Hi Coach Han -- oh, sorry) is a one way ticket to being traded to the British Ice Hockey League for some battered haddock wrapped in newspaper. Or worse, Los Angeles. That would leave Swiss Pastry to carry our Cup hopes, and that is something for which I could never forgive you.

• Why no, I don't believe a six foot opening is large enough for a three inch object. Why do you ask?: Chris, as your picking the carbon slivers from your palms this morning, I want you to forget about it. Forget, for the moment, that that shorty would have meant a 3-3 tie and the completion of an improbable comeback. Forget that your miss cost us any momentum we'd managed to generate to that point and therefore probably cost us the game. Forget, as hard as it seems, the fact that you hit the freakin' post on a deserted net from three feet away!! Forget all that. Look at those splinters. Now, perhaps you're squeezing the stick juuuust a tad too hard, no?

• Well, if it's in a "newspaper", it must be true!: Last Friday, I advanced the theory that Heater was in a slump. The following Monday, the Ottawa Citizen's Allen Panzeri reported to the breathless masses that...wait for it...Heater was in a slump. I don't know what that means, except that I should probably track the IP addresses of my visitors a little more closely. Anyway, Dany, your two goals in the last three games ( or 3 in the last 12 for those of you scoring at home) does not mean your slump is dead. Only that it has been relocated to other parts of your game. Apropos of nothing, standing still while flailing helplessly at opponents with your stick (as lovely a tribute to the Golden Groin --BFF 4EVAH!! -- as it may be) and taking stupid penalties is not the optimal way one would go about being a leader.
  

Curdled Middle: Depending on what happens against the Flightless Birds tonight, we may be on the verge of a full blown slide. Of course, I can't actually see what's happening in tonight's game as it is the first of seven of those abominations before the eyes of man and God known as "Pay-Per-View". As I would rather urinate down my own throat than shell out money for a third rate broadcast, thus feeding and giving credence to the beast that is corporate greed, we'll move straight on to...

Up Next: Bobby Clarke's fiendish army of the undead comes to visit on Saturday. A bright shiny penny to the man, or woman, who brings me Steve Downie's head on a plate. What? He's in the minors? All right. Two bright shiny pennies.