Red Wings 3, Sens 2 -- So What Have We Learned From This, Class?

Well, for one thing, we've learned that it's not very wise to pull four of our five players off on a line change while nursing (and I mean nursing) a 2-1 lead as the most hellacious transition game in the league is busting down the wing. Right this way, Mr. Franzen.

The Highs:

• The kids are alright, Part I: Ho. Ly. Crap. Little Nicky's second period goal, scored on the rebound with two defencemen draped on his back after splitting the D on an end-to-end rush, is now 1A on my list of most spectacular goals scored in Senators history, only slightly behind Giggles pwning Sheldon Souray in OT. Somebody with more interwebbing skills than mine own needs to get that up on YouTube. Like, right now.

• The kids are alright, Part II: It so happens I'll be enjoying Thanksgiving dinner at my uncle's place, a half hour down the road, in bucolic Long Sault, Ontario, home of our very own Jesse Winchester. I'm told that the Winchesters are acquaintances of the family (mostly because, if you live in Long Sault, everybody is an acquaintance). I may ask for directions to their house, if for no other reason than to prostrate myself at the feet of Jesse's father in order to properly thank him for impregnating his wife. Yeah, you might say I'm becoming a bit of a fan.

• We now pause for a damning by faint praise: Against my better judgment, I'm going to cut you some slack here, Martin. Sure, you probably should have had that last shot. After all, real money goalies don't allow a winning goal with less than two minutes to go, no matter how many crazy bounces it takes. That said, being out shot 41-22 makes it pretty tough to blame the goalie for the loss, and you did come up with some spectacular saves, without which this game was over by the end of the second. And don't take this the wrong way, but do you know what else real money goalies do? Steal games their teams have no business winning. Just sayin'...
  

The Lows:

• Somebody needs a time out chair: Look Christoph, you've made it abundantly clear you'd rather be a sixth D-man than a fourth line forward. We know that. But maybe, and I'm just spit balling here, but maybe your coaches think you're more useful to the team playing on the wing, whether or not you agree with them. So how about you stop pouting about it and, oh...I don't know...look like you give a shit about playing the game? Thanks. That'd be cool.
  

• *Sigh* Let's do it ALL over again, starting with the electrical college: It seems to me, the consensus was pretty clear coming into the season. The only way we're going to go anywhere, was to work harder than our opponent. Everybody said it. More than a few wrote it. And one of the team's more enthusiastic supporters may have even spent most of Saturday afternoon yelling it from his own rooftop as he cleaned out his eave troughs...or so I heard. So what happened? Three games in and the boys are 1-for-3 in the "beat the other guys to a pulp" department. So let's try it again, shall we? All together now! LET'S GO FORE-CHECK! (clap-clap clapclapclap).
  

• You cannot cure herpes, but you can contain the outbreaks: Mike Milbury just keeps popping up, doesn't he? If his polluting TSN's That's Hockey wasn't bad enough, there he was, bloviating on The Satellite Hot Stove. Great. Mike Milbury and Al Strachan on the same panel. Their combined egos may well tear open a hole in the fabric of space-time and destroy us all.
  

Pithy Observations of Questionable Importance:

• C'mon guys, it's the home opener! Why did everybody look like they were waiting for root canals? A little excitement during the player introductions shouldn't be that hard to muster, should it? Fish, next time I want to see you go Ray Lewis on your team's ass and do a Dirty Bird at centre ice. You've got a whole year to practice. GO!
  

• Now I don't know who, or what, is in charge of the team's Pump Up The Crowd division, but my money is on a wheel of retarded cheddar. First came that ridiculous and embarrassing We Are SPARTA! intro last April *shudder* (as much as I've attempted to repress the memory...it just won't go away!). Then we get saddled with what may well go down in the annals of marketing as the lamest slogan ever..."Sens Army: A force united!" Ooooh, be still my groin! So yeah, about those intros there Edam...if you want to sustain any kind of crowd noise (a rarity in and of itself at SBP) you might want to try introducing the training staff and coaches first. If memory serves, Ed Sullivan didn't say "Ladies and Gentlemen...THE BEATLES!...coming up soon. Please welcome Harvey the Musical Wombat and his all kazoo quartet." Get it?
  

• Memo to Roy Mlakar: No offence to Lyndon Slewidge, but I think our anthem could have done with a little more Swedish hottie.
  

The Creamy Middle:

This one is easy. The boys had to come out with their absolute best game to have a chance. They didn't. They lost. And frankly, they deserved it. If it weren't for Pastry (there's something you won't see here very often), and the erection inducing play of the kids (take a bow Messrs. Foligno, Winchester and Picard) the final score would have been much, much worse. The nice thing about watching an October game I really didn't expect them to win in the first place, is that the inevitable loss doesn't tend to cost me as much, either in sanity or fragile household items. Lay an egg like this in March? Let's just say my dog really hopes that doesn't happen.

Up Next:

Week 3 kicks off next Friday, with The Great One's Phoenix Coyotes in the house (SportsNet East with the coverage). Please forgive the mixed sporting metaphors in that sentence, but at this rate, the 08-09 season is going to take roughly eleventeen years to actually play.

Behind Enemy Lines:

Tracy, one of the Hockey Ladies Of Greatness, opens her heart to the internets at True Coyote Love. Be sure to pop in and say hi, won't you? After all, everybody loves puppies. Even Gator.

Happy Turkey Day, everyone!

Marc-Andre's Ass Would Like To Congratulate The Detroit Red Wings!

I can think of a few worse feelings than losing a Stanley Cup on an own-goal. Like...say...getting one's testes caught in a band saw. Or coaching the Laughs.

But really, MAF's posterior exploits aside, the Wings have deserved this win since the first week of October. So congrats Detroit! And thanks! Universal Order has been restored.

Now we can finally start talking about the draft.

Stanly Cup Finals: You Heard It Here Last!

The year was 2003. The Human Genome Project was completed, thus solving the mystery, once and for all, surrounding the exact genetic mutation responsible for Leaf Nation. The Iraq war was declared "over", thus compounding the mystery of the exact genetic mutation responsible for George W. Bush.

It was the last year that featured two American teams in the Stanley Cup Final, with New Jersey defeating the (then Mighty) Ducks in seven snooze-a-rific games, thus ushering in an era of defensive hockey so stifled and boring, the entire League would be forced to close shop for a year out of shame and self-loathing.

It was also the last year anyone in the Great USofA gave a rat's ass about the Stanley Cup. Until now. Detroit vs. Pittsburgh. Wily Veterans vs. The Wave of the Future. Original Six vs. Hockey Jesus (© MYFO). Remember, Herr Kommisar Bettman. If it lasts for more than four hours, you really should see a doctor.

So who's going to win? Join me now for my in-depth analysis of this titanic struggle, as I compare relative strengths and weakness based on rock solid facts and a complete algorithmic study of all possible statistics, while also peering into the very souls of the coaching staff in order to determine, with an accuracy verging on witchcraft, the inevitable outcome!

Um...yeah. Just kidding. Wings in 7.

Why? Because it's too soon, dammit! You are the '83 Oilers to their Islanders. A bunch of kids with abundant talent and a future absolutely sick with promise, but who first needs to lose in order to figure out how to win. So, sorry Pittsburgh. No Cup for you this year. It will happen, of that I have no doubt. But at least this way, I can pretend for another year that the Senators will contend for an Eastern Title again in my lifetime. And you wouldn't want to take that away from me, would you??

You would? Fine. Screw you too. Go Wings!

Sens 3, Red Wings 2: Some Marinara, A Little Lemon Juice -- Delicious!

Yes, I realize that calamari is actually deep fried squid and not octopus, but you do a Google Image search for "octopus balls" and see what you get. I had no idea some of those things were even possible.

Pithy Observations of Questionable Importance:

• Very classy "welcome home" for Stevie Y before the game. Of course, I'm sure he was all agog over his induction into something called the "Ottawa Sports Hall of Fame" and will no doubt put the trophy on his mantle right next to his 10 All Star Games, 3 Cups, and his Conn Smythe. Yep. Absolutely positive.

• To everybody at the Bank last night not wearing Red Wings jerseys, I'm terribly disappointed in you. You were presented with a golden opportunity and you let it go. I wanted clown dolls dressed in goalie pads hung in effigy! I wanted soothers and tubes of A-535 to rain down on his head! I wanted Ace bandages (good for abductor pulls, dontcha know) burning in the rafters! What did you give me? About thirty seconds of halfhearted HAAAASEK! HAAAASEK! Weak Sens fans. Just weak.
  

• For most of the game, the rink board in front of the Wings bench featured a giant ad for Viagra. I'll stop here and just let the irony sink in for a moment. It was gone in the third however. My guess is Chris Chelios mistook it as a birthday present and ate it between periods.

The Highs:

• There was more than one Swede on the ice? Really?: The Captain comes through with 2 PP goals, including the winner, to once again remind us why we will have him bronzed and mounted on Parliament Hill immediately following his retirement announcement (you won't mind, will you Alfie?) There was much talk about some "Lidstrom" somebody-or-other before the game, but I didn't notice anybody by that name during it. No word yet on whether King Carl Gustav is planning on launching an international manhunt.

• Yea, though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death: I'll admit, I've been rather harsh with you Ray. But I know what I hate, and your performance last night was definitely not it. I'll even give you a pass on allowing the two goals to blow (yet another) two goal lead because a) you were facing the most dangerous pro hockey team in the known universe and b) I'm well into my Sunday 12 pack as I write this. Keep it up, and more importantly keep your mouth shut and you might just get off the top bunk in our goalie dog house.

The Lows:

• OWOWOWOWOWOW: 4-6 weeks. That's what TSN was reporting this morning on Heater's separated shoulder. That pegs his return for the 19th of February game against the Flyers. Among the many downsides to this are that a third straight 50 goal season pretty much goes in the crapper, his Iron Man streak comes to an end at a ridiculous 207 games and Coach P loses his opportunity to tell the rest of the league to suck it by putting the Heater-Spez-Captain line out at the All Star Game.

• "Game of the Year"? Pfffft...who cares. I want to fellate Darcy Tucker!: It's no secret that Grapes is a Leaf fan. And really, Coach's Corner is his show and he can talk about anything he wants. But really Don, would have been too much to ask that, during a game featuring the two best teams in hockey, you take a little time to talk about that game instead of wasting your entire segment blathering on about how the Laffs are "close" and "gonna to turn it around in the second half!"?? Especially when the Leafs aren't playing for another two fucking hours?!?! Put down Peddie's Kool-Aid blowhard, and face the fact that your darling little boys suck. You're embarrassing yourself even more than you normally do.

• And never again, the twain shall meet: Greg Wyshynski at AOL Fanhouse ran a fantastic piece yesterday in which he asked some of the most talented bloggers from both teams why the League wasn't hyping this game the way, say, the NFL pumped Colts/Pats or Cowboys/Packers, among other things. I'll let you read their answers for yourself (mostly because I can't possibly do them justice here), but my theory is that deep down, the League knows that they completely screwed up with this unbalanced schedule and didn't want this game to draw attention to the fact. And the way the first two-and-a-half periods were played, I think bears this out. There was no passion, no hatred, no heat to this game. Because both teams are so good, and had so much respect for their opponents, the game itself turned into a tentative trap game played mostly between the blue lines. And now, they won't see each other again unless they both make the Finals. So congratulations Gary. You've managed to suck all of the remaining excitement out of what should have been THE regular season game because you would rather have Phoenix play Los Angeles eight times a year in front of ten thousand empty seats. Bravo. Think about that the next time you see a ratings report from Versus.

Creamy Middle: It was costly as hell, and not particularly pretty, but we took the two points, and earned the right to call ourselves the baddest asses in the world, for at least 24 hours. If there's a silver lining to Heater's dark cloud, it's that it will force Coach P to come up with a completely new strategy. One that doesn't involve "Throw out the big line when we get in trouble".

Up Next: The fishermen are coming! The fishermen are coming! The fisherm--wait. That's not very scary, is it? Tonight, at the Bank, Sportsnet East with the coverage (Yippee! No Gord Wilson). I can't be the only guy who misses those Captain Highliner third jerseys, am I?

Behind enemy lines: The Drive For Five lends their talents and surprisingly honest analysis to this night's festivities:

Simply put, this Senators team scares the crap out of me. They have it all, two goaltenders most teams in the league would love to have, plenty of primary scoring threats, a host of solid role players who can contribute and a defense that can contribute on both sides of the ice.

"Two goaltenders most teams in the league would love to have"??? Really?!? Dude, give us a call. We'll talk.