The Playoffs So Far

When the playoffs began I had the following teams continuing into the second round in their quest for the holy grail; Lord Stanley’s Mug:

Pittsburgh

Washington

New Jersey

Montreal

and from the West

San Jose

Dallas

Colorado

Detroit

As it stands right now, I am well on my way to a pretty good standing at 5-3. Of course only one series has been decided so far as of Friday afternoon and tonight two more could end.

Some surprises so far in the playoffs.

Alexander Ovechkin’s virtual disappearing act after the first game of his series. The first series set up an amazing run by Ovechkin and the Caps but Philly has turned the tide drastically and now it is crazy to think that if Ovechkin didn’t turn it on in the final ten minutes of game 1, this series would probably already be over in a sweep. The caps still have a chance, Alexander Ovechkin just has to be the deciding factor in game 5. This is the most exciting series of the playoffs so far.

Detroit and Nashville is an interesting series to watch now that Dominik Hasek has probably played his last game in the series and probably his career. If Osgood can’t hold down the Nashville offense that likes to score goals within one minute of each other every game then the Wings are finished in the first round yet again. I think game 5 is the pivotal game and whoever takes that game will take the series.

The Ottawa Pittsburgh series was a joke. Ottawa has no heart, no grit and didn’t have a chance from the get-go.

New Jersey and New York I don’t even want to comment too much on because New Jersey is my team. They weren’t built for a cup run this year by any means so I am not too disappointed by their lackluster performance so far. Sean Avery’s antics in game 3 were ridiculous and I’m glad they were deemed illegal. Look for the devils to take it to game 7 but unfortunately lose. Who am I kidding, they will probably lose tonight and the series will end 4-1.

The Colorado Minny series is going as expected. A close tight checking game but I think Colorado has the edge in talent right now with Hejduk, Forsberg and Mr Clutch himself Joseph Sakic firing on all cylinders. Theodore is lights out right now, looking like he’s in Montreal Canadiens form. Colorado looks good.

Now Montreal and Boston. This series is tough to gauge. The first night it looked like Montreal was going to run away with it. Ever since then, Boston looked like the better team. Game two the refs handed to Montreal on a silver platter with a bullshit call in overtime. Game 4 could have went either way but Price stood on his head. Yesterday’s game was a full out domination by the Bruins from the third period on. What sparked this? Price’s gaff. A rookie mistake that cost his team the game. He is said to be cool calm and collected for his age but I think one shaky goal next game and Price and the Canadiens are in big trouble. Especially in Boston. Look for Boston to take game 6 and I can’t really call game 7 until I see 6.

The team to beat right now as I see it are the Penguins. They have depth, they have leadership and they have some grit guys with tons of Playoff hockey at their disposal. Roberts and Hossa have been here before, Fleury looks like a wall. Crosby isn’t even playing well right now and Malkin is a one man band. I don’t see anyone being able to take down the Penguins in the East.

The west is another story. No team looks dominant right now. San Jose, the supposed power in the West looks very human against the Flames. Colorado looks like the best team right now and that is not saying a lot because every series is so close right now and seems to turn momentum at the drop of a dime. At the very least, this year’s playoffs have been very entertaining and full of surprises. Hopefully next round will bring more drama.

George Parros is out of control.

George James Parros is actually out of his mind. There are few enforcers around the league that I actually like to watch. Derek Boogard is in a class all his won in terms of fighting but George Parros not only can fight, he does it with style!

George Parros’ wikipedia page has its own Moustache section. It actually claims that Parros uses his moustache to intimidate other players. I guess there is nothing more scary than a Princeton graduate sporting a Tom Selek cookie duster.

Go to GeorgeParros.com and look at the images section. It is literally 40 photos of Parros and his enormous moustache whipping other non-moustache clad player’s asses. Every time he is interviewed I am expecting him to blurt out that there is a whole ocean of oil under our feet and no one can get to it except him.

Making a career of punching people in the face has to get tiresome and I like the fact that Parros puts his own little twist on the legacy he will leave. I wasn’t around when Lanny McDonald played hockey, hell, my girlfriend wasn’t alive when Lanny McDonald played hockey but the second I mention his name she immediately says its the “guy with the moustache”.

In 154 career NHL regular season games Parros has 11 points. Lets face it, scoring is not his forte. What he does is he makes the talented players on his team feel safer and that is the job of any true enforcer. Dave Semenko made Gretzky’s career a lot easier because if anyone ever got near Gretzky, Semenko would actually chase the guy down, put his head through the boards and then Semenko’s family would be waiting on the other side of the boards to spit on said player’s head. Parros makes things easier for Selanne, Niedermeyer, Getzlaf, and Perry. Its like when you go into a public bathroom and decide to use the handicap stall. You love the extra space in there and sometimes the stalls even have their own little sink to offset the inevitable feeling of guilt for using the stall reserved for the disabled. Just as an aside, here is how you know if you feel bad for using the handicap stall or not. If there is one person in the bathroom with you and you wait until that person leaves for you to exit the stall. You are so ashamed of taking advantage of that stall that you don’t even want strangers that you will never see again seeing you walk out of there. The extreme, of course, would be the person that fakes a limp as they walk out of the stall so people maybe think they were just in their use of the stall clearly not for them.

George Parros is the handicap stall in the public bathroom that is the NHL and his moustache is the personal sink.

Funny Hockey Names

I have compiled a small list of the funniest names in the National Hockey League.

• Ron Tugnut

Is there anything else that needs to be said? He has two words in his last name that send chills through male sports fan’s balls. It almost sounds like a drink you could order at a martini bar. “Yes I’ll have a Ron Tugnut on the rocks with a twist”. Here you go you Ron.

• Valeri Zelepukin

This player’s name is completely fine aside from Valeri being sort of a girly name. Zelepukin begins fine. Zele reminds me of Zeal and strength and VIGOR! If we stopped there it would be terrific. Unfortunately the last 5 letters totally destroy any credibility this player may have built up in during his career.

• Urban Dictionary describes puke as:

“ever notice that when you eat sweetcorn, three years later its still there?
hey, i’m pukin and, oh look, sweetcorn!”

• Daren Puppa

The torment and humiliation this man went through from the time he was born is enough to make me not want to make him go through any more.

• Jeff Beukeboom

Jeff Beukeboom is just a sweet name. It sounds strong and like someone you don’t want to mess with and it describes him pretty well. Second all-time on the Rangers in penalty minutes, Beukeboom’s career was cut short from concussions. Just as an aside, Beukeboom won four Stanley Cups but I think his most cherished acheivement is his 1996 New York Rangers Crumb Bum award.

• Wacey Rabbit

Wacey Rabbit is just one of those cool sports names like Peekaboo Street or Coco Crisp. Either that or something Elmer Fudd might say.

• Jim Carey

Yes, Ace Ventura laced them up in 1996 for the Washington Capitals and beat out Dominek Hasek for the Vezina Trophy that year. That coming year he signed a four year contract worth 11 million dollars and then started struggling and played his way into obscurity. Never to be seen again. Jim Carey is known for his name but the bigger joke is him being the biggest disappearing act in NHL history.

• Milan Chalupa

I don’t know what team this man played for, what his stats were, his height or his weight and I don’t care. Chalupa.

• Harry Dick

I think this one pretty much explains itself. But lets see what Urban Dictionary has to say just for fun.

• Hairy:

Ravenous Robin Williams-like heroine use

“I’m gettin hairy tonight! you want in?”

• Yutaka Fukufuji

It is impossible for any broadcasters to say this man’s name without saying “Fuck You Fugi”. Simple pleasures I guess.

• Honorable Mentions
  • Adam Foote
  • Jeff Finger
  • Zarli Zalapski
  • Steve Junker

Feel free to add whatever names you think are funny to the list. I may have forgotten some obvious ones but these are the ones I could come up with on my shoestring budget.

D2: The Mighty Ducks

In terms of family movies, this is a heart warming tale of the kids from the first Mighty Ducks movie coming back to play for their country in some sort of all-world tournament. On a family movie scale, this movie isn’t even that bad. As a hockey movie, this breaks every rule in hockey, physics and common sense.

I don’t even know where to start on this movie because it is so ludicrous at points and has so many inconsistencies and glaring errors that Gary Bettman must be rolling in his grave.

First and foremost Coach Bombay is selecting a team for the upcoming Junior Goodwill Games in Los Angeles. Instead of picking the best players from around the country, Bombay in all his wisdom chooses a ragtag ethnic cross section of players including a cowboy, a spanish speedster and a black roller hockey player that somehow joins the team mid-season after the entire Team U.S.A is taken to the ghetto to play some street toughs. Did I mention that there was an Asian figure skater on the team? I’m guessing Erik Rasmussen, Marty Reasoner, Matt Cullen, and Tom Poti were too busy that summer to represent their country in a made up tournament.

Secondly we have the opponents in this tournament and the total fuck you this movie sends Canada and their youth hockey programs. Somehow the Mighty Ducks, or Team U.S.A I should say, disposes of Team Canada with ease and they are pretty much never mentioned again. So obviously, the next choice for Hockey World Power would be Russia or maybe Sweden right? NO it is the dominant hockey country of ICELAND. Team U.S.A’s rival and greatest competitor in this movie is the country of Iceland. Just off the top of my head I can only name one player in the NHL drafted out of Iceland. His name is Stephan Reykivakolaid, never heard of him? That’s because I made him up. So somehow the country of Iceland, a country that only has one man-made ice rink built in 1987 trained a group of kids for 9 years and became the world’s fastest rising hockey power. It would have made as much sense to put the Jamaican bobsled team out there against Team U.S.A. Sanka you dead? Ya man.

The kicker in this movie is the blatant disregard for any sort of rules set up to play the game of hockey. At one point in the movie, the cowboy hockey player takes off his helmet, puts on a cowboy hat and lassos two Icelandic players and low and behold receives a penalty for lassoing! Mid way through the championship game, father time comes in and gives Team U.S.A the new Mighty Ducks jerseys with the new Mighty Ducks logo on them. Don’t worry, that wasn’t a marketing ploy at all! How do the team members that had nothing to do with the first movie feel about this change? Who cares! They’re playing Iceland!

The final straw has to be how this championship game ends. With Team Mighty Ducks U.S.A or whatever down by one goal, Coach Bombay calls a timeout and mayhem ensues. The play starts behind the net and the flying V begins, this is all well and good but the goalie is in the center of the V! So lets forget that any self respecting hockey fan already knows that goalies can’t cross their own blue line without getting a penalty. The puck is going down the ice in the flying V and remember that the goalie (Goldberg) has been playing the entire game so we can only assume its him in the middle of this mess. There is a bunch of disorganized Iceland players wondering what the hell is going on and finally the puck goes back to the point to the Team U.S.A GOALIE and as he lifts off his goalie mask we see who? Not Goldberg but the BLACK KID THE TEAM PICKED UP FROM THE GHETTO. Somehow in the 30 second time out Coach Bombay took, Goldberg, the original goalie got out of his equipment and the ghetto kid strapped on the pads and pants and chest protector and skates. All this happened while Iceland was watching the 1996 Presidential Election on the Jumbotron I’m guessing? I hear Coach Wolf Stansson voted for Bob Dole!

Anyways the knuckle-puck wielding black ghetto kid scores and Team U.S.A wins in a shootout as I stare in amazement as to what exactly happened to the last 106 minutes of my life.

All in all, its not a bad watch but you have to ignore the onslaught of marketing, sports cliches running a muck and the cheesiest cameos by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Cam Neely, Chris Chelios, Luc Robitaille, Greg Louganis for some reason? and worst of all Kristi Yamaguchi! Only Wayne Gretzky saves this movie from total cheesy annihilation.

The Edmonton Oilers

The Edmonton Oilers should not be anywhere near the playoffs. They shouldn’t even be able to smell the playoffs, from their vantage point, the playoffs should look like a far away dreamland filled with disappointing overtimes the feeling of “what could have been”. Unfortunately in the new NHL, they aren’t wondering what could have been, they are probably thinking “I can’t believe we are still in this”. As it stands right now Edmonton is five points out of the playoffs and it doesn’t look like they will even make it but I can’t even accept how close they are to being in.

Looking at their record, the Oilers have a pretty respectable record at (37-33-5). But if you delve deeper into this abomination of a team’s season you will realise they should be fighting it out with the Los Angeles Kings for the Stamkos lottery. Fifteen of the Oilers thirty-seven wins are Shootout wins. This means that if the shootout rule was not in place we could shave off fifteen points from the Oiler’s record. To be fair, we should also shave off a few points from all other teams but it would be easier if we just curved the Oiler’s record and gave them four or five points they might have gained from other teams not winning in the shootout.

So with 11 fewer points from the shootout, the Edmonton Oilers are at 68 points and only four points ahead of the lowly Los Angeles Kings. I’m not saying I don’t like the shootout because I truly do enjoy the excitement of it. Whenever a new rule change is implemented, someone always takes advantage directly or indirectly and reaps the benefits. The Edmonton Oilers are a anomaly and I understand this but it makes me angry so I wrote about it.

15 shootout wins.

Why I hate the Montreal Canadiens

First and foremost, I think the Montreal Canadiens are a great team with exciting players, a good coach and from what I can tell from watching him play so far, a very good goalie. What I despise are the fans of the Montreal Canadiens. This is not referring to how they lambaste the team after every loss and numerous fans claiming the season is over every time they lose to the Senators. I am talking about the beginning of the most annoying tradition in hockey history; the Ole chant.

Now don’t get me wrong, I understand that a fan paying upwards of 150 to 200 dollars for a ticket has every right to chant whatever they want. The problem I have with this chant is that it is taken from the worst sport created by humans that rivals things such as old NHL All-Star game uniforms on a list of things I never want to see or hear about ever again.

If I had to parade that up and down the ice on national television I’d probably pick up my Blackberry and text Chris Simon to come and stomp on my ankle for a few minutes until dementia started setting in.ANYWAY, I hate the Ole chant because of two main reasons.

1. It is a soccer chant and it should stay in soccer.
2. It is followed(usually) by the second most annoying thing Habs fans do and that is the Goodbye chant.

I wouldn’t have a problem with the Goodbye chant if their fans didn’t chant it EVERY SINGLE GAME. I was watching the first regulation blowout win for the Habs this season, an October 22nd win against the Boston Bruins. They were up 6-1 by the end of the game and started chanting Hey Hey Hey…Goodbye. Then they went on to play the bruins 8 more times in the same season.

So why the chant? Is it necessary to chant the losing team goodbye every single game? I can understand that chant if its the elimination game in a playoff series and the score is out of hand but these people do it at any opportunity they get no matter how ridiculous. Tie game going into overtime hey hey hey goodbye. The habs are losing 4-1 to the Peterborough Petes in an inter-league game hey hey hey…goodbye. Habs fans are born without a sense of time and place when it comes to chanting. I can surmise by their behaviour that they laugh at funerals and cry at birthday parties.

I can only guess that Montreal’s harsh winter months and surplus of strip-bars contributes to this over exuberance and ill-timed chanting. The fact that most Habs fans are still not over the departure of Patrick Roy and the subsequent stagnation of the franchise points towards a city lost in it’s own self-loathing. Keep chanting you hooligans, maybe one day you’ll realize exactly what sport you’re watching.

Hockey Memories

I’m going to list some of my favourite hockey memories. Some of these are subjective but I think most people can relate and hopefully enjoy most of them.

One of my favourite memories has to be Mario Lemieux coming back from retirement for the second time. The Penguins were facing my most hated team, the Leafs, and Mario not only came back, he stole the show. Super Mario put up a goal and two assists leading his Penguins team to a 5-0 drubbing of the Toronto Maple Leafs. His comeback kind of plateaued midway through the season and eventually his season was cut short because of injuries and fatigue but I will never forget the moment Lemieux scored that goal and I started to remember just why I love hockey so much in the first place.

Another great memory I have doesn’t really have to do with the NHL but it was the year the NHL was under its lock out and subsequently the Ontario Hockey League and the related QMJHL, and WHL competing in the Memorial Cup became my NHL. The centre of that sub-NHL universe was London Ontario, my home town. This tournament was filled with talent and this London Knights team was the cream of the crop. This team lost 7 games all season with an astonishing record of 59-7-2-0 and went on a 31 game unbeaten streak (29-0-2) and I had the pleasure of attending game number 31 of that streak. This was the most exciting game I have ever been to. The Knights were down 3-0 going into the third. Ten minutes into the third they made it 3-1, with 5 minutes left they made it 3-2 on a power play and then with their goalie pulled with 30 seconds left they tied it up and I thought a crowd could never get as loud as the John Labatt Centre was at that moment. I was wrong because 2 minutes into overtime Robbie Schremp took a breakaway pass from just outside his own blue line and buried a backhand just over the Kitchener Ranger’s goalie blocker. I had a smile on my face that stretched from ear to ear and it solidified my belief that I was watching the greatest Junior team to ever lace up their skates collectively. They went on to confirm feelings by dominating the Memorial Cup with a 4-0 Hockey School against Sydney Crosby and the Rimouski Oceanic.

Uwe Krupp scoring the overtime winning goal in the 1996 Stanley Cup Finals has to be on this list. Earlier that year Patrick Roy told the Montreal Canadiens that he just played his last game as a Hab. He was subsequently traded to Colorado where the team flourished backed by his goal tending and some amazing talent in Peter Forsberg and Joe Sakic. In the Stanley Cup finals the Florida Panthers were no match for the near All-Star team the team from Denver had and Uve Krupp’s overtime blast from the point was the final touch in the biggest Fuck-You ever completed in the NHL by Patrick Roy to the Montreal Canadiens.