GAME SEVEN GAME SEVEN GAME SEVEN

I'm cautiously optimistic for the Bruins in this. Sorry I didn't get a pre-game post up, nor am I able to live-blog it, or even live-tweet it on my dormant @alittlechippy account. Nor did I do a proper goodbye-to-the-Stanley Cup for the Blackhawks for their last few hours as current champs (if not "defending" champs--I assume that ended when they were out of the playoffs). I'm just trying to enjoy the moment. And hopefully only a few more minutes of the game...

okay. GO BRUINS

I'M NOT READY FOR HOCKEY SEASON TO BE OVER. Even if I've hardly written about it this year, even if I didn't do very much hockey-related travel this season (some pretty great trips though--well, if you follow me on social media, you saw that), even if--eek--I didn't leave a single comment on a single hockey blog all season.

I'm still caffeinated from the coffee in this photo, at Knockbox in Chicago's Humboldt Park (awesome overlooked place, so I'll mention them wherever. Grilled cheese served with applesauce! Lowest price on bottomless coffee of indie places I know!) and I've been wearing my Boston Bruins bag (which I bought in the 2009-10 season, mind you) around town. I wish I could be in Boston watching Game 6 tonight, even just at a bar. Again, GO BRUINS (and man, am I sorry I didn't see the team this year).

a note

First I was too busy/lazy to write about the beginning of the 2011 NHL playoffs, then Chicago fell behind 3-0 and it was too depressing, then every game INCLUDING THE ONE TONIGHT became an elimination game and I'm too nervous to say anything. If the season ends I'll be forced to write a real piece! And spend the rest of the playoffs finally posting my photos from the past year! I'm not ready! But I had to say something! Also, Happy Easter if you celebrate it! I wish I had a lot of candy right now but I don't but for one reason or another I'll be getting a lot of candy on clearance tomorrow!

hubris

HUBRIS: that word was in my head not long after the Blackhawks' huge 7-4 win giving them a 3-1 series lead against the Canucks on Friday night. look it up and think about it, Blackhawks fans--it's why I didn't want to assume the Hawks would win game 5, even if the Canucks seemed a psychological mess, even if it was at the United Center, even if it was Mother's Day...and it's why I don't make predictions. I would have loved if the guy who called in to WGN after the Blackhawks' game 1 loss saying the Hawks would come back to win in 5 games (to the incredulity of the host) and (I'm paraphrasing, don't recall specifics) said "Carl in Hanover Park said 5 games. Write it down!" had been right, but no...

of my teams, Blackhawks and Bruins were both up 3 games in their series and lost the next one. they still lead, though...meanwhile, both the Chicago Wolves and Cincinnati Cyclones were in do-or-die games (Wolves at home down 3-2, Cyclones on road down 3-1) and got shutout wins today. (I can't remember if I ever explained my Cyclones obsession...part of it is I'd really like them to get to the next round so I have a chance of seeing an ECHL playoff game.) so I didn't have to write any "goodbye" posts yet...I suppose I need to come up with something for Detroit, eliminated last night...

(I feel like this blog has choked in the hockey postseason even more than any team you could name [and I've got a little baseball stuff to post too]. some of it's laziness but a lot of it is computer struggles that keep me from being able to run more than one thing at once, and give up early every night. all I've got to do is back up and remove 20,000+ of my photos before the games at 6 pm Central on Monday and I should be okay! sigh...)

game 3, Vancouver

needed to get this up as fast as possible, from @stevewsop on Twitter, symbolizing the Vancouver Canucks' loss to Chicago tonight (why hadn't I seen a Canucks fail-whale sooner? coincidentally, Twitter was down for a bit after the game tonight and fail-whaled for a while...):

(no kidding: I just had to try uploading that twice, because the first time I got a "failed" message, which I haven't gotten the entire time I've been putting images on this blog)

but more important than the Canucks losing...Blackhawks winning 5-2, with a hat trick by...Dustin Byfuglien?! his first points of the 2010 playoffs (photo via official Blackhawks Facebook page), and the Blackhawks first road-trip playoff hat trick since Denis Savard vs the St. Louis Blues in 1988:

I heard Boston won 4-1 vs the Flyers, making them the second team in the 2010 playoffs to be up 3-0. the first team? well, I saw that game in person...if there's ever a time to get photos up in a timely manner, it's for that--I'll see if my computer will even let me upload them. seeing a game in person meant I couldn't get back in time to see much of Wednesday's NHL games, but it was well worth it!

glad I don't have to write sports headlines, #16 in an ongoing series

are the headlines for the west coast games written by severely sleep-deprived east coast writers? I don't know, but this seemed like a goofy one, highlighting L.A.'s Dustin Brown's second career hat trick, in a 8-3 drubbing of Vancouver. (two of the Canucks goals were Kyle Wellwood's; I kind of hoped he'd get the hat trick too.)

 

 

replaced by a duller headline later:

 

congrats to Brown! though as a Blackhawks fan it's less about the Kings having a big win than the Canucks having a huge loss. I enjoyed this one so much (was on the phone at the start of the game; tuned in in the second when Kings were up 4-0) that I put both the Kings AND Canucks feeds on online (well, and it was the only game on by that point).

 

although the Hawks lost to the Blue Jackets last week by as bad a score, at least in that game "only" 7 of the goals were when Huet was playing, and one during Niemi's shift. I wonder if this is the most goals allowed by one goalie this season...

winning streaks

right now I have overwhelming, irrational hate for any NHL team with a long winning streak. all the active ones below were increased tonight, by the way. I'd thought Chicago had only made it to 7 this season, but it's 8, so at least the Hawks are tied for 3rd. admittedly it's just for bragging rights that don't really mean that much, but did you see my previous post? I like winning streaks...for the Blackhawks.

if forced, I had to pick the Senators over the Canucks in tonight's game, though, and they won. I lost the feed to the game more than once and missed the fights.
 

I know they have to get these headlines up fast, but damn, what's more hilarious than a team's name spelled wrong?

bonus from NHL.com: not a silly headline, but the blue highlighted part at the bottom? sheesh, if that'd been the headline it would have qualified for my silly headline series. I feel deprived!

I'm gonna say it: one part of sports I'm just not interested in (and thus don't cover here)? trade rumors. and cap space and all the relevant issues. I don't begrudge other people their interest in it...but other than keeping up with the major trade stories (about hockey--I'm not paying much attention to baseball; I'll just learn the teams' rosters when the season starts, okay?) and knowing the basics of the Blackhawks' situation...my eyes glaze over and I skim through ALL OF THIS. except, for some reason, on Twitter, where I kind of enjoy it. Kovalchuk was a friggin' WORLDWIDE trending topic today!

 

something I didn't think of when I first posted this--since Patrice Cormier was in the trade, he's now in the Atlanta Thrashers system, and therefore could end up playing for the Chicago Wolves. uh-oh. not that that'll happen anytime soon...

Hockey Day in Canada, in odd screenshots

I posted a nonsensical preview of Hock--excuse me, Tim Hortons Hockey Day in Canada a couple posts ago. here are the almost equally nonsensical screenshots of a day spent watching all 3 HDIC games (plus some others) online and following along on Twitter, which as of last week offers the glorious option to look at trending topics by country/US city. (Canada has had at least one, and as many as 8, of the 10 TT's be hockey-related virtually every time I've looked, and Tim Hortons has trended at least 3 times in the past week). but I did in fact go out for a couple hours that afternoon! so, not yet a total shut-in!

 

  

lots of quaint outdoorsy stuff. OMG a Nordiques jersey sweater!

  

HDIC is #1! first up was Canadiens @ Senators. I actually wanted Canadiens to win, because Sens were coming into this game on an 8-game winning streak, and 3 of those wins were against Boston & Chicago, and that just pissed me off...

  

 

 

Sens took the lead, but Habs eventually tied it and it went to overtime. Sens won (9-game streak) and the Habs' Cammalleri was injured and will be out for weeks.

  

 

 

yeah, uh...next up: Canucks @ Maple Leafs. this was...um. I wanted Leafs to win regardless, and I especially wanted them to beat the Canucks because of Chicago's loss in Vancouver, and just on general principle. Leafs were off to an amazing start--2 goals by Phil Kessel in the first few minutes. a fight about 4 1/2 minutes in. Leafs went into the second period 3-0, and Canucks pulled Luongo (always fun to see) for Andrew Raycroft, and--

  

Leafs lost the game 5-3. at home. 5 unanswered goals. I'm glad I was too busy commenting on the Blackhawks game online to follow along with the Leafs fans...

  

  

 

I have NO IDEA how Raycroft was a TT in the U.S., after a game involving two Canadian teams.

 

  

  

not Canada: a scene from the Wild @ Sharks game. Minnesota took the early lead, went on to lose 5-2.

 

late game: Oilers @ Flames. I heard this was some sort of record for losing-est teams facing each other--Oilers with 12 in a row, Flames at 9. one of them HAD to win, giving Alberta a grand total of two wins for January. I wanted it to be Oilers because I felt sorrier for them, and because if Flames lost then both teams would have hit double-digit losing streaks...

  

Flames won. boy, did they win. 6-1. Jarome Iginla got his 900th NHL point in this game. and, perhaps inspired by the recent NHL.com Gordie Howe hat trick story, got two goals, two assists, and one fight (against Sheldon Souray, who broke his hand. ouch) 

  

it also meant they swept the 6 games of the "Battle of Alberta" this season, first time ever. 

in other news: I never found an online feed of the Kings @ Bruins game. I would have seen a shootout loss if I had. at least Bruins got a point. and Mark Stuart had a very impressive hit on Anze Kopitar (except now he's out for 4 weeks due to an injury from a fight after the hit). I'm sorry I missed Jack Edwards confusing Johnny Bucyk and Johnny Boychuk during the game, as mentioned at Fire Wagon Hockey (now I'm wondering if Boychuk is of Ukrainian descent, by the way--could be).

oh, and the Blackhawks lost the last game of their 8-game road trip. to CAROLINA. oh well, Hurricanes have been on a winning streak, and a 4-2 loss isn't the worst (it was exciting to see Hawks tie it late in the game, 2-2, with a goal by former Hurricane Andrew Ladd. then Canes scored two more goals in like the next minute or so). for more on the game you can see the story of a Chicagoan who made the trip (braving a snowstorm in the Raleigh area) at Blackhawks Down Low, a new addition to the blogroll.

so...on Hockey Day in Canada all 3 Canada matchups turned out the opposite of what I wanted. and the two teams I follow (well, 3, you can sort of count Leafs) lost, all in games where they had a lead or were at least tied at some point. and I learned I do eventually get tired of listening to Canadians talk about hockey...

recent NHL fights, late January

here's some miscellaneous hockey fight material I'm finally getting around to posting (all in one post so any imaginary readers who really don't like hockey fights can skip it). on Friday night, not to look like I'm ripping off the Friday Night Fight feature at Hockeenight. ...since the last fight post, first Anaheim and then Philadelphia reached 50 fights for the season, and Calgary is the only team averaging more than a fight per game (right now they've lost 9 games in a row, so the fights obviously aren't sparking any wins...). Zenon Konopka reached 20 fights this season (21 tonight). once again I admit I'm strangely and mildly obsessed with the guy, and this great piece from the Tampa Tribune just adds to it--funny and sad stories about his family and childhood in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. one of the best player profile pieces I've seen this season.

I'll just link a few of these to the hockeyfights.com pages, in case anyone missed them:

Jan. 21 Blue Jackets-Bruins game, here's Jared Boll vs Milan Lucic, Lucic's first fight since returning after injury (Jan. 29 was his first goal since then!)

in the Jan. 21 Rangers-Flyers game with four fights, Marian Gaborik vs Daniel Carcillo was the most surprising and debated

in the Jan. 27 Flames-Stars game, Eric Nystrom vs Mark Fistric, there was controversy over Fistric hitting with his helmet--accidental or not? he received an "attempt to injure" and Nystrom got an unsportsmanlike conduct

except for a terrific night out at the Whirlaway bar in Chicago's Logan Square watching it with a bunch of other hockey bloggers and Twitterers, last Saturday's Blackhawks @ Canucks game was pretty miserable, one of the 5-1 games I referred to in a previous post. (oh, and the infamous partying by the team after the game...I'll post about it [finally] this weekend.) every Canucks game seems to produce another player for Hawks fans to loathe. this time...Ryan Kesler! vs Andrew Ladd, who has about a fight per season. those of us in the bar were stunned by Kesler's ridiculous wrestling move. I'm not the hockey fight expert but...that seems like something you just don't do (and of course Kesler made it worse by calling Ladd a "coward" in the media later. WTF?). maybe he had legitimate gripes about Ladd's past behavior, maybe not, but again--what the hell is this?



the most surprising fight, though, is the Predators' Steve Sullivan vs the Avalanche's Wojtek Wolski. it's the second NHL fight for Sullivan--his last was 1997--and the first NHL fight for Wolski. I will definitely make a habit of posting first NHL fights when I see them.



the blog View from My Seats posted a survey, 1/18, for Least Likely to Fight on each NHL team. but just since then, Gaborik, Sullivan, and Wolski, all of who seemed unlikely, all got in fights. so who knows?

also of note, a 1/27 Denver Post piece by Adrian Dater about enforcers. and this week on Twitter, @RealDenverSport (who I follow, and who writes the Real Denver Sports blog) was debating @VicLombardi of Denver's CBS-4 about hockey fights--apparently Lombardi isn't a fan and CBS-4 wasn't in the habit of showing fights in their stories about the Avalanche. the site now has a commentary up about changing the policy, looks like...

this post has too much sugar & not enough Team Canada

so it's less than 10 hours until Team Canada is announced, and I'm not gonna bet on whether both Keith and Seabrook will make the team. but I'll bet dollars to donuts that of everyone reading this blog, I'm the only one who had dinner last night at a (soon-to-be-closing, alas. or relocating) 24-hour diner, in a booth where the waitress (on her last day today) told us a (her words) crack whore had given birth, at 6 a.m., one morning. (also I'll bet on "dollars to donuts" and "crack whore" not being used in the same sentence before.)

um, anyway, I listened to the Blackhawks @ Stars game on WGN radio on the way home, and 7 goals had been scored by the time I got to my computer and found the game online, including two quick Stars goals at the top of the 2nd while the bus went the last couple blocks to my place. Hawks lose 5-4, and are 0-2 with the Stars this season. but at least they got TWO power play goals in one game, and Fraser got his first goal of the season (first scored since April 1).

note: one of the WGN guys said in the post-game discussion of how fans feel about Hawks being on Olympic teams, are they "concerned this could take away the possibility that the Hawks could hoist the Cup for the first time in 61 years." ouch! yes, Hawks fans have "61" in their heads but at least the non-winning streak hasn't been THAT long...

remember the Chicago Tribune Toews piece I linked to a few posts ago? well, seeing it on paper was even better--he was the cover of the Sunday section (which used to be the glossy-covered weekly magazine in the Trib. decline of newspapers, etc. etc.). here's what fit on my scanner...

remember the Martin Brodeur recipe page I posted last week? well, I actually made the "traditional fudge from Quebec," but either the recipe's not quite right or (more likely) I messed up the ice-water step because I've never made candy before. so it ended up not as fudge but a zillion-calorie pan of caramel goo. which is unbelievably good over vanilla ice cream. somehow this counts as preparing myself for the New Year's Eve Devils @ Hawks game I'll be attending...

remember the PNC Park, Stanley Cup, etc. in gingerbread form I posted from my Pittsburgh trip? (yeah, still haven't posted my December game recaps/photos...) I expanded it into this this photoblog that also includes gingerbread McDonald's, Titanic, trolleys, Obama (and stayed up so late working on it I didn't post at all here Monday). 

**********
if all the sappy holiday-time stuff is past...well, it's time for some Canadian-on-Canadian violence again! this Canucks @ Flames game 12/27 has the highest-rated-on-hockeyfights.com fights of any of the post-Christmas games. this fight went on for a full minute, and Tanner Glass received a game misconduct for not having his jersey tied down.

I'll just have to link to it because when I embedded it in this post, a version showed up that plays automatically--arrgh, never happened with anything I've posted from there before. a still from Glass vs. Brandon Prust:

re: Team Canada again. you might enjoy Fallen Leafs' "My Team Canada of Man-Crushes". I know I did.

Hawks vs. Canucks, football vs. hockey...

a little more about the Chicago Wolves: Committed Indians wonders if Chris Chelios, who plays for them now, could somehow return to the Blackhawks if Sopel and Barker were traded. I'm going to say that's unlikely...(Third String Goalie features Chelios' 1991-92 Blackhawks jersey today because "on this date in 2006, Chris Chelios passed Phil Housley as the all-time leader in games played by an American born player when he skated in his 1,496th game...")

oh, and the hat I mentioned, worn the next day in Chicago's Loop. here, I bring together my love of cute winter hats, hockey, public transportation, and not smiling in photos:

 

 ...so I got back from the diner Sunday and had an hour I could have watched the Bears-Eagles game, but didn't. nothing against football, but I have trouble getting into a sport where there are so few games that every one becomes such an event (and dominates the news all week, news space that could be used to discuss, I don't know, hockey?). also, it's been years since I've seen football in person and I never entirely learned the rules (look, do you expect me to fill up my ladybrain with the rules of more than one or two sports? I can't, not when I need to be able to remember things like which trains use F40PH locomotives).

anyway, Blackhawks @ Canucks finally started at 9, their first meet since Willie Mitchell hit Captain Toews and he was out weeks with a concussion. there's other, uh, tension between these teams (sadly, I wasn't paying close attention to the Hawks when the line brawl which included Duncan Keith getting his hair pulled happened, March '09). no major incidents this time except a Ben Eager-Rick Rypien fight, but overall the game was, well, a little chippy:

 

Bryan Bickell got his first goal for the Hawks, but got sent back to the Rockford IceHogs the next day (Hawks salary issues, of course). Antti Niemi got an amazing shutout. I'm not sure how someone other than maybe the Canucks' goalie was a "star" in a shutout game, but here you go. Keith is star of almost every freaking game this season (I'm not complaining).

Hawks vs. Canucks 11/22/09

of which more later, I actually have somewhere to be this morning. I'm trying to cut down on my use of exclamation points in things I write elsewhere on the internet (makes me seem too excited/not serious enough, maybe) so I'll use some up here:

ANTTI NIEMI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

what women want, apparently

I couldn’t find a feed of the Canucks @ Red Wings game tonight (I watched substantial amounts of 5 others…odd that I could only find a Florida broadcast of the Panthers @ Bruins game; it was the first NHL game I’ve watched with no score till the shootout [I had the misfortune of being at an AHL game where that happened], and the feed ended early so I didn’t even realize Bruins lost), so all I’ve seen is this fight, which obviously brightened these women’s day. (Wings won, too)

you never forget your first hockey game. but this isn’t it (I’ve posted that elsewhere). this was my first hockey game watched live online! (while listening to the WGN radio broadcast) alas, it’s the game where the Hawks lost to the Canucks