"Holy guacamole, what a fight!"

okay, it's late, and I'm tired, and finishing the giant can of Molson I bought at the Albany-Renssalaer train station (but couldn't drink on the Amtrak back, unfortunately) feels like a chore at this point, as does blogging tonight...but I've gotta put up a couple fight videos, it's been a while. and it's been a busy week for NHL fights. checking hockeyfights.com for games just since Saturday, I noticed a high number of games with more than one fight. let's see:

Flames @ Canucks: 2 fights (I was watching this on a friend's computer on my trip, but only saw the 3rd, fightless period. quite an impressive Prust-Rypien battle)
Blues @ Kings: 3 fights
Avalanche @ Flames: 3, all in the 1st 4 minutes, including one only 20 seconds in! (forgot the start time on this one and missed them). this fight got a very high rating...the announcers are rather entertaining: "Holy guacamole, what a fight!" ...but you can find a more subdued feed with different announcers, one who uses the delightful phrase "haymaker city!"



Senators @ Thrashers: 2 fights
Blue Jackets @ Blues: 4, all in the 1st period
Canucks @ Wild: 3, all in the 3rd period
Bruins @ Ducks: 2, both in the 1st period
Capitals @ Lightning: 2, both in the 3rd period. one was (OF COURSE) Zenon Konopka, who actually got a win

and THIS one, where Ovechkin (!) moves to fight Downie (despite what the idiot announcers say about him not answering the bell) and Bradley hilariously jumps in. lots of debating about this one...I don't have strong feelings about these teams so I'm not going to offer much of an opinion (but I kind of wish Eager had done this for Toews in that Blues game the other week)


 
I finally noticed that not only is the Western Conference leading the NHL standings, but it looks to be leading in fights, too. not that there's a direct correlation; both the Sharks and Blues are in the top 10 of fighting majors, and they're having very different seasons. I know people keep stats on fights, but does anyone calculate those against other hockey stats? this all bears further investigation...maybe even by me.

(successfully resized these videos after the original post had them too large--thanks for the help)

Blackhawks @ Goodwill & other notes

I'm working on getting some goodies from my trip posted, plus there's recent hockey fights to discuss, but a few quick items...first, a typo I'm sure has been made many times before:

...but after that Milan Lucic Total Temperature Control commercial, all I can think of is Zenon Konopka doing an ad for a lighting store!

 

well, it's Goodwill, so what if all the letters aren't in "Wednesday"--at that price, does it matter? now theoretically I could go to this tomorrow, I do like Arlington Heights (a northwest suburb near O'Hare) but I'd have to figure out how to get there, and I've never actually met any hockey players or put much thought into what I'd say to them if I did (okay, I dream of running into athletes at some random place, but not where I'd have to wait in line)--just that hey, they're doing a great job (and sotto voce hint that Fraser should leave the fighting to someone else).

I mentioned the lights-out game the other night. the other oddity was the laser at a Flames-Canucks game from some creep in the audience, and a big fight in the KHL. both those link to Deadspin pieces because as always there's some amusing comments. in the case of the laser story, there's also a bit about the questionable goal at the Flyers-Penguins game, and that brought out something I rarely see in Deadspin comments--people who like different teams arguing and mudslinging. (strange that something that ruins comments sections on almost any other popular sports site is so rare there--of course they do have a stricter policy for commenting which I've never tried to figure out, mostly because I don't think I have anything funny to add.)

Toews got in a fight, Zenon scored a goal...

...and yet, the sun rose again this morning, it's January so all the top TV news stories in Chicago are about the cold, and I drank lousy coffee later in the day than is a good idea. the world goes on.

one of my favorite cliched sports phrases is "You know, these teams don't like each other very much." having seen the extremely chippy Blackhawks first game against the St. Louis Blues this season (in person), and their first road game against them on Saturday (online)...well, it's all I can think of. I already posted the penalty minutes summary, and a screenshot of the five (!) fights that ended up on hockeyfights.com. (9 fighting majors, so it's more like 4.5 fights?) this game also was the front page story there to start the week (the first time I've seen the Hawks mentioned in one since I started looking at that site, I think).

Saturday, I didn't find an online feed till more than halfway through the first period, and a lot had happened by then. Tomas Kopecky, who Hawks fans have been complaining about (as "useless") scored the first goal. and the second. his first 2-goal game...and he'd only had one prior goal this season. (he almost got a hat trick later. Blackhawks haven't had one this season, and it'd have been hilarious if he was first.) you may have seen real game recaps, so you know about how the Hawks got tons of penalties and the refs missed some on the Blues. Blues were on a seven-minute power play. Blackhawks got 63 penalty minutes in this game (they'd had 436 total in the previous 40 games). Patrick Sharp was knocked down in a possibly clean hit...no penalty. he came back later to score two goals himself, the best revenge. Brent Sopel, also not a favorite of Hawks fans this year, was very useful in the game. a Blues fan taunted him--I don't have a shot of that, but I tried to keep up with the fights. it was exhausting.

oh yeah, the Jonathan Toews vs. David Backes fight, right near the beginning of the second. I'm not sure what that was about, but...well, good for Toews for standing up for himself and "sending a message" and all, but he didn't do well and let's hope he doesn't make a habit of it. I had to check--it was only his second NHL fight, the first in Nov. 2008 vs. a Phoenix Coyotes player.  the Toews-Backes fight page is here (once again I had trouble embedding the YouTube version); all 5 fights have both the Blues and Hawks broadcast versions on hockeyfights.com.

meanwhile, on Twitter, some random guy (not a follower, I found this searching #Blackhawks) who probably doesn't watch hockey much happened to catch THAT game...

Saturday was the first game for the Blues' new coach Davis Payne. I'm not even going to count this in my bad headlines series because it's just so obvious:

 

in other news--I totally missed Zenon Konopka's birthday. he's less known as a forward for the Tampa Bay Lightning and more for being the NHL fight leader so far this season, as chronicled on his hockeyfights.com fight card. but on his 29th birthday, 1/2/10, in a game that was ultimately a 3-1 defeat of the Penguins, he scored his second goal of the season (and first goals since 2005...!)

The Hockey News recently posted Getting To Know: Zenon Konopka, in which I learned...his father is Zenon Sr.! and he thinks the Oakland Raiders have the best uniform in any sport. and chocolate chip cookie dough (yes!) is his favorite ice cream flavor. and he tells of the time he got pelted with beer bottles and fish heads (uh, at a game). I don't exactly have a high opinion of the Lightning after seeing them play in Chicago, but that was a fun read, anyway.

I have to quote this post at Sabre Kollisions: "Do you think Zenon gets depressed when he Googles himself and auto fill kicks in with 'girl of the 21st century?'" (I was not aware of this. yep, it's true. it was a movie)

oh, and did you know the Blackhawks' Antti Niemi has the same birthday (Aug. 29) as me? you do now, because I found it out recently and will post it many more times to come.