I admit I really, really wish the NHL playoffs would be off for a day or two so I could catch up; every day I've been too distracted by wins or deflated by losses (Friday night EVERY team I was rooting for, ECHL, AHL, or NHL, lost, sometimes terribly. I was neutral about a few games, but every team I actively rooted for lost). I need a little more time to process the huge Blackhawks win vs Predators today (and think about the Marian Hossa hit), so here's the funniest thing I've seen in any hockey game I've seen the entire season...I'd never seen it happen before:
the puck headed towards Chicago's net. no goal, so play was stopped, but...the puck vanished, and Antti Niemi got patted down...then they were even feeling in the back of his pants (poor guy, in front of 22,000, and the NBC audience!). (I could make various saucy remarks about this...you know I like goalies...) no luck, and they wanted to continue play, but the officals in Toronto said they couldn't just get another puck, in case there'd be two pucks on the ice. then Captain Toews magically found it! that's a LOT of padding to not realize where a puck went. the NHL.com clip is pretty good and has the announcer's references to O'Hare security, and a famous scene in Slap Shot:
Puck Daddy had the video up before the game was even over...and because they didn't put up other stories for a long time, and this was featured prominently on the Yahoo Sports page (and Yahoo front page, maybe?) the comments section is a hideous mess of 1) arguing about the Hossa hit later in the game 2) trolls showing up to bash hockey. huh? CAN'T WE JUST ENJOY THIS?
the WGN radio announcers were even more amused; they really lost it after saying "Niemi's got to reposition his equipment," as did I...
so the game I was all excited about going to tonight? well, I'll post any interesting photos later (Chicago Wolves looked great in their new green jerseys), but the laziest recap:
I got home to find out on Twitter, thanks to the knowledgeable and entertaining @HockeyJoeGM (see, I'm doing a Twitter "Follow Friday," but on my blog instead. ha!) that a men's college hockey game was about to become the longest college hockey game in history. Quinnipiac was playing at Union (these are in Hamden, CT, & Schenectady, NY respectively--I had to look those up just now). there's the score at bottom (what's that cool building?):
and you could have watched it unfold here:
so this game was starting around the time I left for the Wolves game, and still going on when I got back. and it's a CTA bus, CTA train, and Pace bus each way for me to get to Allstate Arena. a relatively brief 2.5 hours to see the home team lose doesn't seem so bad now.
speaking of other crushing defeats...how about the Predators at Sharks game Thursday night? I doubt many east coasters stayed up for that but it would have been worth it. I wanted Nashville to win, to keep some points away from San Jose. not just because I've recently become enamored, like so many others, of Preds' goalie Dan Ellis' Twitter account, @dellis39 (my favorite "verified" sports celebrity Twitterer, though I can't say I've sought out many yet. @OzzieGuillenis...well, did you SEE the feud, possibly one-sided, with Sean Penn? he's always, um, interesting.) linked in this tweet are photos each of us posted of the demolition of the Lafayette Building in downtown Detroit (he threw in a swipe at Detroit...and the Preds were beaten badly by the Red Wings that night)!
anyway, it was a fine back-and-forth game, with the Predators leading for much of the first two periods. late in the second, in a few minutes of game time, the score went from 3-2 Preds to 4-2 to 3-2 back to 4-2. the Preds seemed to score a goal and the score went up but the goal was disallowed (the "distinct kicking motion" call). then right after, they scored a 4th goal for real. but I guess this messed with them a bit, because then in the third period...the Sharks starting scoring.
A LOT. even a goal which was questionable, for..."distinct kicking motion." but was allowed. (I don't think I've seen TWO goals under review in any game I watched this season. interesting that both were decided in the home team's favor, though I haven't watched them enough to judge for myself.) after 4 fairly quick Sharks goals (another from Preds too), Dan Ellis was pulled. goalies often get pulled when that many goals happen quickly, but to put in the other goalie with only 5 minutes left in the game?!
then Marleau got his 40th goal of the season...then Jay Leach got an empty-netter, his first career NHL goal. and then I learned the Sharks set an interesting NHL record (this surprised me):
boy, I hope no one left that game early to beat traffic. I checked NHL.com after the game hoping for a spectacular headline, but I guess they were in bed for the night, nothing on the main page. in the morning, Joe Pavelski got this salute on the front page (and I agree with the Blackhawks fan who said he looks like he could be Kris Versteeg's brother):
I'll let Dan Ellis have the last word, which did appear before I went to bed:
...no matter what this screenshot from NHL.com shows. so earlier in the season I made fun of a Maple Leafs game 3 Stars with Phil Kessel still in his Bruins uniform. well, this tops it, in a big way, although in this case it's understandable--all the NHL trades of the past 3 days happened so fast, there's barely time for new photos. I wonder if this has ever happened before--all 3 stars from one team, and all shown in their now-outdated uniforms.
as you may know, in their first game with the new goalie and new star defenseman (and Sjostrom), the Maple Leafs shut out the Devils 3-0 (Devils, by the way, were using the goalie who isn't Martin Brodeur). and:
note: that's the "official" Hartford Whalers Twitter. I was already going to mention it here...and today because I mentioned Whalers in a tweet, they started following me. I was elated. people with a public Twitter feed are used to getting spam followers based on words they use (I was telling someone about a tweet that got real estate spam--and got two more real estate spam followers because of that one), but I definitely don't mind this.
anyway, besides the shutout, Phaneuf got into a fight about 6 minutes into the game, so he's got the "truculence" and all. this also ended a long winless streak for the Leafs. meanwhile, the Canucks' 7-game winning streak was snapped in a 3-2 loss (yay! even though it was by the Canadiens). and Boston...scored first against the Capitals, then went on to lose 4-1 (the last was an empty-netter--pffftt, I always think of those as half a goal at best). that's 8 losses in a row...and a record 11 wins in a row for the Caps.
I think I forgot to point out that after the beating by the Flames Saturday, Edmonton finally won after 13 losses...against Carolina. and note that the Flames' first game after the player trades, they got shut out 3-0 by the Flyers. tonight, I also watched an exciting Red Wings @ Sharks game (Detroit won 4-2 after Sharks blew their 2-0 lead), even though I didn't want either team to win. and I'm glad I caught the end of the Coyotes @ Predators--a scoreless game went to shootout, and the shootout went so long that I watched extra little boxes pop up on the screen to record attempts. after 10 rounds, Phoenix won.
something a little older, now. through Maple Leaf game threads, I'd heard there was a Hockey Night in Canada Punjabi edition, but never encountered it. the New York Times' hockey blog Slap Shot happened to post a fight in the Punjabi version recently, and through YouTube I found another: a decent Colton Orr vs Shawn Thornton bout (right off the faceoff, which is always absurd/entertaining) from Dec. 2009. I can only assume they're talking about "haymakers" and "heavyweights"...
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. 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...
no, not points this season, though I guess they reached that mark relatively recently. I mean, Calgary was the first team to rack up 50 fighting majors in the 2009-10 season. the next closest was Anaheim Ducks with 43. then the teams played each other tonight and added two fights in the first period (Ducks won 5-4). Flames' previous game was vs. Nashville Predators, who have the fewest FM--a mere 13, one of which was from the McGrattan-Belak fight in that game (Preds won 1-0).
I thought the impressive stat was that Flames have 14 players with fighting majors so far this year. then I noticed Blackhawks have 11--more than I'd have guessed, but some are players who virtually never fight and some are Rockford IceHogs who got called up a few times. ...and I noticed Flames' next game is against the Sharks Monday night. I'll try to actually tune in at the start unlike all their recent games.
continuing my cataloging of recent multi-fight NHL games (then abandoning it after this post):
Canadiens @ Rangers: 2 fights, 2nd period (but one involved Sean Avery)
Bruins @ Kings: 2 fights, 1st period
Devils @ Avalanche: 3 fights, involving 6 different players
Leafs @ Capitals: 2 fights, 3rd period
Ducks @ Kings, 3 fights
Senators @ Rangers, 2 Carkner-Brashear fights in the 1st period
I certainly haven't watched all those, so I'll just include (and thanks for the advice on how to resize these) the only fight that really matters from recent games: a Blackhawks-Red Wings fight from Sunday! I'm pretty sure there are more fights between fans of these teams than between the players...and Versteeg hasn't had a fight since Dec. 2008. right at the end of the first, it's brief and a little bloody, and the WGN 720 announcers (of course here you get the TV ones...NBC! both games NBC has shown live this year had fights) liked this a lot.
Trying--for real this time--to blog regularly, but I do get distracted by adventures to abandoned factories filled with parade floats (see above) and such. (And sorry right now the blogroll's a couple years out of date.)
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