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.

it's the one-year anniversary of my first Hawks game at United Center

and I need to write a real photo-filled writeup of that soon, but I'm not sure when due to THE BIG EAST COAST HOCKEY TRIP I'm going on this week. (sorry about the shouting.) first I'll probably write the "first 365 days following the Blackhawks" piece I thought of yesterday, on day 365, when I was at my first Blackhawks game of 2010, on Marian Hossa bobblehead night. here it is:

oh no not celebrity news again

how is it that print journalism is dying, as in many newspapers and magazines shutting down/cutting back...but celebrity magazines seem to have only increased in number in recent years? I don't know, but I found myself at Walgreens the other day looking at the Jan. 11 2010 issue of 5 magazines (People, Us, In Touch, OK, and Star) to see what each had printed about the Mike Fisher--Carrie Underwood engagement. OK and Us mentioned her engagement on their covers. but I bought In Touch because, well, it had the biggest cover on Brittany Murphy's death and I figured I could get one magazine related to that...they gave the story a whole page, and were the only one with an action shot of Fisher, and a quote from another hockey player (Chris Neil):

I promise to keep you upda--er, no, not to write about this again, except when there's wedding coverage (Down Goes Brown had better have something about that...).

a bit of Bruins pic spam

is posting just one image pic spam? I always have to look up these internet terms to be sure I'm using them right. anyway, there's really no reason to post this, but there's no reason NOT to post it. this was on the Bruins site when I checked it 1/1; still there 1/2. I thought I should preserve it here...

some games are "a little chippy"...

and some are an absolute fucking bloodbath. and I'm not even counting the horrific puck-to-the-face injury in this one...I mean the 107 penalty minutes (63 to Chicago) racked up in tonight's Blackhawks @ Blues (more on this later):

 

re: the above list of fighters? for some reason "one of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn't belong" is in my head...

I already had a ticket to the next Hawks-Blues game. I'm looking forward to it...and a little scared.

glad I don't have to write sports headlines, #6 in an ongoing series

OMFG, I can only justify this by assuming they were drunk (this was the latest game on New Year's Eve), drunker than my downstairs neighbors' party guests who were breaking things at 3 am and smoking and chatting outside at 4 am in 10 degree F weather...

anyway, EPIC EPIC POST about the Winter Classic/Team USA will be up soon (okay, hopefully before HNIC Saturday night)...

I have a rather nice list for 2009...

Blackhawks games attended by K of C in 2009:

1/4 vs. Flames BLACKHAWKS WIN
10/14 vs. Oilers BLACKHAWKS WIN
10/26 vs. Wild BLACKHAWKS WIN
10/30 vs. Canadiens BLACKHAWKS WIN
11/9 vs. Kings BLACKHAWKS WIN
11/11 vs. Avalanche BLACKHAWKS WIN
11/13 vs. Maple Leafs BLACKHAWKS WIN
12/1 vs. Blue Jackets BLACKHAWKS WIN
12/5 @ Penguins BLACKHAWKS WIN
12/9 vs. Rangers BLACKHAWKS WIN
12/13 vs. Lightning BLACKHAWKS WIN
12/16 vs. Blues BLACKHAWKS WIN
12/18 vs. Bruins BLACKHAWKS WIN
12/31 vs. Devils BLACKHAWKS WIN

what are the odds? NO, DON'T TRY calculating, I have a friend who does this every time I see another winner and I'm not sure this can be mathematically determined (well, based on a 50-50 chance it can). obviously, I'm a good luck charm, which makes it all the sadder that ticket prices (on Ticket Exchange) skyrocketed late December and I'm effectively priced out of going to games in 2010 (though I do have tickets to a few).

anyway...HAPPY NEW YEAR!

congratulations!

I don't know about you, but I know I'm going to remember where I was when...THIS happened:

yes! Team Canada was a trending topic on Twitter! usually this is reserved for celebrities I don't care about, obvious stuff like Christmas, and illiterate and/or misogynist nonsense (#URaHoeIf and the like), but today, it was up there. (Mary Poppins is because it was showing on BBC at the time and people were twittering about it) and I helped...

and now, the Team Canada announcements, told like so much else here, through screenshots:

I tried finding the official CBC live announcement, but didn't have the right thing installed to actually watch it. all I could see were some very busy chat rooms:

the percentage of "Yes" votes actually dropped in the time I had this on. someone provided a link to a different feed of the coverage:

I'd missed the goalie annoucements, and they took a while with interviews and such before getting to defence (uh-oh, I'm using Canadian spelling now)

Keith makes it, of course!

and so does Seabrook! everyone loves the chemistry of those two

and there's your captain! he needs a photo that makes him look less like someone you see boarding a Greyhound bus and really, really hoping doesn't sit next to you...

and Toews! (they were showing childhood photos of players but I wasn't fast enough to grab most)

the feed kept going, so I left on this sports show. if you'd told me even a year ago that I'd be listening to Canadian sports radio...

there's the roster at NHL.com. wish I'd been fast enough to capture what a contributor on Pensblog found (cut off after the relevant part):

and then I looked at more on NHL.com. if I was any good at funny captions I'd have one for the pic below, because I love their expressions

there's the Blackhawks from the Hawks website. and congratulations to Hossa and Kopecky for the Slovakian team!

and to the Bruins' Bergeron, who I hadn't mentioned yet. his selection was enough of a surprise to some to get its own story on NHL.com

I haven't waded through all the comments in my usual online hockey reads, but I know From the Rink, Pension Plan Puppets, and Puck Daddy all had active discussions, if you can endure the Canadians out there who are showing off so much, they're drafting their imaginary B teams with the Canadian players who didn't make it...

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). 

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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.

on Twitter.

THIS JUST HAPPENED. #getJackEdwardsonTwitter worked!

and now THIS is happening:

oh boy. btw, I got on Twitter for real a couple months ago. I don't use it much, because I have no portable device to access the Internet with. maybe I can send tweets from my very low-tech (pay as you go, no camera) cell phone, but if I can't read them too, why bother? so I only post a few times a day, from home.

I've reached a decent balance between the number of followers/people I'm following, but I haven't figured out how to get 1) anyone to retweet anything I post (no matter how useful I think it is) 2) anyone to respond to me after I directly address THEM in a tweet. (note: these gripes apply to my hockey followers, not so much the people I know in real life.) Twitter is just the latest place on the Internet I fail at...***sighs histrionically***

WJHC day one...that was something.

(note: blog post title may incorrectly imply I'll be reporting on other days of WJHC. I might, but I couldn't find the games online today...) I'd never watched any junior hockey until yesterday, when the 2010 World Junior Hockey Championship kicked off on Boxing Day, in Saskatchewan.

 

I caught Canada vs Latvia in the second period. actually, I had to go out for a few brief errands within a couple blocks of my place...and when I got back, it'd gone from 5-0 to 8-0 Canada. then quickly to 11-0 Canada, then right as I was posting "11-0 Canada" somewhere, they scored goal #12.

you probably know it turned out 16-0...shots on goal 66-10.

Latvia's goalie a few seconds from the end of the game...

the Canadians just kept clapping and clapping...yeah, we GET it, you're good at hockey. this topped last year's 15-0 blowout. and Sweden beat the Czech Republic yesterday 10-1.

I understand that goal differential helps determine playoff standings (Puck Daddy had a piece today on blowout games at the WJHC), so it's not like a team would be ahead 5-0 then barely do anything the rest of the game, but this was still depressing to watch...don't Canadian parents teach "nobody likes a showoff"? oh well, congratulations on whatever records this set.

afterwards I saw a little of Russia defeating Austria 6-2.

and then, when I switched over to HNIC, I saw a Boxing Day sale commercial for the first time!

and I saw a Peter Puck spot (promoting the Winter Classic) for the first time (though I knew of Peter Puck, of course)! well, here's a disturbing image to leave you on...

a shiny new condo for the Captain, a little more Christmas, etc.

oh hey there! I was inside nearly all day because it's lousy weather and I have a cold and because of that I couldn't travel and missed Christmas entirely (no family, no gifts, need I elaborate?) and I've mostly been working on completely redoing my other blog's blogroll, which means I've been skimming through blogs about pancake restaurants in suburban Chicago, and economic development in Youngstown, Ohio, and high-speed rail in Europe...whee! (I'm not being sarcastic.)  but of course my mind is on hockey, too...

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the Sunday Chicago Tribune has a story on Jonathan Toews' new condo in the Chicago Loop (saw this item on Kukla's blog this morning). I include it because, well, there's just nothing my guy friends like more than reading articles about a man who's much younger than them, handsome, making more money than they could dream of, extremely talented and admired...who now has a fabulous apartment in possibly the most luxurious part of Chicago. right?

well...at least I might have some readers who'll take note of this sentence in this piece: "On days off, I sort of sit in the steam shower and get a sweat going, just to wake up in the morning."

the condo has a great kitchen, of course, but it says Toews doesn't cook, except: "...if guests were hungry? 'I've made my share of omelets,' he says, with an impish wink."
(PLEASE NOTE: actual article might not contain the phrase "with an impish wink.")

*******
in very different news, and I meant to post it a few days ago because it didn't get much publicity locally, I don't think: CBS-2 Chicago had a story on how Stan Mikita and his wife Jill were recently victims of identity theft and had $100,000 taken from their account. (covered by the bank)

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I've been stumbling across new sites to add to the blogroll, and sometimes I think to mention them. I'm not into the hockey card (or jerseys, or other collectibles) collecting aspect of hockey fandom (just like I like trains, but avoid getting too interested in model trains) though I definitely think sports cards, etc. can be pretty cool. I'd already blogrolled Puck Junk, and then I just added Shoebox Legends, a blog that covers hockey and baseball cards and has a Boston focus, nice. then there's Cardboard Gods, a site I'm amazed I hadn't seen before. it's hard to explain...except to say it goes way, way beyond just talking about sports cards and the players on them.

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if I didn't scare you off with the mention of my other blog, I'll put in a plug (a little late now) for the Christmas piece I finally wrote there, which rambles a bit to defend cheesy music and fruitcake and so on, and has lovely vintage cookbook covers too. but, a warning: on City of Destiny, I don't swear, I rarely use innuendo, and I properly capitalize sentences (bizarre, I know!)

Merry Christmas from K of C & friends

uh, I don't know what this is either, but I wanted to put my first bobblehead to decorative use (and one of my pink trees--yes, I have more than one--from Borders). dammit, Kaner!

Happy Holidays from me! I'd say a mushy thanks to my readers but I did that on Thanksgiving and will write something like that for New Year's too. there's a lot of fun holiday-related stuff on the sports blogs I read, but I'll just highlight the folks who took the time to write hockey-themed versions of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (a.k.a. "The Night Before Christmas"--your pedantic blogger here gives bonus points for those who riffed on the proper title):

HOCKEENIGHT Gets a Visit From St. Nick
this one's my favorite, because, well, it's Blackhawks, so I feel closest to it (and get all the jokes)
Pension Plan Puppets has A Visit from Saint Burke
'Twas the Night Before Christmas from a reader at The Pensblog
and 'Twas the Night Before Christmas at Hockey Blog in Canada, where the focus is on the World Junior Championships, which start on Boxing Day (or as it's known to Americans, "wait, why do they call it Boxing Day again?")

did I miss any? well, this post on Puck Daddy links to Avalanche and Predators versions too, plus a reader contributes a poem in the first comment. I don't think I saw a Bruins version, and I don't feel I know the team well enough yet to write one (though I've already rhymed "style and class" with "put a guy through the glass"...).

Stone vs. Stoner: name-wise, the NHL FOTY

I know, I know, another fight? but it involves the Minnesota Wild, and it doesn't get more Christmas-y than the Wild's uniforms, does it? (too bad they have to wear them all the time.) and this is hardly more violent than trying to visit the mall today, isn't it?

NHL players only get a few days off around Christmas...they were working right up through Dec. 23, doing impressive things: the Hawks' Antti Niemi got his 4th shutout of the season, and the Coyotes' Ilya Bryzgalov got his 5th to lead the league. Malkin got a hat trick for the Penguins' 8-2 win over the Senators. Bruins scored 3 goals in 68 seconds (damn, wish I'd seen that, but I was out watching the Hawks game with people) and eventually beat Atlanta 6-4. and of course, there were fights. I had to post this because it's Ryan Stone (Oilers) vs. Clayton Stoner (Wild), and it's worth posting for those names alone. (the two also fought in the AHL.) to borrow a joke from the hockeyfights.com comments, the win, and a big bag of Cheetos, goes to Stoner: