Ouch

Did this:
"I'm still legitimately terrified that because I've talked about him he's going to get hurt."
cause the injury to Marek Svatos? It's a direct quote from my post on Tuesday, and some pretty damning evidence that I really am a bottomless pit of bad luck. However, the true reason that Marek now has a groin injury is this, uttered right before the above quote:
"The Real Marek Svatos has been around for a few games now and, in the one redeemable event in the past few days, is developing some chemistry with Tyler Arnason."
When it rains, it pours, and right now there's a goddamn storm. All I've done for the past few entries is complain, but that's because there haven't been many redeemable events, and when there have been, they've gotten groin injuries. After a while it's kind of funny in a way.

Talking to Paula, I noted that the Bruins, though sucking, were still only 8 points behind the Canadiens with 4 games in hand. We play each other on Saturday, and with us playing Philadelphia before then and them playing Buffalo, it wasn't far-fetched to think that we could rise to 4 points behind with 4 in hand by the end of the weekend. I convinced myself that this would happen, despite my Bruin senses telling me otherwise. Tonight the only reason the Bruins lost in overtime to the Flyers was because Tim Thomas stopped 48 of 51 shots in regulation. You know a game is ugly when the Flyers get a shorthanded goal and immediately get another quality 2-on-1 chance on the same penalty kill, Savard sucks while Chara scores the game-tying goal, and I fleetingly wonder if we traded Brad Boyes for the Ontarian MAB. In games like these it doesn't make me happy that Tim Thomas plays incredibly- it makes me sad. Why should he stand on his head if his teammates can't stop or score on the Flyers? With the recent trades, the Bruins should at least be able to do the former. They added to their pretty solid core of Chara, Ference, and Alberts with Wideman and Ward. How does a group like that let in 55 shots in one game? If anything it's a little comforting that they did so terribly. That's probably as bad as they can do, and I imagine they'll improve soon. And if Montreal loses...ugh. This team is impossible.

I caught some of the Islanders game against St. Louis. There was an awkward moment when the Islanders announcers kept saying that Smytty was coming onto the ice, but each time another string of people would come out with no Smytty in sight. It was really funny until he finally did come out. I was shocked at how disturbing it was to see him in another uniform and how sad it made me to see him celebrating after Sillinger's goal with people on another team. Still, Smytty made a wonderful play to get Sillinger the goal, and the crowd cheered him wildly when he did something good or even sometimes when he was just on the ice. At least they're excited to have him. I switched away from the game when MAB scored, because it was a little too much to handle. With Brad Boyes playing on the St. Louis side, the whole thing just freaked me out.

Even when they're not winning, the Avs are kind of comforting to watch. I think it's because they score a lot of goals, and a goal under any circumstances is a reason to celebrate. Even if they let in goals just as much as they score them, there have still been 214 reasons to celebrate this season. They're just not a stressful team to watch, at least in relation to the other two. They don't ever give me the feeling that they're one really long, well-timed hot streak away from making the playoffs, but they also don't play so badly that it's painful. When they went down 1-0 tonight and then announced that Marek Svatos was hurt, I considered turning off the TV and pretending that my teams weren't crumbling to pieces (which is big, because usually I force myself to watch games unless I have a legitimate excuse). But they kept playing, drew me back in, and ended up winning 6-1 with a feel-good list of goal scorers. Seasons like this aren't comforting if they come in strings of four or five years, but every so often it's good to have something go a little right when I expected it to crash and burn.

Quick notes

• Jeff Woywitka has been a part of a lot of dark moments in Oiler history. They got him for Mike Comrie, gave him up for Chris Pronger, and tonight he played for the Blues in Smytty's first game as an Islander. It's either a really weird coincidence or he's the spawn of Satan. Either way we might want to kill him.
• I was happy to see Smid back, so naturally he got run at by Derek Boogaard all night long.
• At the end of the Avs game, the announcers were sympathizing with Ian Laperriere, who had an empty net but couldn't settle the puck down. This led to one of them joking, "If he had a gun he would have shot the puck- put it out of its misery right then. 'You're going to stay down!'" Maybe the weirdest thing I've heard someone say during a hockey broadcast.