Lappy the Graceful

I played my last hockey game Saturday night. We lost by a good amount to Woburn and now our season's over. This means I'm done playing hockey, at least on a team of any sort. I'm not as hysterically upset about it as I assumed I'd be. Life goes on, eh?

I missed all the games last night because of my game, but I didn't miss much. The Bruins won in a shooutout but both the Avs and Oilers lost. The one bright spot is that the Oilers finally made a move and traded MAB to the Islanders for Russian defenseman Denis Grebeshkov. A lot has already been said on the topic, so I'll just say that I'm pretty excited about it. It's not only because MAB has been struggling lately. It mostly is, but not entirely. I'm just happy to see any sort of movement from Lowe- for it to be a good trade is just a bonus. From what I've heard, Grebeshkov is a good prospect who, with the right upbringing, will turn into a nice defenseman. For MAB, that sounds like a fair trade.
[Edit: This article has a few interesting MAB quotes.]

I have nothing insightful to say about the Avs loss tonight. I missed part of it because I was at the beach (no explanation for that) and the other part because my friend is staying over and distracted me. I tried to watch the game with her, but it ended up being too painful for both of us. After Lappy scored his goal and I scared her with my cheers of joy, I started chattering away about him and his gorgeously broken nose. She replied, "I think my dad broke his nose once playing baseball...or maybe it was softball." It was around then that I knew our situation wasn't going to work out, and I let the game fade into background noise for the sake of being a good host. After that the only discussions we had related to hockey was when she cut me off midsentence to say, "This probably isn't going to sound funny to you, but they look so graceful. The hockey players, I mean." No, no...it's pretty funny to me.

Anyway, that's my excuse. I'll put effort into this tomorrow.

(I think he's pretty.)

The Middle Child

Out of my three teams, lately the Avs have become the forgotten middle child, with the Bruins being the delinquent oldest and the Oilers being the youngest in need of constant supervision. The Avs have played neither well enough nor poorly enough to get my attention, and their games have been at times when I'm more likely to miss them. That being said, there's no way I'm going to forget about them. I sympathize with them, being in the middle of two completely psychotic sisters myself. Tonight, I made sure that I gave them my undivided attention. It helped that their game started later than the Oilers (7:00) and Bruins (7:30), who had to fight for time, but with a 7-5 win over Calgary, it wasn't a game to be missed anyway.
For the convenience of browsers, I've sectioned off the games a bit.

The Avs
The Avs proved me wrong throughout the entire game, in good and annoying ways. For instance, before the game I noted that the Avs were the most consistent in the set of forwards they used every night. Just then the Altitude announcers informed me that Marek Svatos was a healthy scratch for the second night in a row, not only proving me wrong but also breaking my heart. I miss the real Marek Svatos. Later, I tried again and remarked that the Avs had the most stable line combinations (Sakic-Brunette-Wolski, Stastny-Hejduk-who cares, Arnason-McLean-Laperierre, the fourth). Brunette then scored a goal while Brad Richardson took Wojtek Wolski's place on their line. After that I realized that I had no idea what was going on in the game and should stop trying before I hurt myself. Peter Budaj was pulled for Jose Theodore after he let in four Calgary goals that weren't really his fault, but weren't completely impossible to save. The Avs had my luck working against them. As was pointed out during the game, Calgary scored most of their goals when the momentum was on Colorado's side, making them even more back-breaking. It was one of those extremely tiring games that's devastating to lose and exhilirating to win, and therefore really hard to talk about afterwards. I will say that the Avs forwards are an impressive bunch when they play to their potential. The Sakic-Brunette-Wolski tandem is consistently good, though Sakic would be consistently good if his linemates were PJ Stock and our pet rabbit Snickers. Though they're not nearly as prolific, I'm also a big fan of the third line, mostly because it hinges on Tyler Arnason. Lappy and McLean always do the best they can, meaning the line is only as good as Arnason is that night. Recently, it's been pretty good, because when he's working hard Arnason is really fun to watch.

The best foward of the night, however, was Milan Hejduk, who has played better than his numbers this year show. Milan owned this game, and not just because he had a hat trick. If you watch any one of his goals, you can see that he was a step ahead of the game all night long. It was clearest on his second goal, where he banked the shot in off of Kiprusoff from behind the goal line. It appeared to be a lucky bounce, but when they replayed the goal in slow motion, I saw Milan pick up his head, see where Kiprusoff was, and shoot it at exactly the angle to bounce in. They played it again at regular speed and, like before, it just seemed lucky. Milan was seeing the game in slow motion, which is why he was able to score on 3 of his team-high 9 shots. He's frequented the Avs' penalty killing squad, too, which in the beginning of the year weirded me out, but makes perfect sense after last night. Milan may be known for his fine-tuned offensive skills, but he's a very smart player who understands hockey well. How can it possibly be harder to notice the opposing de cheating for a one-timer than it is to notice Kiprusoff cheating off the post? That being said, the Avs have the 22nd best penalty kill in the league, making it hard to praise too much.
Strange dream from a few weeks ago that's vaguely relevant: I was at a party at my friend's house, and hooked up with this kid I know. Then Milan Hejduk showed up. I've never found him very attractive before, but all of a sudden I did. So I hooked up with him, too. I woke up and thought, "Wow, this is great! I finally find Milan Hejduk attractive! Wait...no. No, I still don't. Dang."

The Bruins
My three teams each had a different outcome, and of course the Bruins were the losers. Not having Patrice Bergeron in the lineup due to a typical late-season "lower-body injury" hurt the B's more than most people realized. Confident and surprisingly strong, Patrice is one of the better puck posession forwards that the Bruins have, and without him the rest of the team was throwing the puck around with no real plan. Savard did his best to step up his already stellar game, assisting on Murray's lone Bruins goal, but he doesn't play the same sort of game that Patrice does. With a little bit of space and a target (whether it be pass or shot), Savard is deadly, but he doesn't create space for himself as well as Patrice. He also could have been thrown off by the "line combinations", which ended up just being Boyes and him at center, with Bochenski, Murray, Axelsson, Kessel, Sturm, Tenkrat, and Chistov cycling on the wings. There were minor variations (occasionally Kessel at center, sometimes Donovan and Mowers would appear) but for the most part it was a steady stream of chaos. Things with the Bruins have gotten so bad that I don't even know what they're attempting to do anymore. Take the Sillinger goal, for instance, when he walked right in without a Bruin near him. He was actually so open that I couldn't tell which Bruin should have been responsible for him. Murray was in no man's land and appeared to be closest, but Mara was standing in front of Tim Thomas like the motionless pillar of ineptitude that he is and Chara was somewhere by the other faceoff dot, contemplating his escape route back to Slovakia. I give up.

The Oilers
For the Oilers to get only one point out of the Buffalo game sucked, but I can't argue too strongly that they definitely deserved another. They outplayed Buffalo for the most part, and especially early on, but the amount of legitimately good scoring chances had to be about equal. The Oilers would control play for a decent amount of time, then Buffalo would come down and get a point-blank chance, mostly denied by a very sharp Roli. After a few runs through this cycle I realized that Buffalo (mainly the Afinogenov-Vanek-Roy line) was having its way with both the fourth line and the scary de pairing of MAB and Greene. All night long the Sabres were busting through those two, eventually leading to the goal scored by Afinogenov (who, despite his awesome name, I'm starting to hate). The rest of the de, minus a few Hejda blunders, played surprisingly well, mostly because they were very agressive. They held the line, closed the gap in the neutral zone, and skated the puck deep on the few occasions when they could. One could argue that while the Sabres were flat to start out with, they were also held at bay early on by pretty good defense. Jason Smith in particular showed his worth in a game like this. He's not the best player by many measures, but to me there are no sweeter words than, "OUCH. Daniel Briere just got hammered by Smith! His pale, sickly-looking ass isn't getting up off the ice any time soon!" Maybe no announcer has said that exactly, but after that OT goal I have to keep hope. With most of the de doing their job, the Sabres were forced to score their only goals first on MAB/Greene, then on Toby Petersen. That's one potent Buffalo offense!

Then again, I'm just speaking out of bitter hatred. Like the Sabres, the Oilers only had one line really going for them- though they were REALLY going. Horc, Smytty, and Hemsky were so powerful that, save for the occasional "this line can be dangerous" muttering, they silenced the Buffalo announcers when they were on the ice. Considering the announcers, though, this might not be that great of a feat. These are the same guys who suggested that Edmonton really misses the veteran leadership of Sergei Samsonov. They kept making mistakes without any attempts at correcting themselves, almost as if they knew that no one in their audience would notice. A surefire giveaway that announcers are useless is if they pronounce names wrong. Very good announcers know how to pronounce most players' names out of familiarity, and I suspect that if they don't know then they make an effort to find out. Pronouncing Smid's name as it's spelled rather than "Schmeed" is understandable, as is (to a lesser extent) calling Pouliot "Poulio", but both could have been avoided with any sort of effort. In addition to a minor mispronounciation of the vowell-happy Staios, somehow Horc's name turned into "Horcrot". To give them credit, they moved closer to his actual name as the game went on (Horcrot, then Horcroft, then Horcroff), and if the game had only gone into a shootout, they just might've gotten there. This is a pointless rant, but an extreme pet peeve. For some reason, the most annoying thing an announcer can do is mispronounce names and call Jarret Stoll "Jarret Staal" for the whole game.

I guess one good thing about watching the opposition's station is that it's easier to analyze the game without bias. Jack Edwards and Andy Brickley, the Bruins' guys, are constantly worrying about placating the insane Boston fans. For the past two games they've done nothing but rabidly praise Ference out of fear that B's fans will tear his newly-added hide to pieces. If they were objective, they'd tell us that he hasn't played badly, but is a little nervous in his new city, which you can't fault him on. For the first few games he's rushed passes and looked a tiny bit twitchy. Wouldn't it be better to just acknowledge this and move on, rather than repeatedly pointing out what a beautiful skating stride he has? Better than either of the other options, the Avs' Altitude manages to capture how I'm feeling perfectly, mostly because the announcers seem to be what I am- in love with the team. They're ecstatic when the Avs score, despondent when they're scored on, and in awe of Joe Sakic. They understand the significance of certain players scoring or playing well. In some strange way, it's like watching the game with friends. This is the something like the newfound familiarity I feel with Ladislav Smid, but not nearly as creepy.

Quick notes

• Zach Stortini looks like a dirty hobo that you'd be afraid to walk by on the street for fear of contracting diseases, but somehow his proud, toothless grin after the fight was adorably endearing. Somehow.
  
• Raffi played a terrible game. He wasn't skating at all. Even the Buffalo announcers picked up on it when he made a beautiful breakout pass to Daniel Briere. You could see MacT complimenting it on the bench. I think the Oilers need to hire someone to follow Raffi around and piss him off so he plays with a little more anger. His linemates, Pouliot and Thoreson, would agree, though it would end up being costly for Edmonton as these "Raffi Provokers" would need pretty frequent replacement (and medical benefits).
  
• Despite this fact not being mentioned by my buddies at Altitude, J-M Liles had one shift in the third period and just over eight minutes of ice time overall. Why do I keep looking these things up?
  
• After way too much thought, I've figured out that the NHL equivalent of me is Brett Clark. This is pretty objective and fair, seeing as I've pegged other teammates of mine as J-M Liles, Rob Blake, and Peter Forsberg. And yes, my entire team has played for the Avs at one point in their career. It's great. We even have a Dan Hinote.
• Looking back, I'm not sure I really would have murdered my English teacher. Then again, I'm not sure that I wouldn't have. But I took the last post down anyway. Summary (factually altered for length): I skipped a class. Instead of giving me a cut card, my English teacher tried to keep me from playing in the last game of the season, but failed. Before he failed I swore I would kill him, and was serious. For the record, even though I skipped half a day of school and got myself in a ton of trouble, my parents are completely on my side and my dad also swore to kill Skinder.
  
• "Kill Skinder" would make a great movie title, especially if that movie were a documentary.
  
• I'm pretty sure I don't come off this bitter in person.
  

Snow Day

I finally saw the Bruins play well in person...against the Oilers. I could see this coming from a mile away, seeing as I've got the worst luck in the world for hockey teams. One playoffs a few years ago, out of every team I wanted to win, in every series from the first to the last, my teams won twice. I had picked a team in just about every series, too. It was bad, so this isn't very surprising. My dad remarked after the game that the Oilers looked flat. I'm not sure if a team can be completely flat if the opposing goalie got 32 shots and a first star selection, but they weren't really on top of their game. After Raffi got a good scoring chance from Horc in the second period, I remember thinking that it was the first chance they got that made the Bruins fans really cheer for Tim Thomas. There were shots and chances, but the Bruins simply got more. Patrice and his line played well and took advantage of the Oilers' de throughout the whole game, getting themselves two goals, an empty netter, and a goal that was called back because of an interference call on Bochenski. Bochenski has been awesome since he came to the Bruins, though I've really only noticed him when he's scoring. I've heard that the reason he was never successful was because he's horrible defensively. That issue hasn't come up yet, but give it enough time and I'm sure it will.

Looking back, the Oilers' game was far from perfect. Horc alone had a few puzzling defensive zone turnovers that turned into scoring chances, and though I don't remember if he caused any of the goals, he was out there for all of them. In his defense, one was a 5-on-3 and the other was a powerplay (and the other was an empty net), but still, he needed to move the puck faster. Both teams had clearly studied the other's power play, because the Oilers had someone shadowing Marc Savard and the Bruins took away the points. While the Bruins adjusted to this, the Oilers kept forcing the puck to the points and ended up giving it away way too many times. This would have been a little more understandable if it were Jarret Stoll they were forcing it to, but it wasn't. It was Toby Petersen. I know the guy works hard and has earned the minutes he's gotten (with help from injury), but he's not the type to be forcing the puck to. They made the B's mediocre penalty kill look amazing. Some of the best chances the Oilers have gotten recently have come from Horc and Smytty battling low for the puck- why not cycle it to them instead of forcing it back? The Oilers were winning the puck in the corners all night long, inciting Bruins fans around me to scream at our de, "Use your body! Come on! Get the puck! Jesus!" Working it down low would also pull the opposing forwards down lower, making the point shot a better option. All night Petersen and Sykora were way too high to get off an effective shot, and they were only getting forced out higher as the Bruins figured out that they were the entire basis of the power play. And if Simpson still isn't convinced, then he can at least concede that it's harder for the other team to clear the puck from the corner than it is from 10 feet inside the blue line, where they were intercepting passes all night long.

Was there any reason why the line of Pouliot- Torres- Throreson got broken up? They were the only physical presence on the ice in the first period. On one shift, all three of them took down a Bruin to get the puck deep in the offensive zone. They also got themselves some chances. With all the talk about his most recent call-up, I decided to watch Pouliot, and he was playing well, I thought. If they wanted to do something with the lines, they shouldn't have demoted him to the fourth line. Couldn't they have had him center Torres and Lupul instead of Nedved? This would have made vastly more sense. Even when Pouliot was on the fourth line, playing minutes late in the third, he was creating chances and working hard.
[One thing about Nedved- when warming up for the second period, he was skating up and down the boards next to the bench, in what was the Bruins zone that period. Savard skated by him and gave him a look, causing him to retreat closer to the Oilers' bench. Once Savard left, he skated down again and pretended he was taking a shot on Thomas from the half-boards. It reminded me of a little kid pretending he's an airplane or something. Did Nedved even have any shots?]

Before the third period started, Liz was texting her friend Kyle, who asked her if I was there to see my hero, Ryan Smyth. He was sitting right near the Oilers' bench and said that there were seats nearby, so Paula and I moved over. The seats were maybe ten rows back from the glass, but right next to the runway, so we were only a couple of feet away from the Oilers as they walked onto the ice. Paula, Kyle, and his girlfriend McKenzie all laughed at me after Smytty passed, as instead of breathing I let out little squeaks. It was a pretty depressing period for the Oilers, but absolutely hilarious for me. Paula was freaking out more than I was and kept asking me about all of the players. When she saw MAB, she squealed, "Oh my god! They have a Bergeron, too?" Kyle told us that they were cousins (true?) and Paula yelled to him, "Hey, Bergeron! OUR BERGERON IS BETTER!" He turned slightly and she said, "They definitely are related! Look at the nose! That's a Bergeron Nose! He's got a schnozz and a half!" Even funnier than that was her interaction with Ladislav Smid. She thought his name was funny and started yelling, "Smid! Smid!" (pronounced like it's spelled). I corrected her and told her that it was pronounced "Schmeed", but he went on the ice before she could yell again. Just as he came off, however, there was a quiet moment and she shouted, "SCHMEEEEED!" as loud as she could. He looked right up a her with the most priceless face I've ever seen. It was a perplexed death-stare, as if he were saying "Why are you talking to me and what drugs are you on?" She quieted down, and even Kyle and McKenzie, who had been nervous with all the yelling, were amused. I now have no doubts that he'll be an amazing defenseman one day, and I might be in love.

Quick notes

• I have the same stick as Marty Reasoner- good or bad?
• On the topic of sticks, I saw Smytty's sticks up close. For a second I thought they were righty shots. Weirdly enough, the most curved stick I saw was Zach Stortini's. I assume that I missed something.
  
• When the Bruins put Chara in front of the net on the power play, I saw Jason Smith bounce off of him. Staios and him had no idea how to deal with big Z. If he didn't have such a good point shot, I'd say that they should put him there all the time.
  
• The Avs had a good win over Anaheim, though I didn't get to see much. From looking at the shift chart, it looks like they had a line of Paul Stastny, Milan Hejduk, and Brad May. I like Hejduk and Stastny together (so do they, with a goal apiece) but Brad May? I guess whatever works.
  
• The announcers mentioned that J-M Liles barely played in the third, and not at all in the second. I'm pretending they never said anything and that he's perfectly fine.
  
• Marek Svatos has gone missing again. He needs good linemates to play well. I'd love to see him on the other side of Stastny and Hejduk's line. How could that not work? (Besides, you know, Marek not playing very well.)
• During the Colorado game they brought up the Rycroft-Smid fight again. After seeing him in person, that fight makes both more and less sense to me. Again, I'll just pretend the announcers never said a word.
• As the Oilers went into the dressing room, I felt stupid putting my hand out, so I just said, "Good game, Smytty" as he passed. After that, Raffi passed by, and I was too frightened to say another word. He looks as mean in person as he does on TV (in the best way possible). He probably scares the crap out of his opponents.
• Sturm's first goal was pretty indicative of how the game went. It was a great goal, but Hejda never should have left his feet on the play and Horc got outmuscled in front of the net. All in all, the Bruins played well, but got help from some Oiler mistakes.

We have a snow day, and my friends are currently drunk, high, and watching "The Backyardigans", meaning I'm done posting.

There Is No "Game11"

Tonight the Oilers game was supposed to be on CenterIce channel "Game11". At least on my network, the channels range from 621 (Game1) to 630 (Game10). There is no "Game11", and sure enough, there was also no Oilers game. I would be fine with no Oilers broadcast if all the other channels were occupied or if no broadcast was available (as has happened during PPV games before), but this was clearly the CenterIce people taking too much acid. The game is apparently still going on, and the Oilers are apparently losing. I hate TV.

Luckily, though, both the Bruins and Avs games were amazing. I missed most of the Bruins game because the quick nap I took at around 5:30 ended up being four hours long. I caught the end of the game, the overtime, and the shootout, though I was a little distracted by the Game11 dilemma. I keep expecting Phil Kessel's shootout luck to run out, but after that last goal I've realized that it's not luck. He just owns.

I caught most of the Avs game. When I came in they were losing 2-1, then went down 3-1. Tyler Arnason then took over. He went through a stretch earlier in the year where he was playing wonderfully, but has tapered off lately. He had a really incredible game, besides his beautiful goal. After he scored it, I said to my parents, "Oh! He can do that. He did it before but he hasn't lately, and it'll be so good if he starts to again!" Since they don't know what I'm talking about anyway, I've stopped even trying to make sense. Despite the wording, I meant what I said- if he can keep playing like this, it's going to seriously help the Avs down the stretch. To quote Joe Sakic, "Arny was flying out there tonight." We need him to keep flying.
A few late-night thoughts:

• John-Michael Liles, one of my favorite players, is back from a broken foot. Even though he wasn't as spectacular tonight as he can be, he's always valuable because of the way he moves the puck. I bet it turns the Oiler forwards on just to think about his passes.
• Patrice Bergeron has played really well lately. I don't know if it's because he's stuck on a bad team, or because he's being overshahowed by Marc Savard, but Patrice has sort of faded into the background this season. Of course he's played well, but he hasn't been wowing us. On the other hand, Patrice is something of a quietly great player. He was picked 45th overall in 2003, the year that Eric Staal was #1. Since then, Patrice has played 203 games, amassing 160 points (.79 PPG), while Staal has played 218 games, getting 178 points (.82 PPG). Yet Eric Staal was an All-Star, while Patrice barely got considered? Even this year Patrice has more points. I know he hasn't had a 100-point season like Staal, but he's one of the most gifted young players around. He's smart, works hard, and not only plays the PP but also the PK. I can't believe that Patrice still isn't fully appreciated.
  
• The one good side effect of the Oilers game not being broadcast is that I was forced to watch the Avs game without switching back and forth. It was a game that shouldn't have been switched from, and while I'd of course have loved to watch the Oil, it was nice to focus on one game.
  
• We play Belmont tomorrow, and we should beat them. Nothing's guaranteed, though.