The Sultan of Swank

I'm about to eat some crow here... Evidentally it has been brought to my attention that Phil Kessel may have been the one doing the heavy lifting in his pairing with Marc Savard. Apologies all around haha. Also... Andrei Markov, scheduled to return in Febru-- Saturday fucking night! It's a Festivus Miracle! .... Although if I'm Jacques Martin, I bench him against Toronto...

I read an interesting article today, the Gazette was asking the question of should Mike Cammalleri be considered for Team Canada? He's not been mentioned at all, but they brought up that last year he was a top 5 Canadian goal scorer and so far this season is again in the top 5 for Canadians and also of those 5 only Sidney Crosby has a better +/-. To me, I think maybe, I mean, I don't see why not, but there's so much talent in Canada that's they're so many players that we can make the same case about so if he's left out I think it speaks more to the depth of Canadian talent than anything else... Thoughts? Anyone else you feel the same way about?

It was a fan-dabi-dozi game last night. I really... really want to blame that terrible call where Gomez scored as the ref was blowing the whistle for the puck apparently being covered... It irks me because RDS showed in a replay that when the whistle blew, the puck was already in the net, but there's three reasons why it's entirely the Habs fault. 1) In the first two periods, they miss fired on at least 3 or 4 open nets/sure goals. If Cammy didn't hit the post, or Sergei didn't lose it in his feet, it'd have been 3, 4 or even 5-2 going into the third. 2) Carey Price after playing an amazing game (as he's done for his last 10 starts or so) let in a real softie with 6 minutes to play. 3) After Montreal had their goal disallowed, they went from a hard forechecking team, stifling a lot of Pens chances and turning them into odd man rushes to a deflated hockey team, upset by the call and not willing to put the effort back in. Seriously though, there is one hell of an annomally going on this season. Montreal is the only team averaging less than 3 power plays a game, but we've gotta be one of the most penalized teams. Yeah we deserve most of them, but I felt that last night, on 5 PP's awarded to the Pens, 2 were calls where there just wasn't a penalty, they killed off all 5, but I feel that handling 3 PK's in a game, would have been much more reasonable than 5. I'm not saying that the refs are out to get the Habs, but it's just strange how quickly they put the whistles away when a guy like Moen takes a cross check to the back or wtv. In any case, fan-dabi-dozi game to watch, sour ending, but the quick whistle hits every team from time to time, so they lost this one all on their own. Dust off and Atlanta on Saturday.

Be we were arguing about hockey, you're still wrong, you act like a 12 year old and I'm pretty sure that right now if I insulted the Leafs, you would pop a vein at your computer and start typing in ALL CAPS or something to try to cut me down... so why don't you stop acting like a troll and try to contribute to the thread? I mean, like I've said before, aside from the occasional spat, Clawson and I have managed to more or less set aside our homerism and try to be better fans in general in the thread... I think it wouldn't be too much to ask of you to just... Y'know... grow up? Sean, where does this come from. I was comparing teams in the East, because teams in the same conference battle for playoff spots against each other. I didn't think my dislike of the bitch point means I don't know what I'm talking about. I'd like to believe that Pizza, Clawson and I discussed something about hockey that didn't degenerate into name calling for once... sorry for trying to talk about something other than the Habs for once? Pittsburgh tonight. Got killed last time, would be nice to beat them. Spacek is back from injury tonight which means Hamrlik won't have to play 30 min again. Maybe we can get lucky and take it in OT?

It's not that I want to put Montreal in a far better position, I just feel that if Boston and Montreal have equal number of wins, they should be far closer in points.

I'm not saying it based on Montreal alone Clawson, my point is that teams who have more wins deserve the playoffs ahead of teams who have more favourable losses. Pizza, I meant to compare to Boston haha.

Pizza Monkey, Rewarding a team for losing in Overtime (Tampa has lost 8 in OT, NYI and Toronto have 7) is ridiculous. Tampa's losing 8 in OT means they've won 4 games. So Tampa gets closer to the Playoffs despite having at least 4 wins less than teams in the playoffs. That's the point I'm making... I don't want a 3 point system, I think that's equally stupid. I think that a team that wins deserves 2 points and a team that loses deserves none. I know it sucks to lose in OT or Shootout, but you still lost so you don't deserve any points. Under the way I feel it should be the East would look as such. Team - Record - PTS (compared to...) NJ - 21-8 - 42 (43) WSH - 19-12 - 38 (44) BUF - 17-11 - 34 (36) PIT - 20-11 - 40 (41) ATL - 15-12 - 30 (33) BOS - 15-14 - 30 (35) MTL - 15-16 - 30 (32) PHI - 14-14 - 28 (29) OTT - 14-15 - 28 (32) NYR - 14-15 - 28 (29) NYI - 11-20 - 22 (29) FLO - 11-20 - 22 (28) TOR - 10-20 - 20 (27) CAR - 7-23 - 14 (19) I feel that standing should be based more on wins than how many times you managed to come back or blow a 3rd period lead. At the top of the East it's not too much an issue, but teams like Boston, New York Islanders, Florida and Toronto have infated point totals like this. All those teams are going to be around 6-10 come March or April and it's kinda shitty when a team with a losing record gets in ahead of a team with more wins.

My bad, we didn't force enough losses to OT first. I know we have to live with the bitch point, but it's ridiculous. I just can't get over the fact that a team like Tampa who have only 11 wins are only 2 points back of 8th, despite have 4 fewer wins.... To me, it's the biggest issue with the league, rewarding failure.

Third win in a row for the Habs. Since their debacle with Toronto and Buffalo, this team has really started to show up and buy into Martin's system. Montreal has the same number of wins as Buffalo, unfortunately we didn't force enough games to OT. Tomas Pleks needs to be signed right now. What an amazing player. 3 more assists tonight, 7 in his last 3 or 4 games, he's tied for 5th in the league, he's getting all these assists because he's been feeding Mike Cammalleri who has 17 goals now and 5 goals in his last 3 games. His 17 is also good enough for 6th in the league. As many as Stamkos and Iginla... Iginla being the player everyone said Cammy couldn't score without. The PK tonight was unbelievable. We need to get more disciplined but 7 for 7 and then we scored twice on the powerplay. Our PK has given up only 1 goal in the last 25 opportunities, you have to go back 6 games to find a PPG against which is nice... It must suck to be a Sens fan. The Habs come to town and it's legitamately the Bell Centre. They loudly booed Kovalev, they Ole'd there was more cheering with the Habs scored and they couldn't even drown out the Go Habs Go chants... I guess that's the issue with putting an expansion team 45 minutes from Montreal.

I got a plesant surprise last night when a buddy called me up to let me know he got tickets to the Habs/Flyers game and invited me. 2 games in a row... I feel special. Boring game really. 28 shots total between the two teams (that's an all-time low for the Canadiens) but we still get the 3-1 win. Lapierre's feed to Cammy. Unbelievable. 16 for Cammy, yay! Now if we could get some secondary scoring plzkthx.

I never did agree with Toronto trading away Rask. Although if we could swing Halak + for Osgood and a centre we'd be in business.

It was loooooooong, but it was awesome Toe. I was at the game. I can die happy tonight.

Tlusty traded for Paradis.

I was just watching the highlights from the 2002 Olympic Gold medal game, and I have to say that the Canadian goal where I believe it's Sakic passes it towards Lemieux, who lets it go between his skates but still fakes the shot and then it lands right on Kariya's stick like it was meant to go there the whole time and Kariya pots the goal.... I think that's the most amazing goal I've ever seen.

I believe that because at the time, Sittler was still having nothing to do with the team, and it's a lot harder to get star players who are into their 70's and 80's to come out than it is for star players in their 50's. Watch on saturday, the 100th anniversary game, when they parade out the old stars, most will be from the 70's dynasty. A few from our 60's dynasty and maybe 1 from our 50's dynasty.

It was a good game last night. I felt that Montreal was putting in a decent effort, but it seemed a little like going through the motions as we saw on the 2 breakaways and on the first goal. They seemed to work hard, but Toronto just worked harder. The Habs weren't really.... complacent... they just weren't working as hard as they needed to... maybe they took the game for granted as a win... I dunno. But I called this in an earlier post... the season series will never be a big win in the end for one team or the other.

Hopefully by that point our old timers are still able to skate haha.

I'd put the Forum as a more important hockey arena. I agree with overall fame, but I feel that the Forum, is easily the most famous hockey venue. MSG definitely the most famous venue period. MLG definitely more important than the forum outside of hockey. I think it'd be sick to have a Habs/Leafs game at MLG. I wish they could do it at the Forum obviously, but since that's gone haha. I think it being in an Original 6 arena with so much prestige would be awesome. Unfortunately I think that both teams would need to be East contenders to do the game justice, so break and come back in 3-5 years each haha. It'd also be cool if they did an old-timers game beforehand like in the first one. Imagine seeing guys like Lafleur, Dryden, Gilmour or Sittler on the ice against each other, on MLG ice... it would be incredible. I will officially be sitting 2 rows from the very back having paid 4 times face value for tickets (100$) to see the Centennial game. I just want to be there.

Maple Leaf Gardens will be saved the indignity that was served upon the Montreal Forum. They're re-opening the second most famous arena in the world as a rink/grocery store. I say the fact that it retains a rink puts it miles ahead of the Forum now being an AMC theatre.

The Als really did everything they could to lose this game. It's something of a small miracle that in the last 3 minutes they managed to turn it on and the Riders managed to implode worse than most any team I've seen.

Awesome! I love Capitals games. I'll never forget we went 2 years ago to see him, and I believe the game or 2 before we had shut out Washington 4-0. In the game Ovechkin scores 4 goals in a 5-4 OT win and after the game his comments were; "Last time, Montreal score 4 goals. Tonight. Ovechkin score 4 goals!" Instant love.

Greatest game. Ever. I went nuts when the Als pulled it through. We've got season tickets back home and it was UNBELIEVABLE.

Well it really has nowhere to go but up hahaha.

Got my tickets to the Centennial game against Boston on Friday. It should be unbelievable! Toronto tomorrow night. Somehow they've put 2 in a row together, I'd seriously hate to lose to Toronto, but the season series seems to always be tied in the end no matter how terrible one team may be. If we play like we did against Washington it should be in the bag pretty easily, especially with Gomez back. If we play like we did against Pittsburgh well then I get to listent to Clawson's raging boner cream all over his screen when Toronto wins hahaha. Should be a fun week for the Habs. Also, Markov could be back at Christmas! Yay!

Clawson... seriously? Is that what it takes to make you feel better because you've got a team on pace to be slightly better than the 14 win 1994 Senators? I mean Toronto only got to 4 wins 2 games and 4 days faster than the 11 win 1993 San Jose Sharks... annnnd last I checked, while unfortunate to give up the extra point (but still wildly exciting), a win is still a win. So at essentially 11-12, I'm not pleased but I'll take it for now and hope for better when we get some bodies back. At 4-17 I understand if you're frustrated at the fact that Boston will likely take the 1st overall pick this year. Awesome game last night. Detroit finally snapped our undefeated extra time streak. If not for that idiot Laraque taking 6 min in penalties in one shift(should have been tossed anyways for his knee on knee), we may well have won it in regulation. At 5 on 5, we kept up, we played solid D like we did against Washington and we got our chances from their mistakes. Cammy scoring 9 seconds into the third was awesome. His playing with Plek and Big Tits seems to have woken up the beleagued Belarussian a bit. He's making good passes, shooting well, hitting and skating hard. That's all we've wanted him to do.