Wait- Did Keith Ballard kill another goalie?

 From the Yahoo! recap of tonight's Florida/Colorado game:

Scott Clemmensen, starting in place of injured Panthers goalie Tomas Vokoun(notes), made 29 saves. Vokoun is recovering after he was hit in the head by Florida defenseman Keith Ballard’s(notes) stick during a bizarre on-ice accident Monday night. Vokoun received stitches on his ear but had no other medical problems... Ballard was involved in another scary incident on Wednesday. Charging toward the net with less than a minute left in overtime, Ballard slid toward the net and appeared to collide with Anderson, whose head hit the goal post...Ballard wasn’t available to speak with reporters after Wednesday’s game.

I'll say it: Keith Ballard is the Tommy Jarvis of the NHL.

Watch your ass, Varlamov, you're next. 

Stunning New Angle On Keith Ballard-Vokoun Hit

Maybe it's the 3D, but this new look at the vicious shot to the mask dished out on Tomas Vokoun by his own defenseman last night makes Ballard look, oh I don't know, a little more feminine, maybe?



What do you think?

(H/T Dumb As A Blog)

I've only seen one Bruins game this year-

-but I'll tell ya, I'm a little worried about the penalty kill.

Missing both PJ Axellsson and Stephane Yelle hurts.

Whew!

Man, that was some solid-ass hockey analysis, especially after a four month layoff.

I'm tired.

Dang.

I've been on a book tour,  gone to a bunch of weddings, have another wedding to go to this weekend, and that means I'm gonna miss the B's/Islanders game.

And that's a bummer, because I like these new look Islanders. Win or lose, if you're an Islander fan, I think checking in on dudes like Streit, Okposo, Tavares, and whoever their next general manager current backup goaltender is, is gonna be fun to watch.

Great Season, Everybody

Let's do it again in October!

Sidney Crosby is the youngest captain ever-

-to win the Stanley Cup while not playing the third period.

It kind of reminds me of the time Willis Reed limped back into Madison Square Garden, and made the heroic decision to stay on the bench so he wouldn't hurt his team, or Keri Strug.... oh screw it.

Really?

Mario?

With the Cup on the ice?

Fuck me.

I hate that guy.

That was awesome how one asshole who didn't play in the third period passed it to another asshole who didn't play the third period.

Yay, Marketing!

In case any of you Penguins fans are interested in rewatching game seven...

...there will be an IMAX version of the game being shown Monday evening at the Moon Township drive-in movie theater, projected onto Marc Andres Fleury's massive teeth.

Fans should bring wine, cheese, blankets, and several yards of thick rope, should the Stanley Cup winner need to at any point, floss.

I gotta tell you-

I got a little choked up seeing Hal Gill raise the Stanley Cup.

That's a native of Concord, Massachusetts right there, and he played hard for the Bruins.

It was nice to see Guerin lift it too, but he'd done it before.

And, you know- both of those guys managed to suck it up and play the third period.

Please, Gary. For the Love of the Game. Don't.

I said it last year, and I'll say it again.

Gary Bettman has no business on the ice at the end of the year, handing out the Stanley Cup and the Conn Smythe Trophy.

Justified or not, the fans hate Gary Bettman, and not only does it bum out us hardcore fans, the inevitable booing takes casual fans out of this wonderful moment of celebrating hockey.

Seriously.

Gary.

Stop it.

Please.

One man, and one man alone should have been handing out the Stanley Cup that night, and his name was Mario Lemieux. If the Wings had won, it should have been Steve Yzerman. Or Gordie Howe.

I've put out my theory on this.

It is do-able.

Can we PLEASE make it happen?

Please?

Even though I knew the outcome and the final score...

... while I was watching the Stanley Cup Final on DVR, when Nic Kronwall hit the crossbar with 2:10 remaining in the third period, I screamed.

Goddamnit- I love this game.

Congrats to the Pittsburgh Penguins and their fans on an incredible playoff and final.

The Best Possible Reason To Miss Game Seven Of The Stanley Cup Finals

Annabelle Ellen Duncan.
Born June 12, 2009.
11:42 PM
6 lbs, 13 oz.





So.

Who won the game?

A thoughtful gift.

Just in case I haven't expressed how totally awesome my wife is, she arrived home last night and told me that she had been to a discount candy store and she bought me a present.

It was a pack of 1990 Topps hockey cards, complete with gum.

Let's open 'er up!

-Kelly Miller: Capitals.
eh.

-Troy Murray: Blackhawks.
again, I sorta remember him.

-Doug Brown: Devils
At this point, I'm thinking this pack might be shit. There might be a reason it only cost a dollar.

-Mark Osbourne: Maple Leafs.
Seriously, this might as well be a random name generator. I don't know any of these guys.

-Pelle Eklund: Flyers
- I sort of remember this guy, but it's hard to get too fired up about a random dude form Philly. Especially when he's named "Pelle."

-Doug Brown: Devils.
You read that right. Another fucking Doug Brown Card. I was still thrilled that my wife got me the pack, but yeah- I was getting discouraged. And then, all of a sudden:

-Barry Pederson: Penguins
Heyhey! I'd forgotten that this current member of the Boston Bruins broadcast team played for the Penguins, and let's not forget, this is the guy who went the other way for Cam Neely. This is a great card, and I'm happy, but if that's all I got in the pack that I liked, let's be honest here- Barry Pederson on the Penguins is sort of a thin broth. So who was next?

-Mario Lemieux: Penguins.
WOW! Yes, I've always hated number 66, but you can't deny he was one of the best ever, and I got that old pop I used to get when you open a pack of hockey cards, and stumble on a superstar. It was a really nice nostalgic moment. I looked it up on line, and I don't want to brag, but that card is now worth a cool dollar and fifteen cents. Bidding starts at a dollar. Up next?

Ken Linseman: Flyers.
This was a really fun one too, from a Bruins fan's perspective. Everybody loved The Rat in Boston, and this was a card from his first year in a Flyers uniform after the Dave Poulin trade. Poulin was a great Bruin too, and I feel like getting a Linseman card in a Flyer uniform is almost better than getting one of his Bruins cards, cause this way, I remember Poulin as well.

-Edmonton Times: "Gretzky Returns home to score his 1851st point"
These cards were always horseshit. Nobody wants the fake-ass Gretzky card that's not Gretzky's actual card. Still, being able to fondly remember my disdain for getting such a shit card was still kinda fun, from a nostalgia perspective.

-Rick Tocchet Flyers (89-90 Scoring leaders card)
see above. Also, screw Rick Tocchet. But yeah, you know, even though he was a shitty Bruin, you gotta kinda like the guy. Let's use this space to watch him break Claude Julien's nose again, shall we?

-Bob Carpenter: Bruins
Damn, I loved Bob Carpenter. He's another guy who's still with the Bruins organization, and he was a dandy, lemme tell you. On the face of things, he wasn't really that goddamn good. He could check and play OK, and wasn't awful, a good lunchpail Bruin, and then every now and then- like every 25 games or so, Bobby Carpenter would get these GREAT goals, and- oh wait. Shit. I'm thinking of Bob Sweeney. But Carpenter was great too. We eventually lost him to the Devils, (I think) for one reason or another and he was one of those B's you'd see in another uniform, and just wish we never let him go. Brian Rolston-esque, that guy.

Dave Chyzowski: Islanders (Top Prospect Card!)
Yeah, well that didn't work out so well for the Islanders, did it? And you Isles fans can't even blame Milbury for that one. In 1990, he was one of the best coaches in the league, bringing the Bruins to the Stanley Cup final. And these last two are something else:

Scott Stevens: Capitals.
Boy, it's hard to imagine old Scott Stevens on the Caps, isn't it? But he was. I saw that card and eagerly thought "Maybe this is a rookie card!" Wrong. He was on the caps for 8 years before he ever joined the Devils. What a player. And then, the icing on the cake, the best card in the pack:

Andy Brickley: Bruins
Wow- two members of the current Bruins broadcast team in one pack? Good times. Since there isn't much chance I'd find a card of a 15 year old Kathryn Tappen, this is about as good as it gets. Good old Brick, who was a great lunchpail Bruin, smart hockey player, and now one of the best color men in the game. When I was lucky enough to get a press pass at the Verizon Center in Washington, one of my biggest thrills was to meet, and do a quick interview with Andy Brickley. Man, does he look like a baby on that card. Funny.

Incidently, the gum, like all hockey card gum, was broken into three jagged, solid shards. Before I could stop her, my wife popped one of the shards into her mouth, made a horrible face, and ran from the room to spit it out. That's 19 year old gum. I asked her why she did it, and she said "I was curious!" This coming from a woman who won't try Indian food, and yet her driving culinary curiosity compells her to chew a piece of hockey card gum that's old enough to vote.

And I've tried that gum 19 years ago, when it was fresh.

It sucked then too.

My beautiful wife....

...will be giving birth to a baby girl this weekend, if her doctor is to be believed.

But the doctor might be lying.

It makes sense to me that baby doctors might tell women who are very pregnant and sick of being pregnant that "it'll be this weekend" just to make them feel better. Believe me, there is something to be said for lying to pregnant women to make them feel better. And don't misjudge my motives, I'm just positing the theory that it's a good thing when pregnant women feel better.

Cause, from what little I've seen of it, being pregnant kind of sucks.

Anyway, this is a hockey blog, and I post this here because this weekend, of course, there's a pretty big hockey game on, and I may become a father during game seven of the Stanley Cup Finals. My wedding had a similar hockey overlap, and of course what happens in circumstances like that is that watching hockey becomes the smaller number. It's a big goddamn number, there's no doubt about it, but when you do the math, you realize what's really important. If you are the kind of hockey fan that would bemoan getting married or experiencing the birth of your first child because you're missing a hockey game, you might want to stop calling yourself "a hockey fan," and go with something smoother sounding, like "sociopath."

Hockey is hockey and life is life and there are some things that are just more important, plain and simple.

With that said, thank fucking Christ the Bruins aren't playing Friday. And I'm not saying I wouldn't make the right choice, I'm just glad I don't have to. For all hockey people, the game is part of our lives, so it would follow that it might be part of the significant milestones of our lives as well. I haven't missed watching the Stanley Cup being raised since the mid-80's, but if I do miss it this year, I'll have a pretty good excuse. If the game is tied at the end of the third, and I'm not there to watch it, enjoy your sudden death hockey fans.

I'll be welcoming new life.

Yawn.

Tired tonight.

If you wanna see some exclusive crowd pics from before game 5 in Detroit, check out Dumb as a Blog. My co-worker (and huge Red Wing Fan) Sam actually got tickets by just getting on Ticketmaster with four friends and hitting refresh.

I expressed surprise that she got tickets that way and she said "Yeah, I guess there's a lot of people from Detroit these days who can't really afford hockey tickets." Which is sad. Of course, there's also the fact that tomorrow's game 6 will be the Red Wings 30th Stanley Cup finals game in less than 15 years.

In the same time period, counting tomorrow's game, Penguins fans have had the opportunity to watch their team play in 12 finals games, all from this and last season.

The Bruins of course, have had none. If you go all the way back to 1988, they've had 10 appearances in the cup finals, and I'm counting the game when the lights went out, which ended a tie, and was replayed, which technically meant there was another opportunity to buy tickets to the finals. In my lifetime, the Boston Bruins have won exactly one hockey game in the Stanley Cup finals.

It was pretty sweet.

In Detroit, they've had considerably more chances to see their team in the Finals, and have no reason to expect those opportunities are going to dry up in the immediate future. With all due respect to the folks who have lost their jobs, I think that's worth mentioning.

Do I sound like a bitter and jealous Bruins fan? Is that coming across?

Cause I am.

Celebrity Sighting

Today was a beautiful summer day in New York City.

I was out and about, doing some errands, and found myself walking up 6th avenue, just south of Radio City Music Hall. There were tourists out in force, and as such, I found myself rather unintentionally walking right next to another guy.

Like side by side, our strides were matching, we were in each other's personal spaces, and it was kind of weird. It went on for a full 10 steps or so, to the point where I thought "Oh Christ, am I gonna have to slow down, or pretend to stop or something?" I glance over at the guy and I recognize him. I can't place him right away, but I know that I know this guy. I take another look, and I place him. It was a prominent sports columnist for the Boston Globe, who's name I won't mention here since I don't want to invade the dude's privacy more than I already am, but anyway, I recognize him right away. I will say that he wasn't one of the regular hockey guys. Since we were literally right next to each other, I call him by his first name and say hi. He's a little cold at first, probably because he spotted my double take, and- you know, I was walking down the street close enough to be holding his hand. I quickly say "tough year for the Bruins." He looks at me, and says: "Yeah."

A thoughtful look comes over his face, and he corrects himself.
"Actually, no. Tough series. Great year."

And he was absolutely right. Not wanting to act like a creep, I wished him well, told him to enjoy the nice day, and turned the corner. For the next 20 minutes I replayed the scenario in my mind, rehearsing scenarios in which I told him that it always feels tougher when your expectations are higher, told him how glad I was that the Globe didn't go under, offered to give him a restaurant reccomendation, or asked him the proper pronounciation of Fluto Shinzawa. Ultimately, I think I did the right thing.

But it was a fun brush with celebrity.

To bring it back to hockey, my brother plays in an ice league in Houston, Texas and according to his Facebook status, he overheard the following in the locker room:

"I was as useless out there as tits on a snow shovel!"

He is happy to report that even in Houston, Texas- hockey players are still hockey players.

No Internet Access At Home.

Hey all,

My internet at home has been knocked out for the past few days, and I can't really do a lot of hockey blogging at work, mainly because my day job is blogging, and one of the ways I got the job in the first place was by showing them the hockey blog. Hence, my employers know it exists, and they are cool and nice, and if they noticed that I wasn't writing on their blog while some hillarious post I write here about Jordan Staal popping someone in the walnuts turns up in their Google Readers, well, it wouldn't look good is all.

But yes, I'm aware the Stanley Cup final has gotten a heck of a lot more fun to watch, I just haven't said so yet cause I haven't had the ability to write from home these past few days. Hopefully I'll get the problem worked out over the weekend.

For now, enjoy this comment I received on my last post from the ever eloquent "Mr. Ken:"

You're a dumb ass mother fucker. The game is right. PENGUINS will LOSE if they don't WIN in game 5 on Saturday. Funny, fucking bullshit if I can't log on and post this fucking simple true information on their goddamn dumb ass site. I can't. It's a piece of fucking shit!!

Personally, he lost me after "dumb ass mother fucker," but like most great poetry, the interpretation of meaning is up to YOU- the reader.

What do you think he's saying here?

The Stanley Cup Finals Have Sucked. Watch, As I Start To Bitch About It, Decide It's Pointless, And Instead Resort To Mocking Rod Brind'Amour's Looks

Boys and men.

I didn't even watch the third period.

Dullsville.

The Pittsburgh Penguins are consistently playing JUST well enough to lose by one.

If they don't show me something radically different in Pittsburgh, we're looking at a sweep.

All I can say is, if the fucking Carolina Hurricanes are gonna go and knock out the two best teams in the east, the least they could have done is shown up for the conference finals.

I mean, Jesus.

I don't know how Rod Brind'Amour can look at himself in the mirror.

No Dog In The Hunt? Who To Root For In The Stanley Cup Final

I've been clear about this. I have hated the Pittsburgh Penguins for over 20 years and I'm not going to just blindly endorse them now. I mean, for God's sake, right after Crosby touched the Prince of Wales trophy, the officials actually gave the trophy a two minute holding penalty.

I'm not sure how they justified that.

But it's also tough to root for a dynasty, and if you look up "underdog" in the dictionary, it says "antonyms: 2008-2009 Detroit Red Wings." So what the hell do we do?

Let's be honest, I'm not going to NOT watch the Stanley Cup Final If the lockout taught us anything, it's that as fans, we should enjoy it while we have it. Also, last year's conference finals were also deadly dull, and the Cup final ended up being a very entertaining affair. That means some tough decisions have to be made.

Who do we root for?

There are a lot of reasons to root for the Wings:

- Original Six team. Snobby, I know, but that's where I stand. I think it's good for the game.

-Economywise, the city of Detroit, the state of Michigan, and the US automobile industry are, to put things as gently as I can, fucked. Their fans could use a lift.

-Excellence. There is a very good argument to be made that to root for the Detroit Red Wings is to root for hockey excellence, plain and simple. They are cobbling together the seeds of a dynasty, and this after greats like Yzerman, Hull, Shanahan, Hasek, and Federov have all moved on. From a hockey management perspective, that is amazing, and to see it in the salary cap era, makes it even more impressive.

-Detroit could be the first team to win both the Winter Classic and the Stanley Cup in the same year, something that the Penguins were unable to do last season. Achieving this feat could be a future yardstick to determine the all-time greatness of Stanley Cup winning teams. You can't get into the Winter Classic unless you were at the very least, a contender for the cup the year before, and to win both the classic and the cup is to shine on hockey's two biggest stages at both the beginning and end of a season. They say you have to be lucky and good. To win both the Winter Classic and the Stanley Cup is to be lucky and great. That's worth rooting for. Which brings me to my next point.

- Unlike the Penguins, the Detroit Red Wings were excellent all year, from the drop of the puck in October to the beginning of the Stanley Cup final, the Wings were a yardstick team, which means that every team brought their A-game all year long, and the Wings ended up on top again. As recent seasons in Boston, San Jose, Buffalo and Ottawa have proved, it's one thing to be good in the regular season, and another to maintain that level of excellence all year and through the playoffs.

-Darren Helm, who scored the series clinching overtime goal for the Detroit Red Wings last night, could potentially be the only forward to have two Stanley Cup rings and no regular season goals. In his career. Ever. I'm not sure that's ever been done, and it's kind of cool.

Reasons to root for the Pittsburgh Penguins:

-I've said this before, but from a hate perspective, it'd be fantastic to see Marion Hossa lose the Stanley Cup again this year, this time in the other sweater. I know hockey is a business, blah blah, blah, but to bolt the Stanley Cup loser to sign with the team that beat them is some lame, front-running shit. I'd love to see that guy lose. Seeing him lose the Stanley Cup to his former team while wearing the sweater of the team that beat him a season ago would be the hater's version of Ray Bourque finally winning a cup in Colorado. Hockey fans from around the world would rally together to cheer his loss.

-No matter what happens in this series, the interest generated by the Washington-Pittsburgh playoff series is going to insure that we're going to be bombarded with promos and commercials talking about how great Sidney Crosby is. If it annoyed you in the past, it's going to be even worse next year, whether he wins or loses the cup. Search your feelings, hockey fans, you know this to be true. If Crosby actually fucking wins something for once, at a bare minimum, the league won't look as stupid for endlessly promoting him. It's a thin broth, but it's something.

-If the Penguins win the Cup, everybody on that goddamn team is going to want a raise. With the cap heading down, this means that there'd be a good chance that I might be able to see Jordan Staal play for a team that I don't hate worse than poison. Again, I'm reaching a little.

Of course, at the end of the day, what I'm really hoping for is a long, hard, competitive series in which my allegiances shift from game to game, something that has happened in the past, (even with the Penguins.) While I'll probably end up supporting the successes of whichever team whose effort and heart forces me to recognize them, I'm gonna bite my lip, take a deep breath and just say it:

GO RED WINGS.

In game one, anyway.

Penguins. WIngs. Goddamnit.

Screw it.

I'm just gonna reprint what I wrote at this time last year.


I've been watching a lot of popular entertainment recently, mainly because with the exception of a few rare sparks of effort by Dallas and Marty Turco, both the Eastern and Western Conference championship series have been desperately fucking dull.

That said, they are mercifully over now, and hopefully we'll have a decent cup final, although I wouldn't be surprised if the Penguins don't win a single game.

That said, here are some of the things I've been enjoying more than hockey these days:

The Iron Man movie:
Not a revolutionary piece of cinema, but marketed honestly, which I appreciate. The movie was called Iron Man, and guess what was in it? An Iron Man.
Several in fact. The only way I can see anybody leaving that movie angry would be if they hated receiving more than what they paid for."What! I was expecting one Iron Man, singular, and instead I got Iron Men, in the plural! Fraud!" Nope, it was fun, featured good Robert Downey Jr, and had robot fights in it.

Adding Machine: The Musical

My mother-in-law was in town for her birthday this weekend, and like all upper middle class members of the baby boom generation who visit New York City, she finds herself genetically compelled to attend either a Broadway or an off-Broadway show. I'm not quite sure why this is, but I don't mess with it, and it's fun to see a live show from time to time. Plus, it was one of the best reviewed musicals of the season, and described as an extremely bleak, dark comedy, which interests me more than your average overpriced, overblown, watered-down broadway crap. My wife enjoyed it more than I did, but it was certainly a dark, ambitious, funny work of art, and a great night out. Very well acted too, perhaps not well acted enough to convince the NHL on NBC's entire on air broadcast team, but well acted.

Grand Theft Auto IV:
I bought this game, along with an Xbox360 recently, because my beautiful wife, a talented singer and voiceover artist, is one of the voices on the game. I will thank you to take note that I did not purchase this game because I enjoy staying up until 3:00 in the morning killing virtual hookers with rocket launchers, I purchased it because I am a supportive husband. The hooker killing is just a happy offshoot of that support. I did get a fun phone call from my buddy Ted though, (Not that Ted, a different Ted,) who left me a message telling me that he had purchased a copy of Grand Theft Auto, and would like to know which character my wife portrayed, so that he might avoid having sex with her, gunning her down in the street or both. I thought this was damn considerate. I know, it's all show business, but he was right to check in to see if he was crossing a line. It's all good, by the way, as she is actually a character in a sketch about health care on PRL, the Liberty City Public Radio Station. She plays a pharmaceutical rep named Sheila, and eventually gets her head drilled open by a character played by the unrelenting Rick Shapiro, who you might remember from the late, great HBO show Lucky Louie. SNL's Bill Hader is also in that sketch, along with my pal Bryan Tucker, who is a writer on SNL as well.

Which brings me back to hockey.

I was watching SNL last night (thanks, DVR!) and happened to catch a promo, on NBC, for the Stanley Cup Finals on Versus. I have long been a proponent of the theory that the best way to sell hockey is to show hockey, and Versus brought us back to the bad old days in style, showing us a promo for the Stanley Cup Finals starring- yes, a Lawn Chair.


Sigh.

I mean, is promoting this game really so fucking hard?

The Washington Capitals-

- apparently played their last game of the season this year against the 1996 Florida Panthers.



Thanks to Off Wing Opinon for the vid-