Trade Skoula!

If they don't trade him, he's in danger of being bodily harmed by one of his teammates...or a random fan. Tonight he is directly responsible for the loss. Mark Parrish tied the game up with five or so minutes to go, and before they even had time to make the goal announcement, the Sharks had scored. Why? Because Martin Skoula sucks at life. DR is very famous for that ten player trade that sent Gilmour to the Leafs back in the day, but now he made an even worse decision to get Martin Skoula for Willie Mitchell instead of nothing. The team would have been better off losing Willie to free agency. Night after night he gives away the puck, trips over paint lines, and has no offensive upside to make up for it, not to mention he looks like he got badly beaten with the ugly stick. People in the crowd were chanting "Let's Trade Skoula!", instead of the usual and ever creative "Let's Go Wild!" Oh and Demitra. He needs to learn how to pass/recieve passes and take faceoffs.

On a brighter note, Mark Parrish scored a goal, and looked like a very excited eight year old. Actually, so did I as Mark Parrish is my hero. Niklas Backstrom played very well, even if the defencemen seem to started their New Year's celebration early. Maybe that's where all those empty bottles of Captain Morgan came from (as I was walking down the stairs after the game, there was a cart full of empty Captain Morgan bottles). It's not good that he's being forced to make upwards of 40 saves each time we play.

It's almost January, so who will be the captain for the next month? I hope it's Parrish again, but rumblings around the Cities point to Belanger. Everyone is all of a sudden singing his praises again. I like Belanger and all, but he's not the second coming of Guy Lafleur. Wes Walz maybe, but not Guy Lafleur.

PS: Whoever can explain to me why Jacques Lemaire still likes Skoula and can make me believe their explaination (and preferably entertain me while doing so) will win some sort of prize.

Well, That Was Exciting

The 5-4 finish was quite nerve racking, but whatever, we won, and I got lots of good pictures that have made me many friends. I don't have a tremendous amount to say about the game since I was highly medicated and really tired the whole time. Good game, but Jarret Stoll clearly should not play for us, he'd score too many goals on our net. Something like 3/4 of his goals this season have been against us.

Moral of the story: Mark Parrish is clearly a better captain than Ethan Moreau. There are tons of pictures up on Facebook (if you don't have facebook and still want to see, that can be arranged), but here's a good one.


Tonight: Joe Thornton, er the San Jose Sharks at the X. I'll be at that game too, and I'm wondering if Joe Thornton will let me have a butt shot for my inadvertant collection of them. I'm hoping we play better against them than we have, but if we barely beat the Oilers, I'm not hopeful.

WJCs update: Canada lost to Sweden, but they are still going to win the gold anyway. From what I have heard, they deserved to lose.

PS: I just chocked on those words, but there you have it. I supposed a loss once in a while doesn't hurt, it reminds them that winning is good.

Parrish Scores 200 (oh and the Wild won)

Last night Mark Parrish, my new favorite player on the team, scored his 200th NHL goal. He's quite excited about this, but managed to contain himself long enough to give a polite and informative interview while probably thinking that Mike Greenlay is an idiot. Congrats to you, Mr. Parrish, and I hope they are right that you will now score a million goals in a row.

It was a pretty good game last night against the Coyotes. I missed the first part of the game while watching an excellent steamrolling of the Lightning by the Habs. When I flipped over to the Wild game, the score was already 1-0. I tried this tactic with the Oilers, since when I left them, they were up 1-0 also, but they unfortunately lost 2-1 to the Ducks. Anyways, the Wild beat the Coyotes 3-2 with Bryzgalov in net. Sadly he was not interviewed last night, which bums me out because he is always entertaining. It could just be that he has a really high-pitched voice and a very um, interesting command of English. In addition to getting his 200th goal, Parrish was on the ice and in front of the net for the other two goals for the Wild. Sounds like things are starting to come together better for him at the moment. Coach Gretzky looked slightly less upset than usual, which is good, considering they really had the Wild on the run towards the end of the game. I started to get nervous, especially after the Coyotes scored late in the game. All is well, and we play the Oilers on Saturday at the X. As I mentioned before, I'll be there with my family mostly cheering for the Wild. According to Russo of the Star Tribune, Mikko Koivu skated for 40 minutes on his own the other day. This is excellent news on the Koivu front. I wish him a continued speedy recovery. We need someone to win faceoffs.

Last night was a rare treat as we got to have HNIC on a Thursday night. The first game was the Habs vs. Lightning (GO HABS GO) and the second was the Canucks vs. the Shames. The Canucks won that one 5-3 I believe while the Habs won 5-1. Hopefully there will be another HNIC on Saturday. That would be a double bonus. Clearly the Oilers won't be on the Late Game that night as the Wild game starts on time, whereas it would have to start at 9 or 10 PM CST to be the correct timing for the Late Game.

WJC update: Canada is now 2-0! WHOO! CANADA FOR THE WIN!


This is my new wallpaper on my computer in honour of the WJCs. I love it.

Complete Crap

Before I rant about the game, I would first like to rant about the NHL. They have a rule that prohibits teams from traveling on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. That's fine, it's nice of them to observe a major Christian holiday, but it is a death sentence for all visiting teams on the 26th. If they want to have that rule, they should not put any games on the 26th, allowing teams to travel the day before the game and get their legs under them a bit better.

I don't know if the NHL's travel rule is completely to blame for the Wild getting smoked 8-3 by the Stars last night, but I'm sure it didn't help. Josh Harding had a rough night, as did Brent Burns. We were keeping pace with them goal for goal, but then something just exploded/died/self-destructed/etc. The score was 3-2 Stars at the end of the first. That was managable, but it all went to hell after that. I now present to you the game in pictures.

First they scored like a minute in..

Demitra had two goals on the night...

Then they lit up Harding

This is what the team looked like at the end of the game...

And this is what Coach Lemaire looked like.

Notes: Mark Parrish clearly pissed off the hockey gods. He had more good chances and didn't score, but then again no one else on the team really did either, so it's ok.

There might be some light blogging upcoming as I had elbow/wrist surgery yesterday. I'll see how it goes. I should be at the game on Saturday if anyone else will be there. Yay Oilers, even though I kind of don't like playing them, because it's hard to choose. I like the Oilers, but we need to get points in the division.

Oh It's THEM Again...

Captain Grumpy had another rough night. No wonder he's grumpy.

Well, the Red Wings killed us once again. The score was much closer than it should have been, Backstrom made 47 saves. He was pretty good last night, but the rest of the team disappeared. I'm not even sure how the Wild managed to get one goal in the 4-1 loss. I was texting with Steph, and she was kind enough not to gloat, even though the Wild deserved it they played so poorly. The Wild just let them make passes uninterrupted, and hesitated before shooting. The Awesome Dude who sits next to me, his buddy, and I were making bets as to how many shots the Red Wings would get. The final shot total was 51-19. I doubt I need to tell you who that was in favor of. I'm really, really glad we only play them four times a year. They are by far the best team in the NHL right now.

Next up: the hated Stars on the 26th in Dallas at 7:30PM CST.

A Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Yippee! We killed the Rangers!

Shot taken of the scoreboard after the game

Take that Rangers! You are not welcome in Minnesota, according to Marian Gaborik and Wild fans. The fans were all over that game, especially after Brent Burns hit that dude, making him fall down really hard. There really isn't a whole lot more to say about it. I believe Brendan Shanahan made some polite comments about how it was the game of a lifetime, etc, but I can't find them right now. He was denied hardcore several times by Harding as the Rangers tried to bring the game back. They way outplayed us in the third, but we were unstoppable. Too bad they didn't save a few of those goals for the Red Wings...

Even more entertaining than the destruction of the Rangers were the comments made by Coach Renney after the game. He got a penalty for "abusing the refs" the official penalty was called "abuse of officials". I didn't know they had those.

"I pride myself on how I respect the whole operation of the National Hockey League and the officiating therein," coach Tom Renney said. "I'm that way because I'm sincere about it. In the heat of the moment players will lose the handle too. I'm disappointed with the way things transpired. But it's no excuse."

Quote courtesy of TSN

WHOOOOOO! I'm back!

I'm back in Minnesota, and I went to the game last night. I got to see the Wild beat the Preds 3-2. The first two periods of the game absolutely sucked, but the third was good. The played like crap for a while, Josh Harding wanted to quit life, and Backstrom looked bored. It was Jacques Lemaire's 1000th game coached last night, which was really cool. He has more games coached than played, and has had a brilliant career as both a player and coach. Hats off to you Mr. Lemaire, and here's to many more games coached.

Tomorrow night we play the Rangers, and my mission that I have been forced to accept, is to get a good picture of Shanny. I suspect he doesn't wear a helmet for warm ups. Sakic didn't and Shanahan is vain, so my money is on no helmet. I'm not gonna lie, I haven't paid attention to the Rangers lately, so I really have no idea what's going to happen.

I have a bunch of pictures from Tuesday's game up on Facebook, but I'll post my favorite one here.

The Man, the Legend, doing one of the things he does best...he's a sharp dresser. Congrats Coach Lemaire!

Tonight we went to see Nick Schultz, and I take back some of the mean things I said about him. He was very gracious and polite, and he positively glowed when asked about his son. As expected, he signed his name in a tiny place so he could sign it on the number.

Sorry about the red-eye...I was too lazy to edit the picture apparently.

NHL Road Trip promo (Extended Version)

To remind you to vote for the All-Star Game...

Portland Needs a Better Airport

I'm currently sitting in the PDX International Airport using the slowest (but free!) WiFi internet connection known to man. I have two hours to kill, so I suppose it doesn't really matter how slow it is.

It has been an extremely stressful last few days, but the stress has been lifted, and in 9 hours I will be home on my parents' couch stuffing my face and watching hockey. It's a good day (minus the unfortunately long travel time).

Friday night I should have been studying harder than I was for my calc exam, but I really wanted to watch the game, so I made up for it on Saturday morning. Nothing makes me happier than FCP FAILING at life. Elly over at No Pun Intended has an excellent post up about why you should blame all of your problems on FCP. It's an excellent read, I highly recommend checking it out. Right, so the Wild schooled the Ducks 5-2. I'm kind of sad that I know they will improve once Scott Niedermayer takes off running (or skating) again, but it's ok. My reward for that is getting to watch him skate. In order to make room for the good Niedermayer, the Ducks ended up dumping Andy McDonald in return for Doug Weight, a prospect whose name is escaping me, and a draft pick. I have to say, I was hoping Burke would have to squirm around and make a bad deal. I'm bumming that the Wild couldn't have picked up Andy McDonald, because I think he would have been a good fit. Now that he is no longer a Duck, my liking for him has gone up exponentially.

Last night I recieved a set of excellent updates from my super awesome mom, because I had used up too much internet watching the Ducks game and couldn't watch a second game in 24 hours. There was also the part about how I had a final from 7-10 PM, which was basically the time west coast games run. Woot. I didn't bomb my exam, and the Wild didn't stink up the place, even with Harding starting back to back games. I was surprised to see Harding play, I had put Backstrom in for my fantasy team...and didn't find out until too late.

I'm especially sad that I missed the Early Game on HNIC. The Habs owned the Leafs (not like it's hard) 4-0. I heard rumblings that McCabe got hurt during all of this. I'm sure my Canadian friends either will either gleefully fill me in on the details, or tell me this as they are drinking it off. Anyone know who was on After Hours this week? Did I miss anything good? Stupid Saturday finals, I was home in time for After Hours last year.

Random Tidbits of life

The Wild against any remotely good team

So there was a game on Tuesday apparently. I went to a concert instead of watching it, and it sounds like I made an excellent decision. (besides the fact that it was an amazing concert) The Wild got destroyed 4-1 by the Sharks. Oops. C'mon Captain Grumpy( so named because his teammates call him Grumpy, it's written on his sticks and he's the captain for the month), you need to make a Wes Walz speech and kick the team into gear. We need some road wins.

Coming up the Wild will swing through SoCal, but I unfortunately will be studying for/taking an exam during both of those games, so I would ask you to seek out Finny of Girl With a Puck and Earl Sleek over at Battle of California for their takes on the game. For the Kings: kms2 at Purple Crushed Velvet, Ckim at A Queen Among Kings (she's going to be at the game), and RudyKelly also of Battle of California. These fine bloggers will give the enemy opinion on the games in addition to the Wild Blogosphere listed at right. I will be mostly MIA until Sunday when I fly home. I have calculated that I have an 11 hour travel time, so I'll be bored hanging around in airports. Here's to hoping that Scott Niedermayer doesn't make his season debut against the Wild.

Manny Fernandez will need knee surgery and is likely out for the season. DR, I know I give you a lot of crap and say that I think you suck at life quite frequently, but getting rid of Manny seems like a pretty genius move just now.

Joe Sakic is still out with a groin injury, and I'm really hoping this doesn't mean he's slowing down. I know he's the type of player that will retire as soon as he feels he isn't playing at the same level anymore, and I'd really hate to see him go.

Mikko Koivu looks doubtful for the SoCal swing, but I'm REALLY, REALLY hoping he will heal quickly and rejoin the team. They need him like nobody's business.

Photo idea borrowed from Elly @ No Pun Intended. Thanks!
All news reports used can be found at TSN.ca

Zetterdouche and win #2

So Friday night the Wild got murdered by the Red Wings. Zetterdouche (thanks, Margee!) got a hat trick, and the Wild lost 5-0. 5-0! HARDING, WTF? You are in the big show now for real. Get it together. Too bad we don't have Roloson. Back in the day, he OWNED the Red Wings. Manny Fernandez played much like Harding, only instead of the Homeless Swede paying him to let goals in, it was Brendan Shanahan. Just because you were brought in to replace Fernandez doesn't mean you have to BECOME him. I now dislike ALL Red Wings. Ever.

The announcers kept going on about how the Wild had only won once ever at the Blue Jacket's arena, and I kept pounding my head on solid objects thinking they were cursing the karma. Turns out I was wrong for once, and dumb and dumber actually didn't kill the karma. A 2-1 win keeps the Wild over .500 in their last six games.

I'm glad Mark Parrish is back, but I and the Wild of course miss Mikko Koivu.

Top Ten Reasons I Can't Wait to go to Minnesota

10.) It snows there. None of this typhoon powered rain for weeks on end crap. And sun, don't get me started on how much I LOVE the sun. I will tell you every reason I can think of that the sun is good.

9.) HOCKEY! Season tickets, here I come. Centre Ice on a TV that I don't have to murder someone to watch. (one TV for 200 people is not sufficient)

8.) There are food types that are not some variation of Asian.

7.) I don't have to do homework.

6.) Caribou Coffee and all my other favorite places to hang out in MN will be there waiting for me, plus I won't have to spend an hour trying to figure out how to get where I want to go.

5.) I get to see my friends/have my arm fixed by a real doctor that doesn't use words like suck, bummer, and tell me he couldn't get into the school I attend if he were apply today when discussing the fact that I think my arm is falling off.

4.) Hopkins is much less sketchy than Salem.

3.) I won't have to comb the internet for any scrap of information I can find about my sports teams, I can just open my front door or flip on the TV.

2.) I can shoot the breeze with random people about anything as long as it's sports or the weather.

1.) Did I mention snow and hockey? Really? Well I'm mentioning them again.

What now, Detroit?

They need to change the name of their restaurant...

St. Paul has officially been named the new "Hockeytown" according to Yahoo!.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/news?slug=rm-saintpaul110107&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

Oh yeah, and we play them tomorrow. Should be an interesting game to say the least. Steph, you and I are just not friends this week I see, but good job in getting Hemsky back. I appreciate it.

I may not have a lot of time to post until after tomorrow/Saturday/maybe beyond since it's finals week, so I invite you to check out all of the awesome blogs in my sidebar from around the NHL...

If you dislike Bucci : Check out A Queen Among Kings, or Hockey Blog in Canada

If you need to laugh until you hurt: Sportsquee, Barry Melrose Rocks, and Covered in Oil are good choices.

Eye Candy: Hot Oil is having their annual "Hot Off" to determine the hottest Oiler on the team.

Enemy opinions: Steph over at No Pun Intended will fill you in on the Wings, and Bethany at Bethany's Hockey Rants has the Blue Jackets covered.

If you are jumping up and down with glee because Scott Niedermayer is coming back, I'm sure Finny at Girl with a Puck, and Earl Sleek at Battle of California would love to join you in celebration.

And as always if you are bored (or procrastinating)...YouTube is your friend! If you are a really good person, you will vote for your favorite NHL players for the All-Star ballot.

I'll be sure and put up awesome posts once I'm back in MN and able to see the team in person, shoot the breeze with random people, talk to opposing fans, er I mean heckle them, and I won't be doing mountains of homework every day so I'll actually have time to surf the net and/or find something cool to put up.

Wildblogosphere: Wild Puck Banter has a new contributer who also likes Mark Parrish and Mikko Koivu. You should check it out. *nudge*

Valeri Kamensky vs Scott Niedermayer Hockey Fight

Because this is the greatest video clip I will ever see of Nieds...and because I have a secret thing for him even if he does play for the Ducks. It's because of Team Canada, I swear!

Liveblogging the Broad Street Bully Wannabes

I came back from dinner at the halfway point of the game just in time to hear the announcers talking about how great they think Steve Downie is...

Second half of First:
Score is 1-0
NOOOOOO! That was a horrible play. 2-0 BSBW.
Dominique Moore? Apparently we have a woman on our team now...
Are these announcers homers much? Jesus.
Timmonen looks like he just got nutted...announcer says he's "writhing in pain".
Centre Ice just cut out on me! Hosers! Oh here we got, Timmonen icing his nuts..er midsection.
Whoo! Gaborik breakaway! Or not. WHY! WHY DO YOU FAIL AT BREAKAWAYS!
Interviewing some Flyer and putting out fresh towels.
There is now a random thing called "Coatesy's Corner". Whatever. Not nearly as good as watching Don Cherry turn purple.

Second Period:
My roommate took an interest in the game randomly, so I'm teaching her about the great game of hockey.
What's with all the stupid penalties?
Watch yourself Fedoruk. You had better believe the league is watching, hits like that are what keeps getting the Flyers suspended. Please try to forget you ever played for them.
WHOOO! I almost forgot. Did you guys see that absolutely sick goal? Awesome.
Yet again, interviewing some random Flyer.

Third Period:
CRAP! What was that? Co'mon, you guys are better than that. 3-1 Flyers.
So close, then a bunch of random punching, with Lupul trying to look tough. Just a hint for you...it's not working.
It's never Keith Carney, it's always Veteran Defenceman Keith Carney. At least according to the announcers. It's so random.

That was ridiculous. I was not pleased with those goals. Good thing I just picked up another goalie today, trade pending. That goal we got was sweet, though.

Oh yeah and that Scott Niedermayer guy is back. TSN is all over it.

Game previews, Captains, and limericks

C is for captain, that's good enough for me-What Cookie Monster would have sung if he were a cool kid and a hockey fan instead of a cookie fan.

Today the Wild will play the Canucks. Whoppee, more division rivals. All I have to say is we had better beat the crap out of them. Koivu isn't skating and is in the IR, so I'm going to guess he won't play for a bit. I need my boys Rolston, Bouchard, and goalies to be sharp tonight for my fantasy team! I've had a rather tough week, but I might be able to pull off a win tonight.

Mark Parrish has been named the captain for the month of December. Congrats to "Captain Grumpy"! He used a lot of words like proud and honoured when asked for his reaction to being named captain for the third time. Here's to December being much better than November! As the above picture illustrates, I'm just really not a fan of Brian Rolston as captain. No particular reason why, I'm not just not.

Also, the first person that can find a the video clip played on the NHL Network/TSN of Parrish fishing and breaking his boat will be my hero forever.

Speaking of Captains, everyone should check out SportSquee. Margee has, as usual, posted a brilliant investigation into the secret lives of the NHL's captains. Sakic's is my favorite. (No, not just because it's Sakic.)

Clearly Janessa was bored in the shower today, because she created this limerick about Jarret Stoll. There are more of these on HF, including an excellent one about Pierre McGuire.

There was a boy from Sask who played for the Oil
He could really fire the puck
The next C he'll wear
The Oiler fans swear
Until he started to suck

And one about Cam Barker:
Cam Barker was drafted overall third
Whose play was increadibly absurd
He was supposedly the best
Even though there was the rest
He made Tigers fans say curse words

Don't forget to vote for your favorite NHLers for the All-Star game! I have a link up...use it! Backstrom needs some love, he's not doing as well as he could be.

Letter to Wes Walz

Dear Wes,
You sounded very unsure during your retirement speech and subsequent interview about how the fans view you. I just wanted to say a few things to make it clear that we adore and respect you as a player and a person. You have been one of my favorite players if not my favorite player for a long time. I am shocked to say the least, and I believe that you can still play very well in this league, but this is about you, not me.

Everyday you came to the rink and gave it your all. Off the ice you were very giving in the community, friendly with the fans, and always smiling. On the ice your intesity and passion were unmatched, and it showed. Even though many people have expressed thoughts that you still have it, I respect that you feel you are not playing at the level you used to play at, and it is most important that you be happy with your decision, one that only you can make.

I wish you nothing but the best in your life, and I hope you realize just how much you will be missed. Please don't be a stranger at the X or in the community. Take care and good luck. Like someone else said, it's a not goodbye, it's a thank you.

Sincerely,

Kirsten

Walz to Announce Retirement

Longtime NHLer and Wild veteran Wes Walz will announce his retirement tomorrow, December 1st. TSN, NHL.com, and Wild.com are all reporting this. I think I'm going to go and cry in a corner now. I am very sad that I did not get to see him play this season. He was my favorite Wild player, and has been since Brad Bombardir left. It was strange the way he left the team, but I respect him enough not to ask questions, and I'll leave it at that.

You will be missed, Walzy. All the luck in the world to you and your family in the future, and I hope you are content with your decision.

More tomorrow if I can bring myself to post something.

Time Flies

Time flies when you're having fun/stressing about a million things that you need to do before you leave school in less than three weeks...Thanksgiving weekend was super short. I have no idea where it went. That's fitting, because I have no idea what happened in the world outside Seattle, either.

Many things seem to have happened while I was hiding in Seattle and attempting to de-stress. I stuffed my face, avoided doing any homework, and watched a lot of mindless TV and movies. While I was "relaxing" my sports world was turned upside down.

The fantastic: Torii Hunter is now an Angel. So long! Hopefully now I won't have to hear you complaining every five seconds. I hope Justin Morneau hits a bunch of homers just over his head and makes him look really bad.


The good: The Yankees haven't managed to get their filthy paws on Johan Santana, and it's going to stay that way. The Wild won in Nashville on Saturday. That's also good news. Hopefully it means we don't completely suck.


The Bad: They haven't been playing well, and injuries are killing the Wild. I also read on TSN that we are no longer in the top 8. Crap!


The Ugly: Wes Walz is still MIA. We need him badly right now. MacT was talking about how he was happy when they got Mike Peca (2005), because the Oilers would finally have someone to play against Walz. He also talked about how he still appears to have all the skills, and he should worry about not being able to stop Malkin and Crobsy because " Heck, there might only be eight coaches left if we all decided we couldn't coach against Crosby and Malkin". Listen to MacT, come back, Walzy!


The Beyond ugly: The Riders beat the Bombers for the Grey Cup. I don't want to talk about it.


The WTF: Fedoruk? Why'd we get him? I'm still really confused about that one.

Ohlund Suspended

Mattias Ohlund was suspended by the NHL for four games, according to TSN. This is because he decided that it would be a good idea to chop Mikko Koivu in the knee with his stick, knocking him out for 1-2 weeks. That's what you get for being a jerk and breaking the Wild's best player, not to mention the best player on my fantasy team of late.

In other news, the Wild are back on top of the division, and third in the Western Conference. They play the Canucks on Wednesday while I'm en route to Seattle. I'm hoping they will be looking to avenge that 6-2 loss that I'm pretending didn't happen last week. I'm sure my friend Tim will have many opinions on the subject, none of which I care to hear until after my boys crush the Canucks into little, tiny, plankton sized pieces. Word on the street is that the Canucks have called up some talentless thug who fights a lot and sent down a player with actual skills in preparation for Wednesday's game. Gee, I wonder why that might be? Maybe because they are a bunch of cheap shotting douchebags most of the time. Granted they are not the team they once were in terms of jerks, but they still have plenty apparently. I predict the Wild will win and shed some orca blood along the way.

CFL: BOMBERS vs. Riders Grey Cup Final!!!!! WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Go Bombers Go! I know Teebz of Hockey Blog in Canada will be joining me in cheering, will you?

Finally: Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends, and happy November 22nd to all my Canadian friends! Peace out, Wednesday I'm off to the even rainer parts of the Pacific Northwest for the weekend and I don't know if I'll get another post in for a few days.

Wild Blogosphere

This is just a field guide to Wild bloggers, especially since the Wild Blogosphere has expanded recently (myself included, I'm still new). If I forgot anyone, please let me know! Note: All of these blogs can be found in my sidebar.

Russo's Rants
Michael Russo is the Wild beat writer for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, but he also maintains a blog on the Strib's website. He usually has a lot of inside information and insight, so any fantasy owners with Wild players on their team will want to check this one out.

Hitting the Post
Nick in New York usually posts about every game, and decides who was the dud and stud for the games. He has many more stats in his posts than I do, so if you are a stats person, Nick is your man.

Wild4Knitting
Maggie blogs when she can, and is a season ticket holder for the Wild, so she often has pictures and live reactions up. She also blogs about her latest knitting projects.

Wild Puck Banter
Another one that blogs when he can, covers hockey in Minnesota outside of the Wild in addition to writing about recent Wild happenings. Usually has a poll up of the entertaining variety.

Casual Wild Guide
This is the Wild blog I go to for sheer entertainment. This blog is much more satirical than the rest of us. There are always entertaining visuals in the form of pictures and video clips floating around, and to me it's a Wild form of Sportsquee.

Today's game: Wild are playing the Avs, which makes me cringe just thinking about it. Especially considering how we have played the last week/it's the Avs and they are rolling. I have a lab report to write up with a group, so I'll miss the first part of the game, but hopefully I'll be able to catch the last two periods and have some sort of post game. Here's to hoping that Sakic and Sakic Jr. have horrible games!

CFL note: The Bombers play the Argos today....if they win, it's on to the Grey Cup! Lions play the Riders afterwards, but that is not nearly as important.

EDIT: According to TSN, the Wild are back on top of the division and third in the west!!!

Gaborik Apologizes and the Wild Win!

All in all, it was a productive day. The Wild won, I only had one class and one other obligation. I was able to watch the entire Wild game, make some origami, and finish my homework.

Sportsnet had a hilarious video up of Gaborik reading an apology to fantasy GMs about how he is all for the team winning a Stanley Cup, not his own personal stats. Blah Blah, it's still funny any way. http://www2.sportsnet.ca/nhl/fantasy/20071115_Fantasy_Hockey


The Wild actually won! 4-2 vs the Oilers! It was awesome, except for the part where Backstrom let in two soft goals against Stoll and got pulled. Staios behaved like Darcy Tucker, had a meltdown, and sat angrily in the box for most of the game. All in all, a good night.


The next night...not so much. The Wild lost 6-2 to the Canucks, a fact that my friend Tim is happily gloating about right now. I watched most of the game, but then my RA had promised really good cookies if we went to mocktails, so I got a fake drink and wished it were real so I could tolerate watching the rest of the game.


The Ducks put Bryz on waivers, the Coyotes pick up him, and shazam! Shut out. Take that Ducks!


I just finished watching the HHOF speeches, and my mom was right. Al MacInnis did a REALLY nice job. Messier, not so much.

Barry Bonds got indicted on five felonies according to ESPN. I was practically dancing around with glee, I'm not gonna lie. I think he's a douche, and now...yeah. That's all I'll say. ESPN outlines what they think will happen. Selig will be suspending him if the US justice system doesn't get to him first...http://insider.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?entryID=3115655&name=olney_buster&action=login&appRedirect=http%3a%2f%2finsider.espn.go.com%2fespn%2fblog%2findex%3fentryID%3d3115655%26name%3dolney_buster

If you scroll down further on that same page, there is a headline I couldn't resist reading: "Derek Jeter's mom defended him". It's really, really funny, and I suggest you click on the above link, scroll down, and give it a read. Don't eat or drink anything while doing so, as I cannot be held responsible for you destroying your keyboards.

Edit: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Russo is telling me that Koivu is hurt. Some kind of crack in his tibia. He wrote up a deal about it on Russo's Rants. Please Hockey Gods, tell me what it is that I have done to make you hate me.

Be careful what you wish for I guess

So remember in my last post how I complained that there was no Wild hockey? Now that there is, I sort of wish there wasn't. Why do we have to suck right now? Isn't it bad enough that ALL of my fantasy teams sucked last week? I have different players on all of them! What's wrong???

Avs: Paul Statsny has been billed as a possible Sakic Jr. and now I know why. He had a pair of goals against us Sunday night. Sakic only picked up an assist. Peter Statsny, Paul's father, was a mentor to Sakic way back in the day, and now Sakic is returning the favor by teaching his son all he knows about Wild killing.

Shames: My boy Koivu (who I just picked up for my struggling fantasy team) had a pair of goals, actually the only goals against the Shames. I was busy and missed most of the game, but it sounds like they played like crap the entire time, not just the part I saw, so I clearly didn't miss much. Husileus had a very late goal to end it.

Hopefully the boys newly in red will find a way to stop the bleeding. This isn't that pirate joke where the captain says "bring me my red shirt" but why Captain? " so that the crew will not see me bleed and have fear for me". If you guys don't start playing better, I'm going to need someone to bring me my brown pants. Bonus points for anyone who knows that joke!

On a final note, Avery and Tucker were both fined for their actions on Saturday night.
http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/news_story/?ID=222807&hubname=nhl

Around the NHL

Since nothing is happening on the Wild front his week due to having so much time off, I'm having to resort to all those TSN headlines that are in my inbox every day.

1.) Mark Messier is quite possible the douchiest (sp?) looking person I've ever seen.

2.) Go Kings! Way to school the Stars, highly exciting game at the end I hear.

3.) Goilers! Nothing like a Battle of Alberta for the late game, but I find I like it much better when the Oilers win. Now if only they didn't have to spoil it all by having Theo Fleury as the guest on After Hours...

4.) Someone in the Leafs organization is going to get fired very soon, and I strongly suspect JFJ is in the hot seat.

5.) Scott Niedermayer is skating again. The way I see it, there are three possibilities: A.) He misses hockey because he loves the game and wants to keep playing. B.) He really enjoys playing mind games with people. C.) His wife is driving him nuts and he wants to play again so he can go on road trips and get away.

6.) Don Cherry ripped into Sean Avery! It was on this past Saturday's Coach's Corner. I just went hunting for it on You Tube.

7.) HHOF inductions are tomorrow. Congratulations to the four inductees Messier (it kills me to say that), Francis, MacInnis (probably my fave of the four), and Stevens. TSN has tons of stuff about all of these guys, videos, articles, polls, and the like.

8.) Speaking of douchey people, JR got his 500th goal.

9.) Lindros FINALLY announced his retirement.

10.) Joe Sakic continues to prove Margee right that he's still got it. http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/news_story/?ID=222563&hubname=nhl

Week preview: Since I probably won't have time to write up a game preview for each of the games this upcoming week, I will write a few thoughts on each now. We play our entire division on the road in one week, and then we'll be finishing up with the Avs at home.

Wild Vs. Avs: They have stolen our division crown, but we are only one point behind them. Backstrom being able to play tonight will be key. He is a beast in net for us against the Avs. Unfortunately it sounds like he tweaked his groin again. Hopefully he's just lazy and was using it as an excuse to get out of practice or something. This is a team I find it really hard to hate, in fact, I almost sort of like them a little bit. What is it with me and finding things to like about division rivals?

The remaining three teams we will be playing this week are out of the playoffs as of now. Dude, what happened to our division?

Tuesday-Wild vs. Flames: We destroyed them a week and some change ago, and I'm looking for a repeat performance. The Flames have been fairly horrible lately, a fact that makes me a little bit giddy. Neener neener. That's what you guys get for hiring Iron Mike.

Thursday-Wild vs. Oilers: This game depends on whether or not they can stay out of the box. They were hurting last night when they had Staios AND Stoll in the box at the same time. Their defence is still looking thin missing Souray and now Greene. They need Roli/Garon/the stickboy to really be solid in net for them to give the struggling defence a chance. I'm liking what Gagner has been bringing.

Friday-Wild vs. Canucks: They were supposed to win in regulation last night so we'd be tied with the Avs, not behind them. The Canucks are not living up to expectations at the moment at 11th in the conference. Ouch, but I'll take it. It's a back to back game, so it will be a battle of the scraggly haired goalies with too much grease in their hair, unless Lemaire decides to play Harding against the Oilers and Backstrom against the Canucks, but Backstrom absolutely destroys the Oilers in a way that must be heartwarming to the Avs.

All-Star voting

Happy Election Day! Speaking of which, NHL All-Star voting begins November13th...get your mice ready. This year it will again be completely electronic. According to TSN, each team has at least two players on the ballot, so that means that EVERYONE should get their butts online and vote. No excuses such as "my team isn't represented" or "why should I care, my player won't make it anyway". Think of it as trying to overthrow the Yankees and Red Sox fans, or in this case the Leafs and Habs fans. As Russo said "vote early and vote often". I'm going to take a wild guess and say at least one Sen will be on the roster.

Brian Rolston, Marian Gaborik, and Niklas Backstrom have all gotten the nod for the Wild. The 2008 NHL All-Star Game is being held in Atlanta of all places. It's gross, but what can you do?

So about last night's game... the Wild won last night 5-2 over the Oilers. Mark Parrish had a pair of goals, and Jarret Stoll had a pair of penalties. That kind of sums up the game. The Oilers were absolutely killed by the amount of penalties they took, so I expect that MacT will not let that go on for long. I was still on internet probation from the Flames/Wild game + the Habs/Leafs game and part of the Avs/Canucks game. The school wasn't too pleased with me, but for what they charge for people to go here, we should have absolutely unlimited internet.

Five long days from now we take a road trip out west to play all four of our division rivals in a row. In the meantime, I will be writing my term paper for my politics class. That should be about as much fun as listening to Brian Burke talk. Woot.

Wild Vs. Shames sort of liveblogging

Whoo, I finally have time to watch a game!
1st period:
Not a lot happens except for Parrish stuck his butt in Kipper's face. Rolston tees up, and GOAL!
1-0 Wild end of the first.

Switching over to HNIC and watching Hot Stove.
Talking about Montreal this year without Souray and what they've done. Sounds like they feel Montreal did a good thing in letting him go.
Hey, Ron is there!

Second:
Feed died, but my mom and Courtney are telling me what's going on. Yay for friends in Canada and parents with Centre Ice!
Fight! Stupid Phaneuf, stop hitting Parrish from behind. That's the second time you've done that! Caused a fight both times.
In the mean time I was watching the Habs/ Leafs game, but the Wild game is back.
Gaborik scores!
Courtney and I have decided that Koivu is becoming a fan favorite, and with good reason!
Iginla scores. Wild fans burn him in effigy.

Third:
Feed dies several times.
Gaborik scores!
Hey look. Skoula just turned over the puck. Why does Lemaire like him so much?
Radivojevic scores!
Foster got into an embarassing fight.

Final: 4-1 Wild! WHOO! We finally stopped sucking!

I learned that Centre Ice online is about 15 seconds behind Centre Ice on TV or maybe she was just watching regular FSN North.
Habs winthe Early Game vs the Leafs!
I'm almost cheering for the Canucks in the Late Game, cause they are lower in the standings, but the Avs have Joe Sakic...
Andrew Brunette will be on After Hours! Woot! I love HNIC.
I may put up something better later, but my arm is killing me right now.

Edit: I'm aware that we played the Blues and Pens this past week, but I just don't want to talk about it.

Wild, Wild Northwest

Except it's not so Wild right now since we have lost three in a row to division rivals. Ooops. They really need to stop that if they want to make the playoffs. Kind of like the Twins absolutely sucked against division rivals this past season and therefore didn't make it. In order to stay on top of the division, it is necessary to grind the division into pulp and make them feel bad themselves. Clearly that is a lesson that still needs to be learned in Minnesota.

Last night's loss to Colorado disappointed me. Sure we may have been without our number one goalie, and Gaborik and his "special friend", but that doesn't mean our entire team should fall apart. In fact, the Wild had been doing quite well scoring without the help of Demitra and Gaborik. Harding is a competent goalie on his way to proving he can be a number one.

Whatever, we lost 3-1 to Joe Sakic and Ryan Smyth. Smyth had a goal and an assist, and Sakic had a pair of assists. Wolski added an insurance goal late in the game, and my fantasy team did well overall because of this. I had 7-8 players playing in that game. 7 normally, 8 if you count Backstrom who didn't actually play.

On a side note, I hear Grapes called Jagr out for whining about missing Nylander. If anyone finds the video clip of that, I'd be much obliged. Maybe I'll check and see if Antti over on the Wild.com boards has it up.

Also, go Oilers! Yay for beating the Ducks in a SO and making Giguere sulk. He's quite the poor sport about losing. It makes me giggle. Props to Gagner and Hemsky for getting goals in the SO.

Tomorrow night we play the Pens at 6 PM CST and 4 PM Pacific time. It's on VS, which is a channel the school actually gets, so I'll be watching the game on TV with Dillon, who is a Pens fan. He doesn't get as mean as I do about the other teams when we are playing them, so it will be interesting to see how shocked he gets. Something may be up about the game at some point over at No Pun Intended (see sidebar) from the Pens perspective. The Pens recently lost to both the Leafs and Habs, so they might be irritated about that, but the Wild have just lost three in a row to division rivals, so they had better be pissed about that. May the most pissed off team win!

Whatever it was, I'm sorry

Clearly the citizens of Minnesota have done something to make Alberta's Hockey Gods angry, and angry in a high scoring, soul crushing kind of a way.
First there was Calgary. It all started off so well. We got three goals in the first period, and everything was all hunky dory. Not so much for the Rockies, but I was ok with that as long as the Wild were winning against the Shames so handily. In the second period it all went to hell. The Flames had tied the game by the end of the period, and they added two more in the third to beat the Wild 5-3. It was our first loss in regulation. It sucked, but I figured we'd shake it off and come back and win the next night. I also thought the Rockies would do the same...maybe that was my mistake. Too much optimism.
Last night the Wild faced off against Jarret Stoll, er the Oilers. (Stoll is a center, thus takes faceoffs and lots of them this season...get it? Bad hockey humor, I know.) I had 5 bajillion things to do last night, so I checked in by text mostly. I was less than pleased to find out we were starting off by being down by 2, but yet again I figured they could come back and win it. We'd been there before. Yeah, not so much. It ended up going into a SO, and obviously we ended up losing to Edmonton 5-4. The Rockies also lost...again, and my geology prof is predicting their doom. I haven't given up on them, I believe they can come back and win, and they are in their home field tonight, so that will hopefully help them out somehow.
Brighter notes:
The lecture I went to last night about El Nino, the Andes, and early civilizations in the Americas was extremely interesting and well-presented.
Brent Burns has signed a four-year extension with the Wild.
Mark Parrish had two goals in as many games.
Wes Walz got his first goal of the season.
My fantasy team was awesome. Hemsky (2), Butch, and Rolston all being on my team. Oh and Toskala manged not to suck too horribly while watching his team hand the Pens a nice 5-2 loss.
I got a box full of goodies from the homeland!
I'm getting to watch all of these baseball games without hassle
There is a Wild game on actual TV next week that I can watch!
I saw a great concert last night of a campus accapella group, Headband. They're really good, and I'm happy to say that the replacements for the outgoing seniors are filling their shoes well. There are also two good groups down at the U of O, one male and one female.
The Wild were the last team in the league to lose in regulation!
Less bright notes:
We lost two games to division rivals
The lecture I had to attend today was nowhere near interesting or well-presented. In fact, it was an hour of death. Stupid world geography class.
The Rockies are down by 2.
My room is a mess and I have two exams next week that are going to kill me...(the room being a mess is a good indicator of how stressed and busy I am at the moment)
I just read about how much it's going to cost to keep all the Twin's good players.
Moral of the story: the sports gods are mad at me and annihilating my teams, and they are in league with the school gods and nerve damage gods to annihilate my free time, shoulder/wrist, and sanity.

Before the fun begins

I just want to declare this before the World Series begins. I am cheering for the Colorado Rockies. No BoSox allowed in my world. I've never been a BoSox fan in any way shape or form, and moving out west where most of my friends are cheering for the Rockies hasn't helped that.

Everytime my team gets kicked out of the playoffs in any sport (or chokes doesn't make the playoffs at all...*coughTwinscough*), I always swear I will no longer care what happens, but I ALWAYS pick a team to cheer for, learn everything I can about them, and jump on their bandwagon. If that team loses, I pick again. This year's chosen WS team was the Cubs, but we all know what happened there. I then picked the Rockies, and success! Apparently I suck at staying indifferent.

I would like to thank the BoSox for throwing the Tribe unceremoniously out, though. That's what they get for kicking the crap out of us most of the season!

Catching up on the last week

It's mid-term time at Willamette, so I've been extremely swamped lately.

Last week we played Anaheim and won 2-0, extending our winning streak longer than any other team in the league. (I don't know if it was longer in terms of games, but longer in terms of time.) Josh Harding turned a few heads by proving to Anaheim that he exists, and that he's good. Not so surprising now that I picked him for my team, is it?

Then we played the LA Kings on Tuesday, and we lost 4-3, in a shoot out. How stupid is that? Whatever, we came back to win yesterday against the St. Louis Blues. Wild's record is now 6-1, and they play division rival Colorado tonight (finally, some teams in our division). Technically the game is on right now...but I'm studying for my world geography exam and writing a French essay, so I probably won't be turning the game on for a bit yet.

He's still amazing and godly even while playing my team, I'm just not supposed to admit to that fact. I'm pretty sure he won all those trophys by owning my team.

Joe Sakic is in town padding his stats some more, and in one of my fantasy leagues, I have seven players involved in the Wild/Avs game. Sakic is on my team, but I'd like him to not dominate my team like he usually does, because the Avs are right behind us in the division. The big question of the night is, will Andrew Brunette be able to trick Wes Walz into giving him the puck twice? It worked before, but Walz might be a bit more wary this time of the crafty Brunette.

In other bad news, the Wild are going to Calgary on Wednesday to face Jerome Iginla and those other guys. Iginla is second behind Sakic in points scored against the Wild. Good times. Phaneuf should prepare to get owned by Boogaard again if he decides to try anything stupid, and I look forward to Warrener having something entertaining to say. I will also be grilling Courtney to see if her loyalties lie with Minnesota, or Matthew Lombardi, although it's possible that I don't want to know the answer to that.

For those of you that do not read Hot Oil or No Pun Intended regularly, you should check out the Oilers website(and you should also start reading those blogs! Hot Oil is having a Hot-off right now!)...they have the new pictures up. This year is the year of smiling it looks like. Staios is smiling like someone farted, and Jarret Stoll is proving that he still has some teeth left. There are also some awful ones, but I'll let you find that out for yourself.

And the survey says...yes

The Wild can win on the road. An exciting 3-2 road win over the Coyotes has extended the win streak to 4. *knock on wood* I actually got to watch the game tonight, and I sent a very detailed game recap to the people paying for me to watch the game, but since I'm sure those details would kill all of you with boredom, I'll just do a brief recap here.
I had four games up, so randomly I'll mention other games, too.

First Period:
Gaborik got a goal, and then two Coyotes got goals too. Not ok.
I watched Behind the Mask, and Kelly Hrudey was freaking out a little bit. He talked about the young Oilers a little bit, praising their hockey smarts. He and Scott Oake then moved on to the subject of the recent suspensions, and Tootoo came up. Hrudey says that Tootoo is a disgrace to the game, and he feels that Tootoo should not be allowed back on the ice again. He hopes that someday he gets forced out of the game, because he believes that many of his hits are dirty with intent to injure. He was very worked up about this, and even went all Don Cherry on Scott Oake.
Second Period:
Pretty boring period overall. A couple of penalties and a lot of turnovers. The Wild were very much out-skated.
I got bored during intermission, so I flipped to the Avs game and listened to the announcers talk about how amazing and godly Joe Sakic is. Congrats to him on his 15th career hat trick. It's nice to see Sakic getting a bajillion goals on someone else's team for a change. (Ok, so with 614 goals, clearly we are not the only team he has beaten up on over time, but he has the most goals against the Wild of anyone in the NHL.) Avs beat the crap out of Columbus. I tried to watch the Oilers game for a bit, but that didn't go too well for me. Sharks lost 2-1 to Boston. I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to that game.
Third Period:
The second half of the third period is when things started to get good. The Wild lost control of their tight dicipline a little bit, but Mikko Koivu bailed us out by getting a shorthanded goal. Gaborik, yeah Gaborik was in the box for roughing of all things. Clearly he and Hemsky need to learn that they are not tough enough to get into a fight without getting killed. Teammates came and saved him from certain death. Then Belanger got a goal on a nice rebound. Auld went to his right, puck came out to his left and Belanger jammed it in. Couple more penalties at the end of the game, and JL looked pissed about that. Shane Doan completely blindsided Brent Burns who dropped the gloves, but managed not to get a penalty.

Overall the Wild were outworked, and they didn't deserve this win, but obviously I'm glad they won. The dicipline started to slip later in the game, and a couple of players *coughGaborik&Fostercough* took some stupid penalties. Foster really needs to stop shoving people into the goalie. Specifically his own goalie.

Up Next: Anaheim tomorrow at 7 CST and 5 Pacific time
Ridiculously speedy Scott Niedermayer won't be there, as well as the Finnish Flash. Penner is up in Edmonton having good hockey sense with Gagner and Cogliano. Other than that the team has remained largely the same, so we'll see what happens.
Finny and Cassie will be representing for the Ducks over at Girl With A Puck and Anaheim Duck Fan respectively. (See sidebar for links)

I know it's too early but....

I'm stoked anyway! 3-0!

Backstrom was AWESOME even though Jarret Stoll was trying to kill him, posting his second shutout in three games. Mike W, over at Covered in Oil, said the Wild played "a tactically brilliant game in the neutral zone", and MacT was slightly cranky (either about the game or the questions the press was asking, maybe both) after the game last night. He has a right to be since we have beaten the Oilers 13 of the last 16 times that we have played them. Boogaard didn't play very much last night, so that should make MacT a little bit happier.

Steph has promised to forgive the Wild beating the Oilers if the Wings won, and fortunately for me, the Wings did win. Thanks guys, also thank you for beating a division rival. That's always helpful.

Up Next: Pheonix on the road. Now it's time for the Wild to show that they can win on the road. The head coach of the St. Louis Blues, Andy Murray, claims not to swear. I don't think that is a claim that Coach Gretzky can truthfully make at this time. Watching Pheonix games always makes me miss smiling Wayne Gretzky. I have to say though, if I were icing Shane Doan + the AHL, I'd be cranky too.

Tracy at True Coyote Love, and Monique over at Hip Shot Blog will have the Coyote's take on things.

I get to use the online Centre Ice package this weekend, so I get to watch this game, and the next game vs. Anaheim if I'm lucky. I'll actually have a real post-game write up! Whoo! Yay road trip!

Whoo! 2-0!

I hope the Wild can keep this up like they did last season *knock on wood*. They pulled off an awesome come-from-behind win, the kind we could only dream of in seasons past. Pierre-Marc Bouchard, Brent Burns, and Eric Belanger all scored with Brian Rolston picking up three assists. Coach Lemaire should be much more pleased with this game than the last. Sounds like the boys gave a much better effort.

Wes Walz got injured in practice, so Sheppard was given a chance. I have said I don't like him, but I'm hoping he will prove me wrong and make me like him. I didn't like Burns for ages, but I'm starting to come around and decide that he might be as awful as I previously thought he was. Being put on defence for good has really helped.

The next game is against the Oilers. They had a great 5-3 win over the Flyers last night, so it looks like they have made great strides towards reversing their fortunes. Former Oilers captain and current Flyers captain Jason Smith was given a nice pre-game ceremony to commemorate his many seasons with the Oilers. I've heard good things about Sheldon Souray thus far this year, and I'm stoked about Gagner and Cogliano. These kids have been great so far. Captain Moreau has a foot thing going on, so we might not see him on Wednesday.

Tuesday night the Wild have a number of player appearances happening. Wild.com has more on that. My bro has a Court of Honor that night, so it looks like I won't be getting Mark Parrish's autograph after all.

Post game/pre-game

Taken of the opening of the game at the Xcel Energy Center

So I forgot to do a post game anything for the last game, since I was too excited that they managed to win to remember. The didn't play well at all (specifically the top line combined for 2 shots on the night), but I'm sure Lemaire yelled at them and it will be all better tonight when we play Columbus. According to the Blue Jacket's website, they are 3-7-2 all time in Minnesota. That's a stat I like.
Looks like Adam Foote is going to be around tonight (which is cool, I like him, but he does like to team my team apart limb from limb), but Mike Peca and Derek Dorsett (Yay Medicine Hat!) will not be, since they're on the IR.
A random PS to whoever writes the Jackets pre-game reports...you need to make them more interesting somehow.
Bitchany,writer of "Bethany's Hockey Rants" and leader of the Blue Jackets fans, has already predicted that the Wild will lose. Bring it on! We can so take you, even if you do have Rick Nash.
Know Thy Enemies: http://bluejackets.nhl.com/index.html (official site)
Blog: http://bethanym85.blogspot.com/ (Bethany's Hockey Rants)

Today's the Day

So I'm kind of bouncing off the walls with energy because I'm so excited for the season to start. Normally I'm dead tired on Thursdays, but hockey has energized me, and I'm even getting things done.
Tonight is the Wild's Home Opener against Chicago. At least two members of my family will be there at the game, and I really hope someone takes me some pictures, or at the very least coughs up their calendar so that I can have it on my wall at school. (I'm looking at you, Jess. You can't even find your walls, so therefore you should fork over the goods!)
I told someone to wear my new Mark Parrish sweater because he needs to feel the love. Sounds like he was ringing quite a few shots off the post during preseason, maybe this extra karma boost will be what he needs to put a puck or three into the net...
If I end up having to go home in two weeks, I would get to see an Avs game at the X if I caught a red-eye back to Oregon Sunday night. It would be pretty sweet, especially since I don't get to see one over winter break. Seeing Joe Sakic would totally make up for any loss of sleep I may have, and I gain two hours flying back west, so it wouldn't be too bad. If I left the Cities at 10 PM and got to Oregon at 2-3 AM, it would only be 12-1 AM, then an hour drive back, then 5 1/2 hours of sleep, for college that's pretty good. I've slept less for worse reasons (like homework).


In other news, it's still raining in Oregon and I 'm cheering for the Cubs to win the World Series.

HLOG Suckitude Fantasy Draft

Shit. I forgot to do the HLOG suckitude league draft/had other reasons not to be around for it, and I pretty much got a fantasy dream team. Unfortunately that was the opposite of what I was trying to achieve.
This is what Autodraft gave me:

Team Non-Domination
Round Pick Player Position
1.) 8 Dany Heatley RW
2.) 9 Roberto Luongo G
3.) 24 Evgeni Malkin LW
4.) 25 Alexander Ovechkin LW
5.) 40 Jaromir Jagr RW
6.) 41 Jason Spezza C
7.) 56 Vincent Lecavalier C
8.) 57 Dominik Hasek G
9.) 72 Chris Pronger D
10.) 73 Ryan Whitney D
11.) 88 Henrik Lundqvist G
12.) 89 Dan Boyle D
13.) 104 Philippe Boucher D

Whoops. My first matchup appears to be against HG. My money's on her.

Shoot Me in the Face

Just when I thought I couldn't hate the Ducks any more...it turns out that I can.

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/news_story/?ID=219404&hubname=

This is only going to up the press coverage that smug asshole gets. Anaheim had better hope that Lauren Pronger doesn't get a bug up her ass and decide that she hates California, or else they will lose two captains in two years. Not gonna lie, I almost hope she does.

On another note, does this signal that Scott Niedermayer isn't coming back?

Suisse

Have you evert wondered why Switzerland writes Suisse on their sweaters instead of Schweitz when 2/3 of the population is German speaking (I should say, speaks German as a primary language)? Just me? Ok. Well in case you were secretly wondering, or are ever on some trivia-type game show, here's why.
I emailed the IIHF to ask them why this is, and they referred me to Karin Hoerhager, who works for the Swiss Ice Hockey Association. Here is what she said: "In the history of the Olympics the short form for Switzerland has always been SUI, that's why on every Swiss uniform (skiing, swimming etc.) you'll find Suisse instead of Swiss or Schweiz. I cannot tell you why exactly they chose to do that but over the years it has just become a rule."
The culture of Switzerland facinates me due to their intense multilingualism, and everyone I was told to email was really nice about sending quick and polite responses. I wish everyone were as nice as random people from Europe when you show interest in their team. I'm also pleased when I find that I can write Swiss German almost as fluently as I can speak it.

Things are starting to look good

Well, after their stomping on Tuesday night, the Wild have decided to get it together. Two more wins under their belt, and the kids are starting to get sent down. Much as I like getting to see them play, to me seeing the regulars in the lineup makes me think the season is really getting here.

To celebrate that fact, I made a hockey corner in my room using the pennents for all the NHL teams, and also some posters, pictures, and newspaper clippings. I'll decorate more later, but it's early in the school year and I'm already getting dumped on.

It's not much, and my camera is kind of fuzzy (or maybe I'm the fuzzy one), but it makes me smile.

The picture in the far left corner is of Boogaard looming over Chelios. That is definitely my favorite part of the wall.

Also, I'd like to send a big thank you out to Teebz for sending me a beautiful copy of the Heritage Classic game. I finally got a chance to watch it last night, and it's awesome! Thank you so much, Teebz!

Ooops

Well, that first preseason game didn't go so well for the Wild, but Wes Walz was a very speedy bright spot. He played like a man posessed. Boogaard managed to get himself into trouble, and Lemaire and MacT wore pretty much the same expression all night. Osgood was super lucky tonight. I can't even believe how much the Hockey Gods smiled on him.

Congrats, Steph. You have won this time, but there is a rematch on Thursday!

TSN Season Previews

TSN has their season previews up!
Here is the one for the Wild: http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/feature/?fid=11200
My own season preview will hopefully be up soon.
Margee is doing a season Squee-view, so besure and stop by SportSquee and let her know who the MVSquees are of your team!

Training camp is finally here!

The Wild don't have a preseason game until Tuesday against the Dead Wings, but training camp has started! Technically it started yesterday, but whatever. I was busy/tired yesterday. Apparently Dominic Moore played well yesterday. From what I can tell (there are probably more that I'm not aware of...), the following players are in camp:
Center:
Wes Walz
Eric Belanger
Peter Olvecky
Somebody Fiala (I have never heard of him)
Pavol Demitra
James Sheppard
Serge Payer
Mikko Koivu
Dominic Moore
Steve Kelly

Left Wing:
Brian Rolston
Benoit Pouliot
Matt Kassian
Aaron Voros
Somebody Graham (yet again, I have no idea who this dude is)
Petr Kalus
Roman Voloshenko
Colton Gillies
Ryan Hamilton
Branko Radivojivic
Morten Madsen
Derek Boogaard
Somebody Hirsch

Right Wing:
Pierre-Marc Bouchard
Matt Foy
Cal Clutterbuck
Somebody Gutierrez (Yep, don't know him either, but maybe he is the one from Alaska that my mom was talking about?)
Marian Gaborik
Stephane Veilleux
Joel Ward
Mark Parrish
Danny Irmen
A. Foster ( I want to say it's Aaron, but I'm not sure.)

Defence:
Nick Schultz
Kim Johnsson
Keith Carney
Brent Burns
Shawn Belle
A.J. Thelen (Gross, I thought we were done with him)
Andre Lakos
Paul Albers
Clayton Stoner (YAY! I am pleased to see that he's healthy this season)
Sean Hill
Kurtis Foster
Martin Skoula
Petteri Nummelin
Eric Reitz
John Scott
Somebody Noreau (damn, another one that I don't know.)

Goal:
Josh Harding
Niklas Backstrom

Ok, so now that I feel like a bad fan for not knowing who half of these guys are, I will mention that I think there are only something like two roster spots up for grabs. Wonder who will get them? If I had watched the prospects tournament last week, I would probably have a better clue, but last week was crazy. I suppose I could go through and review what happened, but that's almost more time comsuming than going to the website and looking them up, googling, or asking people. I'm pretty sure we got 4th place in the tournament.
Sounds like Sheppard and Moore are currently in the top positions as far as making the team this year, but Ward might, and people in Minnesota think Irmen might, and they are pulling for him to do so (go GOPHERS!). Matt Foy almost made the team a couple of years back, makes me wonder what happened to him? Pouliot is always mentioned, but I don't think he's ready for the big show yet.
I appologize for not really knowing what's going on, I am still searching for efficient and effective ways to keep tabs on these things from the west coast. Games are easy, prospects are another thing.

Fantasy Hockey

So the HLOG league I'm in drafted today. Here is who I got:
C-Joe Sakic
C-Chris Drury
LW-Rick Nash
LW-Wojtek Wolski
LW-Clarke MacArthur
RW-Brian Gionta
RW-Ales Hemsky
RW-Brian Rolston
D-Niklas Lidstrom
D-Zdeno Chara
D-Brett Clark
D-Mike Commodore
D-Tom Poti
G-Niklas Backstrom
G-Vesa Toskala
G-Josh Harding
I'm pretty stoked about Lidstrom especially. I couldn't decide what do to about Niedermayer. I didn't want to get screwed over, so in the end I decided against him. MacArthur is finally getting to play with the big club. I love his style and have followed him since his junior days, so I really hope he does well. Sakic will hopefully continue to be ageless, and I'm hoping for a repeat performance from Backstrom. Should be a decent team, I'll have to see. I'm up against Sherry this week, and she has Spezza, Alfredsson, is a hoser and took Boyle, and has my boy Parise.

Could be worse

I have been very outspoken about the fact that I did not like the loss of the green sweaters. Minnesota has always been associated with having green sweaters, that's just how it is. I still do not like the loss, but they didn't make the new sweater awful or anything, so I guess I should count my blessings. All they did was add weird piping to the third jersey and raise the price a whole bunch. They are now tremendously spendy, so I guess I can banish any thoughts of buying a sweater between now and the time that I get a job that pays extremely well. I'm kind of wondering why the Wild aren't special enough to have pictures of players modeling them for us. All the other teams get to...apparently our players weren't on hand, or are boycotting them.

In other news, Scott Niedermayer is still taking way, way too long to decide what he's going to do. He's either an attention whore, really indecisive, or just doesn't really care about the rest of the world since he lives in his own little happy, perfect world.

I redid the colors of the blog, just to mix it up a bit. I'm not sure if they look ok or not, since I don't really have a creative eye...hence the science major.

Since I'm always bored at the end of the summer, I'm used to having to find things to do to amuse myself. Typically that means I overcommit myself at the beginning of the school year, and then once hockey starts I don't have time to follow it. Looks like I'm on that path again, but maybe I'll learn how to say no this year. On the other hand, my homework actually gets done at the beginning of the semester because I'm not blowing it off to watch hockey. (I can do my homework during playoff baseball no problem. There is definitely enough down time in baseball. Hockey, not so much.) If you have suggestions for things to keep the offseason rolling, please let me know.

Since the Wild aren't doing anything at the moment, I will just make do with the Twins. Seriously, the Wild have done almost NOTHING recently. Their news headlines have been the same for at least the last week.

Justin Morneau has been nominated for the Hank Aaron award again this season. I would strongly recommend voting for him...even if you don't vote for him, you can still win a free TV.
http://minnesota.twins.mlb.com/mlb/fan_forum/ha/y2007/index.jsp

Leeeeeewwwwwwww Ford is back with the Twins. After being demoted to their AAA affiliate, he is now part of the September call ups, and will be available to play tomorrow.
Source: Minnesota Twins

One last random note/warning: The Bombers lost to the Riders yesterday at the end of the game, so I'm pretty bitter about that. Several people got very, uh, annoyed responses this morning when they asked me over AIM how the game went. I would recommend giving it another day before attempting to discuss the game.

Random Minnesota Sports Things

Derek Boogaard and Mark Parrish with some random chick. I took this at the Summer Bash.

We in Minnesota, have always know that Mark Parrish is awesome. Others found out since he started playing in the NHL. Now, he is adding to his awesomeness by supporting a charity in Minnesota to help disabled and diseased children. I meant to get the word out about this earlier, but I got swamped with leaving for Oregon. The actual event for this year is over, but it sounds like there will be more events and money raising to come. It's a good cause.

http://21forkids.blogspot.com/

The Minnesota Wild has a presence at the Minnesota State Fair again this year. Details can be found at the official website, or at the link below. The fair ends on Labour Day, so be sure to make plans soon! While you are there, we boast many fine foods on a stick. I recommend trying them. Also, go to the corn on the cob stand. Get an ear, and eat it while standing in line for another . Repeat as necessary.
http://wild.nhl.com/team/app/?service=page&page=NewsPage&articleid=336075

The Wild have jumped on the bandwagon and are getting new sweaters also. No clue what they will look like, I only know that they will be red. I really don't think they should ditch the green, but apparently they seem to think that Minnesotans prefer the red sweaters. Whatever. It gave me the excuse I needed to beg for (and recieve) a green Parrish sweater.
http://wild.nhl.com/team/app/?service=page&page=NewsPage&articleid=336244

So the Twins apparently don't want to make the playoffs this season, or at least that's what they are telling me. They are 9 games back from Cleveland, and 5.5 games back from Detroit. Furthermore they are 7.5 games back in the AL Wildcard race behind Detroit, Seattle, and NY (Yankees). I haven't given up on them yet, but I'm really not pleased by what I see. I strongly suspect I'm not the only one in fits about their inability to step it up when both Detroit and Cleveland slumped. We cannot rely only on 2-3 people to always step up. Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer both slumped at the same time, and at a fairly bad time down the stretch. I can't really harrass them too much, since both are young players and will hopefully get things figured out. Torii Hunter should have spent less time yapping and more time in batting practice or talking with hitting coach Joe Vavra, because he has been pretty average this season missing important catches and striking out. TR should have traded him while he had the chance.

Update:

My parents got their season tickets today and they got to see what the new sweaters look like. This blogger has a picture of the coupon up.

http://nhllogos.blogspot.com/

CapsChick's Challenge

So CapsChick posted this on HLOG as an impromptu challenge( and everyone knows I can't resist a challenge...), so I've decided to come up with my own version.



Best one-on-one offensive player: Hard to say for me. Lecavalier strikes me as a solid choice, but so does Joe Sakic. Dude can let his wrister go at any time, he's a great passer, good skater, and if I were a goalie, he is one of the last people I'd ever want to see skating towards me. For this round I'm going to take the crafty veteran over the flashy (sort of) young gun.



Best one-on-one defenceman: Niedermayer with a nod to Lidstrom. Nieds can puckhandle, he can pass, shoot, and if worse comes to worse, he can just plain out-skate your ass.



Assist Man: I will also say Joe Thornton (if only he could step it up at key times like the Olympics, I'd be a happy, happy camper). Andrew Brunette is also a good wingman to have, since he gets and keeps the puck at any cost, but Thornton is currently hard to deny.



Best Pure Goal Scorer: I've heard good things about AO, but I haven't seen him play extensive amounts outside of the WJC, so I'm picking Lecavalier.

Power Play Specialist: Sheldon Souray perhaps? Does he ever score even strength goals? At any rate, he's definitely not my pick for the best one-on-one defenceman. Jarret Stoll was also good on the PP for the Oilers.

Shorthanded Specialist: At one point in time Wes Walz was the SH goal king for the Wild, but sadly no longer. (he had seven or eight one season. *sigh*) I gotta give props to Jordan Staal, cause I looked it up on TSN, and it appears that he had the most shorthanded goals in the league. Due to the stupid NHL schedule I have not really had the chance to see him play much, but those stats aren't lying to me.

Need One Save: Martin Brodeur had kind of a crappy season by his standards, but Marty Turco was the man. Props also to my boy Backstrom since the Wild weren't scoring goals, he was making awesome saves and keeping us in games.

The Guy You've Never Heard Of: I don't know, maybe he has become more famous now, but Pierre-Marc Bouchard is awesome, and usually flies under the radar. In 2006, he made the long list for the Team Canada roster in Torino. The Great One has mentioned him on several occasions, and PMB has even drawn a comparison to him. Mikko Koivu is also a guy most people haven't heard of, but he's really making a name for himself. Awesome.

Biggest Impact on a New Team: Sup Scotty? Scott Niedermayer is my pick, because I refuse to acknowledge the existence of FCP. Niedermayer proved that he really is all that, which had quite unfortunate results for both my western conference teams.

When It Gets Chippy: Derek Boogaard. He's massive, can break people's faces in one punch, skates decently for a huge dude, and wouldn't you knock it off if he gave you a warning glare?

Coach For a Must-Win Game: Gotta agree with CapsChick here. There is no one better than Scotty Bowman. He is abosolutely amazing. I have to say, though, I'm pretty happy with Jacques Lemaire as a coach. He does pretty good things with what he's been given. 2003 playoff run anyone?

Get Under Your Skin Guy: Sean Avery is a pain, but I would imagine Raffi Torres and Chris Neil also qualify. FCP gets under my skin, but I don't know if that counts.

The Home Crowd: The Leafs and Habs both have awesome crowds. I like to think MN fans are that awesome, but in reality they probably aren't.

Most Overrated Player: Can I say Sidney Crosby just because I'm sick of hearing about him? In reality Briere totally gets my vote, and I can't wait until Flyers fans figure this out.

Most Underrated Player: Rob Niedermayer got consideration for this, but he finally got the props he deserves this spring. Mikko Koivu is another one that is finally starting to step out of Big Brother's shadow. Jarret Stoll is another one who is very talented, just doesn't really get the love outside of Edmonton. Being injured doesn't really help that.

Worst Area to Play in as a Visitor: Philly would suck, but I would imagine that all those Habs and Leafs fans could be pretty intimidating also. Canucks are only the worst if you are a visiting fan during the playoffs. They throw things...

Worst Area to Play in as the Home Team: I would think anywhere down south where there are more people in visiting sweaters than home ones. Very demoralizing. Philly too. Rough city.

Project Runway: Are we talking modeling the stuff or designing it? Those would be two differenct answers.

It's About Time I Got My Act Together

Due to the fact that I'm now a HLOGer, I decided that this was the motivation I needed to finally get my own blog up and going.

Naturally mostly hockey will be covered, but in the summertime the Twins will definitely sneak their way into my posts. I've noticed that there don't seem to be many Wild blogs out there, so I'm adding one.