Quick Round up

A few awesome things and a couple of not so awesome things have happened in the blogosphere lately. I'll start with the not so awesome so as to end on a good note.

James Mirtle is handing in the keys to his blog to work on a new project. Sad day as he was (is) one of the greatest.

An Oilers blogger was kicked out of a game for live blogging during the game. This is explained in more detail over at Covered in Oil, and one of the writers is leaving. We'll miss you, buddy.

In other news, Elise has shown her brilliance once again in my favorite thing in the blogosphere, Tale of the Tape. Go over and check it out!

RudyKelly of the Battle of California made fun of the Avs goaltenders and caused them to lose the game. Note to self, do not make fun of the Avs goaltenders. Though he does speak works of truth when he points out that Mr. Sakic probably really hates their goalies.

If you want to check out the competition for Thursday, I'd recommend heading over to see Heather B. at Top Shelf. She's hilarious and is a Twins fan.

If I get my homework done, I'll do my first game preview of the season.

FCP Part 2?

I've complained enough about this on other people's blogs/cell phones, so it's probably time that I dug out my computer and wrote about it. The Oilers traded Greene and Stoll for Visnovsky, and I'm not pleased. Bro said that Edmonton was not on his list of places to go, and after having FCP bail and screw the team over, I'm extremely wary. Also, I really liked Stoll and Greene. I'm less upset about the acquisition of Brule. 1.) his name is fun to say, 2.) he seems like solid player. Cole I'm kind of indifferent to. The new owner Katz is aggressive indeed. He wants the best team NOW.

The fact that Bruno has been acquired makes me extremely happy. Shepp better start to pick a new number, because I don't know that the Wild faithful would allow him to survive if he didn't give up number 15 to Bruno.

Joe Sakic has not yet made a decision, but I say he should take his time. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

The rest of the trades have been very well analyzed over at TSN, and I won't pretend like I'm as cool as Bob McKenzie. He has a couple of great articles up, and TSN has provided analysis on all the trades and stuff. I'm too tired to post about all of it (this stupid internship is killing me), so I just decided to write a small blurb for now where people can yell at me back for completely trashing the Edmonton/LA trade. A crapload has happened in the past few days, and I'm sure I'll make a better post about it, just not for a bit.

Happy Canada Day to my Canadian peeps! Justin Morneau is currently celebrating in fine style.

In Which the Wild decide to hand over their playoff spot to the Oilers

So the Wild have apparently decided that making the playoffs isn't such a good idea after all. Maybe they'd rather work on their golf games or something. Maybe some of them haven't taken a look outside lately, but it's not exactly good golfing weather. Last night's 5-3 beating at the hands of the Oilers was not pretty. Three goals in something like the first five minutes of the game were enough to get Backstrom yanked, though he was back in the game for the third period.

This team is imploding like nobody's business. I'm all for the Oilers making the playoffs, but preferably not at the Wild's expense.


So yeah, we have to play them again tomorrow, and I will be there. We'll see how that goes, but I'll be there in my Parrish sweater cheering, even if I do like the Oilers. The Oilers are playing some desperate hockey right now, and the Wild should be too.

The Habs clinched a playoff spot last night, but unfortunately the Twins couldn't pull out a win today. Baby Bradke was on the mound for the start, but the Twins' fielding sucked more than the Wild's defence last night.

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.

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.