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.

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!