Baby Hockey Jesus 2; Sidney Crosby 0

I wonder if this is the Untypical Girls at work. In their original post about Baby Hockey Jesus, Sidney Crosby was the sacrifice. I'm thinking that this is Baby Hockey Jesus collecting on that offering. Thank you Baby Hockey Jesus for your brilliant timing.

Meanwhile over at No Pun Intended, Elly is attempting to make herself feel better with Knob Hockey and alcohol, and I'm sure Steph is off somewhere gloating about the 2-0 lead and the fact that the Twins got owned 19-3 over the weekend. I really, really don't want to talk about it, Steph. The game tonight will be telling. If the Pens lose at home, they are screwed. Obvi, right? If they can't win on the road, and they can't win at home, I guess they would not win anywhere and therefore get swept, but sometimes I need to lay things out so that I can understand.

In keeping with my theme, right now it seems to be Baseball Gods Five bajillion; Minnesota Twins -.500

The Twins fans are complaining about a lack of power, but I really think they need to be complaining about the fact that our bullpen kind of sucks, and so does the fielding of certain players. *coughyoungcough* Other stupid people are complaining about the fact that Justin Morneau isn't playing as well as he should be, but really, he's been hitting pretty consistantly, getting plenty of RBIs, and he seems to be pretty capable of catching the ball. On top of that, he is not arbitrarily deciding when he will and will not play. Gomez, I've got news for you amigo, you are a rookie and in hot water for some of your fielding decisions. You should not be trying to tell Ron Gardenhire what you feel like doing, because judging by his umpire wars, he's not afraid to tell you what HE feels like doing. Think Red Foreman.

Joe Mauer may not be playing long ball (I wonder if that will hurt his fan club, as the ladies love the long ball), but he's getting on base, and in these times of barely .500 baseball, every little bit helps. That being said, he does not have ANY homeruns this season, and even Everett has one. Really, Joe? I have often wondered why Gardy doesn't have him hitting 1 or 2 instead of 3, but like I said before, I don't think it's wise to tell him how to run his baseball club/he knows more about baseball than I ever will. Cuddyer is doing the best he can, and I admit, he's had some struggles at the plate with just one homerun, but he's been making up for it on the field, and seems to be providing veteran leadership in the clubhouse and helping to keep things loose and fun. Besides, he has not run into a wall and broken his throwing hand, nor has he made an error in judgement that cause the opposing team to tie up the game in the 9th inning when the game was 3-0. I'm looking at you Gomez and Young.

We have a completely different infield for the most part, and I think they are still doing some shuffling around trying to see who fits best where. The fact that they are all getting injured is really hurting the team. The AAA club was getting really annoyed with the fact that they had no players left in the infield because the Twins had called them all up.

Lastly, the bullpen has not been stellar. Jesse Crain has been brutal this season, and I freak out every time he is put in the game, especially since he has been in towards the end of the game a lot. This does not give the team time to recover from him WALKING IN RUNS, SOMETIMES MULTIPLE RUNS IN AN INNING. Juan Rincon is totally off his game this season, though he's not anywhere near as bad as Jesse Crain. I only cringe a little bit when he's put in. I usually figure we just lost the game when Crain is put in. Joe Nathan was mad at Delmon Young last night, but he gave up a bunch of hits to allow all of those people on the bases, so he should be more forgiving and doing some apologizing of his own to Mr. Nick Blackburn. Blackburn has been pretty good for us this year, and he pitched really well for 8 and 1/3 innings last night. Mega shout-out to him, even if he does look alarmingly like Joe Mauer when he has a ball cap on.

If you made it all the way through that post that you thought was about hockey but was really about baseball, good job, and Go Twins!

Dear Baby Hockey Jesus,

I have come to you in my hour of need. If necessary, I will lay out the proper sacrifices like the Untypical Girls outlined, but I don't have time tonight. The things I would like from you are simple things indeed, and I will give you a whole list to choose from, but I would be happy with just one of them.

-Please make Chris Simon go away
-Smite Skoula
-let the Wild score goals. Lots of them.
-Help us regain our division lead
-If not the division lead, I'd settle for making the playoffs
-Don't make us play Anaheim in the playoffs, even if Sleek says we are due to win
-Make Jarome Iginla get some embarassing injury before we play them next.
-Let Forsberg screw up the Avs chemistry so they are not as good as I fear they will be.

Thank you Baby Hockey Jesus for letting us keep Pierre Marc Bouchard, and thank you to the Untypical Girls for the inspiration for this post.

Feel free to add onto this list of things to ask Baby Hockey Jesus for, because I'm sure that no matter who you are a fan of right now, there is something about today that makes you unhappy. Unless you are a fan of the Penguins, and in which case, I hate you a little bit.

I'm too irritated about life to do a pre-game for the next game. We play Tampa Bay tomorrow. They no longer have Richards, they have half the Dallas Stars instead. Lecavalier plays for them. That is all.

***EDIT*** I got a mention on Deadspin, and not in a bad way! See it here http://deadspin.com/361314/maybe-pittsburgh-didnt-get-bitch+slapped-after-all
Thanks to Loser Domi for pointing it out!

@#$*&)(!!!

Ugh. I missed most of the Canucks game yesterday, but Elise informed me that I didn't miss much. I watched part of the Chicago game tonight, and I have to say, I'm pretty pissed that we lost to the Blackhawks. We have an excellent record against them, partially helped by the fact that they have really sucked in recent years. This is a much improved version of the Blackhawks, but a 3-0 loss is unacceptable. Especially since goaltending was the one area that I am actually owning this week in fantasy hockey. Step it up! I expect you guys to be better than this! You are leading the division in an extremely tough division, holding onto that lead will require some effort! PLAYOFF HUNT! Do those words mean anything? They had better, because when I get home in May, there will be hell to pay if there is no Wild hockey for me to watch.

Now then, on to happier things.
Congrats to Mark Parrish and his wife on the birth of their daughter!
Did anyone see the Habs game yesterday? It was totally sick. They came back from a five goal deficit to win. That's the largest comeback in all of the Habs' storied history. I was SUPER stoked that I chose to spend a little of my precious bandwidth watching them beat the icky Rangers.
Joe Sakic had his first full practice today! I'm so excited for him to come back.
I got an amazing holiday card in the mail today from my HLOG sister Tracy. It has a GIANT Joe Sakic trading card on the cover and shiny, silver stars. I love it! Thanks, Tracy!

Up Next: Calgary. I really dislike Calgary, but they have a couple of awesome fans in HG and Leanne over at Double d(ion) and Open.Ice. Hits., respectively. We need to beat them! This is one of the teams that is creeping up on us in the standings, and we've had trouble against them all season. Someone needs to be assigned to Iginla...hit, kill! Something, anything.

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.

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

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!