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.