Battle of Who Can Fail More

Preee-gaaaame stufffs

• RYAN WHITE is back. I guess this means Poo is going to be back soon? 
• And as Flandersdude said the Hammies are "dreaming of a Ryan White Christmas". Um, actually, he kinda sang it. I say "kinda" because I actually didn't recognize the melody. Hahaha. Poor Flandersdude. He can't sing..... 
• Trrrrotter was sick last night. Guy said he wasn't going to play but then he marched in before the game and said he was playing. So he played. Bwahahaha. 
• Teddy also has a franchise record for the longest shutout streak by a goalie (as opposed to the team). 
• Jeez, Guy, can't you just enjoy the three shutouts? No? I keep forgetting this is the same guy who hates losing. To the point where he hates losing at cards to his little kids. Ah dear..... 

The game 

• well.. it started off bad. The Marlies finished the first period up 2-0. Flandersdude says "we'll replay the  Marlies goals, but it will sound like nails on a chalkboard for the Bulldogs fans". 
• Fighty fighty fighty
• I think the Marlies are way more truculent than the Leafs. If truculent means "cheap hitting everyone". 
• fighty fighty fighty
• White wants to demolish a Marlie! Welcome back to the AHL!
• GLUU! 2-1!
• UGH. Marlie goal. 3-1 
• DAVID! 3-2!
• PA fail in Toronto. They can't run the PA system through the radio hence we can't hear the Marlies guy announcing the Baby Habs goal. 
• WYMAN! 3-3!! 
• Fighty fighty fighty! 
• UUUUUUUUUUUGH. Marlie goal........... 4-3.............*headdesk*
• Ref you suck!
• Omg, NEILSON with a goal? 4-4! HAHAHA. Wow!
• Fighty fighty fighty 
• I'm sure Guy is standing there going "guhhh". 
• ARGH ANOTHER BLEEPING MARLIES GOAL. 
• Flandersdude wonders if it's a battle to see who can lose this game 
• Rrrrrrrrrrrryaaaaaaan Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrusssssel! TIED AGAIN. 
• They keep changing the assists for all the goals..... 
• Fighty fighty fighty
• OT
• I hate Stalberg
• fighty fighty fighty
• Hammies PP fail 
• Trotter hits the crossbar.... 
• @#$%^ Stalberg wins it for the Marlies. I hate this guy. SOMEONE SMASH HIM. BAD GIVEAWAY, HAMMIES. *smashes the Marlies*
• And the stats guys in Toronto fail. BIG TIME. 

The Sean Couturier Show aka the Voltigeurs/Mooski game 

• he had a five point game as the Voltigeurs FINALLY won a game. They should be thanking the Juniors for tiring out Mooksi first. 
• Larabie, Brunelle and Randazzo had the three others for the Voltigeurs. Emond had the lone Mooski goal. 
• Baby Hab Dumont had his requisite penalty of the game (he thinks his home is in the penalty boxes, I swear) and he added a goal and two assists too. 
• Philippe doesn't know how to score anymore D: 

In other news...It's Scrum Night in Canada 

• Leafs got blown out by the Booins. If this trend of getting blown out by a division rival one night only to blow out another division rival the next keeps up, then the Leafs are due to blow out the Sens, who will then blow out the Sabres (who won't be blowing out the Habs again). Highlight of the game: The Czech Bulldozer smashed Komisarek. And here I was fretting over who would take over Looch's job.... Ah.... 
• Welcome back to the NHL, Laviolette. Caps blow out the Flyers 8-2 despite actually being outshot by the Flyers. What. The. Hell?! Anyway, who said the Caps need Ovie to score? Oh and Pie = awesome. 
• Puffles vs Peachhawks was boring as hell from the bit that I saw. I was hoping for a lot more from these two teams. Way too many scrums and either it was the crapp FSN feed coming in via RDS or something but the crowd was SUPER quiet. Boring. 
• Sharks and Flames are fighting already and the game just started... myeh.... 

One does not simply walk into the Bell Centre

.... especially not on the Habs 100th birthday!

Thanks to Number31 for reminding me of that quote from Lord of the Rings. How does that tie in? Why because Viggo Mortensen was there tonight! You know... Aragorn? Doesn't anyone remember when I said he was a Habs fan last year?

Anyway.. pre-game stuff

• Absolutely amazing pre-game stuff. Yeah, yeah, I watch the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, call me whatever you want after I complained last night that I wouldn't do it. It was way better than I thought it was going to be. It was really well done. Habs know how to throw a party. 
• I really loved the bit where they had all the old players coming out for a pre-game skate. Really awesome. I'm forgetting the finer points of the all the ceremonies. Hey, did start... 6 hours ago!
• No Koivu made me sad though.
• It was really great to see Lach and Bouchard's numbers retired. Probably the most touching moment of the entire thing. How cool is it to be like 90 something and have your number retired? SO cool. 
• O'Byrne is a super classy guy. he didn't need to change his number ahead of tonight's game but he did it anyway. 
• I hope they're going to sell that group photo of all the guys on the ice. Like in HUGE poster form. I would buy that.

The Game 

• I think the old guys should show up to every game because the Habs came out flying!
• Pricey with a saaaaaveeee!
• Head Pigeon! I thought it looked Patches got a stick on it, but I guess not. 1-0!
• Hey.. why is there a 5 on 3 for the Booins? I don't get it?
• KILL THE PENALTIES! KILL! 
• OMG they killed it off! 
• Pleky almost has a goal on the Marshmallow. Scrum in front. SQUISHY! 2-0. HELL YEAH. 
• Marshmallow decides to give Squishy a birthday present by coughing up the puck right in front of the net. Squishy scores. 3-0! 
• METRO! Gill gets the assist! Oh yes, that would be TWO ex-Booins who worked together on that goal. Karma, I tell you. No goals for Begin or Ryder. 
• Seriously, didn't Marshmallow have a broken hand? What's wrong with his glove hand? It's all screwey. Oh well. 
• Uhoh... Sergei injured?! Gomer lost his new best friend.... D: 
• Aaaaaaaaandddddddd haaaaaat triiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick for Squishy!!!!!!! 
• We can forget about the rest of the game. The Czech Bulldozer ruined Pricey's shutout, but that was it from the Booins. Oh and the Milk Crate Thrower finished the game for the Booins. Marshmallow had to sit the rest out. 
• Patches is working his butt off tonight. 
• Oh noes! Habs fans at the BC are SINGING. And there's 8 mins left!!!! Shut up! 
• PRICEY! 
• Habs finish off the Booins. WHOOOOOO! 

Please note how I didn't stick it to the Booins fans on twitter. I was a (relatively) gracious winner.

Post game cake handouts! We'll just steal THIS cake from l'antichambre too! 

this is also from Number31. Yes, I'm stealing all of her stuff tonight

• Pricey gets five pieces because we're giving him one for every goal the Habs scored on the other team
• Sqiushy gets three pieces of cake for the hat trick!
• Gorges gets one piece for his great work tonight
• Patches gets one piece for working his butt off
• Sergei gets one because he got hurt
• Metro gets one piece for being Metro. And for scoring on the Booins 
• Head Pigeon gets one piece because he scored
• Marshmallow gets half a muffin because he made my team win. Thanks, Tim!
• Booins get to have the crumbs. If there are any left.

To cap off this great night......

Juniors beat Mooski 2-1 in a shootout. HAH! Last week they lost to Dupod in a shootout and tonight they exacted some revenge. Good job boys =) Although... can someone tell Chouinard that he can't live in the penalty box? I swear he takes at least one penalty a game. It's crazy. But yeah... WHOOOO!

HAMMIES WIN! HAMMIES WIN! And not just win, win. They won via another shutout. This is the first time in franchise history that they've had three consecutive shutouts (c'mon, Guy, you know you want to smile!). Brrrrrock Trotter, PK and uh PK again a had the Hammies three goals. PK's second came short handed when it put it into the empty net. First shorty of the year for the Hammies too. YAAAAAAAAAY! Lots of brawling too. Like, lots of brawling and loads of penalties.

Fail of the game: the ref tried to call a penalty on the Marlies for too many men on the ice only to realize that they had pulled their goalie. He should have called them when they had nearly ten players on the ice.

Best part of the game: Flandersdude ripping the Marlies and the Leafs. In a super polite, super nice sort of way. It was funny. And great.

And the Cyclones won too. Great night for the franchise! :D

Seriously, this must be the first time ALL of my teams have won when playing in the same night.

Leasfail reaches new levels of hilarity

So this interview with Filatov went up on Puck Daddy. I wouldn't be mentioning it at all if it wasn't for the really bizarre and hilarious bit at the end.

He's talking about some pre-draft interviews he did with various NHL clubs.

What question surprised you the most?

"I had interviews with many NHL clubs. But I was surprised when I came into Toronto's office. Their general manager was sitting there. I thought that some regular questions [would be asked]. But he tossed a candy on the table and said ‘If you take it you will be a millionaire, the best hockey player in the world, would win five Stanley Cups and two Olympics. But when you're 30 you will most likely have an accident. If you don't take it, you will live until you're 100, but would be an average player.'"

And what did you do?

"I took the candy..."

And went to that Phoenix interview from this odd one in Toronto?

"I liked Gretzky's questions better."

Uhh seriously? What is this? The Matrix? Hahahahahaha.............

Oh and the Flyers just fired Bub (John Stevens). Oops. And I was SO looking forward to beating the Flyers next week with him  behind the bench. Damnit. What? There's some serious hard feelings from the 08 playoffs....

Happy 100th Habs!

Happy birthday Habs! Despite the negativity surrounding this team right now, it's not everyday that you get to see your team turn 100. Let's just enjoy the.....super long ceremonies tonight. Okay fine. Enjoy some of it, because really... two hours is a looooooong time. Anyway, just have fun and don't jump off a bridge if the Bruins win tonight.

Go Habs Go

(not sure where this pic came from.. it was just floating around my comp)

6-2

At least it's not double digits, right? And at least it's not like the Habs were blanked. 

• I love hate how everyone's reactions towards goals are totally different depending on who's in nets. The defense routinely left the Sabres completely open. It was pretty sad.
  
  
• This whole effort tonight, was sad. I was at least hoping for some effort after that shallacking by the Leafs. But nope.
  
  
• Josh Gorges gets half a chocolate chip muffin for stealing a goal from the Sabres. He gets the other half for scoring a goal. Apparently he wants to stay on pace with Gomer (who had the Habs first goal courtesy of a beautiful pass from Sergei).
  
  
• I wonder if the Molson's are regretting buying back the team? Maybe just a tiny bit?
  
  
• Can we have a better effort tomorrow? Although I doubt it considering their record after sitting through random ceremonies.... Seriously, though, I'm not watching 2 hours of whatever they're going to do. I just won't do it. I've got Hammies and Juniors to follow. 

Speaking of 6-2.... 

The Caps won 6-2 over the Faily Panthers. Why is this great? Well first off, the Caps winning is great. Second, Salak was in nets for four of those goals. You know Salak as the jerk who rubbed the Amerk's win in the faces of the Crunch last week. Remind me to rant about him one day. Right now, I'm just going to sit back and really enjoy this Caps win. 

Oh and the Leafs would have won 6-2 if the Blue Jackets hadn't scored another goal. So they only won 6-3. Ugh. 

THIS is the team that keeps beating up my Juniors?

This team that has THIS record in it's last four games?

Is it just me or does that 10-2 loss really stick out? I think it's the double digits.

Since they beat my Juniors on the 10th of November they have gone 2-6-0-1. Their only wins have come against the worst team in the league and another team that is only three points out of being the second worst team. Two of those losses have come after they've held two goal leads at least once in the game too. Including last night. They had a two goal lead TWICE in the game. Worst bit? The GWG came short handed. Guh.

Remind me why I even follow this fail-team to begin with?

I can't figure my brain out sometimes.... I really can't......

[pssst.... the Moosies did something useful last night as they beat the Amerks 2-1. Thanks Moosies].

WJC selection camp by the numnbers

Because it interests me and I'm trying not to dwell on the fact that  the Habs are rapidly losing players that they drafted...

Random look at the selection camp doodad thing.

36 - the number of players invited to Team Canada's camp
10 - are from the Q (should I be slightly surprised that none of the Voltigeurs are there?)
9 - are prospects of Canadian teams (3 from Edmonton, 2 from Ottawa, 1 each from Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal)
7 - played for Team Canada last year (including Eberle. You know him as the kid who saved Canada's gold medal hopes with 6 seconds left in the third period against Russia)
5 - are LA Kings prospects (drafting high for so many years has it's benefits)
4 - play for Windsor (the most from one team)
4 - aren't drafted yet (yes, including Hall and Seguin)
3 - are born in 1992  (including Seguin)
2 - are Rimouski Oceanic players (boo Mooski)
1 - plays for the Juniors (Jake Allen)
1 - is a Habs prospect (Louis Leblanc)

I believe the Habs have two other prospects in Maxim Trunev and Danny Kristo who could also be playing for their countries.

Byebye Chipper....

[Yeah, like I'm really going to spend time and energy talking about the game last night. I think not. I'll just sob over Chipper leaving instead]

I was going to write something up about Chipper. I was telling some people that I felt incredibly bad for him. I thought he had a solid season last year with the Hammies. I didn't expect him to be kept up here with the Habs. While I was happy that he was going to be given a shot at the NHL, it became pretty clear that he was struggling a lot. I felt bad for him because it's hard to watch any of your guys struggling. I said I fully expected the Habs to waive Chipper once some of the other guys started coming back from injury. I thought at the very least he would be able to go back to Hamilton and get more than 5 minutes of ice time.

Well... clearly the Habs had other ideas.

Chipper is off to Anaheim and the Habs get a fourth round pick in 2011.

*sighs*

I wish Chipper all the best. I hope he gets more than 5 mins of ice time in Anaheim (say "hi" to Koivu for us!). If things don't work out, maybe he can come back to Hamilton? Please?