And they wonder why I hate Christmas sometimes

Yes, the off-season has really ground to a halt right now (or rather my brain has simply refused to come up with a half decent post about Team Canada). So we're stuck with this crap.

Thanks to Capitals Kremlin for this one.

Yes, that's Crysob the Christmas tree ornament. Yes, I almost just puked.

World peace must be on it's way

(What the hell is that kid doing in a LEAFS shirt?)

I can't read a word of this , but it's quite clear that Sergei has made up with Grabs.

Umm.... EXCUSE ME? I very nearly spit out my wonderful cup of tea at this news.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING? DAMNIT SERGEI YOU JUST COMPLETELY RUINED MY FUN. COMPLETELY. PLUS GRABS STILL NEEDS A GOOD WHACK UPSIDE THE HEAD FOR HURTING MARKOV.

Thank you to the epic twerps who wanted this epic peace deal so they actually run an Olympic team (not that any of it will help you out).

I think I am going to go kick my Grabs voodoo doll around seeing as our dear Sergei has decided not to.

Clearly I haven't taken to this "new team"...

Okay so I went looking for some stuff on youtube of our new team members. You know, in an effort to get to know more about them.

First up on the youtube search list was Scott Gomez.

I ended up with this video:



Me: YAY KOIVU SMACKED GOMEZ! HAHAHAHA!

Little voice inside my head: You know we have Gomez now?

Me: Oh crap....GO KOIVU GO! YAY!

Next up was Cammalleri. After mispelling his name half a dozen times (whaddya mean the Habs didn't sign an octopus?), I finally found this:



Me: ummm.....

Little voice inside my head: I wonder if he still keeps golf clubs in his room in case someone decides to rob him... Oh maybe he'll invite Havlavt over and make him eat those fake plastic limes and then whack him upside the head with a golf club! HAHAHAHAHA....

Spacek's turn came next.



Me: Ow..... I wonder if there was permanent brain damage there?

Little voice: I WANT A GOALIE FIGHT! SMASHY SMASHY SMASHY!

And Hal Gill!



Me: oh.my.god.

Little voice: Yeah, I'm sure Crysob will have a thing or two to say about that! He wants his own snuggy! GIVE THE CRYSOB HIS OWN SNUGGY DAMNIT!!!

Umm yeah *goes back to looking for something better*

Random Monday

Because it's high time we had a day filled with randomness!

EP gets her first taste of hockey

Okay, okay so it was street hockey. BUT STILL.

• It was probably the first time I got to hold a real hockey stick
• I didn't suck at shooting too much
• Yes, I played goalie most of the time
• No, I had no pads
• Yes, the substitute puck (aka a orange ball) kinda hurt
• Yes, I let in about 4 goals
• I played "forward" for a bit
• Yes, I scored
• Yes, I had my Ovie shirt on
• YES, I did the flaming stick of doom thing when I scored "game winner" (it was first team up to 10 goals wins *G*)
• oh and yes, I did say "I win" and walked away (it was okay. I was playing with my sister and her friends)
• I wanna play more now

I wouldn't be mentioing this if it wasn't the middle of the offseason and my poor blog wasn't waiting for me to write something. But yeah. Hockey is fun =)

Metro who?

Umm yeah, in all this "OMFG OUR TEAM JUST GOT BLOWN UP" stuff, we forget who IS staying. And Metro is one of the guys staying (right, Bob?!). Dennis Kane reposted this article about Metro on his blog.. I remember reading a similiar thing in some Habs magazine. If you haven't heard about Metro's life before he ended up in the NHL, go read it. If you have, then you know why I like this guy.

Avtsin doesn't want to be Ovie #2.

Found this interview about our recently acquired Russian.

So you feel like you can’t go anywhere with these Ovechkin comparisons. And in Russia in these days only title that Avtsin wants to be like Ovechkin…

It’s pleasant from a certain point of view. But imagine how much I have to work to get to his level. His level is like that (points a hand to his head), while mine is like that (points the other hand to the ground). And anyway I don’t want to be like him. Ovechkin is Ovechkin, and I have to be not Ovechkin, but Avtsin.

Butbutbutbutbut... Fine. You be yourself. Just make sure you get yourself over here to play!

Speaking of Ovie....

Saw this interview with the party animal. I'm pretty sure there's something slightly off with this translation but I just laughed anyway for no reason.

Evgeni Malkin in an interview said that he was going to seriously improve his English because, in his view, his communication with the journalists was not enough to get him the Hart Trophy. How would you look at it?

If someone believes that Hart Trophy is given only for communicating with the journalists, they can even start learning Chinese if they think it would help.

I can almost picture this.... the thing with Chinese is that if you put the wrong inflection on a word, then you could end up calling your mother a horse by accident.... Could you imagine the type of fail that could come out of an interview with Eggplant speaking Chinese in it? Oh the possibilities!

And... this may be an epic time waster but it's still epically fun:

Thanks to puckdaddy (link is in the sidebar) for alerting me to this place where you can design your own hockey jersey. Here's my first attempt:

I would've written "Pufffles Smashing" but it wouldn't let me... =(

Congrats to Roger and Mirka!

LOOK!

I have some exciting news to share with you: Late last night, in Switzerland, Mirka and I became proud parents of twin girls! We named them Myla Rose and Charlene Riva and they are both healthy and along with their mother, they are doing great. This is the best day of our lives!

Three thoughts:

1. TWIN GIRLS?! I thought it was just one!
2. I guess this means he's skipping Montreal....
3. How long before one of them wins Wimby?

Squeaky Marty to the ISLANDERS?

Damn. I was SO hoping he'd go back to the Flyers so I could continue to make fun of him as a Flyer. BOO! This sucks. Now I'll just have to make fun of him as an Islander instead. Which won't be half as fun. He made such a great duo with Itty Bitty. Oh well...

My favorite Squeaky Marty fail. Which actually wasn't my favorite because it was against the Pens....but it was still....it WOULD have been hilariously stupid if it had been against any other team:



Altogether now: "Failtender!"

Turtle-Pleky is coming back!

Yuppers. He's back for another year!

Make it count, pwease?

And here go the "trade Jaro" rumors again....

Yesterday, the Canadiens signed former Canuck, Curtis Sanford to a year contract with a cap hit of $600,000. Suddenly this turned into a "Gainey wants to trade for some 2nd line center and he'll use Halak in the trade". HUH? I admit that I didn't get this one at first. Not because I wanted to believe that Gainey sign Halak for the rest of his career but because it doesn't make sense to me...

Because I feel like arguing and am enjoying sitting on my deck much too much... You get a boring stupid argument for why Sanford won't/shouldn't be Price's backup:

1. The Bulldogs need another goalie. According to this article in the Spec, Marc Denis is not coming back to the Bulldog's lineup. That leaves the Cedric Desjardins as the main goalie, but right now there's nobody else. From what I understand, none of the goalies from the farm are ready to make the jump to the AHL. So the Bulldogs needed another goalie. Sanford is that goalie.
   
   
2. Halak has played more games in the NHL/AHL in the last two years than Sanford has. But apparently because Sanford has some NHL experience, that means he can easily make the jump to the Habs team and therefore Gainey is trading Halak away. While it's true that Sanford has played more games in the NHL than Halak has (Sanford has 108 to Halak's 54) overall, in the last two years, Sanford has played in 35 games to Halak's 40 (Sanford also played in 16 games in the AHL to Halak's 28 during that span). Halak's stats are also better in his NHL games than Sanford's were.
   
   
3. Sanford is injury prone. What Sanford's numbers also don't say is that he is injury prone. In his first stint with the Blues in 2003, he went down with an ankle injury. He would play 65 games in the 06 and 07 seasons but he went down with an ankle sprain in 06 and had groin issues through 07. He filled in for Luongo (when Luongo was out for an extended period of time) in the past season but ended up suffering back spasms in one game and was eventually placed on IR with another groin injury in December.
   
   
4. Yes, Price could benefit from an experienced goalie.... and yes, Sanford has more experience as a player than Halak does, but Sanford has played mostly in the AHL. Apart from his 65 games over two seasons in 06 and 07 with the Blues, he hasn't had much playing experience in the NHL - which I think is a totally different ballpark in the mental aspect of the game. Sanford is not the goalie they want to help Price with his mental stuff (and if you ask me, that is where Price needs help).
   
   
5. If they trade Halak for a second line center... then what? So they have Price in Montreal. Sanford and Desjardins in Hamilton. If they call up Sanford then they have to go goalie shopping for Desjardins - unless we determine that one of the prospects can make the cut in the AHL. If Sanford is injured or they determine that he won't do well in the NHL, then they either call up Desjardins or go goalie shopping. Either way, unless one of the prospects is ready, they have to go goalie shopping if they trade away Halak.

I'm not saying that Gainey isn't going to trade Halak. I'm not saying that Halak should be Price's backup forever (even though I'd love that). What I am saying is that just because Gainey signed Sanford, it doesn't automatically mean that he going to trade Halak and that Sanford is going to take his place.