If Carbo can be happy we can all be happy, right?

A very interesting probably quite unique thing happened tonight. Guy Carbonneau pulled a strange face. Later experts were to announce that after hours of meticulous research, they had come ot the conclusion that this strange face was indeed what most would define as smiling. Wikipedia says this: "Among humans, it is customarily an expression denoting please, happiness, or amusement". Yes, Carbo was smiling. Almost non-stop too. No, this wasn't one of his "Oh my god, I can't believe we just took another penalty that we don't deserve" smiles. This was definitely one of those "holy cow, this is freaking amazing!" looks. I've never ever seen the guy look so happy. Never. Ever. It was insane.

Anyway.....

I liked the game. I'm sorry. No, wait. I'm not sorry at all. I don't feel any shame in saying that I enjoyed the AllStar Game tonight. I think this city knows how to put on a good show and they did it. This is the only time ever that I can cheer for Alex Ovechkin without feeling guilty. This is the only time too that I will not hate Chara, Kaberle and Carter for playing for my least favorite teams. And this is the only time when I will cheer for Tim Thomas the perky and totally uncolour coordinated goalie. That should be the whole point, people. To see some of the best guys together and just skate around and scoring like there was no goalie in nets.

I mean it about the scoring thing.

Okay, so, this game was obviously going to promise to be a higher scoring game than some of the others that the Habs have been in when they play for real. You think a score of 6-4 and 6-5 is high? How about 12-11? Yeah. The score really did finish 12-11. In a way it's too bad that Price started off the game because I thought things were kind of slow at first. The players were probably still shaking off some serious nerves and the crowd was still trying to figure out the whole cirque eloise thing from the beginning. I would have liked him to be in nets at the end of the game when the crowd was really in it. Oh well, beggars can't be choosers or whatever. The first period ended with a score of 4-2. Goals came from Tkachuk and Marleau for the West while the wonderfully talented Ovechkin, Eric Staal, Kovalev and Markov (who took a pass from Ovechkin) tallied for the East. Modest enough score.

I think Giguere was happy to get out of there but I'm sure he couldn't have been happier than Lundqvist and Backstrom. The players made it very clear that they would do some serious scoring tonight and by the end of the second period the score was 8-8. Ready for it? Take a deep breath. St. Louis and Parise scored first for the East followed by two straight goals for the West from Souray and Boyle. Malkin got a weird one which dribbled past Backstrom while Nash came in put it past Lundqvist. Hejduk and Souray followed up with some more goals. Kovalev got a beautiful breakaway and scored. And Iginla somehow also added to the total and tied up the game at 8-8. Good thing the goalies don't play like that normally.....

So just how high was the score going to be? I was thinking like maybe 20-20 by the end *g* The players sort of decided that maybe they would try a little harder and keep the scoring down. I mean, how many 4 on 1 rushes were there? It was ridiculous by fun nonetheless. Shane Doan decided he didn't want to be left out of the scoring party and put the West ahead for the first time before there was even a minute in the third. Can we say "Thomas, you look horrible in nets the way you flounder around in there?" Heatley added a goal (boooo). Toews added another because like, that would be like, so embarrassing if he didn't score. We then had a 1o minute span of no scoring (*le gasp!*) which wasn't great because the East was losing. St. Louis tied it while Kane got a break away or something and put them ahead again. It was Jay Bouwmeester who finally tied it up and saved the East from total humiliation. There was lots of cheering actually. Everyone wanted to see Les Boys win it.

Just when you thought you'd had enough of the game, it was going to OT. Great. OT was great until the stupid referees called a penalty on... Komisarek. Like hello?! You don't call ANY penalties whatsoever throughout the whole game - mainly 'cause the guys were on their best behavior but really, there was some minor stuff that could have been called - and yet NOW with two and a half minutes left in OT you call a penalty? Give me a break. Amid all the booing, the West couldn't score - how is anyone going to score if Chara just stands in front of the net? He completely blocks it *g* So.....SHOOTOUTS!

Well, I guess in this case it wouldn't be a bad idea. I mean... just get a couple of goals in and it's over. I would like to say that I didn't care who won but that's a lie. I wanted the Habs err I mean, the East, to win it.

First up was Vinny who had been getting cheered all night. Sadly, he was one of he few guys not to score - which was incredibly sad because well, the crowd would have loved him to score - and what does he do? Shoots it right at Luongo. Okay.... Doan is next. I'm not terribly confident in Thomas' shootout abilities. It's tempting to say that the only reason why he's good is because he flails around so much that he's bound to stop something. I was almost surprised that they picked Doan to shoot only because they had so many talented forwards but then again, Doan was the one who routinely got past Thomas yesterday in the elimination shootout thing and he scored tonight. So Doan was probably the West's best hope and.... he doesn't score. Okay. 0-0. Kovy's up next. I was praying that he would get it in because otherwise this could have been a very long night for all of us. No hitting the post like you did in OT, Kovy! And what does he do? He puts it into the back of the net. In spectacular fashion too. YES! Nash is next. And he misses entirely. I predicted that we would see Kovalev (because he really can be good at this), Lacavalier (for crowd pleasing points) and Ovechkin (because he can score any way on any given day) in the shootout and yes, it was Alex the Great who finished off the shootouts. Yay! Game over. Habs err East won!

It was a lot of fun to watch, especially from the second half of the third period on. it looked like a real game from then on - minus the hitting. I don't think there will be another AllStar game quite like this one for a while. Like I said, the Habs put on a show, got to brag a bit about their team and their city and the city - minus a few grumpy writers - loved it.

The good

• The whole thing? I just love the crowd getting excited about this thing. It would have been awesome to be there live.
  
• The crowd booing Gary Bettman. Am I the only one who finds this guy kind of creepy?
  
• The fans

The bad

• Lacavalier not scoring. I mean c'mooooooon.....practically everyone else scored or at least got a point...Okay so Carter, Vanek and Kovalchuk were useless too but nobody cared about them....
  

FEDERER YOU IDIOT!

Seriously man! What was that?!!!! Dropping the first two sets - including getting your serve broke in the very first set - in a horrendous fashion and looking just as horrid in the first four games of the third set.....If I hadn't been so exhausted I would have stayed up all night watching you eke out a five set win. But I missed the rest of the match and had dreams of you losing in straight sets. On a day that saw another of the women's top players fall on the very same court that you were going to play on, and saw another top seeded woman almost fall, I had to ask: Was this court cursed or something? Jankovic lost to Bartoli in straight sets, Safina faced half a dozen (at least) match points against her but fought back from 2-5 to take the third set and the match at 7-5.

And YOU Mr. Federer, looked awful at the start. You dropped serve in the very first game, you got run around like a qualifer, you dropped serve again.... and you magically managed to break serve once but lost the first set anyway. What was going on? You seemed completely out of sorts and then you looked like your brain was getting your way. There seemed nothing wrong with you physically but mentally you were obviously suffering. Your body language showed a guy who upset more with himself than he was with his opponent. I mean, you both had around the same amount of winners but in your case, for every winner you had, you had almost the same amount of unforced errors. Not acceptable from a guy ranked in the top 10 and definitely not acceptable from the former world no 1. And you knew that. Those errors were what were keeping you out of this match at first. They kept replaying your mind and you couldn't focus. You came up with the plays to break serve but then you couldn't hold your own serve. It was awful.

But you pulled out of it because in the end, you knew that you weren't going to go out in the 4th round. You couldn't. There was no way that the papers were going to have the headlines "For the first time since 2004, Federer loses before the semi finals". So you pulled out a win. You deserved it if only because you hung in there mentally. And now I can rest easy for a little bit.


*coughs*

And just because I could Ovechkin's in the breakaway challenge for quite a bit....



You just don't vote against the guy with the hat.... you just dont...

Well, that was interesting

I think I like this All Star thing. It's kind of fun. I wish people - including you guys who write for the papers here - would stop dissing the event. I mean, yeah, it's meaningless. That's the whole darn point of it. It's a meaningless FUN event. Let me say that again. The AllStar thing is a meaningless F-U-N event where most of the best players come together and do meaningless FUN things together in front of an APPRECIATIVE crowd. Look, is it sad that Crosby, Lidstrom and Datsyuk aren't participating? Well, as a non fan of Crosby, I don't care too much. And I couldn't really care too much if the other two aren't here either to be honest. Do I care that the Habs fans stuffed the ballot box? Heck no. If you're going to let the fans vote, you're going to get ballot stuffing. Don't try and tell me that the Pens didn't do it either. Bottom line is: it's supposed to be FUN and the only thing keeping it from being (more) fun is the people who whine about it.

Okay enough complaining.

Okay, so the cold weather outside was absolutely horrid so I didn't bother to lineup and buy tickets to go to all the stuff for the fans downtown (I know, I know. But I figured I wasn't missing too much) but I did get some pictures of the stuff outside- my fingers froze just trying to take the stupid pictures - and I blew some money at the gift shop (which got taken over with AllStars stuff). I couldn't help myself... I'm oddly drawn to the over prized merchandise that the NHL sells..... ANYWAY... the skills thingy was kind of cool to watch. I mean, I wouldn't want to watch them every week or anything but yeah....

My favorite thing was definitely the breakaway challenge. I think St. Louis had a couple of neat moves and I liked Stamkos' last one, and I'll biased and say that I liked Kovalev too, but I have to say that Ovechkin got my vote tonight. I'm sorry, but you don't vote against the guy with the hat, the glasses and two sticks. How can you? You want creativity? That was it. I loved it *g*

I know Price wasn't particularly trying tonight, but I'm hoping that it was mainly because everyone knows that it was a meaningless game and no one cares how many goals he lets in and not because he's ankle is still hurting him..........

I was going to say more but the Fed is about to play at a fairly decent hour here so I'm off to watch him decimate Berdych. In theory...