Random info day =p

In hockey news....

Well, I can say for sure that was the least amount of fun I've had "watching" the NHL awards thing. I blame CBC for airing the thing an hour after it started. So I already knew who won via twitter before hand. Whoever was responsible for that messup should be waterbottled. Just saying. Also I predicted this over at A View From the Cheap Seats:

Hart - I’ll say Malkin… But I’d like to see Ovie get it. Obviously.

Pearson - Ovie! Ovie! Ovie!

Norris - Chara…..*sigh* (my Markov should be there)

Calder - Mason

Vezina - Thomas *sighs some more*

Adams - it should be Andy Murray but Julien is walking out with it *sighs even more*

Selke - Datsyuk although I’d take Richards winning the thing….

Lady Byng - Shorty Marty…. poor guy

......And was only wrong twice. In all honesty, I didn't actually see Shorty Marty getting the Byng thing over Turnip because... well, it's Turnip here (lesson learned: don't go against your gut feeling in this case). Not sure why I went with Eggplant over Ovie for the Hart though... That was just stupid. Probably to set myself up in the weird event that he actually did win it. So all in all, I was bored and annoyed with this whole thing last night. Mind you...some nice pictures came out of it.... I'm a sucker for pictures....ANYWAY... Congrats to Ovie for winning the Hart thingy and the Pearson thing and we already knew you were walking out with the Maurice Richard thing (how about we work on the assists and/or goals for next year so you can get the Ross again? *G*). And congrats to everyone else too (and someone please tell Chara that it's okay to deliver a short speech in the event that he wins something next time. I know the guy doesn't do anything short but really... I almost fell asleep!).

Two random things about the awards:

1. I loved Ovie's "it's too hot to touch" thing when he got the Hart
2. "I could really use two Stanley Cup rings to block out Roenick..." <-- Number31 last night on Twitter while Roenick was attempting to talk last night. She is a genius.

Not too much in the way of rumors in general and pretty much nada about the Habs. I'm not sure if I should be worried that there's nothing coming out of Habsland or if I should just be thankful that I don't have to think about insane rumors. The closest thing to a rumor I've heard from Habsland is that they're close to coming to a deal with Komi and there appears to be a big chance that Koivu's headed to the Wild. Meh. Heard that one about Koivu. Let me know if it actually happens (which I hope it doesn't).

The only other interesting thing I've heard is that those creepy Sedin twins want matching 12 year contracts worth 63 million.... Not that I care about where they end up or anything, but to me, 12 years is a long time and unless you front load the contract, you could end up with a b*tch of a time trying to get rid of them if you don't want them down the road.... I get that players want the security but as a GM, I'd be hesitant to do it.

In tennis news....

The biggest news is whether or not Rafa will be playing in Wimby on Monday. Apparently his knees are still acting up. I'm a bit torn on this. I'm ready to believe that Rafa is indeed in a lot of pain. I'm not making light of his injuries. I just wonder how it is that he didn't appear to be playing with a lot of pain a the French Open, still lost, and now we're hearing about this? Maybe he really was in pain throughout the French Open. Maybe it started afterwords. It's entirely possible. Honestly, I almost hope that he really is in pain and this isn't an attempt at trying to 1) soften the blow of his Roland Garros loss and 2) lessen the expectations for Wimbledon. I've heard before that Rafa is supposedly injured and then he plays and blows everyone out of the water for the most part. All this being said, I want Rafa to recover and play. I want him and Roger to play in the finals the way it's been for the past.... however many years *g* It wouldn't be a Wimby final without Rafa and Roger. I don't want Muzz and Roger. I don't want Nole and Roger. And I definitely do NOT want Muzz and Nole. GIMME A ROGER VS RAFA FINAL!

EDIT: He pulled out. *sighs* no Rafa. Messed up draw now.... I'm not very pleased with this. Not at all.

And in football/soccer and yes, baseball news....

I hate Toronto. I hate Toronto. I hate Toronto. I hate Toronto. I hate Toronto. I hate Toronto. I hate Toronto.

Today in "things that annoy EP"... Crosby vs. Ovie

More Crosby vs Ovechkin stuff. I'm getting tired of this, which is why I've gotten around to writing this after three failed attempts.

You'd think that I'd like this stuff. I'm a Habs fan who was a Penguins fan who turned into a Capitals fan. At no point was I ever a big Crosby fan, although I did turn into a huge Ovechkin fan. But honestly, all this stuff is annoying. And it's quite pointless.

I understand why Crosby has turned into public enemy no. 1 for just about everyone who doesn't live in Pittsburgh. He has been hyped and hyped and shoved down our throats since before day one of his NHL career. That type of hype easily drives people batty and there will invariably be a backlash. Maybe because of all the hype and the handling he's gone through, Crosby comes off as having about as much emotion as a cardboard box. He's been told what to do and how to do it for a very long time and it seems as though nothing he says or does is very original. I'm not saying that he's like in that in reality, but he comes off that way. Talented as he may be (and all you Crosby haters, let's face it, he is indeed talented), he's not very fun to watch on most days.

Sadly for Crosby, there so just happens to be a very talented and very flashy Russian who came along at the same time as him. Think of it as a Federer and Nadal thing if you want to compare it to tennis. On the one hand we've got the very talented but boring superstars and on the other, we have the very talented but definitelty not boring superstars. It's a bit of a no brainer as to who everyone will gravitate to. Ovechkin is everything that Crosby isn't in terms of personality. He's this huge ball of emotion that just bursts out. He comes off way more genuine and way less manufactured. When he celebrates his goals or the goals of his teamates, you can't help but get excited for them. You're drawn in. When Ovechkin was told that some people were comparing him to Maurice Richard he said that he just wants to be himself. He's not trying to be anyone else.

So we have two guys who are both incredibly talented. Why on earth do I have to wake up every morning to "Crosby vs Ovie round 1234567865"? Oh wait. I know. It's the big bad hype machine again. The hype machine doesn't allow for two talented guys to inhabit the same league without there being some friction between them. When the Ovechkin/Malkin "feud" went poof, the media had to go and hype up something else to death. Oh hey, why not Crosby and Ovechkin? Now, we can't exactly go blaming the media only. The media is only doing it's job: the sell a story, however stupid, wrong, or unfounded it may be. People enjoy wild and stupid stories.

Ignoring the media hype for a second, I do believe there are a few reasons why the average fan has trouble accepting both of them at the same time. First is that they have vastly different personalities. Because they're so different and they're teams play in such a different way, it's hard to like both of them. Second, is nationality. For Canadians, anyway, I think there's people who feel threatened by Ovechkin and the fact that he's from Europe. It goes to that whole anti-Euro sentiments that I keep complaining about. I'm not sure that we'd be seeing the same type of hype if they were both from the same country. It's possible (they did manage to hype up Ovechkin vs Malkin) but I'm not sure it'd be the same. I think Penguins fans just feel threatened period. Crosby has been hyped up to be the savior of the NHL and of the Pittsburgh Penguins and to suddenly have people accusing him of being boring and whiny while this other guy goes around earning all this praise for being entertaining, isn't too nice.

But really, despite of all that, I still don't get why it has to be one or the other. If you don't like one of them, fine, but why go into a long tirade about the other one? Good natured bashing is fine. But a lot of what I see, isn't good natured in the least. It's often quite (unintentionally) silly and the premises for bashing the other one is often stupid. "Crosby's whiny so therefore he sucks". "Ovechkin shows off so he sucks". That's really not much of an argument and it's not really true. Both are very talented players and both don't really deserve half the bashing that they've gotten. If the hype machines would just go dive off a cliff, I think I could take a lot of it better, but it's very annoying to wake up every morning and see "Crosby thinks Ovie's a showboat" or "Ovie tries to kill Crosby on the ice!" or "Crosby vs Ovie: the feud continues"...Like it or lump it, they're both talented players and they're not going anywhere.

Crosby's killing my love for the Pens

bwahahaha.....

I'm serious. He's the single reason why I'm not liking them anymore....*sniffles* Ovie just decimated the Pens and Sid was so grumpy and immature about it. He got all upset because Ovie gave him a little push and he freaked out. And then he started whining about it after the game...Bah... I felt so bad for Fleury because he was quite frankly awful and he could have used a little more help (yes, Pens that means you stop beating up on Ovie and start trying to keep the rest of the Caps from scoring!)It wasn't that Theodore was better by the bucket load or anything. He was just lucky that the Caps played a lot better defense and were mowing down everything in their path while they were on the offense. On the other hand, having Garon and Theodore out there at the same time was funny because they both played together here in Montreal (anyone else want our ex-goalies?!)...Fun game to watch anyway.




I like youtube.

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...

This should be interesting...........or not....

Tonight's game between the Washington Capitals and the Habs should prove interesting. Not because both are particularly wonderful right now - if the Habs come out and win three good games in a row then I will say that they are doing well - but because I want to see who can cope the best with having a pile of their players out with injuries. Apparently the Capitals have around nine players out while the Habs could have up to three out. Tanguay is most likely out after getting flattened by Brad Stuart in Detroit, and Kovalev and Josh Gorges could be out as well. No idea what happened to Kovalev but Gorges' knee took a beating trying to stop a shot by Lidstrom.

The one huge problem I see with tonight for the Habs is Ovechkin. The guy has finally woken up and decided that he would like to go back to scoring a pile of goals again. While this is great news if you're a Caps fan, this is of course really bad news for the Habs who need to show that they can play more than one period of good offense. The Habs need to get scoring, and get scoring early, and defintely keep Ovechkin from getting anywhere near the net - although even that isn't a guarantee that he won't score. While I understand the need to put Halak in goals sometimes, I can't help but feel that perhaps this isn't the game to put him in. Why couldn't he have played against the Islanders? And then again against Buffalo? We really could use someone who is really good in nets and I"m not saying that Halak isn't good but there is a reason why Halak is the backup goalie...... Oh well. Let's hope everyone but Ovechkin turns in a great performance.

In other random useless news: I got bored last night so I watched Ottawa play Toronto. Yes, I did. I only caught the last period (like I'm really going to sit through a full 60 mins of that?!) but it was really boring. There is a good reason why both teams are near the bottom. At the time they were 25 and 27 I believe and they played like it. On the NHL website they were saying that the lack of scoring (after both scored in the first 5 mins of the game no one scored again until the shootouts) was due to the good goaltending. I saw a few good saves - especially from Toskala - but I mostly saw two teams that forgot how to hit the puck into the net. There was quite a bit of shots but most of them completely missed the net. I would expect that from Toronto but not from Ottawa's top (only?) offensive line. Oh well. Ottawa won in shootouts which was sad. Heh.

Later... Another first for the season: Habs get blanked 3-0. Is is seriously too much to ask for the Habs to put two consistant games together?!!!! Apparently it is because the offense was no good again tonight. The game looked oddly like the one against Detroit only in reverse. The Caps did a good job of defending and left the Habs' offense not that much room to manoever. That being said, there was some room. There was actually quite a few really good chances in the second period, but the offense could not get it together to put the puck into the back of the net. After the Caps opened up the scoring in the first period after a botched up pass by Boullion near the Habs's net, there was more scoring until the third period when Ovechkin and.... someone else scored - I was attempting to read something in Russian and kind of missed the goal. I was fully expecting the Caps to score at least that many goals but I was not exactly expecting the Habs to not score....

The good - Ovechkin was actually terrible tonight. I honestly thought he would be better tonight but he was limited to one goal in the third period. He missed so many chances it wasn't even funny. Well, actually, it was amusing for me, but yeah.... Considering it's Ovechkin, it was sad.

The bad - The score makes Halak look bad which is completely unfair for him. For some reason everytime he is in nets, the Habs go off and die, making Halak look bad. Halak was the team tonight. Again. I was surprised at how well he did tonight - yeah, okay, so I underestimate him all the time. I'm working on it. He did very well. No beating up on Halak. Oh and speaking of goalies, I don't believe for one second that Theodore should have been given the first star tonight either. He can thank the defense of his team and the stupid Habs for the shutout.

The downright ugly - The Habs' offense. They are obviously very capable of doing well so what's the problem here? I have no idea but something has to be done to get these overpaid guys to work consistantly. Right now I see a team that only comes out and plays well after they've lost a few in a row and the fans and the media starts getting tough on them. So either we have to diss the Habs continually or someone needs to take charge of the team and get them motivated to come out and win because *they* want to do well, not because the fans want them to do well.

The sad part - In essence, the Habs were playing a team that was made of a lot of AHL players with the Caps having to call up a pile of players last night.

The annoying - It's AW-vech-kin!!!!!! AW!!!