Canes played better than last night. Staal stepped it up, and the D actually shot rather than passed. Avoid a couple of bad penalties tonight, and it might be a win.
Anyone know what happened to Marty Turco? Is he just sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring? I don’t think he even got a tryout contract with any team this year.
Devils are off the schneide, looking far better against the Hurricanes than they did on opening night, though some of that may be due to the fact that the Canes don’t look like they’re going to be a very good team this year.
PK has been excellent, which is good because they’ve taken an uncharacteristically high number of penalties, but their PP is still not where it needs to be.
On the plus side, I’m happy to start eating crow about Adam Larsson, who I thought should probably have played another year in the SEL, or at least found his North American game in the AHL before being thrown into the fire. It’s early yet, but the kid is already eating big, all-purpose minutes and not looking a bit out of place. If he keeps it up, NJ may have its first Calder winner since Scott Gomez.
I stopped my subscription after last year because I was so tired of most of the games I wanted to watch being blacked out. And I live 3000 miles away from ‘my team’, the games I wanted to watch, so it’s not like they’re all on local broadcasting.
Anyone catch the lazy journalism by Versus (surprise!) last night before/during the Pens/Panthers game?
The talking heads kept going on about the Penguins PK and referring to them as ranked number one in the League at 100%. I was pretty sure there was at least one other team with a 100% PK rate, and a quick search shows that there are actually five other teams with a 100% PK, including the Panthers, the other team playing in the game they were covering!
I can sort of forgive that they omitted that they were technically tied for first place (even though at the time three of the five other teams had killed as many or more penalties), but to completely ignore that the other team playing, even if it was just the lowly Panthers, had the same exact PK% is downright pathetic.
I was quite honestly shocked the Senators pulled a win off last night. The way that team looks I was afraid they’d go 0-82.
Well, if you’re watching Versus, you deserve what you get. They’re a bunch of morons. (Lucky most of our games are on the local cable sports network.) 
BTW, did Versus happen to mention that Sid and Malkin weren’t in the line-up last night? Just in case anyone forgot, you know, I hope they made sure to let people know.
I hope our power-play continues to improve like it has been.
An interesting idea about NHL realignment. Here As soon as the Phoenix situation has been figured out, I’m liking the 8,8,7,7 division idea with the 1-16 teams playing each other in a seeded playoff.
It’s a funny team. Lots of youthful enthusiasm, but not a lot of finish. The forwards definitely haven’t figured out that whole “defence” thing yet, either – the seams in our PK are atrocious. To top it all off, when things start going badly they seem to lose their confidence and then things really go to hell – hence the team being outscored 10-1 in the first two periods so far this season.
On the defence, Gonchar just doesn’t look like an NHL-caliber defenceman anymore, Kuba goes between “serviceable bottom-two guy” to “downright awful”, and Phillips doesn’t look like he can handle top pairing duties anymore. Pity the young defencemen in Ottawa’s lineup, who find themselves covering for their partner’s mistakes more than their partner is covering for theirs. It’s so bad I sometimes wonder if Cowen and Runblad should be shipped off to the AHL just so that they can learn to play defence with a competent partner, relative to the skill level of the opposition.
The Stars found themselves in an amusing bind this week. With no owner, their payroll sits just above the salary cap floor. One of the contracts that they still had on the books was Sean Avery’s – the Rangers picked him up off of re-entry waivers, so the Stars were on the hook for half of his contract. However, now that Avery has been demoted to the minors, not only does his contract come off of the Ranger’s cap hit, he also comes off of the Stars’ cap hit, bringing them below the cap floor. They ended up having to pick up Eric Nystrom to get back over it.
As James Duthie said on TSN, the Avery contract is the gift that keeps on giving for the Stars.
I really hope that the NHL ‘brain trust’ has developed a plan of some sort to take advantage of the looming loss of the NBA season.
twitch twitch
Tomorrow night, the Habs play their third game of the season. The schedule-makers were kind enough to toss in a back-to-back with the Flyers and Bruins later in the month, to make up for the stupid start to the season.
What’s the over/under on some sort of freak injury happening to take yet another player out of the game? Seriously, Campoli spends all of 10 minutes as a Hab and fucks up his hamstring on a bizarre fall when a skate apparently gets stuck in the ice, then Spacek screws up his ribs on the boards, and Cammalleri gets his thigh sliced open by Yanick Weber (in Toronto, naturally, as that’s where freak injuries involving skate blades happen.) They took Blair Betts off waivers, then sent him back because he was already injured. White and Eller have yet to play, Moen just came back (and scored a beauty of a goal in Winnipeg). Don’t even get me started on Markov. sigh
So, sooner or later we might actually get to see this team play, and it might actually one day later this season be with the full Habs roster. Or at least I hope so. I’m tired of watching other teams on TV.
I WANT MY HABS!!!
twitch**twitch #Habswithdrawl
What, you mean Dallas didn’t want Avery back? 
(I was kind of hoping the Rangers would wait until after the Winter Classic to ditch him. I would have LOVED to have seen him in 24/7!)
The NBA isn’t playing? I didn’t notice.
Preliminary “tests” indicate pilot error in the Yaroslavl crash. I think I mentioned here before, that the real cause will likely never be known and the cause will be pinned on the pilots.
I’m still betting on a more sever problem, but I don’t doubt that pilot error may have contributed. It’s easier to blame a dead guy than actually solve systemic problems in the Russian air industry.
Oh mnemosyne. I’m so sorry.
No, wait. I’m not. Do the Flames look good tonight? Or are the Habs just not playing very well?
Oh well, there’s still another period.
Ottawa’s getting plowed like a needy cheerleader. 4-1 Avalanche, and here are the shots on goa early i nthe 3rd:
Colorado: 31
Ottawa: 9
That’s not a typo.
Will the Sens get 60 points this year?
Well, they blew up the team last year for a reason: to begin rebuilding. Did you expect them to make the playoffs this year? It’s going to be a painful two or three years.
A bit of both, really. Kiprusoff was great, Bourque was unreal (and his linemates) but damn the Habs can’t hit an open net to save their lives and there’s no Habs D to speak of. It’s a tired old excuse…and tired old reality…that the Habs are missing a lot of veteran D (Markov, Spacek, Campoli…) and damn did it ever show. Emelin and Diaz just aren’t used to the NHL game, Subban and Weber are basically rookies, and Gill and Gorges are…well, Gill and Gorges (I love these two, but when they are your veteran D, you have a problem). Travis Moen on the top 6 because Cammalleri was out, and Palushaj and Engqvist just aren’t NHL-ready. I’m rather disappointed in Erik Cole; I expect him to spark more than that. I was content with Eller, given as it’s his first game back, and I always love Pacioretty. But…brutal game. Just brutal. Complete lack of discipline to go with the ineptitude didn’t help.
Is it too early in the season for a bag skate?
The one goal they managed to get was awesome though; I’m convinced it wasn’t a fluke bounce, Pacioretty looked up and bounced that puck off the back wall onto Kostitsyn’s stick. Brilliant play. So promising…