You know it's a bit of a different Red Wings team when your goal scorers are Kris Newberry, Patrick Eaves and Derek Meech.

I thoroughly enjoyed the game. Caps looked dead for a period and a half but, talking to a couple of fans around- this was their only home game in almost 3 weeks (19 days, I think). The goal being waived off changed the complexion of the game as it took about a minute to go from 3-1 to 2-2.

A couple of thoughts on the Caps
-They're just a ridiculously fun team to watch. Yeah, they have the best player in the game, but that entire line is pretty darn good. They looked bored and tired, but never really out of it. If it had gone to 3-1, tho, I think that mountain might have been really tough to climb.
-Their defense is prone to bouts of stupid. It's hard to say how good they really are as it seems like 2/3rds of the game is spent in the other team's end. It's like an NFL team with a prolific offense where the defense looks like they are better than they are because they're always put in a position to succeed and not on the field that long.
-Wow do they need help in the net. Theodore reminds us all why he got kicked out of Montreal. And Colorado. The shot total that night was something like 40-15 in favor of Washington but the game was tied 3-3 going into OT. And a couple of those goals were soft goals.
-After Theodore gave up soft goal #2 (goal #3), the team went back on its heals the rest of regulation. They were just so worried that if they didn't stay back and help, he couldn't stop a shot from my 5 year old nephew. The Canes knew it too and at that point started throwing stuff from the blue line at him, just to see if he could even stop it... and he almost let one by.
-I love the NHL atmosphere. Again, been to lots of minor league hockey but never the NHL. It reminded me of minor league fans only more energetic and more into the team. Whereas football fans are fat, beer-swilling, semi-belligerent guys who occasionally bring their family to games, hockey fans are the closest things we have to soccer hooligans: fairly lean, even more beer-guzzling, extremely belligerent folks who bring their kids to games to teach them how to kill. Oh, and female hockey fans are some of the coolest people on earth, albeit typically a smidge (or more) crazy.

SI

C'mon...extremely belligerent while NFL fans are only semi-belligerent?? You're kidding, right?? And comparing NHL fans to soccer hooligans...again, you're kidding right??

I was just looking at the Pens-Flyers box score and saw three fights in 16 seconds.

Sak / Suburban - what was going on?

I was listening on the radio and it was just one staged fight after another.

And to think I said that lovingly ;)

SI

On the other end of that long-ago deal that eventually put Eaves in Detroit, Carolina sent Aaron Ward through waivers. Yeah, that deal worked out well....

I admit taking the stupid pill on this one...we didn't have a puck-stopping d-man last year and I thought someone like Ward, who was pretty solid for us in '06, would be what we needed. Then we traded to get him back, so I thought problem solved. Well, it's been three years and Ward also had Chara on the other side last year. Evidently those two facts conspired to deliver to us an old, slow d-man who's got an Arctic level of +/- so far--not Rod Brind'Amour bad, but still.

Man the Flyers suck.

Rumors are flying that Carter is banging Hartnell's wife.

LOL

This is shades of 80's Leafs when Leeman was banging Iafrates wife.

Again, the theory that hockey players score the best girls is proven.

The most impressive thing about this, to me, is that he matter-of-factly said before the season that his goal was to elevate his game to elite status. Then, he just went ahead and did it.

And the fact that he's dominating at almost the exact same size as me [6'1" 175] really blows me away.

:)

I concur.

If this is true, Tiger Woods could learn a thing or two from Jeff Carter about standards.

Is Hartnell related to Carrot Top?

Yeap. I never quite saw him as an elite goalie, but he proving me wrong. I just hope they don't wear him down (with the Olympics as well).

or, still in Philly when rumors were that BrindAmour was traded after he found out Lindros was banging his wife

Does Philly not have an ample supply of women?

Ugh...Sabres lost 2-0 to Sens tonight. They need to get the PP figured out.

Is it requirement to show Carrie Underwood every time she is at the game?

Can you really blame her in that case? Rod is UGLY.

Sens still have our number.

Some of our "top flight" guys better damn well start playing like top flight guys.

You for forgot the "F" in FUGLY. :)

The correct answers were Circus Ugly, or Ricci Ugly

.

They just seem tired. Of course, I saw some of the players good food sickness the night before in an Ottawa Steakhouse.

The NHL needs to end the instigator penalty. The cheap hits across the league is getting pathetic. I know the Rangers coach is being more vocal about it. Of course, Bettman and his cronies can't figure out 2+2=4, so I don't see much out of them.

I was there...and like Sak said, all staged pretty much.

Asham-Rupp 2 seconds after a faceoff. After that ended, next faceoff, Pens put Godard out, Flyers send Cote...everyone in the building knew what was coming (side note, Cote had 31 seconds of ice time...his fight lasted longer). about 8 seconds after that one, after the next faceoff, Adams - Carcillo.

The 2nd and 3rd periods, comparatively, were pretty boring actually.

Saw this great jersey at the game

I officially hate the term "staged fight".

Gino Reda on TSN went on a little rant about the Flyers/Pens game, and how embarassing it was to have all those "meaningless" fights that were staged.

Really? Really? Two teams with an intense rivalry, one of whom is desperately trying to break out of a death spiral, play a game with three straight fights between known tough guys... and that's "staged" and "meaningless"? We're all going to pretend we can't understand what's happening, and just lump it in with the typical dumb Brian McGratton "pad my stats" fight?

We're now at a point where two teams sending out their tough guys to set the tone for an entire game is "meaningless", but two guys deciding to fight after the bump into each other during the latest Predators/Thrashers game is somehow really profound and important.

Fake outrage over fighting should be considered legal grounds to run over a media guy with your car.

And... down goes Zetterberg. He got knocked out of the game by a clean, hard hit by Ohlund. He drove himself to the hospital to get an MRI on his shoulder. Awesome.

Tonight's goal scorers: Drew Miller, Todd Bertuzzi, Patrick Eaves. Your 2009-2010 Detroit Red Wings!

They beat an incredibly listless Tampa Bay team. Jimmy Howard got his first career shutout, so that's something.

Zetterberg has a slightly separate shoulder. Out for a minimum of 2 weeks.

So, for your scorecard at home, players out with injury include:

Franzen, Filppula, Williams, Cleary, Zetterberg, Helm (minor), Kronwall, Ericsson, and, let us not forget, Lilja.

This is taken from (apparently) the third Malcolm Gladwell-Bill Simmons internet discussion thing:

SIMMONS
That reminds me: A Toronto reader just e-mailed me expressing his dismay that (A) Roy Halladay was traded, and (B) Chris Bosh is a mortal lock to be playing somewhere else next season. By August, he believed Canada's best non-hockey player would be either Hedo Turkoglu or Aaron Hill. I thought that was jarring. How is it possible that the Blue Jays and Raptors cover all of Canada for baseball, football and basketball? Shouldn't the country have more teams? And if your counter-argument is "No, actually, Canada is good, we only care about hockey," then why doesn't Canada have more NHL teams? What about my idea that the NHL should cut back to 24 teams, then go a 12-team American conference and a 12-team Canadian conference? Could Canada handle 12 NHL teams? Am I overrating Canada? Am I the only one who cares? I feel like I am.

GLADWELL
If the question is can Canada support 12 teams that are at least as successful as the Phoenix Coyotes and the Nashville Predators, the answer is of course. I suspect my high school could draw more fans than the Coyotes. I'm with you on the 24-team, Canadian-American conference idea, particularly since it turns the Stanley Cup finals into a border war every year. I was once in Brazil when Brazil was playing Argentina in soccer, and the entire country was in a state of advanced hysteria. I was at a conference and they stopped the proceedings, in the middle of the day, so everyone could go watch the game. Unbelievable. That's what happens when you combine sports and national loyalties. Can you imagine this happening every spring? I have a half a mind to march uptown to the NHL offices and pitch the idea to Gary Bettman personally. Oh, wait. I just checked. He's out. He's in Phoenix trying to figure out a way to skate on sand.

SIMMONS
Speaking of crazy theories, what about the idea that Stern planted Bettman in the NHL knowing he would screw the league up? Follow this timeline.

Fall 1992: Stern sees the NHL coming on strong: Gretzky in Los Angeles; a potential Lemieux/Jagr dynasty in Pittsburgh; Lindros looming in Philly, Messier leading the Rangers back to prominence; three other potential superstars (Alex Mogilny, Pavel Bure and Steve Yzerman); and four major markets (Detroit, Boston, Montreal and Chicago) contending for the Cup. Well, he has to sabotage this immediately. When the NHL owners come to him for a recommendation, he pushes his assistant Bettman on them. It's like Michael Corleone convincing Moe Greene to let Fredo run his casinos. No, really, he'll be great!

Feb 1, 1993: Bettman takes over. At this point, he is saying all the right things and not hinting at his desire to overexpand, lower the number of Canadian teams and effectively destroy the soul of the league.
June 1994: The league finishes its greatest 18-month run ever -- Montreal beating Gretzky's Kings in the '93 finals, then the Rangers ending a 54-year drought by winning the '94 Cup -- and if that's not enough, Jordan "retires" (sorry, I have to use quotes) and baseball has its damaging strike. Sports Illustrated cements hockey's coming-on-strong status with its memorable "WHY THE NHL'S HOT AND THE NBA'S NOT" cover. Even in video games, the NHL was crushing it: That year, "NHL '94" became the single biggest time-waster other than the O.J. trial. There was no cooler/hipper/hotter sport.

Looking back, how can you screw that up? Bettman did it. Forget about all the other reasons the NHL fell off a cliff for 12 years (only recently have there been signs of life) and concentrate on this one: The league had 24 teams when Bettman took over, including eight in Canada. Now they have a whopping 30 teams, including more warm-weather American teams (L.A., Phoenix, Nashville, Carolina, Tampa, Florida, Atlanta, Anaheim) than Canadian teams (only six). Here's Canada, the country that loves hockey more than anyone loves anything … and it only represents 20 percent of the National Hockey League. This is the single dumbest true fact in sports right now. And it happened on Bettman's watch.

GLADWELL
It's incredible, isn't it? What I don't understand is how a country that is obsessed with hockey and supplies the lion's share of players and diehard fans to the NHL allows its national sport to be run by an American working out of New York City. It's as if the Super Bowl were moved, permanently, to Winnipeg. I think the Canadian teams should simply secede from the league and start over. And we'd take any northern American teams that wanted to come as well, particularly those in the upper Midwest and greater Ohio Valley which, if you'll remember your War of 1812 history correctly, is an area that really ought to belong to Canada anyway. But maybe that argument is best left for another time.

I would love to see a challenger to the NHL that went back into the old NHL markets, with some of the other markets that really want an NHL team also included (KC, Vegas, Seattle, maybe put a team back in SD)

If you start with a 12 team league (6 US, 6 Canadian) you would be looking at something like:

Winnipeg
Quebec City
Hamilton
Saskatoon?
Kitchener?
London/Windsor?
(my canadian geography is crap, some of these might not make any sense)

Kansas City
Vegas
Seattle
San Diego? (questionable but the Gulls were pretty popular and a big TV market)
Hartford
Cleveland

Get rid of the instigator and the shootout, get a deal with a TV station that is at least carried on Direct TV and cable and I think you have a pretty solid market among old school hockey fans. If nothing else it would be fun to watch Bettman squirm.

Have the Leafs become so poor that they can't fix that hole in Toskala's glove?

Pens can not solve the Devils this season...and Brodeur gets shutout #104.

So, please Marty, go play in the Olympics, and about another 40 games in the regular seasons, so you are worn out come April.

And your announcers never cease to amaze me...

I got to see the Toronto Marlies play at Hershey on Sunday. Hershey won 5-1, and the Bears dominated the whole game. The best part of the game was Toronto goalie Joey MacDonald taking a double roughing minor because he just felt the need to start punching a Hershey player who got taken down in the crease. I believe the score was 4-0 at the time, and MacDonald just started throwing punches after the whistle. Loved it.

I was wondering if you saw that or not

When I caught it last night, I took it as "that was a really stupid thing to say"...and the more I thought about it, I realized people were going to blow it up to be bigger than it was.

Sure, it was stupid, and I guess tasteless. Me personally...meh. But I can understand someone finding it distasteful.

At least give Errey some credit, for the first time in 3 years, he didn't laugh at Steigy's joke.

I dunno. Just intuitively, looking at the North American list, the only one that makes any sense to me is Hartford, possibly Seattle (with Vancouver right across the border, you're challenging the NHL on what's essentially their turf).

KC, though, has got Denver to the west and St. Louis to the east. I'm not sure what their niche would be.

He's just an idiot. I'm not outraged or anything but it was just stupid and i think it makes FSN look bad. I love listening to Lange on the radio and still have a pipe dream that maybe they'd move him back to TV.

Would a second league in Canadian cities be impressive enough to be a draw over current Major Junior teams in London, Kitchener, Saskatoon, Quebec City (QC actually draws 11k for MJ) etc? I ask because I think any new league will be even more reliant on Canadian money for starters.

You and 99.9998% of the Pittsburgh area...his brother is still around, and his mother is in her 80's (he refers to her every so often in a broadcast).

After that...yeah, we are all with you.

The reason always given is, coming out of the lockout, they wanted to appeal to a younger fanbase. I wonder if Lemieux really pushed FSN on it, what would happen (Lange and Bourque, as the radio guys, are Penguin employees, Steigy and Bob, FSN employees). But FSN also knows there is no other local option.

Errey...I like, but agree he's over the top. Almost like listening to John Madden and his incoherent ramblings.

I haven't seen the video that Dr. Sak linked yet (blocked at my work). I don't think Steigerwald is great or anything, but I don't get all the love for Mike Lange. His voice is like nails on a chalkboard to me. Of course, my favorite broadcaster wears women's glasses, so what do I know.

Nice. And yet another unsuspecting fanbase gets to entertain the incredulous query... "Who the #$%@!&! is Dan Sexton?!?"

The Penguins, in town to play Buffalo tomorrow, had to push their bus that got stuck, on the way to the hotel downtown tonight (due to the bad weather).

Penguins Battle Blizzard in Buffalo - Pittsburgh Penguins - Features

The Caps and Canes played and the scoreboard was somewhat predictable, 6-3. However, the numbers were beside the wrong names or something. Carolina got its second road win of the season, the other being at Pittsburgh a little while ago. Makes sense.

Oilers lose 7 in a row. They are now only 7 points behind the Hurricanes in the race for Taylor Hall.

As an Oilers fan - I'd love to see Hall and Eberle play together. Those two have looked great at the World Juniors so far... (including the exhibition games, not just the 16-0 and 5-0 blow outs :)).

So I can use the excuse of them being tired if they get beat up tonight?

I actually really hope Miller plays tonight, just to see these 2 teams go head to head with all the pieces in place.

DOLA

WE HAVE A TRADE

Caps get Jason Chimera

Jackets get Chris Clark, Milan Jurcina

My analysis:

Washington clears cap space, to be used at the deadline and/or gives them some room (Clark due $2.6M, Chimera $1.8M next year) towards the new deal they just gave Semin ($6M) or re-signing Nik Backstrom.

Also, Chimera gives them a guy with speed, who fits that offense. However, from what I can tell, he doesn't have much after speed-- not really a fighter, weak hands, and doesn't know how to use his skating ability. I guess that falls under "hockey sense". Possibly the Caps have the new improved version of Rico Fata.

Columbus gets two guys, that, really, I don't understand. Clark has been a 4th liner in Washington. He was the captain, so maybe he'll motivate the guys in Columbus. Jurcina isn't what the Jackets need either, he's an inconsistent 3rd pairing guy sometimes forced onto the 2nd pair. If he was a true #4 guy, Washington wouldn't be moving him.

What's a "trade"?

Signed,
NHL fans since the lockout.

Eklund called this trade weeks ago.

The Wings have been shutout in three of their last four games. They scored 2 goals in that one game. So, over the last 4 games, they are averaging 0.25 goals a game.

Congrats to Maple Leafs for being Puck Daddy's Story of the year!

Year in Puck Daddy 2009: Best stories, videos and Jersey Fouls - Puck Daddy - NHL Blog - Yahoo! Sports

:)

Miller should play tonight. Lalime played Sunday, and the Sabres got off until New Year's Day.

thats some fuzzy math right there