As somebody who grew up with Wayne Gretzky being Da Man in hockey, in a time where I deeply cared about hockey, this is a big deal to me. I mean, I was 9 when he first got with the Oilers. We played on the street, all doing as if we were him in the most important game. I don't know how to express it, but it saddens me to hear his name being linked, even loosely, to this kind of crap.

FM

On the one hand you're probably right.

On the other hand, I can't recall a coach (ass't or otherwise) facing federal prison time too often, so it seems fairly newsworthy if for nothing other than the unusual nature of it.

Ugh. Canes get dumped at home 4-3 by the Pens. First back-to-back losses in a while and they're a shootout win from a four-game skid. Naturally, this has lead to speculation that the Weight trade was a bad move, since that four game period coincided with his arrival. Me, personally, I am uncertain. There's something to be said for grabbing the brass ring and showing you mean business, but there's also certainly something to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I think we need to see how they do coming out of the break to see whether we made the correct decision.

I think the Weight trade has introduced a double-edged sword and both are bad. With the addition of Weight, perhaps the other Canes are feeling overconfident and just think showing up would be enough for a win. Hopefully the gak-job against the Pens tonight will adjust any such mentality. The other edge is that Carolina now has a big-ass target on its back. We made a big move and announced we're competing for the Cup this year. No longer will teams just look at us as another team. They're going to come out and play better to prove they can beat us, especially playoff-calibre teams who want to send messages to us and other potential opponents. I'm not sure what can be done for this except to start living up to a much higher expectation than they had even two weeks ago before the trade. It's harder being the hunted.

I still do think we'll win the Southeast Division, but I think we're going to have to ride out Tampa to do it. It's a 14-point lead, but I wouldn't be surprised if we don't clinch until fairly late. We rode an incredible wave in January and we may be starting to crash a bit from that high.

God damn the Rangers are playing some great hockey right now. :)

Yeehah! Carolina beats the Sabres 4-3 in the shootout. Staal with the winner in the sixth round of the shootout puts Carolina at 82 points heading into the Olympic break, 14 up on second-place Tampa Bay.

Was listening on the internet radio and it sounded like the OT was absolutely crazy with serious end-to-end going on. Carolina got off a ton of shots, but couldn't convert. At least they got it done at the end.

Eric Staal is only shooter #6 for the Canes in a shootout?

Yes, actually. It was only his second attempt in a shootout if I read right. Canes have only lost once in the shootout all year (6-1), so the staff felt it unnecessary to change what's generally worked and that has meant Staal hasn't been needed. Odd when you can say that about your leading scorer, but there you have it.

Edit to add: "We've got a long list of guys there who do well in the shootouts," he said. "But it was good to see Staaly get in there and make the game." --Peter Laviolette on why Staal isn't seeing much SO time.

man, those Wings are a damn good team

It was nice to sweep the season series. I enjoyed that very much. The Olympic break is coming at a crappy time. The Wings are really on a roll right now and actually beating decent teams (e.g., Nashville and Colorado) instead of whipping up on bottom feeders like Columbus, Chicago, and St. Louis.

http://www.canadacupofhockey.com/can...me_rosters.htm

I'm sure somebody else knows a bit more about this. I didn't even know this took place. How the hell did they get all those players together during the NHL season. Was it in 2004 or 2005 like it says?

I think the inclusion of Jiri Fischer as having played answers this.

http://pbfc.org/ilas/060110dw.html

"Quigley followed Larionov around his hometown of Moscow for an on-the-ice and behind-the-scenes look at his swan song hockey game of Team Russia vs. Team World in December 2004."

Not really. If you considered that I thought it was a hoax, Amy and Bobby Fisher could have played and it wouldn't have made a difference. Thanks for the verification though.

sounds like a cool event, btw.

I remember something about this. It was during the lockout. Just an exhibition thing more or less.

Hockey's back, playoff drive is here, and the trading deadline is about a week ago. My Leafs are struggling in a bad way right now. Life and death to make the playoffs. I dont know if there's much we can do at the deadline, we just need some of the key guys to play better....BELFOUR....and yes, im pretty sure age has taken its toll on him

Johnny....it's best to just mentally come to grips now with the fact that the Leafs will not make the playoffs. It'll make the rest of the season a little less painful, night in and night out. :)

Nah, i would never give up on my team. Win or lose, playoffs or no playoffs, ill cheer just as hard.

With that said, I'm very concerned :confused:

Oh, I'm still going to cheer for them...but by lowering my expectations, I ensure I'll have more hair left come April. :)

The last time Sweden won a gold medal in the Olympics, the Rangers won the Stanley Cup. Just saying...

Rangers destroyed the Flyers 6-1. Interesting penalty line:

On that note, the Red Wings have won the Stanley Cup in the same year as the last two Olympics (1998 and 2002).

Well done, Donald. It's about time you made your presence known.

NHL Network coming to US

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/news_story/?ID=156945&hubname=nhl

Best news I've heard all day. Thanks, DD!

btw, it's March 3rd...and the Avs have a whopping THREE home games left in March. guh.

Vancouver has 9 (including a 5 game stand), Calgary has 6 and Edmonton has 8.
GUH.

there is a light at the end of the tunnel - they open April with a 5 game home stand against 5 teams currently on the outside looking in (Chicago, St Louis, Phoenix, SJ and Minnesota). Then a hellacious road trip - Calgary, Vancouver, Edmonton - to finish things up.

I only hope it's not something half-assed (not that the NHL has a reputation for doing stuff like that).

if it's, say, 3/4 as good as the NFL Network, I'm going to be loving it.

Nice to see the Stars are hungry for the streach run.

Phoenix 6 - Dallas 2

:(

Agreed. I was obssesed with the NFL Network for months. I have sort of weened myself off of it, but that's only because the Lions suck so bad and I have lost TiVO capabilities during my move. As it gets closer to draft time, I will get back into it.

While old NFL games are not that exciting to me, old NHL games are. I remember about 6 years ago or so I watched the Ron Tugnut 70 some odd save performance on ESPN classic (or the like). I loved it!

btw, it's March 3rd...and the Wings have a whopping ZERO games left against the Avs. That makes me sad and unhappy. They were so much fun to play against this year! :D

Only 6 days to go until the trade deadline...

It will be very interesting to see what kind of action there is this year.

fixed. hopefully.

I agree with this. Hockey is the most exciting sport on the planet, and watching old games and learning about prominant players is a great way to spend my time. Hopefully, that's the sort of stuff they deliver, because the "Cool Shots" stuff get's old pretty quickly.

actually, HB, I have even better new than the NHL Network.

I'm reading more and more that the dreaded jersey redesigns for next season have been put on hold until 2007 as the owners and the league are having second thoughts (they've no doubt been receiving a bit of negative feedback).
Expected logo changes to Boston, Washington and Buffalo will apparently wait another year. Anaheim probably will still happen, since they've already announced the name change.

It's a TSN property, not an NHL property, fwiw.

It's not bad at all, though I can't say I've gone out of my way to watch anything on there. They have the nightly recap shows, classic games, and plenty of That's Hockey! (think TWIB, or NBA XL or whatever it's called on Sat. mornings ... profiles, tips, feature stories, etc.). It's a fun diversion every once in a while, but I doubt it'll be something anybody instinctively flips to every morning.

Yeah, one of the nice things about Columbus is the Doug MacLean show every Wednesday and he talked about this for a few minutes, saying exactly what you're saying here. The quote I loved was his from Reebok, stating that the players would move "9% faster with the jerseys tucked in vs. tucked out" which seems to be one of the biggest complaints. He wanted them to compare the tucked out vs. the old jerseys, but they didn't have the data. But overall, it seems like we will be waiting 'til 07.

I hear that. "Cool Shots" and "That's Hockey" (from how Simms describes it) do nothing for me in the least. I don't want to watch Alan Thicke and Alex Tribec skate around with a couple of NHLers. Old school. Good. Nightly re-caps. Good. Hip, coolest game on earth, nonsense. Nonsense.

I used to watch NHL2Night all the time back in the day. I liked the highlights and what not. I miss that. I would enjoy a show like that again. A good way to keep tabs on Fantasy goings ons.

I wonder if that Reebok guy watched any of the Olympics where the "old jersey" teams like, say, Sweden, did pretty okay agains the new, slicker Nike jersey teams (everyone except Sweden and Switzerland)

:)

Very good news! Your river over floweth today!

I'd be happy with anything more than the 45 seconds of highlights (75% of which involve either Crosby or Ovechkin) we get now on ESPN.

LaFontaine just had his number retired :D Now it's time to bury the Leafs!

Canes win again, but...Cole out 6-8 weeks.

Needless to say, this hasn't done much to endear the struggling Pens to me at all. Let 'em rot.

When NHL2Night went off the air, "NHL On The Fly: Final" started broadcasting in the UK, which I think is a TSN/NHL Network program.

It's the best highlight show I have seen for any sport, mainly because they use the original announcers when showing the highlights rather than letting morons in the studio talk over the action (like Sportscentre).

http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Hockey/NHL/Edmonton/2006/03/05/1473818-sun.html

Reasoner's good to go By ROBIN BROWNLEE -- Edmonton Sun

So, you think you're tough?

If he played baseball, he'd be out until April. A soccer player? See you in a month. A reporter? I'd be ready to pick up a notepad again about the time training camp opens next September.

Luckily for the Edmonton Oilers, Marty Reasoner is none of the above and was on the ice in the third period against San Jose at Rexall Place Friday with a bandage holding a right ear in place that Chris Pronger turned into chopped liver with a slapshot.

Reasoner is not a blood-and-guts guy by hockey standards, but the Oilers forward is tougher than you, or I, or anybody we know. It's the very DNA and culture of the game and what makes it our national passion.

One look at Reasoner's ear - purple and swollen with 30 stitches holding it together - yesterday only reinforced what we know about these guys, what we'll see again during the stretch drive to the playoffs.

No ear. I mean, no fear.

"It feels like turbulence," said Reasoner. "It just feels like it's blocked when you go up in altitude or something.

FIRST BIG SCARE

"My first big scare when I got hit was I heard a pop. Then, I couldn't hear anything and thought I might have done something to the ear drum, but my hearing came back. It was just a matter of stitching it up."

Reasoner looked like a soldier out of a civil war scene with his noggin wrapped in blood-soaked gauze after Pronger felled him with the frozen rubber in the second period.

Reasoner, who was coughing up blood after blocking a slapshot before the Olympics, will be back in his silks against Nashville this afternoon. What, he's supposed to sit out?

"It's just the mentality guys have," shrugs Reasoner. "You get caught in the emotion of the game and you want to get back out there as soon as possible.

"It's one of the things you just kind of grow up with. It's part of the game. Everyone is really competitive and no one likes to sit out, especially due to injury."

Playing through pain is part of the game in the NHL. That's no revelation, but it's awe-inspiring to see what players endure to get the chance to hop the boards for that next shift.

"Hockey moulds and reveals character," said coach Craig MacTavish. "The root of it is really built into the character of the person."

We already know about the cadaver-like pain threshold of Jason Smith, who returned from a broken toe against the Sharks.

Likewise that of Ethan Moreau, back for his first game Friday on an ankle so badly sprained he still can't walk properly.

Then, there's Igor Ulanov, who took a slapshot in the mouth at Madison Square Garden a few years ago and had to be forced by officials to get treatment. Igor wanted to stay on the bench and not miss a shift. It took more than 20 stitches to close him up.

"It has a lot to do with your competitiveness and your nature," says Smith, who played a playoff series with a broken foot a few years back, just as Pronger is doing now.

"Some of the guys come up in families where you're a blue-collar guy. You just want to get out there and get to work. It's something we love to do. It's better to be playing than watching."

CONCERTED EFFORTS

Team medical staffs make concerted efforts to protect players from themselves and the willingness to just spit teeth into a cup or shrug off a concussion and get back out there.

"It's going to be maybe the single most important factor in everybody's success," MacTavish said of a team's ability to overcome injuries down the stretch.

"What you can play with and how effective you can be when you're playing with injuries is going to be a real determining factor in who makes it, who gets home ice and who doesn't."

So, banged up or not, nobody wants to sit.

The stretch is what these guys play for. It's the same in every NHL dressing room. "This is the most exciting time of the year," Smith said. "This is why we all play. Dealing with injuries is a part of it."

Must...resist...urge...to...rile...Leafs fans :)

Seriously though, even naysayers (cough*Johnny93G*cough :)) must admit that it isn't smoke and mirrors now with Buffalo. They roll four lines that can all score, they skate like the wind, win on the road as much as at home and have killer special teams.

Oh yeah, the goaltending is good too! It's nice to be mentioned as a contender again, that's for sure!

Thrashers let another late lead slip away but recover to win 4-3 on Kozlov's goal in the shootout. Problem is that it won't matter at all if Montreal doesn't cool off soon.

The Habs just lost in a shootout to the Flyers.

Yeah, they were losing that about the time I was posting I think. But that's still another point, so they're still 3 up with 2 games in hand to boot. I wouldn't be completely surprised if Montreal passed Tampa & the last spot came down to Atlanta & the Lightning.

Jokinen scores again during a shootout. 9 for 9 and he scored on a penalty shot earlier in the game.

Thrashers 3-2 winners in a shootout, Hossa wrists one past Lundqvist in the bottom of the 4th frame for a 3-2 win (same final shootout & game score), surviving a 2-1 deficit in the SO.

Atlanta now trails Montreal by 1 pt for 8th spot in the East (Habs with 2 games in hand), trails Tampa by 4 (Lightning 1 game in hand).

Rangers played the shootout minus Jaromir Jagr who was caught with an illegal stick during the new pre-shootout measurement, after he took a 2 minute penalty for the same thing with 1:48 left in regulation.

:D I just noticed his absence in the box score for the shootout and figured he got hurt.

That's interesting...I was under the impression that there was no penalty for having an illegal stick during the pre-shootout measurement - you just had to change your stick to a legal one.

I like the fact that you are unable to participate if your stick is found to be illegal.

Unfortunately all I had for the game was Thrashers radio & the broadcast crew was fairly well confused about exactly what was going on but that's the conclusion they finally reached. The measuring process took roughly 10 minutes to complete, so long in fact that they brought the Zamboni out for a second trip while they were waiting. Apparently the delay had to do with Jagr's stick (so the announcers said) & after a discussion, the equipment manager headed to the lockerroom with two of Jagr's sticks & he took a seat on the bench after appearing ready to be their first shooter.

Meanwhile (in another rule that was apparently coming into play for the first time this year for Atlanta), Marian Hossa gets the game winner as our 4th shooter, becoming eligible to participate after the first three rounds. He finished the OT in the penalty box & apparently that makes you an ineligible shooter for rounds 1-3.

Um... and the Blackhawks are sinking ever lower in the standings. Tho they did hurt their chances with a win last night against Columbus to get within 1 point of 13th in the West in that race for the bottom:

13.	Columbus	62	50
14.	Chicago	61	49
15.	St. Louis	60	46

SI

not true at all.
Tkachuk finished up Tuesday's OT in the box - heck, he got the penalty with 8 seconds left - but was still the 2nd shooter.

and this stick rule was stupid enough before this shootout stuff. if they are going to measure sticks in the SO, they should record it as a no goal if they catch anyone stupid enough to actually try to sneak in an illegal stick.