Habs 4, Panthers 0: On the same page

The radio "controversy" du jour was that Cammy was overly vocal over some defensive strategies in yesterday's practice where the team was basically talking communication. No surprise. I totally understand how he feels. He's the kind of guy that demands more than what the team gave on Tuesday in Atlanta where they basically sat back and let Price deal with the rest (though he'll never admit to it, ever). Everyone saw Cammy was not a happy man with how that game went. Happy for the points and the win, yes, but not satisfied. He demands satisfaction.

So good on the Panthers to comply and give the Habs another practice run. And the result? Price gets his 7th shutout of the year and 30th win with goals by Gill, Kostitsyn, Desharnais and Eller. Yes, Hal Gill has the game winning goal on his first goal of the year. Of course you wouldn't know this if you were perusing the web dailies for info, as it's a footnote buried behind THE GREAT PLAY OF JAMES "I SIT ON MY GOAL LINE AND CURRENTLY ON PATH TO BE THE NEXT MICHAEL LEIGHTON" REIMER HOLY MACKINAW!!! Or Penner playing in his first game as a King. Whoopee.

The win keeps the pace in the standings steady. Someone tell me what the fuck is wrong with the fucking Rangers please? Maybe they need a Cammy-like rant from one of their players in practice...

Here's something Melnick will probably bring up and start ranting about the lack of a knuckledragging tough guy like he's been doing since that freak Bruins game that apparently bruised his honour. Hordichuk hit Cammy and waited for someone to fight him. What Darcy didn't realize was that the Habs were a little busy, you know, playing hockey and dealing with two Panthers with the puck that came near their net. Even Cammy got up, saw the sequence and decided more to deal with the task at hand rather than some little revenge. Because taking a stupid fighting penalty there would have only given the Panthers a smidgen of energy which the Habs were busy crushing. All. Night. Long.

They were also busy crushing Patches' balls with the puck.
Ow.

But he went right back out there to the front of the net right after.
That's ballsy.

Habs 3, Panthers 2: Bank shot!

There's a diagram of the game winning goal by Captain America.

Habs and Panthers both ended their previous night in a similar fashion: a shootout. Only the Habs won theirs while the Panther's lost theirs. And now both games in a back-to-back situation were a comeback grind. Stick to the plan, good things should happen.

I suck at pool.
- Finally someone decided to win the Molson Cup other than Price, and it's Mr. Underrated Tomas Plekanec!
- Hey Tieman? Eat your words on AK46.
- No really, stop bitching about Andrei and stop trying to find ways to trade him for the impossible or useless.
- Text intercepted between Ellerby and Price: "Why is everyone hitting me? :("
- Text intercepted between Price and Ellerby: ":D"
- Actually Ellerby's hit on Andrei really woke him up because he was being lulled to sleep by the hypno-Panthers.
- Alex Auld should stop playing the puck.
- Habs need more goals like Halpern's. Perfect move to tip that sucker in.
- Yea the Panthers take plenty of silly penalties. But the PP is in predictable mode.
- Hamr's skate broke. For a guy that doesn't pivot, I don't know how this happened.
- Quote of the night: "Et Veber dit OUF!" (Other than that one gaff which he worked hard to correct, Weber had a solid night).
- With a lead and 2 minutes left, please don't send out the Hamr-Wiz pair...
- Things you've gotten used to hearing to the point where it doesn't actually surprised you: "Higgins! ...Shoots it wide!"
- Things you've grudgingly gotten used to: Gomez's stupid penalties.
- Things we learned from Twitter: According to RDS, Subban's the 1st rookie Habs defenceman to reach 20 points in 10 years. Last guy to do it was Andrei Markov.
- Panthers are a quiet, frustrating, hard-working team but they're meaningless in their existence.
- Where can I get that tuque Carey was wearing?

Mr. Underrated is your first star of the night.

Habs 3, Panthers 2 (OT): Happy WizNewYear

If you squint you can maybe make out Wisniewski smacking in a rebound in OT (his second of the game) to give the Habs their 2nd win on this disastrous roadtrip. RDS was so shocked that they lost the feed. Happy New Year to you too.

Should Auld's acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should Auld's acquaintance be forgot,
And Auld lang sigh!

For Auld lang syne, my dear,
For Auld lang syne.
We'll take the Cup o' hockey yet,
For Auld lang syne.

Team Canada probably would have been better off using Auld tonight as well.

(Note: I'll get to Lapierre later...)

Habs 4, Panthers 1: Amazing what an empty net can do

It's the Florida Panthers.

They're 12th in the East tied with the Carolina Hurricanes who play better hockey than they do even with an injury curse.

Their roll as spoiler has turned into finishing the season alive, healthy, and ready for the beach. For poor David Booth, he may need to re-evaluate his life after a regular hockey hit sent him to the ER with Doctor Mulder. Forget hockey... Dude will have problems sneezing without giving himself a concussion. Mike Richards should send him flowers.

Habs won't be playing the Florida Panthers in the playoffs.

So excuse me if I don't give a damn about this win. The two points, yes. The win, no.

Even in the win the powerplay was tepid. The stupid penalties were still taken. The best players were busy passing. The best line on the ice was Travis "Frankenstein" Moen, Dominic Moore, and Sergei Kostitsyn. Metro and Darche were scratched for Moen and Lapierre. Lapierre, who upon his return from being benched, may as well have stayed benched. Too bad for him but the Habs have a bunch of players who can do his job better.

The Florida Panthers are not the Buffalo Sabres yet they pulled Vokoun with 2 minutes left. Habs easily scored twice but almost made the same stupid "sit on their asses" play to let the Panthers think they're the Buffalo Sabres. Pleky got his 100th career goal. Gionta scored his 25th goal of an injury shortened season. When there's an empty net glaring at you, you better fucking skate like it's your last game on Earth.

One more goal and we would have had free wings.

I was still pissed off from yesterday. (Doesn't help I have a horrible migraine, and I'm in a foul mood when I get those). Free wings might have made it better.

Habs 5, Panthers 4: Win ugly

On this New Year's Eve, a blue moon shines bright, and it apparently sucked out all of Jaro's abilities. Thankfully it appears to have affected Vokoun just as much. But seriously I'm tired of people going all Jaro this and Jaro that... Even my DAD sees his problem with rebounds and his inability to freeze a puck when it needs to be frozen. And this is what he does on a consistent basis. Oddly enough his rebound problem wasn't what caused the goals, but when you're weak on two and were the victim of two breakaways, it would make us all feel better if that puck could freeze more with a one-goal game, especially when your teammates are running around and scrambling everywhere... Nevertheless, better to have him backing up Price than Sanford (who appears to be consistently injuring himself) and padding his stats on weaker teams. Wake up, people: Markov is our litmus paper.

Road trip success 6-1. We'll just forget about the Ottawa game that was gift wrapped by Kerry Fraser. Oh and Chris Fucking Lee still managed to leave his mark on tonight's game. Happy New Year's, Fucker.

Now...about staying healthy, Habs...

Peek-a-BOOOOOO

Cluck like a chicken!
- BennyPoo, may you continue doing what you do.
- Cammy! Scored on the road. I know, shocking eh? Brett Hull style from the knees.
- HMCS Hal Gill fired a torpedo, one casualty (Vokoun's confidence).
- Gomez has been inspired lately, perhaps coinciding with the impending return of his BFF Gionta?
- Horton hears a boo. Cherry picking useless entity.
- Patches played like a man possessed and had to fill in for BOTH Kostitsyns tonight as Sergei injured himself in warmup and Ballard did something to Andrei during the game (Lapierre went after him later).
- No goalies were harmed during this game both on and off the ice.
- I heard it's the first time this year the building was sold out. Sadly for the Panthers, it was all Habs fans.
- Even with Vokoun tugging on his skates, Pleky still managed to score.
- Slippy finally hits a target.
- Frolik reminds me of a hobbit, but cuter. He's just adorable.
- Two delay-of-game penalties in a row, overlapping for a 5-on-3...but it was the Panthers at fault! I know, shocking eh?

Messy and ugly, but a win and free wings to close off the season means all is right with the world.

And the dessert? Canada vs USA at the WJC! And it was a great game for our Danny "The Count" Kristo. So conflicted on my cheering tonight! Anyway it was a 4-4 game in which USA dominated and Canada looked like a bunch of children, until finally Eberle (who reminds me a lot of Pleky in how he skates and cradles the puck) did what he did last year. It ended in a shootout where everyone was scoring until Jordan Schroeder was finally stopped by Jake Allen. Tripping on the puck for a victory splat, it was another classic, regardless of how ugly it was. And I'm in love with Kristo.

Hey, ugly wins all around eh? And I'm closing out 2009 a happy fan but with an annoyingly terrible cold. Happy New Years everyone!

Let there be cake!

I would gladly take this puck to the head.

It's here! It's here! The sound of skates scraping the ice. The sound of sticks cracking and pucks smaking endboards. The sound of Gui! smooshing a small guy into the glass. The sound of Andrei getting elbowed to the head. The sound of 21k+ people chanting "PK!PK!PK!". The sound of the VIA train horn as the red light goes on and the train circles the rink. The sound of U2's Vertigo (yes, it's back apparently).

Oh how I missed you, hockey.

But I was stuffing my face with delicious sushi while Gomez, Cammalleri, and D'Agostini scored goals. I only heard the pre-game skate on the radio and I could sense Gomez' smile through my speakers. I also tuned back in to hear the end of it, and the 3 stars. Bravo guys! And hey Price only faced 9 shots and stopped them all? No prob. Poor Sandford getting all the work in their split game, but hey he'll be used to that later. The purpose of tonight's exercise was to introduce some new stars, warm them up and build their chemistry, then let the kids strut their stuff. Even Rhino got to put those boxing lessons to some use.

Alls I gotta say: Cammy to Spacek to Gomez and it's all red light. Beautiful.

Thanks for the great birthday present guys!

Umm...? Habs 6 Panthers 5 (SO)

Carbo can't look. THERE'S SOMETHING ON THE WING!

Well, that was an episode of the Twilight Zone. I have absolutely no idea what the fuck happened. I do know that somehow the boys got through it with 2 points.

We should be glad for a win because this could very well be the 06-07 season:
- First game note: I hate 2pm games.
- The second period was apparently very good. It looked very good to me. I missed the whole first period because I was away putting together furniture. The third period would have been good except...
- I know Jaro is struggling right now. I know his teammates know he's struggling right now. They look very nervous in front of him. Right now my brother devised a formula for Jaro efficiency/team happiness: The distance of the puck from Jaro inadvertly describes how good he is/how happy team is.
- The Kostitsyns with Lang is a good pairing. I wish Benoit Brunet would shut the fuck up though. Sergei makes a few errors, but does a lot more good than Breezer on defense and he's not even a defenseman.
- Pacioretty has a natural attractions to head for the net. Wish more people would have that kind of magnetism.
- Kostopoulos finally gets a goal after some hard crease work and has a look on his face like he missed the train.
- Pacioretty says hello to Zed with a CRUSHING check. Love the kid. (Oh, and hello Zed!)
- Gui! is playing very solid hockey right now.
- If Kovy's posts would have been goals he'd be leading the league.
- Lang's ringer went in. It was loud, and it was good.
- Andrei also ringed one in that went in. I think every time Anderson heard the ping and cheer he just died a little inside.
- Chipchura for captain!
- Jaro prays to his posts every morning.
- Some guys in the crowd did the Carey Pose when Lang scored.
- The way Pleky juggles the puck he'd be an excellent basketball player.
- Young refs make weak calls but whatever. At least their mics worked.
- At least we get free wings.

In conclusion: Well take it from Begin, they know they're playing like crap half the time, they know they're making mistakes, and they'll settle down to watch and talk about it and build off it. At least they know what's going on. I'm still lost. At least Guy knows. Guy is smart. But with all the injuries and having an entire key line on the shelf, things could be worse but it's not. So three cheers for who's standing and three cheers for the Bulldogs. I just wished PK Subban were playing with the CH right now...

Oh my hats! Habs 5, Panthers 2, 3000th regular season win

Because zombies eat BRAINS, zombies can score

Holy shit what have they put in the Habs water these days? Fruit Punch gets a hat trick and we get free wings, and ZombiePleks has risen from his grave to not only score one of the sickest shorthanded breakaway goals I've seen this side of Jonathan Toews' WJC shootout goals, BUT ALSO PUNCHES A MAN FOR DIGGING ON PRICE! The little girl who could barely get an empty netter earlier this month jumps a man for messing with his goalie and punches him. Ends up with an unjustified 4 minutes roughing penalty (meh, old man ref) but still, this is usually the work of Komisaurus. Begin also had a pretty good fight. He got the worst of it (the dude was twice his height for crying out loud) but Begin jumping to punch the guy was quite a sight to behold. And then he did the take down. The home crowd sure got a show. Wait, this was Florida! The place was sold out thanks to the Habs fans either living there or on vacation (hell, if I didn't just buy my condo, I'd have totally gone for that trip). Another city, another Carey chant.

The question of the day: When was the last time Habs had consecutive hat-trick games? From two players, notching their first career hat tricks?

Memo to the Panthers: Get a bigger penalty box. It didn't fit four Habs at once!

Also it ain't over until we see a classic McCabe and boy was that classic on Fruit Punch's steal for his final goal on the empty net.

That said, Breezer is our McCabe. Thank god there are other people out there able to cover for his errors, but Carbo needs to get him off the powerplay... You can keep Kovy on the powerplay though 'cause that goal was pure math.

Conclusion: Tomorrow is Tampa Bay. Time for SuperPleky to get his revenge on Lecav for that unpenalized spearing.


In other news
- Jean Béliveau is said to be doing well after a drop in his blood pressure sent him to the hospital. Stay healthy, Monsieur! (Actually he was released from hospital already).
- WJC Team Canada beat Germany 5-1 and Subban did his Bobby Orr to give Evander Kane a goal.
- Here's a shock: DiPietro is injured again. Oy.
- Um, Sharks signed Claude Lemieux (yes, THAT Lemieux) to a two-way contract. He's currently in the AHL trying to make a comeback.