Still Not Over It

Seriously, a side-by-side comparison:

Totally legal:

Illegal, for reason's unbeknownst to all:

In the spirit of fairness, I even picked the Blues' broadcast in HD. ohlordstanley has already offered cash money to the first person to explain the material distinction between the two hits.

My Idea to Take the All-Star Game from Mediocrity to Brilliance!

Here it is *drumroll*:

The ANTI-BALLOT!

That's right, the Anti-Ballot. Vote the most despised villains in the NHL off the All-Star Roster. Think of the glory! A chance to vote Pronger, Perry, and Getzlaf off the [to be announced] All-Star teams! How awesome would that be? I think we can all agree, almost too awesome. And definitely too awesome for the NHL. Unless we can get some seriously grass-roots shit going down, like some kind of petition I don't even have the first clue of how to begin. And even then it's a long-shot, because I'm certain that Gary Bettman doesn't give a rat's ass what the fans want if it's not what he wants.

Send Logan and Pavs to the All-Star Game!

Join me in the write-in effort to send Joe Pavelski and Logan Couture to the All-Star Game in Raleigh! And also vote for Patrick Marleau! Joe Thornton and Dany Heatley are gonna go whether you want them to or not.

The Sharks are now 8-8-1 by my count, back at .500. I guess that's okay. I may have finally given in to the play-offs-only attitude in that I don't care particularly what their final points-total is, but I do look at the regular season performances as an indication of play-off potential. And right now, it still feels like we're looking at the first or second round. There just aren't enough super-defensemen to go around and I'm not sure that we have the cap-space to get one or what we'd have to give up for one or if one would have enough time to settle into the team if we got one and --ARGGGGHHH! Too many doubts! We've seen the teams that make it to the Stanley Cup Finals. They have Duncan Keith and Chris Pronger and Nik Lidstrom on them. The Sharks have Dan Boyle, it's true, but the uber-defense pretty much stops there. Besides which, Dan Boyle doesn't score from the point. Dan Boyle scores when he activates himself as the fourth forward. He's not a shut-down guy with a shot that always gets to the net, through or around traffic. We still haven't replaced Rob Blake. We need another Rob Blake! ...Only seven to ten years younger!

Game 14: "Kill the Zebra!"

It was Thornton's first game back and he lost no time getting back to his usual form, turning over the puck at the defensive blue line in the first minute. Although Pavelski continued to struggle, Boyle had a great game, Couture continued to look good, and Demers made several outstanding plays and looked strong overall. Unfortunately, what stood out most to me was the terrible officials! The first goal by the Islanders: the linesman in the corner skates backward out of Parenteau's way and picks Dan Boyle right off of him! It would have been an interference call on any player. And the revocation of Pavelski's goal was crap. Couture was standing between Roloson and the net, but so was an Islanders player and neither of them were in the crease. Everyone was just standing around. They thought the play had stopped because Roloson was acting like he had the puck covered and that is why Roloson got back to the net too late.

Now that it's over and we've won, it was nice to see a low-scoring game; we haven't seen many with fewer than four goals in a while. It was also a confidence-inspiring shoot-out, if you're into that sort of thing.

Sharks now 6-7-1

Game 12: "Free Jumbo!"

Congratulations to San Francisco on its first World Series Championship! Yeah, Man. Sweet. Maybe I'll buy a ball cap. Okay the real news, though, is that Joe Thornton has been suspended for two whole games! For hitting some dude in the head! The replay looks bad, too, like, really bad. Thornton, stepping out of the box after serving a penalty he didn't like,* drops his shoulder into Perron's head while Perron is moving 20mph, looking behind himself. In that respect it looked vicious. On the other hand, what was Joe supposed to do, let Perron skate by with the puck because he wasn't looking where he was going? In this respect, I think that the NHL is sending mixed messages. The only thing this suspension shows is that players are unclear on what the penalty is. They can suspend Joe as many games as they like to "send a message," but he still isn't going to know what he did wrong.

But regardless of the penalties, I was excited to see what the Sharks looked like without Joe Thornton on the first line/power play. Now, having seen the Tampa Bay game, I can say that they looked awesome! Power play was great, too. Couture fit right in on the first line (love that guy) and got a goal to put him right in the middle of the race for the Sharks' goal-scoring lead. I would also like to take this time to note that Jamal Mayers has been making a big impression on me. I think he's really added to the scoring potential of that fourth line, but, not only that, there have been several moments when a puck squirts loose, where all I can think is "Somebody ------- get that!", and Jamal Mayers turns on the jets and gets there first. He's far speedier than I expected. Of course, the only thing anybody could tell me about this guy when he signed was "Was he the guy who shaved his eyebrows into tiger stripes in the playoffs?" So my expectations weren't high.

Go, Sharks!

6-6-0

*and his first of the season

Game 8: Don't Bring a Hat You're Not Willing to Throw

Congratulations to Joe Pavelski and his wife, Sarah, on their newborn son!

In other news:

The Sharks are once again at 500! They improved their record to 4-4-0 with a big win over the Devils and looked okay doing it! The gameplay wasn't all that smooth overall, but even though the Sharks aren't at the strength they were at this point last season, Devils are almost completely in shambles. Trading away a veteran defenseman for Ilya Kovalchuk and then signing him to a prohibitive, career-ending contract with a no-movement clause seems like madness to me. To add to their miseries, the NHL decided to disallow one ridiculous contract, allow a second ridiculous contract, and then punish the team for one of the two (does it matter which?). I don't understand that at all. At any rate, the Devils look awful.

Joe Thornton had a hat-trick (you don't see that every year) and a point on all five goals. And what do I see the rest of the night? Thousands of dickweeds still wearing baseball caps. But what am I supposed to do, walk up to each of a thousand people and say, "Hats off, Jackass. I know that Giants cap was expensive and you just bought it in the last two days, but can you at least take it off? The man just scored three goals for your stupid ass."? It seems disrespectful to me to flaunt your hat after somebody scores a hat-trick. Even for the other team. Apparently, that's just me, though.

Games 5-7: "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad"

All-in-all I thought that was about as good a road trip as we had any right to expect, based upon the first four games of this season. The Colorado game was a little shaky at times, but a good win. The Edmonton game, besides the embarrassment of that short-handed goal (the one highlight from that game showed repeatedly on NHL network), was a gratifying blowout. In fact, one could say that the Sharks “responded well” to the bad play early in the game. The Calgary game was only bad for a little over ten minutes. The Sharks controlled most of the rest of that game and took the crowd right out of it, only thwarted by the outstanding play of Miikka Kiprusoff. Did anybody else hear how quiet it got in there? It sure didn’t sound like a 4-0 game. I wasn’t even prepared to own up to the fact that the Sharks were probably not going to come back until half-way through the third period. Antti Niemi can’t carry the blame for the three he let in and Niittymaki, who looks like he might have a leaky right pad, looked really solid the rest of the game. In fact, if that puck hadn’t been rolling on only one of its edges there’s no way it would have gone in for the one goal against him. It was close enough that I’d call it a fluke. The only worrying thing is that that makes two flukes in four games for Niittymaki. Despite the loss, I thought it was a confidence-inspiring road trip. And as I begin to look forward to tonight’s game against the NJ Devils (completely ignoring game one of the world series for today), I leave these words for those still looking back on the road trip:

Don’t be sad, ‘cause two out of three ain’t bad.