Saturday Shootaround

I'll see if there is enough interest to do this weekly; call this a trial run.

1. The Toronto Maple Leafs travel to Montreal for their first regular season road encounter with the Montreal Canadiens. They bounced the Habs in the regular season opener at home 2-0, but after failing the first part of their Northeast Division litmus test to the Boston Bruins on Thursday the Leafs will want to escape "La Belle Province" with another two points. I discovered a few things about this year's Maple Leafs after the 6-2 shellacking at the hands of the Cup champion Bruins: When playing top-tier teams like the Bruins, our backup goaltenders are not tending goal, our play makers are not making plays, and the lineup changes do not change the outcome of games (2/3 isn't bad). Not even Komisarek could make a tangible difference in the game; he was scratched off coach Ron Wilson's lineup card for the first time since signing a lucrative free-agent contract to be a Leaf! Sure, the Maple Leafs are defeating the teams they should defeat, but to become a top-tier team in the goaltender driven Northeast Division you need to remain solid in all three periods to be successful.
2. The NHL fined Nashville Predators captain and blueliner Shea Weber $2500 for his boarding infraction against the Vancouver Canucks' Jannik Hansen last Thursday. VP of Player Safety and former NHL player Brendan Shanahan handed down the fine for the incident, for which referees penalized Weber for two minutes and slapped an additional two minutes for unsportmanlike conduct. Corey Masisak of NHL.com wrote extensively about the Weber incident online: click on the link here. Shanahan did highlight the fact Weber did not have a record of similar infractions prior to the incident, and perhaps this may be the beginnings of a new look disciplinary procedure from the National Hockey League. Yes, there are still the big time fights announcers, fans, and video editors seem to enjoy during the game, but the recklessness and on-ice craziness of previous years is decreasing, too. The next thing I would do is ask Brendan Shanahan to fire those goofs at NHL Marketing for making the Predators wear those banana-coloured, wacky piping hockey jerseys o_O FASHION CRIME!
3. I bought a copy of NHL 12 for the Playstation 3 a few days ago. 

The annual attractive feature this year is the ability to not only play as your favourite all-time players from year's past, when previous NHL games released by EA Sports were of low graphic quality, but to acquire them to play on your favourite team. I'm inviting a few of the guys to my house, and we may play that game just to see how it works. ^_^ It should be nice; Mario Lemieux playing for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Gordie Howe playing for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Alexander Ovechkin playing for the Toronto Maple Leafs...What? I miss playing NHL 2000; I remember all the antics I got into after the whistle blew play dead, and hearing the automated voice of Jim Hughson going crazy as I picked up penalty after penalty with Joe Sakic and Alex Tanguay LOL ^_^