Saturday Shootaround #2

This is still very touch and go. I'll see how many girls read this and make a decision later.

1. If I don't watch, they will win: Much to my surprise, the Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the New York Rangers 4-2 at Madison Square Garden in New York. From what I gathered from the replays, the Leafs grabbed their win on goals scored against the flow of play, or at least on the counterattack. As expected the Rangers, who celebrated the opening of the 2011-12 campaign in their stadium, opened the scoring with a scramble of a goal by Dan Girardi. However, two disallowed goals by the Rangers soured what was to be a jubilant evening on Thursday. Forward Ryan Callahan engaged with streaky backup Leafs goaltender Jonas Gustavsson while Ryan Del Zotto blasted the puck home from the point, and then as teammate Derek Stepan stuffed home a goal mouth scramble. When the game ends in a 4-2 loss, while you know you should have two more goals on the scoreboard, defeat can be tough to swallow. It's like going to a community rink to watch your friend Bryan play city league hockey twice, and leaving the rink with a cold and two ties. He promises goals and a trendy new goal celebration in your honour, but you don't get to see what a winning team looks like (Yes, I did just tell that story, BRYAN, and I STILL WANT MY FOUR DOLLARS...WITH INTEREST)! I may still have some issues over that incident, but so does Rangers head coach John Tortorella in his postgame interview. Something else I noticed about the game: Not only did I not watch it, I also didn't know it was happening! Absolute obliviousness to the Maple Leafs = Improbable victory by the Buds? So far, the theory holds true, but as interest grows will they start losing. Well, without "St. James" between the pipes I don't know if the theory has any teeth. Unlike most of the leaves in autumn, these Leafs did not fall...yet.
2. Fantastic Fantasty Fit o_O I think: Earlier in the week, the Winnipeg Jets defeated the Philadelphia Flyers 9-8 after Flyers' goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov badmouthed the city of Winnipeg as a "boring" place. He proceeded to allow four goals on ten shots against the Jets in just over thirty-four minutes of gameplay, but something I couldn't find were highlights of the game or his press conference afterward on NHL.com o_O Instead, I received this: CONSPIRACY! How does that happen? I don't know! Bryzgalov did apologize through the media for the poor performance, but the former standout for the Phoenix Coyotes does not need to look far for support. His team is behind him, and he remains the starter for the team as he should: 36 wins last year, 2.48 GAA, and .921 save percentage are all good numbers from 2010-11. A kid in his hometown of Sweden went home to see his father after a game with tears in his eyes because his team lost 9-8; he scored all eight goals, but was sorry the team didn't win. His name was Peter Forsberg; I guess you must lose 9-8 before you can be great. My computer is going kooky, so now would be a good time to wrap things up; I'm a PC, what can you do about it?

CLASSIC: How John Kordic and Jaroslav Halak Nearly Killed Me

During my days with the old FRANCHISE blog, I wrote this hockey blog about two of what I thought were significant moments in my life involving the Montreal Canadiens. I was still down about my previous rant and sulk about the winningest franchise in hockey history, so to lighten up the mood I'm pulling this from the archives and reposting an old favourite. TADA! My first ever 100-pageview blog entry (Early grammar errors and all)!

In the late 1980s, my Dad drove a blue Chrysler sedan; I think it was a "Le Baron". Yes, a blue Chrysler LeBaron! Manual windows and doors, carpeted seating, a pop-up antenna that I whacked with a hockey stick to see how many times it would bounce back and forth, and less interior features than anyone knew what to do with. Dad loved his Le Baron, and nothing put a smile on his face quite like a trip to Knob Hills Farms on a Saturday afternoon. A kid growing up in the suburbs of Mississauga, before the urban sprawl of the 2000s, had millions of things to do during his summer vacation. However, if your name started with "Phil", ended with "Wood", and lived on Autumn Leaf Crescent, then you were going with him. "Phil, get in the car; we're going to Knob Hill Farms."

I cried, pleaded, made excuses, and begged, but nothing I could do or say would prevent my Dad from taking me back to the "most boring place in the world". My Dad threw me into the backseat of the Le Baron, got in the car, and drove off to parts unknown (i.e. North York).

It was during one road trip to the depths of...vegetables that Dad tuned in his special AM/FM Stereo radio to CFRB 1010 to hear good old Wally Kreuter talk sports. I remember that cloudy day as if it was yesterday. Wally said...

"...Maple Leafs General Manager Gord Stellick announced today that the team traded forward Russ Courtnall to the Montreal Canadiens for defenceman John Kordic..."

Suddenly, the rear wheel drive gave way, Dad lost control of the steering wheel, and I could feel my body being thrust from one side of the car to another! Could this be the end? Has the apocalypse begun? Will the specter of the four horsemen signalled the beginning of at least twenty years of Ballard wrought futility? What will become of me? Will I survive, or have I fallen under the icy grip of death?

"Phil, we're here."

I woke up in the backseat of the LeBaron in the Knob Hill Farms parking lot; we arrived safe and sound (albeit safe is not the right word given the circumstance). I passed out before hearing Gord Stellick trying to explain his actions in his squeaky, lilting voice. Nevertheless, the dream was true: The Leafs traded their best player in Russ Courtnall to the dreaded Montreal Canadiens for...John Kordic?! We traded the future star and goal scoring phenom in the "Hound Line" with him, Gary Leeman, and Wendel Clark for a do nothing goon?
(While Russ Courtnall's addition to the Habs' lineup did not produce Cups, his trade to the Minnesota North Stars before the '93 season for Brian Bellows contributed to the team's eventual Cup triumph. John Kordic's story does not have the happy ending; he died in 1992 after an alcohol-related altercation with police)


Fast forward to 2010. Driving on Highway 403 in a Discount rent-a-van to the office in Brampton, I turn on the FAN 590 and hear the announcer proclaim "...Canadiens General Manager Pierre Gauthier announced today that the team traded goaltender Jaroslav Halak to the St.Louis Blues for prospect Lars Eller and..." I forgot the rest of what he said as I was trying to keep the van from tumbling off the overpass!

It happened again! I never thought something like "The Kordic Trade" would ever happen again, but it did this afternoon! Halak, who carried Slovakia to semi-finals of the 2010 Olympics ahead of three of the world's six hockey superpowers and the 'saving grace' of the Canadiens' in last year's postseason run and comeback hero against all things Ovechkin and Backstrom and Crosby and Malkin, is gone to the Blues for...Danish '07 draft pick Lars Eller and Ian Schultz (one of these two does not have a wiki on Wikipedia; guess which one!)



As they say in Slovakia, "Buckle up, this will be a bumpy ride!"

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 ^_^

Hockey Hoodoo

I'm not big time into voodoo and magic, but I noticed a couple things about the Toronto Maple Leafs this year:

1. They are undefeated.
2. I didn't sit down to watch their games for a long period of time.
3. If I don't watch their games live, there will be a Cup parade in Toronto next June :)

By the way, Leaf Nation, how are those plans to erect James Reimer life-size statues on every street corner in Toronto coming along?

Losing to Winners: Me versus the Montreal Canadiens

One Christmas, the Wood family received a table hockey set. It took hours to construct, the half-foot long stickers of the 21 NHL teams pasted on each side were slanted, and the miniature scoreboard attached on top soon fell off and disappeared within a matter of weeks. The best part about the construction was peeling the stickers of the smiling, sparkly toothed, helmet-less, hockey players, attaching the stickers to the plastic wafers, and sticking them onto the metal pegs that danced in their saw-cut groves. Once pucks when behind the net, they stayed there until you called a faceoff next to the mask-less, smiling goalkeeper. The puck would also fly out of the arena causing another stoppage, and another faceoff at center 'ice'.

As months and years passed, I took over that table hockey set. I would broadcast games, and imagine NHLers were playing for the Stanley Cup every night on my kitchen table. In the imagination, however, there was one hindrance: The teams of stickers featured two teams from the same country, two teams with long and storied histories, and while one was my favourite the other was a winner. That favourite team was the Toronto Maple Leafs, and the winning team was the Montreal Canadiens.

Whenever I played table hockey with my older sister, two things always happened:

1. She was always Montreal.
2. She always won.

It was "death and taxes" to me, and as her center scored goal after goal against my "Johnny Bower", and then "Felix Potvin" who played without a mask, I could never figure out why my Leafs were always so...bad! The history books I read, as I grew in interest for the game of hockey, told a similar story in the list of Stanley Cup Champions printed near the back of those books. The Toronto Maple Leafs were winners, and so was Montreal; I liked knowing the Leafs were a good team, and won plenty of Stanley Cups in their history. Then, however, the words "Toronto Maple Leafs" stopped appearing in the column of more recent winners. Words like "Boston Bruins", "Philadelphia Flyers", "New York Islanders", and "Edmonton Oilers" filled the column of Cup champions. However, two words persisted and remained a fixture on that list: Those "Montreal Canadiens".

I wasn't losing to my sister Grace-Anne, I was losing the puck to Larry Robinson, who passed to Jean Beliveau as he breezed over the line. He would pass to Rocket Richard as he blazed down the wing with that trademark glare, and make an unbelievable pass to Guy Lafleur, who won score before my plastic Leaf players could do anything - except smile -_-. On the odd offensive chance, I would be stonewalled by Patrick Roy one game, Jacques Plante the next game, maybe Georges Vezina the week after! My vision of a two-inch tall plastic version of Ken Dryden standing over his goal stick on the table hockey set before me also angered me to no end. Perhaps Les Habs' success on the ice reached my table hockey set as well? I didn't know for sure, because I always played as the Leafs, and I could never turn my back on my team.


With a new computer came NHL 97 by EA Sports, and I could play as any team and any player in any type of game I desired. Of course, the memories of that old table hockey set still linger whenever those Montreal Canadiens do something related to victory, or my Canadiens-loving friends remind me that their most recent Cup Memories are preserved on colour film, and not on black-and-white 8mm reels (they include cigarette commercials! o_O). As I get older, I look for any reason to get excited about my Leafs; any victory is the victory of me. I was that loser by the water cooler at the paint store, where I worked for eight years, and would get hit day after day by my Habs-loving co-worker about how my Leafs stink (Hi Michael). Younger kids in my church, who love the Canadiens, can relive the 1993 Stanley Cup moments on DVD and Blu-Ray discs, unfortunately. Over the years, however, the hatred I should feel for Les Habitants developed into acceptance and respect.


I don't know the moment it happened, but as the Leafs continued to lose and the Canadiens continued to find victory in improbable situations I discovered I liked them, and had brief moments where I cheered for them (Blasphemy, I know). In time, I found a new team to loathe and despise: The Scum from Ottawa with their pink satin and white lace jerseys. A collection of low-blow all-stars, who think 2-on-1 fights and powerplays are the only times they can score, supported by former Leaf fans that grew impatient with the losing but were too proud to join the ranks of "Les Bleu, Blanc, et Rouge". Evil Alfie running Darcy Tucker, the most gentlemanly player in the game, from behind and not getting a penalty because the Scum paid off the referees like they always do...! To them I say: 1927.

Oops, tangent...where was I? Oh yea, Canadiens.

In the opening NHL regular season game in Toronto, my Leafs defeated the visiting Montreal Canadiens 2-0 at the Air Canada Center. The victory did not set off a firestorm of street dancing, confetti tossing, and the Cup parading down Yonge Street Torontonians usually do after every win, but this does add another chapter to the already storied history between these two great teams in the storied history of Canada. It also adds give me bragging rights for at least one hour to all my friends who support the Canadiens; too bad they can't see me gloating behind all their Stanley Cup banners :(

Singing in Leafland

The Maple Leafs blanked the Montreal Canadiens 2-0 in their home opener yesterday to start the 2011-2012 NHL season. Requests poured into the office of local artists and sculptors from all over Toronto ordering lifesize statues of James Reimer to be erected on every street corner in the city. There was a rumour the City of Toronto would change the name of the Don Valley Parkway to the "Dion Phaneuf Expressway", and even requests for Michael Lombardi to run for provincial office.

Lost in the post game, and ridiculously early Stanley Cup championship parade and festivites downtown was the fact the Montreal Canadiens dictated the early tempo from the start of the contest, but lost to costly turnovers which resulted in goals from Michael Lombardi and Leaf captain Dion Phaneuf. Carey Price was to feature a new goalie mask celebrating his Native-American heritage and honour breast cancer awareness month, but there was a delay. Expect to see it next game; I saw a clip of the mask on HNIC and it is a beauty. After his next game, Price will auction the mask and he will donate the proceeds to charity ^_^