Gamenight: Semin Explodes On Crosby.

By now everyone has read this Alexander Semin job on Crosby. [Puck Daddy]

"What's so special about [Crosby]? I don't see anything special there. Yes, he does skate well, has a good head, good pass. But there's nothing else. Even if you compare him to Patrick Kane from Chicago ... [Kane] is a much more interesting player. The way he moves, his deking abilities, his thinking on the ice and his anticipation of the play is so superb."

"I think that if you take any player, even if he is "dead wood," and start promoting him, you'll get a star. Especially if he scores 100 points. No one is going to care about anyone else. No one is going to care whether he possesses great skill. Let's say you put someone in front of the net and let him deflect pucks in, and he scored 50 goals; everyone will say "Wow!" and then hand him a $10 million per year contract. That's what they like here. "

Seriously.

Imagine you've been dating some girl for two years. Then some hot girl is chilling somewhere else, and someone asks you who you think is hotter. What are you going to say? If Semin was on the Pens, Ovechkin would be feeling Semin's wrath. What a boring controversy. But, hey, the Pens suck right now, and this is all we got.

Semin makes some points, and if you read a little into the words, it isn't exactly scathing. In fact, this is the best thing that could have happened. What fun is it to have respect all the time? We want Crosby to score four goals next time he plays the Caps and and point at Semin on the bench or something.

Semin isn't wrong to say Crosby isn't interesting. But who cares about that.
Whether you like him or not. Bing is a solid hockey player; 100 points just don't fall oninto your lap. Semin, if he has the chance, and he should, will be getting some hype soon.If that hype means giving interviews like this, we say bring it.

Malkin is better than both of them anyway.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

::::::::::::::::::::::

As for Gamenight.

Not a lot to pick from, but there is some quality.

We're going with a two-team parlay in these two games.
First the over of 5.5 in the Blackhawks /Stars game, and the Canucks to cover by +1.5



Do it.

Go Pens

Trick Or Balls. PENS LOSE.

If you read anything beyond this point, that is your fault.

These are the kind of games that you wish Michael Myers would be hiding in your house so he could sneak up on you and stab you in the neck.

It is not bad because the Penguins lost, but because of the subsequent bridge-jumping by fans and media members alike.

If this was March 1st, then there would be trouble.
But it is Halloween.

That is all we can tell you at this point. You have to help yourself.


[Jefe B]

[Pete P.]

Dupuis got slashed by Jason Vorhees in the locker room, so the Pens had to call up Chris Minard.

MAF made some solid saves, but everything else was mud.

The most stunning thing about the period was Ken Klee is still in the NHL.
Unreal.

Over/Under on Rob Rossi making up a trade rumor: Three days.

The second period didn't start off much better.
But about five minutes in, at least something happened.

Orpik got a penalty for playing hockey. Sometimes it is hard to believe how bad of a ref Bill McCreary is.

The Pens killed it, but Phoenix was buzzing.
The puck found its way to Olli Joke-enin.

1-0.

Jokinen: 32 points in 37 games against the Pens.
Sick.

The Pens picked up the play a little bit, and some idiot for the Coyotes took a penalty.
On the powerplay, Malkin laces one off the glass. It bounces out in front of the net.
Somehow Satan bats it out of mid-air. 1-0.

We'd show a picture, but apparently no one cares to take good pictures at the Jobing.com Arena. Surprise.
1-1

After the goal, the Pens go nuts.
Malkin had more shots than former WTAE/KDKA broadcaster Don Cannon.

[JSchiff]

Malkin and Sykora looked good, but they just could not beat Bryzlballs.

Towards the end of the period, the Pens hit a post.
Next thing you know, Staal takes a boarding penalty, and Phoenix takes the lead. 2-1

Shane Doan is kind of a big deal.

Malkin finishes the period with 9 shots; a franchise record for shots by a player in a period.
Thank you, Geno.

Things picked up where they left off, with the Pens flying around.
All of sudden though, you notice Bing is nowhere to be found.
In the midst of all this, the Great Homo takes a too-many-men penalty.
What a whiner.

After Wayne is done throwing a tempter tantrum, the Coyotes take another penalty.
5-on-3 time.

It is more or less the game.

The Pens get a few chances, but Bryz is sharp. Phoenix clears it.
Satan gets a penalty because Bill Mcqueery likes to jack us around.
Satan insults Mcqueery's mustache. 10-minute misconductblog.

Without Satan and Crosby, it just ain't gonna fly.

Steve Reinprecht makes a disgusting move, passes to some jerkoff. 3-1.
And then another one by Doan to close up shop. Game.

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MISCELLANEOUS

• Free Candy was everywhere.
• Let's just move on.
• No idea what's up with Bing.
  

GAMEDAY [11] -- PHOENIX COYOTES

:: Phoenix ain't no joke.
Yeah, they're 3-4-0, but they are a solid team all the way through.

The 'Yote's haven't played since they got smoked by Calgary on Saturday night. [Ice Chips]

So that most likely means they are going to be pissed off.

Plus Olli Jokinen always scores against the Pens.
If you need a longer preview of the game, [pp.com] has it.

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:: Some interesting off-the-ice news.
The Pens are now worth $195 Million. [Forbes]


We don't know jack about business, but the Pens had an increase of 26% last year, highest in the NHL.
Buries It bought them for $107 million in 1999, so that's pretty sick.


To contrast, the Leafs are number-one with a worth of $448 million.


The Coyotes are worth $142 million.


Our favorite is the Lightning. [Forbes Magazine]:

"In June, OK Hockey, a group of eight owners led by Oren Koules and Len Barrie, bought the Tampa Bay Lightning, the lease rights to the St. Pete Times Forum and 5.5 axces of land in downtown Tampa's Channelside District near the arena for $210 million, of which $204 million was for the team and operating rights to the arena. The new owners believe they can increase cash flow by $18 million a year. They better. Their purchase was financed with a $105 million, three-year bullet loan, meaning in 2011 they will either have to pay the loan off or refinance it."

Like we said, we know nothing about business,
but if Forbes Magazine is mocking you, you're screwed.

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We fielded some good candidates for the Gameday position tonight.
It was a tough call.
NICK G. comes through.






Go Pens

IceBurgh 08'--One Burgh, One Bird.

Thanks to our boy [Mikey at Kiss FM] for this one.



haha


Go Pens

Mistake City

Betting on sports is how you learn to hate teams.
Toronto just wouldn't die.
We lose.

How does New Jersey shut down the Pens, but get smoked by Toronto?
That is a joke.
John Madden can shutdown Crosby, but he lets Matt Stajan poop in his mouth.


[JS]


Check out Marty Brodeur get jacked at Niklas Hagman for spraying ice in his face on the shutout goal:


“I decided I was going to try something else and I felt pretty confident with it,” Hagman said, “I didn’t want to put snow in his face. That’s why I felt a little bad. I didn’t want to celebrate too much. I didn’t want to be cocky.”[yahoo]



Dick.
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We were made aware of an unreal application for the iPhone:





Go the STATIONS menu.
Choose BROWSE TALK. Choose NHL.
Every team's flagship radio broadcast available for streaming.

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Michael B. employs a great tactic to lure trick-or-treaters.

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Big news for Tony over at The Confluence.
Kukla's Korner has brought him aboard to be their Pens blogger.
Best wishes to a solid human being.
NEW LINK

Don't go into the bathroom in KK's headquarters, Tony.
Abel2Yzerman is waiting.


Actually, head over there now if you haven't heard about HCMT's latest line juggling.

Dupuis- Bing- Tank
Cook-Malkin- Sykora
TK-Staal-Satan
Biz Nasty-Zigo-Godard

Not bad as far as balance. We'll see.

Some people are already flipping out. We knew this was coming. It is just something we're all going to have to deal with, until some people learn how to watch an NHL season.

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Gameday tomorrow:

Someone mentioned we should sign "Rambo," because he can get some shots off.

We really don't want to, so give us someone else who gets shots off.



Go Pens.

Gamenight: Before the Devils know you bet on their game...

Betting is as streaky as anything. When you're hot, you're hot. When you're cold, you're ice.

To clarify some things, we bet at [BETUS].
We've been betting there for three-plus years. Solid organization.
You can fill your account for a minimum of $50.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Only three games on the slate tonight.
Taking one glance at the games, it becomes clear what game we are sitting on:

Toronto visits New Jersey. [PensionPlanPuppets]

Toronto, coming off a tough loss at home, must now travel all the way to the swamp.



5 bucks on Devils to win by 1.5.
Bank it.

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Speaking of the Leafs, they're doing some below-the-radar experiment.
We did extensive Google searches that came up empty.

We won't insult everyone this time with big giant red arrows.


What's wrong with this picture?


Aha


We figured no one had heard about it since goal lights in the Air Canada Centre are the least used in the National Hockey League.


slam

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We wanted to hit the numbers, since we've hit the 10-game mark.



+Evgeni Malkin leads the league in scoring with 3g/12a/15p.
He has played less games than the 2 of the top 16 players up there in scoring.
One of those players is Bing: 3g/10a/13p.
The other is Marc Savard, having played 10 games and putting up 5 goals and 8 assists.

+The Pens have scored an average of 2.4 goals a game.
That's 8th worst in the league.
Of all teams, Philly leads the league with an average of 4 a game.


+But then we hit up goals-against averages for teams.
The Pens are 4th in the league, giving up only 2.1 a game. Staggering.
Rangers are number one with a 1.92 average.

+So, Philly should be awesome since they score 4 goals a game.
Whoops. Their GAA is 3.67. Fourth worst in the league.
Dallas is giving up 4.22 a game.

+The Pens power play is 7th in the league with 20.9%.
St. Louis is all business with mid-'90s-Pens-esque 34.2%
We'll see them Saturday.

+The Pens PK is fifth in the league, dominating 87% of the time.
Minnesota is a perfect 100%, killing 30-some penalties this season.

As far as the Pens individual stats go, here's the breakdown:

Click me.

And now we come to the most disturbing stat of all.

+The Pens are giving up 33.7 shots a game, 5th worst in the league.
They're putting 26.2 shots on net a game, 4th worst.

This looks to be a telltale sign that the blue line is lacking.
Teams don't respect our blue line. Defensemen can rarely get a shot off.
Gonchar and Whitney combined would add at least 3 shots a game to the Pens average.



As far as giving up shots goes, if you've watched Pens game, they've been in the hunt every night.
They're playing conservatively, keeping shots to the perimeter.
It's the only way teams can get the puck to the net against the Pens.
Next time you watch a game, just count 3 shots against the Pens that are trash.
That takes the Pens average down to 30 a game.
It might be naive to think that way, but any statistical figure can be ridiculed.

Go Pens

It's Not Snowflake. PENS LOSE.

Staying up for this one becomes even worse when you woke up today and it's 11 degrees.

Besides getting a survivor goal in the latter portions of the third,
the Pens' anemic offense up to that point was frustrating.

To say this was a defensive battle is somewhat appropriate.
But the ice was leaning towards Sabu all night.
Another heroic performance for Sabourin.

Gotta cut down on the penalties.
The Pens ate more box tonight than Ellen Degeneres.

Can you imagine making this entrance at work every day?


--SDC--

Early on, Godard dropped the gloves with Shelley.

We haven't seen something get beat that hard since we took Charlie to an 'N Sync concert.

We never play the Sharks. We don't have the rapport with the Western Conference that we have with the East. Evgeni Najokov has never given us a reason to hate him.
Buying that penalty against Satan in the early going changed all that.
What a jobber play. We still like him.
The Pens killed it eventually.

Halfway through the period, some stain for San Jose gave the puck away to Malkin in the slot.
Malkin craps himself when he realizes that the idiot is actually gonna try to make that pass.
He breaks for it, steals it, shoots it wide.

When faced with shots that actually hit the net, Nabo was all business.

The Pens got a PP soon after that and promptly gave up the lamest shorthanded goal of the decade. Malkin blew a tire on I-79. Some joke gets it.

1-0.

The Sharks were everywhere, but Legame was all over everything.
We actually forgot Jeremy Roenick still plays in the NHL.
The Sharks might be our second favorite team when they cut him.

The Sharks were given some great chances to distance themselves from the Pens in the second.
Malkin went to the box, and then Dupuis did.
Gotta give it up to Sabu for staying sharp in an otherwise sparingly offensive game.
Then it again, he's paid to do that.

The teams exchanged big bens, and the Sabu had to make a big save on Dan Boyle to keep the Pens in the hunt.

After a couple of more solid saves, Sabourin made another huge save by accident.
The Sharks were swarming. They could smell blood, if you will.

But nothing happened of course.

Guess what. Nothing happened in the first half of the third.
The Sharks came out more aggressive than that annoying dude who always hits on your girlfriend right in front of you.
The Sharks almost scoring off a faceoff was the lead story.

Depending on what you do for a living, you may have been considering closing up shop with about 10 minutes left. No one would have judged you.

In the second half of the third period, the Sharks hit their 41st post of the night.
The Pens kill off that Crosby penalty and then get one of their own.
This was the Pens chance they were waiting for.
Fedotenko squashed that chance by taking a penalty.

When David Alan Grier buried another garbage goal for the Sharks to make it 2-0, you probably brushed your teeth and investigated the issue of whether or not your partner was up for some sex.

You tried to ignore the shot totals of the two teams, but FSN shows with 6 minutes left that the Pens were being outshot 32-9.
The Pens say to hell with the guys in the truck, and Tank puts one home in the Tank. 2-1.

The Pens could smell blood, but it gets gayed up when Matt Cooke takes some phantom penalty.
Didn't deserve to win anyway.
Hacksaw finishes the game by killing dude in the chair. Very short experiment.

Game.

MISCELLANEOUS

• How much better exactly is the West?
• Joe Thornton is a beast. What was Boston doing?
  
• Pens outshot 34-11. ;)
  
• As Jesse from [FF] points out, the Pens have gotten 17 shots in the last 85 minutes of action. Vomit.
  
• Still October.
• Pesonen, best shape of his life. J ust saying.
  
• The Sharks are an entertaining team. They don't take cheap shots, Cheechoo excluded.
  
• Just not a good game.

GAMEDAY [10] -- SAN JOSE SHARKS

The Pens are coming in 5-2-2.
We all know who they have played.

The Sharks are coming in 7-2-0.
Three of those wins came at the expense of the 3-4-1 Los Angeles Kings.
So don't look at San Jose's record at all.

THE CONFLUENCE has a nice preview.
EMPTY NETTERS brings home the bacon.

The last time the Pens were in HP Pavilion, Cheechoo Hines'd Eaton:



If you want to kill yourself, read the game recap that we did for it back in November 2006.
It was our 11th recap ever. OUCH.

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HCMT robbed Pens and Sharks fans everywhere from seeing a supreme goaltending matchup between Nabokov and MAF. PENS

No idea what the reasoning is. But we're not coaches.

Given the way that Sabu played against the Bruins, though,
maybe we are in fact gonna see a solid goaltending matchup.

Last time Sabu was on the West Coast, he stunned Vancouver in his first start after MAF went down in Calgary:



Inspirational performance by Sabu.
Legame.



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+ Hal Gill is no dice tonight.
Zigo-Godard-Biz will be the fourth line.
The top 9 are always everywhere.

+Darryl Sydor will be in the lineup tonight.
He recently requested a trade from the Penguins.
Which means he is putting his skills on display for prospective teams to want him.
Expect him to play as lights-out as a role-playing d-man can play.

+ Max Talbot is not suiting up tonight due to an undisclosed injury. PG
+ Here's another article discussing Talbot's role on the Pens. PG

Speaking of Mad Max...
Is his foot still bothering him from blocking a shot in last year's playoffs?

Here's a pic from a preseason game this year:



And here's one from the Canes regular-season game:

He wore those covers on both skates when returning from his foot injury during the playoffs,
explaining that if he only wore one, people would target it. Wearing two was gonna make it harder for opponents to target the bad foot.

Anyway, if he was wearing those covers in the postseason, maybe the injury was still nagging him.
He blocks shots for a living.
If they aren't uncomfortable, you got to consider keeping them on all the time.
Or does that makes us pansies?

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

PUCK DADDY went inside the most shocking stats accumulated so far this NHL season.
He put the Pens 22% power-play unit on the list.
Which we guess would be a shock to everyone expecting the PP numbers to suffer.
Pens fans aren't shocked by the number at all.

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Since there were no (zero) rebuttals posted in our comments in regard to us labeling Gregor and Brownlee as hypocrites, we consider it a done deal.
We're waiting for their fanboys to catch wind of it.

Point Pensblog.
The Pens will handle the rest on 11.06.
Crosby better keep his head up, apparently.

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TIMKO found this pic:


JVM found this Coffey jersey online that breaks the space-time continuum:


:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

GREG N. dropped us some great news today:


Verizon Fios is offering Center Ice and NHL Network. LINK

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So, who do we turn to in the big Hacksaw battle?
To someone who we feel can make a big impact this season:


dude in the chair

Go Pens

Hacksaw In The Building

Enough with this Oilers Bullshit.

Huge game tonight. Rumor has it Hacksaw is getting the call tonight for [WeBleedTeal]

Moments ago, it was confirmed by Charlie, who is out in San Jose. Hacksaw is in the building.

The Miseducation Of OILER NATION

The whole Bloggergate situation up in Edmonton has taken on a personal note. We were more than comfortable linking to OILER NATION when everything was going down, saying that some journalist who no one has even heard of was siding with the Oilers. That was it. That's all we said. Oilers fans at the aptly named Oiler Nation stopped making out with each other to read a big-time post that Oiler Nation put together about us.

Here's the picture that is depicted in a banner atop OILER NATION'S blog.
See the ethnic/societal-diversity angle they're going for?
From right to left, we got the wily brunette, the Indian, the preppie, the blonde skank, and the Italian free spirit.

The goal when doing this is to welcome new people to the site
by subconsciously telling them that they (and people from all walks of life) are welcome.

But purposely excluding African-Americans and Asians from the diversity picture
is a prime example of the racism prevalent in today's society.

Being the equal-opportunity human beings that we are,
we decided to make a new one for them:

This whole thing started when a blog called JEAN SHORTS AND BAGGED MILK was insulted that we made fun of his "big brother," Robin Brownlee. Being a puppet for Brownlee much like OILERS NATION is puppeted by the Edmonton Oilers' organization, BaggedMilk was personally insulted that we said that traditional media was dying and that we "called out" his BF Brownlee and "hid" (as in, when our blog was down this past weekend).

Feel free to go and read BaggedMilk's scathing post about us at the link provided. The dude actually sent us the link back on October 22nd. He said he sent the link to us because when he calls someone out, he has balls and stands up to the heat. "Heat" in this sense probably refers to a naked man.

You'll agree after reading it that it was nothing worth mentioning.
His best dig at us:

"..You're writing a blog, you don't need any skill, education, or gramatical structure. (as you can plainly see here at jeanshorts and baggedmilk).."

Yawn.

We have been in bigger wars with better bloggers, and we thought the whole issue was dead. But BaggedBalls called upon his self-admitted "big brother that Pensblog wishes they had": Oiler Nation.

If you go and update his San Jose teal-background blog, you'll see he has posted and rebutted a string of e-mails we've had with him. We've gone with that tactic before, when we were still relying on other people for our own blog's content, so we can't say that's low-class.

BaggedMilk suited up for when the "OilersNation War Wagon" comes to Pittsburgh for battle.

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BaggedMilk is pretty much a nuisance in this whole situation. Then again, we must praise him.
If it wasn't for him pushing the issue, we wouldn't have been able to expose Jason Gregor and Robin Brownlee as hypocrites.

Remember when everything was going down in Bloggergate, Brownlee and Gregor came out and supported the Oilers' decision in regard to booting COVERED IN OIL from the press box? That was a watershed moment for all of their fanboys at OILER NATION.

Many bloggers' looks at the situation (including ours) are not focused on the debate of whether or not bloggers should be allowed in the press box. It was the shady way the Oilers' brass handled the situation that sent shockwaves through the community of people on the internet that were interested in the story. We definitely put in our two cents in regard to the way traditional media is sinking. But we never lobbied for bloggers to have free reign in press boxes. We're just recognizing that the fans' voice is more prevalent than ever.

But Jason Gregor and Robin Brownlee, instead of taking the high road and simply telling bloggers to go get journalism degrees, decide to insult the intelligence of hockey fans and internet users everywhere by implying that people don't know whether or not they're reading something that is full of crap. Fortunately, we can tell the difference between something being full of crap or not. And if you want to read a blog that is completely full of crap, head to OILER NATION.

Why do we say this? Well, in Brownlee's blog post about Bloggergate that his fanboys were in love with, he said this in reference to bloggers:

If you want to start a website and write whatever you want without signing your name to it, have at it.

In any case, if you’re going to snipe away relentlessly, then you’d better be prepared to back up what you say or write. LINK

Not too bad.
But then we get to Jason Gregor's take:

There is no accountability on blogs and that is the problem.
My beef with bloggers is that anyone can be one. Most are nameless, faceless people who write their opinions, but unfortunately there are too many false facts in blogs. LINK

Man, it would be unfortunate if Brownlee and Gregor's names were tied to a hockey blog that was disseminating misleading and unfactual information, because they hate that kind of thing.
Whoops. That blog is OILERS NATION, the blog they write for.

The link immediately above sends you to a blog post written by the King of Brownlee/Gregor fanboys, Wanye Gretz. He wrote the following post that has us questioning the credibility of Gregor/Brownlee:

"Close your blog to invited readers only? Chirp the Mighty OilersNation, call Edmontonians hicks and then go and hide? Make fun of Robin Brownlee and Jason Gregor and then close the shop so we can’t even read it to know what makes us so mad? Was it any good? Was it funny? Is it anything we can use ourselves? Now we’ll never know. This makes about as much sense as those new Mats Sundin poker ads on TV."

Without any source, without any information, Gregor and Brownlee's blog falsely reported that we had shut down our blog. And they also made us aware, in another section of their post, of their intent to cause us bodily harm by "loading up the OilersNation War Wagon," coming to Pittsburgh, and kicking the crap out of us. What else would you expect from people who don't include African-Americans and Asians in their fanbase?

It's truly a shame that a blog that Brownlee's and Gregor's names are tied to has resorted to accusing of us of something without asking us what truly happened. We were moving to a three-column format, messed up the code, and got stunned for a day.

It's almost as if "someone has jumped on the internet, sniped away relentlessly, and released too many false facts." And we'll throw in the threat on our lives as a bonus.
And, hey, they even sign their name to the blog.
Weren't there a couple of guys denouncing that type of "reporting"?

We are now openly calling for the questioning of any article written by Brownlee and anything reported by that hack Gregor.
Are Robin Brownlee and Jason Gregor hypocrites? You decide.

While you're contemplating that, Gregor and Brownlee are typing out another big post from the friendly confines of the Edmonton Oilers organization's back pocket.


P.S. to Wanye Gretz and his OILER NATION BF's:

When you cry after the Pens destroy the Oilers on November 6th, don't fake your tears like Wayne Gretzky did.

Monday night's results:

We were looking up the score for the game real quick,
and even Google's algorithms comprehend that the Oilers are sideshows:


Try it for yourself



Huh?

GAMENIGHT: WIN

We had the Wild to win. CHECK.
We had the over on the O/U of 5. PUSH.

We would have been living large if Minnesota Wild forward James Sheppard
could bury it into an empty net while inside the opponent's zone.


Worst player in NHL history.
Thanks for nothing.

Gamenight: How To Gamble On Hockey

For those who don't have Home Ice, Versus is actually showing a decent game:

Thank God.
It's usually Boston/Philadelphia or Detroit/crap.

Because we like to gamble and because we get bored,
we figured we'd try and handicap this game.


Dicks.

For those familiar with throwing cash money around on football point spreads,
hockey is a little bit different.

All spreads are 1.5, plus or minus.
So, for example, here is the line on tonight's Wild/Blackhawks game:

Too much info is sometimes the best, even at the risk of insulting some people's intelligence that we know you have.

Whichever team is minus ( - ) is favored.
Therefore, the Wild are favored to win the game tonight by 1.5 goals.
The Blackhawks are the underdog.

If you bet on the Hawks, and they lose 2-1, you win, since they lost by less than 1.5.
If they lose 3-1, you're taking out a mortgage.
If they win, you win. Obviously.

Conversely, if you take the Wild, you need them to win by two or more.

The money line, which is the second column, is just like football betting.
You're just picking a team to win the game, straight up.
If you put $5 on Chicago at +145, you would get you $7.25 for the win.
If you put $5 on the Wild to win, you get $3.03.

The last column is the over/under: another familiar line to football gamblers.
This one is easy.

You bet on whether the teams will score more or less than 5 goals combined.

Now, you can do several things.
You can make a straight bet on any of these wagers, or you can parlay them.

For example, you can take the Wild to win or cover, and the under.
The more you parlay, the more you can win. You can even do multiple games in a night.

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True hockey gambling story

Bill Simmons once quoted someone who said:
"A good bet is like a good women, you only meet a few, and you remember them all."

Back in our college days, we threw some money around from time to time, never really touching hockey because it is tough to pick a winner every night.

Well, we had a solid weekend, making 150 bucks, and we were feeling lucky.
But after Monday went by, we had nothing to put any action on.

The year was 2005, and the Pens were awful in October.
It was on Tuesday, October 25, that we bet our first hockey game.

The Penguins had to win sometime, and they were playing the Panthers at home.
We put $30 on the Penguins to win.

The recap is still archived of the [4-3 ot] loss.


Sickening.

So yeah, that sucked.

Fast-forward to the end of October.
The 27th, (three-year anniversay today), and the Penguins were hosting the Atlanta Thrashers.
The Penguins hadn't even won a game yet.
All the hype surrounding Crosby entering the NHL and big free-agency signings was just about gone.

But they had to win, right? And the Thrashers were never good.
We put $120 on the Penguins to cover the spread. They had to win by two goals.

The game started at 7:30 PM.
And like so many games that year, it was essentially over by about 8:00 PM.

The Thrashers went off.
They were up 4-0 early, and it was vomit city.

$120 ain't no joke when you're in college and you've overdrafted your bank account more times than you care to remember.

But as usual, #66 bailed us out. He went off.
Scored two straight goals in the first period. Assisted on three more.

And as Ric Jackman made it 6-4, we were stunned. Big John Leclair added a huge insurance goal to make it 7-4, and life had meaning again. But, of course Caron had to give up a goal to make it 7-5 late in third. Thrashers could not score again. And thankfully they didn't.

We won something like $280.
Unreal.

Somehow this game is still on the internet:



And here is the [recap]

This scoresheet might need to be framed:


How Lasse Pirjeta was seeing more ice time than Talbot is a sad commentary on Eddie O's coaching career.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

So anyway, we are going to try and get back into gambling on hockey on these game nights.
We welcome all of you to join in. We'll try to keep our record.

Our pick of the night:


Minnesota to win and the over of 5.


We'd take the under, but we don't trust the Blackhawks goalie situation.


Good luck.

Go Pens

Just To Make You Sick

Not that we have time to track down and defend Evgeni Malkin all the time.
But....

theprinceofwales on LGP:

On the game tying goal Geno just stopped playing when the rags gained possesion in the nuetral zone. If he keeps skating and picks someone up Zherdev maybe doesn't score. Too many three points games in the early going this year. 8 of the pens 12 points this year were earned while giving up 7 to eastern conference teams.



Pretty good position for the guy who isn't even the supposed center on the line.
Sometimes you wonder how people watch games.
Thankfully he got flamed.

Whatev.
It was just a solid shot by Zherdev.



Vintage Big Joke.

And solid play by Hines Ward to drop the ball on 4th down.
We thought the toughest man in the NFL could've gotten that one.

Ernie Mills takes that to the house.

What a player


Go Pens

Spell-checked at 3:31 PM.

Pensblog: In The Posts And Beyond

This post is brought to you by:



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Now is as good a time as any to visit an old friend:
HOT CHICKS WITH DOUCHEBAGS

Is that guy pointing at himself?




That dude in the chair may be a gameday candidate.

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UPDATE: Darryl Sydor has asked for a trade. TRIB
H/T to Eileenover in C-blog.
He's a good man.

:: Hal Gill will be with the Pens during the West-Coast-ish trip. TRIB

:: Nice article about off-ice officials in Mellon Arena. PENS


:: The Baby Pens lost to a bunch of girls. JANNE PESONEN BLOG

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This past Saturday, every NHL team was in action on the same day for the first time since opening night of the post-lockout season.

Ross The Boss McKeon broke down the day of stats. YAHOO



Check out this hit that Doug Weight laid on rookie Brandon Sutter.
He's the one who scored on Orpik's gaffe the other night:



People are whining that it's a hit to the head.
Tell the rookie to keep his head up. What an idiot.
Weight wasn't going for the head. Case closed.
If that's what Weight is about, he wouldn't have been in the league this long.
These guys are flying around the ice. It's a physical sport.
There's a difference between this and something Chris Simon would do.

David Lee from RED AND BLACK HOCKEY agrees.

If Sutter keeps his head up, he would see the hit coming.
He went to the hospital with a concussion and has been released.
He'll keep his head up next time.
But it won't stop the Hurricanes' GM from being on his period. TSN



The Hawks and Wings unveiled their throwback uniforms for the Winter Classic. NHL.COM
Chris Chelios is an idiot.

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Classy

No ads in this post.
Hopefully no one feels personally offended.

Smoke bomb in Philly Saturday night.
You would expect it to be a nightly thing.
EMac breaks it down over at [FANHOUSE]



Wow

Rangers Still Suck. PENS LOSE.

Nothing to say.
Anytime you go into MSG, you expect something like this to happen.
An extended road trip at the beginning of the season does wonders to strengthen team unity and crap.
We're still relatively early in the season, and the Pens are on the road for three more.
If they finish the road trip 0-4, feel free to kill yourself.

And this whole deal about blowing leads in the third period has to stop.

-- Sam's Dog --

It was all Rangers early. A bunch of meaningless shots from the perimeter. Snore.
MAF was being tested.
He was helped by some solid shot-blocks from Mark Eaton and Geno.

Jordan Staal was making his presence known early and often.
This was easily his best game of the season.

The Rangers owned the first half of the opening period.
The Pens took over for the rest.

The Pens had the only power play of the period, and they were sucking the life out of you.
It took a solid cross-ice pass by Tyler Kennedy to Darryl Sydor at the left point for the Pens to finally get a solid look at the net.
Sydor fires. It hits two Rangers and flutters in. 1-0.

Jordan Staal probably made a few more good plays before the period ended.

In the second, the Rangers were getting closer to MAF.
But either MAF was there or a Pens defenseman was blocking a shot or peeing on someone.

Nothing was happening until the second period hit the homestretch.
Another innocent-looking shot from the point results in Crosby finding the puck in a mess and burying it. 2-0.

The Rags and Pens exchanged power plays of ineptitude before the Pens were stunned at the end of the period, having to kill off a 5-on-3.

Jordan Staal was a monster. Scuderi was a monster.
Talbot = beast. Dupuis = Beast.
The 5-on-3 was killed beautifully.

The kill was brought to you by Poker Junkie.com.
Their Poker Glossary is deeper than balls.

The boo birds come out, and the Pens were in good shape.

Early in the third period, the Pens were gonna be short-handed because Jordan Staal was in the vicinity of a Ranger who tripped over himself.
7 seconds later, Markus Naslund made it 2-1.

Fleury doesn't help the Pens' survival efforts when he commits trapezoidal desertion.
That's two minutes.
And that's killed.

Father Time's train pulled into Penn Station as the third period evaporated.
Before you know it, King Henrik was rocketing to the bench for the extra attacker.

The Pens get possession of the puck and fart it up to center ice.
Crosby takes a backhand shot from Wall Street that misses the net.
The Rangers come roaring back for their final rush.
Nikolai Zherdev comes into the zone lazily and shoots. 2-2.

Stunned.

The overtime was as good as it gets.
The Pens had a bulk of the chances on one shift, but Lundqvist was insane.

And then they had some glorious chances at the end of OT.
Crosby was possessed.
But so was Lundqvist.

shootout

Zherdev and Letang were skating streaks of poop on their respective chances.
So was Dubinsky and Sykora.
Some Swedish guy can't lift his backhand and beats MAF.

Sidney Crosby had the chance to shut everyone up.

He pulls the leg kick, the studder deke, the feigned shot. Lundqvist doesn't bite.

No dice.

Game.

MISCELLANEOUS

• Ouch. 2-goal lead in the third period disappears.
• Don't even want to look at shot totals for the third period.
• Uneventful games produce uneventful blog posts.
• Point city.
• Vomit

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Tuesday night:


Hacksaw city.

GAMEDAY [9] -- RANGERS

We looked back at some posts from the playoff series from last season.
It's amazing how much we hated Sean Avery.








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[ Confluence ] has a solid statistical breakdown of the two teams.

Matt Cookie is ready to return.
Hal Gill is still out.
Tom Renney is still a douche.

Escape from NY.

OMG You Killed Tom Renney Manny Legace

From the game tonight. Rangers coach, and all around jerkoff, Tom Renney got smoked by one of his own players stick. F You BNG

New York Rangers coach Tom Renney was taken to the dressing room after being hit on the head by a stick in the second period against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Friday night.

The team announced midway through the third that Renney was still in the arena and "is doing OK" but would not return.

-[NHL.com]

Joke


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Manny Legace gets stunned by a carpet, MAF-style, thanks to Sarah Palin.




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And here's that Lucic hit:



jesus

Fedotenku Very Much. PENS WIN.

The Pens won this game using Charlie's favorite method.


Coming from behind.

What a fun game to be a part of.
It went from the worst game of the year to one of the best.

The Pens have started the season 5-2-1.
Ottawa started last season with a record of 13-0-1.

But the Pens have two of their best defensemen up in the press box.
They have an unreal goaltender.
They have Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.

There's cause for happiness in the good start,
but never get too high or too low.

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ANTHEM PICTURE POLICY:

We won't be posting every anthem pic that we're received.
We'll just pick certain random ones sans favoritism.
It really depends on how much time we have.
Keeping your picture's file size as small as possible is almost a guarantee your pic will be posted.

- Big K -

- Whistler -

Nothing going on early.
Biznasty makes his presence known right out of the gate.
On his first shift he drops the gloves with LaCouture.

- Dan K -


Here is former Penguin Dan LaCouture with our old friend Travis Roy.

We were lucky enough to get seats behind the Pens' bench. We only tell you that because what we saw after the fight has made Bissonnette our favorite player.
When the ref was dragging him to the box, he looked back at the Pens' bench, screaming LET'S GO!
What emotion.

It didn't immediately result in a goal being scored, so Bob Smizik high-fived himself.
But it got an otherwise semi-quiet crowd into the game, which is what home-ice advantage is all about.

With about 7 minutes left in the first, Brooks Orpik redefined the term FREE CANDY.
Brandon Sutter unwraps a Tootsie Roll Orpik left for him, and he beats MAF on a crap backhand. 1-0.


Toward the end of the first, the Penguins finally decided to get things going in the offensive zone.

Sid launched a missile wide of the net. Doops jumped on the rebound off the boards,
and Carolina goalie Michael Leighton had to make a flailing save.

He was big-time for the first two periods.

At the end of the first, the Pens aren't on the board, and Geno is shotless.

To sum up the second period:
The Pens got progressively better, and the Canes got progressively worse.
A couple of posts were hit. We guess. Can't remember.

The Pens had a power play, and Alex Goligoski is good.

The third period was scary at first.
Carolina was going to smother the Pens into unconsciousness.

The Pens were sustaining solid forechecks as they were getting closer and closer to a goal.
Evgeni Malkin takes on the world in the Canes zone for about 8 minutes, loses the puck, and gets a hooking call.
The Pens kill it, and then it was Carolina's turn for a penalty.

The powerplay unit jumped on, knowing it was time to shit or get off the pot.
Malkin takes an innocent slapshot from the right point.
Crosby swoops in and gets a stick on it. 1-1.

Nice. Okay. Tied.
Let's try to wear them down and get a goal lat--

2-1.
Tank and Jordan Staal stave off the rumored Amber Alert with a nice setup on the play,
which turned out to be the game-winner.

Three minutes later, the Pens struck again.
A Canes d-man was drunk, and Maxime Talbot got around him and feathered in a backhand. 3-1.

And the Father Time took over.
The Pens clinch it with a Geno empty-netter.
Game.

Miscellaneous

• Talbot finally on the board Good to see.
  
• Good to see Tank and Staal being beasts.
• When Sykora gets hot, he's gonna be lights-out.
• Post streak still alive
• MAF buries it.. almost.
  

GAMEDAY [8] -- HURRICANES

7:30 -- FSN

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BREAKING NEWS: Penguins Center Jordan Staal and Hurricanes Center Eric Staal are brothers

Just thought we'd be the first to tell you.

1:43

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Add Hal Gill to the list of Penguins D-men that'll  be watching tonights game in a suit.

He sat out of practice with an undisclosed  injury. TRIBUNE

Crosby himself is also battling his own health issues. Sinus Infection.

No worries, he'll play, but you just know that somewhere in the offices of the Ottawa Sun someone is preparing an article in which he'll coyly suggests someone should blow smoke in the face of Bing.

And you thought Brian Burke held grudges for a long time.

:::::::::::

We're heading down to the Mellon for the game tonight.
As of right now, this is the only home game we'll get to this year.

No idea what the game recap will look like tomorrow.

do it

Flyers Blow, But Least They Know How To Party

"But even with the limitations of their defensive corps, the Flyers impress the hell out of me up front and Martin Biron is in his prime right now."

-- [Puck Daddy] Oct 9.

Flyers = 0-3-3 thanks to J.R. last night:




InPuck Daddy's defense, Biron actually came in last night and stopped 18 of 20 shots.

So why are the Flyers so bad?
Maybe too much partying by Upjoke and Palindrome?



Wow.




So cute.

[Thanks to Anon for the tip]

John Stevens watch is on.

Go Pens

So Mark Madden Has A SuperFan

Big thanks to Kevin at [Barry Melrose Rocks] for finding this one.

Mark Madden is either running a blog about himself, or well, we don't even know.

[MrFridayAfterNoon] apparently follows everything Mark Madden does.

For example here are a list of Blog Titles from Superfan the past few days--

Oct. 22

That’s Mark or Mr. Madden to you Jerky!

Oct. 21

Mark Madden Haters United on Gay Message Boards

Oct. 20

Mark’s name evoked at Artie Lange show this weekend

Oct. 20

Mark Madden compared to Bubba the Love Sponge?


Madden is whatev at this point, but are we really at the stage where someone is tracking every mention he gets?


Charlie was going to comment on how gay this is, but he is on a direct flight to Sweden to "look into," this whole Dildo thing.

Dildos Away!

Sweedish hockey fans know how to have a good time.

from www.thelocal.se:

SWEEDISH HOCKEY FANS DELAY MATCH 

WITH DILDO DOWNPOUR

"Supporters of the Stockholm-based AIK ice hockey team 

scored an unusual hat trick of heckling on Tuesday night featuring 

dildos, profane banners, and a giant inflatable penis. 

The taunts were directed at Jan Huokko, a stocky defenceman with the 

Leksand hockey club in Sweden’s second-tier professional hockey league, 

and a former player with AIK. 

Ahead of Tuesday’s match against Leksand, the website for AIK’s unofficial 

supporter group had instructed fans to bring dildos to the match to remind 

Huokko of the sex scandal which plagued him earlier in the year, 

according to the Expressen newspaper."

Read the full article here with NSFW-ish image

(thanks to Jonathan M. for the heads up)

UPDATE

justincredibleh is our hero.

The video is kinda long(haha)... 

Charlie's favorite part comes up at @4:45

"Hellooooooooo nurse!"

Creative Title

Ryan Whitney recently read to a bunch of students
in collaboration with Trib Total Media to promote reading and stuff. PENS


If Whitney wasn't already injured, this kid would have decked him in the parking lot.
funnier caption?


The pool of hate for Malkin bubbling under Ovechkin's skin has left Pens fans puzzled.
LGP has had a good discussion about it.
And Mark Madden came out of nowhere with an article. BEAVER TIMES


Bing is #45 in AskMen.com's latest ranking of men. ASKMEN.COM

There's also a YouTube that's popped up recently of Bing's Top 10 goals:



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:: Instead of painstakingly linking like 20 things, just head over to PUCK DADDY.
Mike Commodore comments about that Facebook picture.
Sean Avery made his return to MSG.
Frightening "Saw" movie goalie masks down in Tampa.

:: Are you an avid hockey fan? KUKLA'S KORNER

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Speaking of Tampa, they finally won a game. TSN


Buffalo still has yet to lose in regulation. TSN

Maybe PUCK DADDY should stop calling their games a quest for an undefeated season
since they have indeed lost a game.
woooooooooo

That's it.
When the Pens aren't doing anything, neither are we.

We were thinking about declaring the first Amber Alert of the season,
but that can wait until after the Carolina game.

Hines Ward Is A Ref Now

This really happened.
On Saturday in a game between LSU and the Gamecocks.
This is surreal.

We would like your honest opinion on this blogger/journalism debate
in the comments below, if you have time.

Thanks.

Go Pens

Edmonton Burning

There is a huge oil spill going on in Edmonton,
and it makes the Exxon Valdez look like a bitch.



To re-hash the whole story, we go back to the weekend, when [Covered in Oil's] Dave Berry wrote his farewell to blogging after the Oilers jobbed him because they felt he was abusing his press pass. [Puck Daddy] has a solid recap.

To personalize the situation, it would be like Seth at [Empty Netters] getting a press pass for the Post-Gazette, and then doing a live blog for us here at this blog.

You can't do it, but it is not the end of the world,
because to our understanding, it has happened in some places before.

[EMac] at FanHouse has a solid recap of this, as well.
He has been instrumental in Washington's acceptance of bloggers.

This story was just about done.
But Monday afternoon, things picked up again.

As we linked in Gameday, [Oilers Nation's] Robin Something wrote a scathing rebuttal to [Covered in Oil], highlighted by this ball-licking paragraph:

"If you want to start a website and write whatever you want without signing your name to it, have at it. If you want to see how many times you can drop the f-bomb in a single paragraph, do it until you’re blue in the face. If your idea of blogging about the Oilers is to write about which players you’d most like to see naked, knock yourself out."

"Just don’t expect JJ Hebert to issue you a pass and save you a chair alongside Terry Jones or Dan Barnes in the rink. And don’t shout indignantly about being discriminated against when he doesn’t."

No word if they had a towel giveaway in Edmonton to dry Kevin Lowe's balls.



So after this joke got done with his rant, we get the best of all.

[Battle Of Alberta's] Andy Grabia turned everyone to this unbelievable article written by [David Staples] from the Edmonton Journal.

Staples interviews some dude named Jason Gregor, who is a drive-time radio personality.
And he moonlights as a part-time Mr. Clean lookalike.



Here is an excerpt:

"There is no accountability on blogs and that is the problem. I know when you are 18-25 it seems funny to jot down the F-bomb every second sentance, or insult players for anything from their looks to their family. But that isn't reporting in my mind."

"My beef with bloggers is that anyone can be one. Most are nameless, faceless people who write their opinions, but unfortunately there are too many false facts in blogs. I understand the next generation gets most of their information from the Internet, but unfortunately lots of it is horribly written or inaccurate. Kids read this stuff and they believe it. I don't think bloggers truly understand the strength of their message, and also the damage it can do. "

We photoshop men making out with each other.
We aren't exactly a good reflection on bloggers.

But the parts of this blog that aren't obviously satirical are researched to the best of our abilities.
When we decide to spellcheck, the resulting grammar gives Charles Dickens an erection.
We're obviously biased towards the Pens, just like professional journalists pretend not to be biased to a team they've covered for 20+ years.

It is worth getting this story out to all the other bloggers we know,
because this moron isn't the only one who feels like this.

This may be up in Canada now, but a storm is brewing.
Traditional print media, especially in the sports world, is dying.
In the get-info-now world we live in, having an internet publication is vital.
It's got to suck when a story "breaks" at 12:00 at night, and newspapers have to wait 24 hours to print it.

And then it's really got to hurt when fans get the hot story by turning to two virgins on the internet who compensate for their shortcomings by calling people homos.

Anyways, it should be interesting to see where this leads.

The Oilers will be coming to Pittsburgh before we know it.
Hopefully we can prank Gregor's radio show by then.

Go Pens.

Dany's Song. PENS WIN.

Solid early-season test for the Pens in a place that has been a little unkind to them in the past.

A home-opener for Boston...and the first real away game for the Pens.

This game was all about Sabu.
What else can you ask of a backup goaltender who will start once every 9-10 games this season?
His job is to keep the team in the game. Mission accomplished.



What a performance.

As far as the Bruins are concerned, they are solid.
They'll be in the playoffs.
If we go any more in-depth than that, we'll shoot ourselves.


-- Alison --


-- Laurie --

This was the Bruins home-opener, so you know their fans were making out with each other, thus pumping up the players on the ice.

At least they have something to cheer about.
wooooooo

The beginning of this beast was all about Sabu.

He was on acid.
He was stopping Boston's top guns.

Heading down the boards, Crosby made a between-the legs-drop pass to Geno.

Even the lame rose from their couches. Nothing happening.

The Pens decided to test Sabu some more, taking a couple penalties in the middle of the period.

The Pens killed the first.
And then they killed the second.
The Bruins power play is scary shit, but Sabu and the PK unit were in the zone.

Before the Pens headed to the box for the third time, Hands of Godard and Scott Thornton square off.

-- Ryan M. --

The neanderthal fans in the arena hoot and holler. So immature.

Every time a fight breaks out, a veteran journalist drinks his own pee.

We can thank Eric Godard for what happened next.

If he wouldn't have been in a fight, the butterfly effect could dictate that Satan wouldn't have taken a penalty.

He wouldn't have been there, fresh out of the box, to pop home a loose rebound after Malkin tried to take on the Giant Gonzalez and Steve Thomas.
Sounds like Chara should have spent less time climbing mountains and more time working on skating.
1-0.

That was it for the first.

The second period was a bunch of crap for a while.

Milan Lucic was being a douche bag.
The Pens had a power play, but no dice.
Without a doubt, Geno is leading the league in powerplay fake shots.

Sabu was staying strong.

What came next was one of the stupidest plays in the history of hockey.
We never berate any of the Pens for making dumb plays. Who cares.
But Jordan Staal took a penalty that defied logic.

Wanted: For stealing ice time.

He lost his stick and was a stride away from getting on the bench.
A Bruin near him gets the puck so he goes and grabs the guy?
Staal sits in the box while Phil Kessel licks the stamp. 1-1.
Errey and Steigy complain about Malkin not winning the face-off that set up the goal.
But no take on the Staal penalty. Racists.

The Bruins gave the Pens a chance for something with a power play shortly thereafter.
No dice. Greg Thomas was stopping what he had to.
Crosby held the puck for about 3 minutes on that PP.

[Crmzak]

At the end of the period, Bing and Marc Savard got into a slapfight.

Nobody wins.

Pascal Dupuis put the exclamation point on the period with an unreal hit on some idiot.
With a few seconds left, Bergeron rings one off the iron. Last-second crisis averted.

Despite a 1-1 score, this was a pretty solid game.

For the past couple years, he's been one of the biggest names in hockey blogging.

To us, he is the Good Doctor, James Mirtle.

Today was his last day at [ the blogspot site ].

All good things come to an end.

From now on, we'll be picking up our prescription of Mirtle [From the Rink ]...his new office.

The cliched intensity was there to start the third period, and it didn't leave.

Halfway through the period, Sabu made a save through traffic that turned Charlie straight.

The third period was great back-and-forth hockey.
There's nothing else to say.
The Pens had the most scoring chances, but that means nothing.
The Bruins trap wasn't so effective.

Free Candy almost ended the world with a goal.

[Charmchild]

What an overtime period. Unreal action.
The Pens looked to be set up to score an OT winner when they were handed a power play.
Staal jobbed the PP by taking one of his own.
Dennis Wideman gets the Academy Award.

That brought on some of best 3-on-3 action since your freshman year.
One mistake would change the world.

One of the Bruins lost a stick, and it turned into a 3-on-2.5.
Probably the first time in history we were profusely yelling SHOOT at the TV.
No dice.

As weird as it sounds, we were headed to our first shootout of the season.

Letang tried his patented move to start things off.
At the last possible second, he loses control of the puck.

No dice.

Kessel goes down and shows him how it's done. 1-0.

Sykie was up next, smooth as a baby's balls. 1-1.
Patrice Bergeron goes down and doesn't even hit the net.

Bing jumps onto the ice. This ain't the Winter Classic.
Michael Ryder was up to win it. Sabu frogs up and makes the right-pad save.

Satan was up for the Pens. vomit.
Krejci City. Sabu with the pokecheck.

Geno draws the number-80 spot in the shootout for some reason.
He zeroes in on the net. He shoots. Thomas tries to make the save.

I don't think so Tim.

buries it

Marc Savard had his chance.
Too bad it's not a passing contest.
Game.

-- kyle k. --

MISCELLANEOUS

• Bruins fans are morons. They boo when their team takes an obvious penalty? Are you kidding
• Alex Goligoski is still a big deal.
• Steigy called Phil Kessel "Rick."
• Aaron Ward is a maniac.
  
• The Pens have won 3 of their last 4.
• What a satisfying victory.
• Smizik sucks

Go Pens

GAMEDAY [7] -- BRUINS

7:00
FSN

Check out BOSTON BLUE LINE, newcomer to Gore this season.


Sabu getting the nod this evening. PENS
It had to happen sometime.
They're thinking a ways ahead right now, though.
They have Carolina at home Thursday then go on a four-game road trip which includes a small West-Coast romp.

Fleury is getting all of those starts.
Why not start Sabu in the friendly confines of Mellon Arena?
That's why Therrien is the coach and we sell our own pee for cigarette money.

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:: Whenever you think about pee, you think of the front office of the Edmonton Oilers.
Bloggergate continues in the great Northwest, with some dude who no one has heard of jumping to the defense of the Oilers. OILER NATION

Our personal take on bloggers and press passes?
Seth at EMPTY NETTERS deserves one. We don't.
Seth should be the beat writer by now.

We'd never ask for press passes and probably accept one if offered just out of courtesy.
But we prefer to be at home Googling pics of Body by Jake without Bob Smizik looking over our shoulder.


ACID QUEEN is up to her tricks again.

She was on Facebook trying to find a friend
and came across Mike Commodore's Facebook page and subsequent personal pics.

She sent it over to PUCK DADDY, who is helpless when it comes to pictures of half-naked men.

We thought it only fair to find pics from Acid Queen's Facebook page:



JAPERS' RINK had this screenshot from NHL '09.
It's real.


They recently made everyone download a "roster update" before going into the section of the game where you meet with team members to play a game online.
Roster updates = propaganda.

We've seen ads for Subway on the boards, as well. What a joke.
Quizno's is the choice of a new generation.
We just want to know how much Bajoke Obama's campaign paid for this advertising.

:: Staying with our good friend Japers',
he covertly alerted us to a "Ovechkin lookalike contest." LINK

We'd show the photoshop of Ovechkin as the GEICO caveman,
but we're sick of that advertising campaign.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Coming off his clutch victory against Toronto,
Mel Gibson went out to celebrate.

He has not been seen since.


Our only guess is Hines Ward cheap-shotted him on Carson Street and broke his jaw.


do it

WOOOOO

Bob Smizik and His Obligatory Attempt To Piss Off Hockey Fans

Bob Smizik thinks fighting in the NHL is a joke. [PG]

We know what Bob Smizik is trying to do.
He is trying to goad hockey fans by writing a column that just doesn't make sense.

We'll take the bait, because that's what we do.

Tons of hidden gems in this latest Smizik joint.
Some highlights:


:: "Fighting in hockey is an absolute joke and the sooner the powers that be admit it -- they already know it -- the better off the sport will be."

Nice to see Smizik is using the word "joke."
To dispute this, we ask, how do the powers that be know fighting is a problem?
That is a guess, at best.



:: "For every new fan fighting turns on in Pittsburgh and other NHL hot spots, it turns off several others in vital areas where the league must gain a foothold if it ever wishes to be remotely competitive with sports higher up the dollar chain."

Once again, a statement based on no facts. Hockey is a violent sport by nature, so to say people are turned on by one aspect and turned off by another doesn't make sense.

:: "At present, the NHL is turning a nice profit and might be content to be the niche league its television ratings say it is. But if it ever wants to crash the big time -- where woebegone franchises like the Pirates turn a profit the Penguins can only dream of -- it needs to appeal to a broader spectrum of fans."

Aren't there bench-clearing brawls in baseball games?
Don't they throw at batter's heads and try to break the second-baseman's leg to disrupt a double play?
Hockey doesn't need casual fans anyway.

The Pirates made a profit?
They don't spend money on players. What an organization.


:: "Fighting does not do that for the NHL. As much as it energizes fans in the various buildings around the league, it turns off the prospective fans outside those building. The NHL needs to grow its base. Fighting is stopping it from doing that."

Stopping fighting brings more fans in? Honestly we wouldn't change anything about the NHL.
But if they do need to change things, fighting is the least of their problems.



:: He talks about how the fight between Riley Cote and God in the Flyers/Pens game this week didn't prove anything, then he says:

"It also had the crowd going crazy. If this is what the fans come for, what a sad commentary on the sport. What a sad commentary on the dazzling skills of Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin that two players who don't even belong in the league can inspire the crowd to such a level."

Huh? We have been hockey fans all our lives. We know a lot of hockey fans.
Never have we gone to a game to see a fight.
Yes, it is fun to see it happen, but if you're a hockey fan, you know better.
To say it is a sad commentary about hockey fans and the sport is completely irresponsible.



:: To use a football analogy, there is no tougher player than the Steelers' Hines Ward. He backs down from no one and plays the game to its fullest. If the hockey mentality existed in football, Ward would be "afraid" to play his game for fear of retaliation. That is nonsense when it is applied to Ward and it is nonsense when applied to hockey players.

That is one of the stupidest groupings of sentences in the history of the English language.
We can't even describe how ridiculous it is.

Nothing like dumbing down a coloumn so some yinzers can understand.
This is what separates Hines Ward from hockey players:


Joke



:: Meanwhile, hockey, which can be a ballet on ice, struggles for far-flung acceptance because it insists, for no good reason, to be best known as a barroom brawl on ice.

It insists to be best-known for fighting?
Are you kidding?
It didn't incorporate fighting INTO the league recently to attract fans.
You're saying something that has been in the sport forever has to leave.
No, Smizik. You have to leave.
Fighting didn't stop hockey from being a major-4 sport in the U.S. in the '90s.
Stop talking.

Smizik, you are a joke.
Did you even watch the Stanley Cup playoffs last year, the NHL's biggest stage of the season????
How many fights do you recall seeing? Are you an idiot?
The playoffs were your elusive "ballet on ice."

Go Pens.

Therrien Knows Best. PENS WIN

The past few seasons, putting Malkin and Bing together usually has been whatev.

But Michel Therrien played the hand tonight, and it worked.
It is only one game, but for all the crap people gave Therrien over the move, it worked.

So suck it.

While we are handing out credit, we have to give Ray Shero some love.

Of all the players out there to trade for/sign, he finds Mike Zigomanis.
We usually look up stats in 10-game intervals, so we don't know what his faceoff shit is.

But he's had his name called frequently since coming to Pittsburgh, and for all good things.
What a pickup by Ray Shero.

Bing and Malkin hit career milestones in this game, which means basically nothing.
The more important part is that Bing finally got on the board this season.

Malkin is such a beast, it's not even funny.

It took 5 seconds for the Leafs to display some suck.
Hagman goes to the box.
The power play had some chances, but Cujo obviously took his Metamucil before the big game.

Later, Gogo went off four minutes for high-sticking.
The Pens killed that off beautifully.
The momentum from the kill excited Mark Eaton too much and he hooked someone.
The Pens killed that off beautifully.

Then the Pens get the first too-many-men penalty of the season.

Didn't miss searching for these.

Third time was a charm.

The Leafs finally put something home. 1-0.

The Pens got it right back, though.
Malkin and Crosby get the job done. Dupuis was there. 1-1.

[ThickAndy]

That was all she wrote for the first.

Solid segment by Dan Potash about the NHL off-ice officials.
Fox Sports should start posting this shit on YouTube so we could pass it along.

Right off the bat in the second, things are buzzing.

Geno and Doops weave, and Dupuis almost puts home his second.

Fedotenko was whistled for a weak hooking call. It happens.

On the kill, a two-on-none shorthanded breakaway was blown dead because of a handpass.

What vision.

The Pens took advantage of the power play.
Crosby and Malkin job it around, then Crosby zeroes in on the net.

Bing does a rain dance and humiliates Luke Schenn with a through-the-legs pass to Satan on the welcome mat. 2-1.

So there we were. In the third period. With the lead.
It's been a pretty familiar situation this year.
But you crying yourself to sleep is how it's usually turned out.

You thought the Malkin penalty was gonna bring about Chernobyl.
And then the Satan penalty came in the sweet spot of the third, and you knew Carlo Colajokio was gonna float one from the point, it would hit someone's balls, and go in.

The Pens didn't let it happen, though.
They played in the third period like sex was on the line.

They killed Malkin and Satan's penalties with ease, with the Maple Leafs' best chance came on that Antropov one-timer at the end of Satan's penalty.

The ominous, puke feeling was lifted when Crosby jobs one in off of a Maple Leaf d-man. 3-1.

What the hell was CuJo doing?

The Leafs take a penalty like 2 seconds after that goal.

The power play took a minute or so to calm down.
Malkin did some jig to Crosby, who found Sykora on a carbon-copy play of the Satan goal.

4-1.
We don't often say what Bing does is nasty, because it is just assumed.
But those passes were sick.

The Leafs tried to cheat to get back into the game, with Antropov kicking one in. We had the over at 5.5, so that kind of sucked. But whatever.

Game.

MISCELLANEOUS

• Bing nets his 100th goal, 200th assist, 300th point
• Malkin gets his 200th point.
• It's so unreal to see the Pens win big faceoffs.
• Ryan Malone has one goal for Tampa Bay.
• Should be a really fun game on Monday in Bean town.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Great night of hockey in the NHL

Some highlights:

:: Check out this hit by Coyote Kurt Sauer:




:: Hossa's 300th goal




:: Sick Save. Flyers still suck

GAMEDAY [6] -- MAPLE LEAFS

The Leafs are a joke, but at least they can beat the Wings.
EMPTY NETTERS has a solid look at the game.


-- THICKANDY --

Crosby and Malkin will be on the top line with Doop. PG
Fedo-Staal-Sykora
Satan-Talbot-Kennedy
Biz-Thomas/Zigo-Godard
maybe

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

The only winless teams in the National Hockey League:


Speaking of the Lightning (0-2-2),
we wanted to check out how Malone and shit were doing.

Malone has 1 G, 17 PIM, averaging 16 minutes a game.
Recchi has 1 G, 14 minutes a game.
Hall has 1 G, averaging 10 minutes a game.
Roberts has nothing, averaging 7 minutes a game.


The Rangers have gotten off to the hottest start with a 6-1 record.
They won a 1-0 defensive battle against Toronto Friday night in a shootout.
The old "back-to-back nights" crap is in the Pens' corner tonight.
We can't wait to start up the rivalry with BLUESHIRT BULLETIN again.


These three teams haven't even lost yet. [ NHL.COM STANDINGS ]
Montreal hasn't lost in regulation. (3-0-1)


The Blues (3-0-1) have scored 18 goals in 4 games.
The Penguins have scored 12 in 5.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::



We're going with random choices early on in the season.
It's too tough to gauge.

Covered In Oil Shut Down

Sort of stunning news coming from Oiler land.
One of the best blogs in Oil nation is ending, due to some shady shit by the Oilers.

***Just to clarify. Covered in Oil isn't shutting down, David Barry, who this happened to, is leaving the blog. And we don't blame him.

"I'm pretty much done with the Oilers organization in any capacity for the foreseeable future. Up until this point, I was nothing but cooperative and apologetic for what happened, and was met with nothing but irrational hostility at worst and condescending patronization at best. They did finally show some understanding, but that was only after I had pointed out that they were either making it up as they went along, applying an obvious double standard or too stupid to read the blogs of two fairly well established media people to look for this kind of egregious violation of their sacred media pass. And even after that, they threw in some condescending patronization, just in case I might want to chalk up their change of heart to magnanimity. I hope most of you will understand exactly why I'm no longer interested in writing about an organization that has decided to dump on me for having the temerity to care about them and treat their wishes with respect."

Go to [Covered In Oil] for the full story.
It is no question an interesting situation to bloggers.

We wish them the best.

Go Pens

Tough To Swallow. PENS LOSE.

This was bound to happen sooner or later.
Pens have been doing this to the Caps for years.

If you were watching his game with a loyal pet,
they probably pissed on your rug and ran out half way through the game.
Animals can sense shit like this coming.

For everything that was said about Sid and Ovechkin heading into this game,
Bing finished with a couple assists, Alex was held off the scoresheet,
and the Caps left town with 2 points.

Its only one game, so no one here is ladling out almond flavored koolaid,
but it's half a year from when we're looking at the standings and think back to games like this one.
You can't have a 3-goal lead and skate off the ice without a point.

:::::::::::::::

Pregame

Rob Rossi stuns the world by bringing out the first yellow mock turtle neck/suit combination since the Carter Administration.


Savran knows it.


Kempedy


Bravada


DoubleJ


Juice

Some things never change. Malkin must have banged Ovie's girlfriend in Russia, because the headhunting resumed in this shit.

Both teams had to kill a penalty early on, and the Caps' PP was the sexier one.

Backstrom got what was arguably the best chance early on, but got confused when he realized he wasn't shooting into his own net.
Scuderi took advantage and made a big play that no one will write about.

The Caps started shooting themselves in the balls after their early chances.
First, Semin makes an ad-nauseam quip about semen and gets sent to the box.

And much like your first sexual encounter, 20 seconds later, something happened.
Gogo Bobby Orrs down deep and Lemieuxs it in.

-- coffeytalk --

1-0.

After a couple minutes of waiting for the Caps to score a classy goal, the Caps were going to the box again.
A minute into that one, Malkin wrists one from the high slot.
It hit some joke in front of the net.
2-0.

If you were content going into the first int with a 2-0 lead, you started taking your pants off when you saw the Caps take a too-many-men penalty at the tail end of the period.

i'm in

Most guys haven't even broken in their skates yet, and we've already got the first coaching casualty. Apparently going 1-2-1 was enough for the Blackhawks to ditch Denis Savard two weeks into the season.

Who the hell are we to second-guess that decision?
But what does the front office know now that they didn't know in the summer?

And wasn't it the offseason idiotic moves of the GM that saw them have to place a $8 million goaltender on waivers?

What does that have to do with a game against the Caps?
The Hawks are still a team with a ton of potential.
Last year, after a piss-poor start, the Caps put another suit behind the bench.
Washington went on to win their division, and this year they are among the elite in the East.

The Caps suck. They job the puck out of their own zone on a PK, and they go down two men.
A PK on this 5-on-3 would change the world for Washington.
Nope.

The Pens got some pucks to the net, but no one was throwing on the jumpsuit.
Finally, there was a loose puck, a whack of the pads, and Miro puts it home. 3-0.

The good thing for the Caps: They get to fly back to Washington for free, thanks to the frequent-flyer miles accumulated by Jokay Theodore's water bottle.

To even out the balance of life, Godard went to the box for slashing soon after Satan's goal.
The Pens kill it off, but a goal was looming.
Fleischmann puts home some poop. 3-1.

It was Biz Nasty's time to shine.
He takes on Matt Bradley. What a little bitch.
Biz goes to the box smirking, knowing he just ruined someone's life.

Sick

-- Jason S --

Somewhere in there, AO tried to line up Malkin again, still looking for the knockout.

Malkin felt the best way to get back at Ovechkin was to go job his boyfriend.
The deed was done, and Ovechkin comes flying over to the scene of the crime like they were giving away animal porn.
What a baby.

The Caps harmlessly went on the power play. Nothin.

Later, the U.S.S. got some penalty that made no sense.
Bettman wants Ovechkin to win. Plain to see.

Of course, the Caps ruined that chance by taking their own penalty.
And Ovechkin took another run at Malkin.
Definitely can't complain about one of your top guns getting hit.
We're just kind of disappointed in Ovechkin.
Most elite NHL players won't continously leave their position on the ice to take runs at people, let alone just doing it to one person in particular.

If you thought this game was in the bag, you've never watched hockey before.
We've seen this episode before.
We've heard the deafening silence in the Mellon in the late stages of games.

A 3-1 Pens lead in the third period at home is about as safe as leaving your coke stash in the Hill District.

Semin nuts one in, 3-2..
And then the Caps score again. 3-3.
Unreal. You knew it was coming.

But you couldn't have expected the Caps to take the lead.
It still felt like a game where the Pens could job one in, probably in OT.

Nevertheless, after a high-stick on the Caps that wasn't called, they took advantage of it and went in on MAF with numbers.

Some dude named Boyd beats MAF, but the refs don't call it a goal.

Back To The Future joke about going back in time after verifying the goal was scored.

4-3.

Last year's Caps would have given up a goal at the end of this game.
But they clamped down defensively, and that was it.

Bing and A.Hole exchange words at the end of the game.

[ NHL.COM RECAP ]

MISCELLANEOUS

• Vomit city.
• Karmablog
  
• Yet another entertaining contest with the Caps.
• You wouldn't complain if Ovechkin was on your team. No way. But he is still a dick.
• It's October 17th.
• USS and Scuds played unreal.
  

GAMEDAY [5] -- CAPITALS

If we still have to wait a while before playing the Bruins,
what better two teams to play than Washington and Toronto?

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Last year, two of the best games of the season were against the Caps.
Ovie had the hatty. LINK
Backstrom was a joke. LINK

Washington got to the playoffs last year.
They were an Ovechkin wrist shot away from getting past the Flyers.
They are the sexy pick to win the East this year.

And instead of hating the Capitals and their fans for their success,
we have embraced the fact that, if not already, this WILL be the Pens top rival,
with many playoff matchups on the horizon.

Have the Caps become the chief rival of the Pens? MVN

Olaf Kolzig not being on the Caps' bench this season may be an omen.

Game Prediction:
Pens 11, Caps 10


Riding the hot hand

Some People Shouldn't Be Allowed To Use Youtube

Ass Clown city.



[Thanks to Puck Daddy for the heads up]


Charlie's dad used to have a pair of sun glases like that, but then he got a job.


Therrien apparently coaches the Canucks now as well.


Joke.

Go Pens.

DebateDay [3]

It's on.

9:00.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

:: Obama is getting painkillers for a swollen larynx. [ BarackObama.com ]

:: McCain may be juggling his lines right before game time. [ JohnMcCain.com ]



DO IT


UPDATE: OH, WOW

Praying-Zigomanis. PENS WIN.

Probably the most homo thing you can do besides having sex with another man
is harp on something that happened last season.

We'll never use the "Oh, where were you in the ECF?" line for Flyer fans.
There's nothing more annoying than when somebody says that to you if the tables are turned.

It's annoying, and it'd be funny to say it,
but we lose respect for fans of other teams who say that shit.

Did some boo birds make an appearance this evening in the first period?
Do you think the Pens could hear those boos if they were in Kansas City?

We'd say the snobby businessmen who touch more balls than your Aunt Minnie when she assisted on the PA Lottery were responsible for the boos, but they've probably killed themselves by now over the financial crisis.

Whatev. We miss Gonchar.
The power play is contributing to global warming, emanating poofs of suck into the ozone.
Goligoski is a machine when it comes to holding it in the zone.


-- Canaan --


-- Daver --

The teams were playing grab-boob early on.
After nothing happened, Godard and Cote dropped the gloves.
It was a heavyweight bout, no question about it.
Godard dropped a haymaker at the end to seal the deal.

Crosby drew a penalty soon after.
Mike Richards gives him the business at the ensuing faceoff.
Maybe Richards was tying to teach Crosby how to dive.

Asshole.

Crosby came full circle, taking a penalty when he jobbed some dude's stick.
The rest of the first was really poop city.
Talbot had a shortie breakaway but forgot to deke.

Mike Richards decided to be a great captain and cheap-shot the Tank.
What a role model.

As seen on Versus:

Oh man.

The man behind the picture emailed us:

[Nizzy]

Sick.

The second period started with the Pens shorthanded 5-on-3 and Scoods making some big saves.

- William Smith -

The Pens jumped onto the power play a little bit into the second, and they were on acid.
It was good to watch.
But you could tell that top unit was lulling the Flyers into a sense of complacency so Free Candy could float one into the net.

1-0.

Our mission is to have everyone throw Tootsie Rolls into the ice after a Orpik goal.
Or feces.

All of a sudden, it just looks like the Pens clicked.
Cookie operating from behind the net finds Ziggy in the slot.

Praying-Zigomanis is in the best shape of his life. 2-0.

-- Faceoff Factor --

The Pens had a couple chances after that to hump the Flyers into submission, but Nittyjoki might have taken a goaltending class over the summer.

The classy Flyers want to stay in the game, though.
Maybe the Pens let up a little too early in the second.
Maybe they were thinking about going to SportsMemorabilia.com and buying jerseys that they signed.

Before you knew it, the turds had tied the game up at 2.
We kind of missed that eerie silence that envelops the Mellon when all you can hear is the away team whooping and hollering.

It set up a sweet third period.

Another opportunity on the powerplay right out of the gate in the third period.
Same results.

Staal nearly deposited the go-ahead goal, kicking a loose puck to his stick in the crease, but he threw it wide of the gaping net.

Man advantages were traded back and forth to no avail.
Both powerplay units were worse than your mom's meatloaf and sex.

The remaining time in regulation dwindled and both teams settled in defensively, picking up the one point and heading into OT.

The 4-on-4 OT was like being able to go back and have sex with that hot girl from high school who you had sex with back then but didn't know what you were doing.

It was awesome.
Back and forth, back and forth.
Daniel Briere still sucks a lot.

[Mike F.]

Were we gonna finally see a shootout this year? The Pens have been putting in more overtime than Oprah's fork.

Hold the phone. Candy gives a pass to Dupuis.
He comes down the left wing on a mission.
He lets go with a slapper.

Game.

[NHL.COM RECAP]

MISCELLANEOUS

• The Flyers still haven't won this year.
• Syko back in the lineup. Nice.
  
• Three Penguin games have been decided on the left wing in OT this season.
• Dupuis played a solid game on the PK.
• The main play-by-play guy for Versus wasn't bad. He doesn't take himself seriously.
  

Woops. Sorry about that.
While typing the recap, we left Versus on and got tricked into watching "Sports Soup."


Sadly, sports doesn't write the jokes for the show.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::



Maybe the Red Wings can save the ecomony by showing it how to clutch and grab.

WOOOOOO

GAMENIGHT [4] -- FLYERS

7:30

4-5 months ago, all we heard about was Ryan Malone/RJ Umberger being from Pittsburgh.
Now we don't have to hear about either of them.
That's what this game is all about.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::


Sykora in the lineup tonight. PENS


The Pens will "debut" their third jersey at a November 15th home game
against, guess who, the Buffalo Sabres. TRIB

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

ROBERT S. sent along the YouTube video of Alexei Cherapanov's final moments.


It's just a sickening feeling.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

More YouTube.
Michael Peca got suspended for grabbing an official the other day. NATTY POST
Apparently, there's no solid clip of it anywhere.
This is the best we could do: It's at 1:17.


WEAK

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

We also tried looking for video of Ben Eager swinging his stick at Sean Avery.
Of course, when you search "eager avery" at YouTube, you get about 30 results for "Bridge to Terabithia." LINK


DO IT

Michel Therrien's Musical Taste Is Soff

One of the few sports anchors we actually respect in this town:
Bob Pompeani of KDKA does a solid interview with Michel Therrien.



[Thanks to the Eric P. AKA Steelcity assault]


Celine Dion sucks, but we're not arguing with Therrien.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::

:: Per [LGP], Godard and Letang got into a fight in practice.
Whatev.

:: This Pierre Lebrun says the Wild should trade Gaborik to the Pens. [ESPN]
If you haven't figured it out by now, Gaborik is the new Hossa.

:: If we wanted to start a rumor, we could link that the Pens aren't making signing Staal a must, [PG], thus making it seem like the Pens might trade Staal for Gaborik.
It's October 14th, by the way.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::


UH, someone break up the Rangers.

5-0 city. [Battle of NY]




Conkblock city.





Semin explodes on some guy's face.



We got to watch the Caps game, and man, they looked sick.
Mike Green is dangerous.

[Japers'] is most likely pleased.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

[Maxim] had hockey's all-time toughest players.

Number 1:


Solid.

::::::::::::

Go Pens

Cherepanov Collapses, Dies During KHL Game

19 year old New York Ranger's prospect Alexei Cherepanov died on the bench during the 3rd period of a KHL game.

[ TSN ] is reporting that Cherepanov collapsed on the bench.
There's some word out of Russia that he may collided with Jaromir Jagr during a linechange. [ Sports.ru ]

[ ESPN ] had included word of the collision in their article, but it has since been revised and removed.

There is some question as to whether or not there was a working defibrillator at the arena,
and the ambulance that is mandatory at all games apparently left early as the game neared it's end.



Those familiar to international hockey need no introduction to Cherepanov.
He was clearly one, if not the most talented hockey player not in the NHL.

Others might remember him from the 2007 NHL Entry Draft know. He was projected as a top 5 pick, but continued to drop and drop until the Rangers selected him 17th overall.

Rangers fans had hoped Cherepanov would elect to transfer to the NHL for this season,
but he wanted to take another year to develope and was looking forward to playing with newly acquired Jagr.

[Puck Daddy]
[Mirtle]
[Kukla's Korner]




***UPDATE***

Shocking video of his last minutes.
This is extremely tough to watch, but it begs the question on safety issues within the arena.

Why was there no stretcher?



[Thanks to Robert S]

The Return Of Double M

Meant to post this last week.

but as per [MondesisHouse], and the [WXDX]over the weekend during the Pens game.


Mark Madden returns today at 3pm to 6pm.


Love him or hate him, it will be good to have something to listen to again.



Go Pens

The Pens Must Be Pregnant, 'Cause They Missed Two Periods. PENS LOSE.

Whatev City.
If any sports journalist is worth their balls, they won't phone in a game recap laced with comments about the Pens suffering from their cross-seas travel.

They were sitting on a plane.
They probably slept on the plane.
They've been back in Pittsburgh for five days.

There's no travel lag.
Drink a Red Bull and play hockey.

The players won't give the bullshit excuse.
They played solid enough to win, especially MAF.
But in a weird twist, the Devils actually benefited from the fact that this was the second game of a back-to-back situation for them.

The more games you play to start the season, you start getting in sync.
The Pens hadn't played in 5 days.
Devils suck.

But at least fans didn't boo the Pens. Good call.
The same can't be said for Sarah Palin:



Huge thanks to the [ KISS Freak Show ] for the heads-up.
That's probably the loudest that music has ever been played in a closed structure in U.S. history.
Almost couldn't hear the boos.


- Bly -

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Out.


In.


Nice touch.

[ Empty Netters ] has more pics of the banners.
Including the ones for individual-award winners.

At the player introductions, we were told to commend Ray Shero up in the press box.
The camera decides to focus on the banker from "Deal or No Deal."

Marc-Andre Fleury didn't fall coming out of the runway.
Signs of good things to come.


Fleuryous

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::


[Micheal B]



Anthem

[Fleuryous]

Guess what. It didn't feel like the same old Devils early on.
Either the Devils are learning to play hockey, the Pens have gotten better, or the Devils have gotten exponentially worse.

Godard dropped the gloves with Mike Rupp in between a few minutes of nothingness.

After a bit, Gogo got the puck behind his net and was gonna carry it out of there.
But some Devil jobs him, and the segment of a game where the Penguins have 5 players as compared to 4 players for the other team commences.

After a little bit of diarrhea, the Pens set up shop.
Malkin let loose with a beast from the point.
It hits some shit.
Satan was standing below the 7th faceoff circle of hell and was there to put home the trash.

1-0.

[Thanks to Mike S.]

A couple of times during the first, MAF showed off his awesome puck-handling skills and rebound controls.
The Pens better trade him soon.

Late in the period, Dainus Zubrus channels Nicklas Kronwall and decides to lay out Matt Cooke.
In Kronwall fashion, the elbow came up.
Cookie probably lost some teeth and some pubes.

Typical Devils bullshit.

The Devils took some crap penalty at the end of the first because Patrick Elias tried to give someone hepatitis A.

The Mario Lemieux Foundation did some house-cleaning
and found some bad-ass stuff in their inventory.

T-shirts, hats, jackets, duffel bags, computer equipment, photo plaques.
You name it. They got it.

They are setting up shop in their parking lot:
Wednesday, October 15 9:00am -- 7:00pm

Where will this be taking place?
It's easier to get to than Lindsay Lohan's bedroom.

1) Take the Bridgeville Exit off of 79S or 79N.
2) Turn left onto Route 50. Turn left onto Hickory Grade Road.
3) Bury it.
4) Turn left onto Old Pond Road (Abele Business Park sign) and follow to the top of the hill.
5) Turn left onto Abele Road.

The MLF office is in the last building on the right.
Bargain Blowout is in the parking lot.

The Penguins had one more guy on the ice than the Devils at the beginning of the second.
But the Devils were all over the place, and the powerplay was mud.

A Crosby penalty crushed the opportunity, and then the Devils had a chance.

No dice on that Devil PP.
A surreal moment came while the Pens were shorthanded.
They broke into the Devils zone on a 2-on-1, and the expected crescendo of the fans murmuring in excitement never came.
There was more reaction in Sweden.

Mike Zigomanis is money.

Kelly Clarkson jobbed Crosby after the kill.
The U.S.S. took umbrage with the fact and changed his course heading.
You were kind of expecting Gill to break his hand in that fight and be out 3-5 weeks.


Fleury flashed his brilliance on a Devils one-time a little bit after that.
What a beast.

Dupuis tripped some dude, and the sneaky Devils had a chance to remind everyone they were actually playing in the game.
The Devils got some chances, but MAF made the saves a shorthanded goalie has to make.
They should still trade him for Mats Sundin.

Ziga-Awesome was getting in some time and getting the job done.
Penalty killed.

Crosby was a machine in the segment after that, setting up more people than Love Connection.

But no deal.

After the Arnold Palmer commercial, the Pens got another one of the man-advantage things.
Crosby draws his first penalty of the year.
No dice on that one.

We got introduced to the Syracuse Women's Hockey Team in the second period.
They have an Asian goalie, which means they're probably undefeated.

The Devils were all business at the end of the second, but the Pens survived.

You suddenly remember what it's like to wish bad things upon people.

Not much was going on in the third.
A couple of close calls, but nothing to waste bandwidth on.

The U.S.S. Hal Gill took on some dinghy for the Subway Sammich of the Game.

Brooks Orpik gets sent to the box for some weak-ass penalty.
But whatev. PK City.

The Devils, again, were all business.
Their great power play was upstaged by an even more solid job of a penalty kill.
Well, actually, it was the Pens making goal-saving plays at the last second.
Letang lifted a stick. Scuderi made a solid no-name play.
MAF does a superman in the crease and keeps it out of there.
If Patrick Elias wasn't busy celebrating a non-existent goal, he may have put it home.

It definitely wasn't the Devils' last chance.
Big Ben quantam leaps into Bing and he almost throws a pick 1.
MAF was there to make the big stop.

That definitely wasn't the Devils' last chance, either.
Some homo just throws it at the net.
It hits the U.S.S. and gets past MAF. 1-1.

There is that sickening feeling. Good times.

Wow.
Pens aren't making the playoffs.

The Pens survive the rest of the third, and they get a point as it goes to OT.

pissed

You may have already known what was about to happen.
We've all seen some of these frustrating games at the Mellon.
The last two periods had turned into the 2001 Eastern Conference Finals.

The Pens get one chance. Legame tries to dish it.
If he gets the pass there, he is a hero.
He doesn't. Goat city.

What happens next separates 300 players in the NHL from just some fat chunk who plays pickup hockey on the weekends.

Zach Parise put a shot in the only place MAF couldn't get it.
Unreal shot.

Game.
Welcome back.

NHL.com RECAP

MISCELLANEOUS

• The Devils get 45 shots? Are they gonna actually play hockey this year? What an offensive explosion.
• Bronx cheer for the Pens when they got that shot in third period. It's good 'cause at least people at the game knew what was (or wasn't) going on.
• F off.
• Can't throw anyone under the bus. Go Pens.

Here's Palin getting jobbed again:



Sarah Palin. Hockey Mom. Hockey Blog. And she got booed.
We aren't conservatives or liberals. We're Pens fans

Gameday [3]: Devils @ Pens: Home Sweet Home

7:30 Pm


The Mellon Arena never looked as sweet.
Sure it is old, sure it is cramped, sure it is outdated.

But it is our home, and for 40 nights a year starting tonight, it's the best place on earth.
For three hours we can get away from all our troubles.

The last time we saw a game here, we know what happened.

But that is history now. A new season is here.

It will be funny to see some people, who jumped on the bandwagon last year, flipping out when the Pens give up a goal, or lose at home.
But for those who have been here before know whats going on.

This is a grueling marathon, and nothing gets decided in October, November, December, January, Feburary, March or early April.

But these months must be used for good. Home ice advanage is huge.
You have to wonder if the Pens would have had home ice in the Finals, would they have maybe split the first two games?

For us, these games must be used for good as well. The timing of bathroom breaks, nacho runs, and smoke breaks doesn't happen over night. It is a process that has to be fine tuned, so in late May it is like tying your shoes.

:::::::::

From commentor [Dr. Turk]:

Why only get 2 hours sleep prepping for a Hockey Draft?

Why have butterflies today like it's the 1st day of Kindergarten?

Why stare at the closet, trying to make a decision about which Penguins attire you're going to wear to the game?

Why countless hours in the driveway shooting pucks against an Orange Cone goalie?

Why bother with 10:00pm practices, at a semi-outdoor rink, when there's no scholarship involved and you know that this is the end of competitive hockey?

Why Road/Street/Ball Hockey? Dekhockey? Roller Hockey? Adult Leagues? Midnight Pick-Up games?

Why order NHL Network? Center Ice?

Why bookmark every Gore site that even mentions Hockey?

Why read a 'Penguins blog' and feel like peeps here are a 2nd family of sorts?

.....

Because I love this game.

We all love this game...for days just like today.


::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::


There are places in this world that aren't made out of stone. That there's something inside... that they can't get to, that they can't touch.

That's yours.


Go Pens.

It's A Great Day For Hockey

The Penguins do a lot of the things better than the Pirates.

Chalk up slogans, as another win for the Pens.

Remember how the Pirates slogan was "We Will?"

No one even knew what was going on.

Well the Pens unveiled their slogan yesterday. And well.... it just feels good.




It is the saying of former Pens coach, the beloved Badger Bob.




Thanks to [Jamie K]...we have been looking for this song forever.

Unreal.


::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::


The NHL network is insane.
If you missed any of the action, you can catch up with NHL On The Fly.
It runs all night.

Some highlights tonight:

:: Brodeur made a save you'll have to see to believe



:: Colby Armstrong, wow. Thrashers stun the world.


:: Carolina, WOOOOOOOOO
Ric Flair now announces Hurricane goals.
The Canes scored 6 goals.

thanks to [Brandon K]


::::::::::::::

Go Pens

Fail

Fail

Rick Roll Over

Apologies to anyone thinking we were insulting you by Rickrolling you.
Or putting you on blast for being rickrolled.

The person's reaction to the Rickroll is what it's all about.
We were all there at one point in time.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Pittsburgh Steeler blog ONE FOR THE OTHER THUMB
invited us to partake in a 5-question survey.

We were honored.
In cooperation with that post, we've decided to mirror our financial-crisis solution here.

305-315 million people live in America.
Give every citizen $1 million.
That's $315 million.
That beats the $700 billion being handed to banks.

A stipulation of the $1 million is that you would have to pay off
any outstanding debts you may have.

And if you're $1 million in debt right now, shoot yourself.

The leftover money after paying off debts would be infused back into the economy.
People buying up stupid shit.
Some people may quit their jobs after they are given $1 million.
No one will be around to build the stupid shit for us to buy.

But this whole plan would never work.
This entire country is built on people living in debt.

People buying shit they don't need with money they don't have is the American Dream,
so said George Carlin.

This plan may not make any sense at all.
But $1 million will be solid.

Fail City

If you watched the Leafs-Wings game Thursday night, good work.

It was a solid hockey game.
The Leafs came out on top.


-MEG T-

But the lowlight of the evening came when Def Jokard performed at the Face-off Rocks thing.
[ Puck Daddy ]


The idiots put the Cup upside down after making out with it.

We would have given an arm and an leg to be able to reach through the screen and shoot someone.


dicks

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::



Hey, the Pens traded for Mike Zigomanis, a center from Phoenix. [ YAHOO ]
Apparently, he's not too bad on faceoffs.
The Pens gave up future considerations. Whatev.
This is just another name to throw into a surprisingly deep forward corps.


David Staples is already in mid-season form. [ Edmonton Journal ]
Some inside scoop on Evgeni Malkin from, of all places, Edmonton.
There's news there regarding his living situation and comments about his contract offer back home.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::


Ben Eager got suspended already. He swung his stick at Sean Avery. [ YAHOO ]
We're anxiously awaiting the YouTube.


Clint Malarchuk shot himself. [ PD ]


The Canucks have the late Luc Bourdon on a Wall of Dreams. [ KK ]
No word yet on whether or not KK will retire after the Red Wing loss.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::



If you're wily enough, you're able to read this post today.
Or maybe it's because thepensblog.blogspot.com is the address you enter to come here.
If you visit thepensblog.com, you're not here right now.

In honor of us being named an influential hockey blog by [ Sports Business Journal ],
we decided to do what anyone else would do when given recognition.:
Rickroll people who may be visiting the site as a result of the mention.

To experience the roll that some people are getting, click THE PENSBLOG up top.

We aren't "late" on the meme.
We used Billy Ocean and Duran Duran during the Ranger series last year.
What is Rickrolling? [ Wiki ]

We apologize for having a laugh at these people's expense, but it's awesome:




And since Sarah Failin Palin got facetime,
it's only fair to give Barack Obama some love.

Here is the BarackRoll.
What dedication.

Pensblog Game Night

We figured this would be a good thing to post on non penguin game nights.
It also helps to centralized comments about the games in case something happens, and we need to go searching for a you tube or something.

A few games to watch tonight.

The biggest, and currently on Versus.

Leafs vs HossaTown





NHL center ice as a free preview going on as well all week.

Don't forget about [NHL.com] either, they have some sick ass things going on.


Go Pens

CALL TO ARMS

Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin will be dropping the ceremonial "first puck"
at the Flyers home-opener on Saturday. [ Yahoo ]

Regardless of whether you'd walk through a wall of fire for Sarah Palin
or light her on fire and pee on her, it's good for hockey that she's a big deal.

She's a hockey mom, so maybe some of her followers and crap
will start watching hockey or something.


In case you haven't noticed, a lot of men consider her attractive.
She has the whole secretary thing going for her.

We found one of the hottest pictures of her on the internet.
RIGHT HERE

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Ah, yes, by the way, there's a grassroots campaign
to get Rick Astley's NGGYU video the award for BEST ACT EVER at some MTV awards show.

BEST ACT EVER started the campaign
and made some jimbob script that sends continuous votes for Rick Astley to MTV's online poll.

The operator of the BEST ACT EVER website had this to say:

It's just that [ The Best Act Ever Award ] is a bit of a joke. Another reason I am doing this is that I'm personally sick of being dictated to by the media in general on what we should and shouldn't like. This is our little revolt to show them that we decide what we like.

awesome.

Now, you can go there and have an automated script vote for you.
Or you can go straight to the MTV EMA website.

-- And here's Rick Astley discussing the phenomenon. [ March LAT article ]

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

DOUG LEAKE came across this:



:: CARL sent in this link where it asks Hossa and Conklin about Pittsburgh failing. [ DETROIT NEWS ]

:: Oh, and Alanis Morriskank and Def Leppard are "rocking out" for the opening-night festivities in Detroit. [ NHL.com ]

That means our favorite penalty killer will be in attendance:

do it

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

:: Banner-raising ceremony for the Pens. Will They? Won't They? [ Tony at MVN ]

:: If you thought the Ruutu board-hump was bad:

Thanks to BRENT for sending that in.

:: JASON BUHI found out why the Dow Jones is dropping faster
than Hossa's shorts in the Wings' dressing room:


Is #25 Brett Favre?
Nobody even knows who those players are.
What is that suit on the far right doing?

You probably looked at that picture and thought the smaller Islander was Miro Satan. Jesus.
Satan. Jesus.


[ PENS ]
:: There will be fan festivals before the first four home games of the season.
The outdoor screen will be back, and you can probably get your face painted by a hot girl.
Weekend Games: Party starts at 4:00.
Weekday: 5:00.


:: Sid vs. AO. Part IV.
Fourth year already? Damn. [ ESPN ]

At this juncture, we always like to remind fans from everywhere else
that Penguins fans have nothing against Ovechkin.

We hate him like we would hate any top player from another team.
But he's as exciting as it gets in the NHL.
We don't have an inferiority complex like Caps fans do.

Right now, we guarantee there's a Caps fan complaing that Crosby is on the left side of that picture because Gary Bettman is left-handed.

Go Pens.
Ovechkin sucks.

Bing Off The Record

It is probably a good idea to talk about the Penguins every so often.
It is just a shame, everything is slow as balls again.

The only real news of note is Jeff Taffe got assigned to Wilkes-Barre, along with Puck Finn and John Curry. [PG]

Kris Beech is MIA or something, but who really gives a shit about him.

::::::::::

Bing has been on a media tear the last few days, everything from [ESPN] chats to being a guest on TSN's off the record.

Big thanks to [Petr F] for the youtubes:








Go Pens

Milt Stegall Thinks Hockey Isn't A Real Sport. Who The F Is Milt Stegall?

Well Milt Stegall is some jobber who played or something in the CFL.

We don't know who else ran this story, we heard it on XM, and found the video on [Scarlett Ice]




Wow.

When Free Candy Happens To You

We all remember this:




Well now Joko Ruutu knows how it feels:


WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Thanks to [Suzanne R] for the pic.


Go Pens

Riddle Me This

What has 10 legs and sucks?

UPDATE:

Confusing Times

As nice as it was to see the Pens play, it is a huge ball tease.
Everything seemed back to normal, and now we are right back to whatev.




Even Giant seems to be confused.


[Thanks to B-Man.]

What a mistake.


::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

And since there is nothing to talk about, it is always fun to check on our old moron of a friend "Phillyfreak."



Bad times for him.

OH YEAH

Versus = Midseason Form

Thanks to [Matt N.] for this.
Can you pick out whats wrong?

Morons

::::::::::::::


Go Pens

Swede Nothings. Pens Lose

Whatev.

CHARLIE?

Five years ago today Dany Heatley was in an accident that resulted in the death of Dan Synder.
Today he scored two goals.

Any potentional recap would be lost in the harsh killing jokes, and photoshops in poor taste, so we'll walk away from this one.

The Senators are a really annoying hockey team. Ruutu is dead to us.
At least they didn't get shut out.

::::::::::::::::::::::

[NHL.com recap]

MISC

• The Powerplay will be fine, but it will need some work.
• Alex Goligoski > Sydor
• The "Jersey Boys" commercial can't end soon enough. Hopefully no one goes.
• Could someone please tape the Arnold Palmer commercial and send it to us?
• Don't job Godard for doing his job. Today's four-minute roughing call made no sense. You can't let Jason Smith do what he was doing to Bing.
  
• Big ups to Matt Cooke for laying out Alfie. Did Alfie even play this weekend?
• We hate Heatley, but his shot is unstoppable.
• The Steelers plus the points and the under?

Goodbye to the Deathstar:

[Will Smith]

Go Pens

Gameday [2]: Pens vs Sens

[2:30-ish]

[FSN] has the local feed, and [Versus] has it nationally.

If your in The Great White North it's on the [CBC].

And as always [WXDX] has it on the dials.

:: After looking shakier than a Jello mold in an earthquake, the Sens are sitting Gerber today.

Alex Auld gets the call. Auld's on his 4th team in as many years.

The guy gets around like patio furniture in a tornado.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

:: Don't expect Sykora to play in the second half of this back-to-back Swedish debacle,

tweaked groin has him out of the line up. Lines should be similair to yesterday.

Crosby with Tanko and Satan. Malkin with Staalsy and TK.

In case you were wondering, this afternoon's game is considered a Pens home game.

So they'll get the last change.

And on top of having to watch our team open in the land of Ace of Base, ABBA, and Ikea,

we'll get one less game in the Mellon this year.

Balls.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Do it

Kennedy Sees The Sign. PENS WIN.

We love hockey, but this business about starting the season overseas is crap.
This felt like a exhibition game.
Someone forgot to tell the Senators that it was actually a regular-season game, though.

Everything will be right as rain a week from now
when the Pens host the bums that play with Martin Brodeur.

Even the upcoming game on Sunday will feel like some weird summer hockey fantasy camp.
Whatev. We'll play in a toilet bowl in Vietnam if it results in the Pens starting the season 2-0.

The girl who sang the Canadian anthem was smokin.

After 10 minutes of national anthems, it was time to drop the puck.

Mats Sundin made the ceremonial drop in front of the crowd of his homeland.

Immediately the Canucks were on the line with his agent,

emptying their bank account to procure future puck dropping rights.

The Senators were starting some dude named Winchester.

Fox shows us the Pens lineup:

[Thanks to Mr.Pockets]

The broadcast feed started buckling under the immense pressure.
It came back in time for us to see Mr. Kennedy swing out in front of the net and put it home.

1-0.

After the Senators skated around sucking for a while, the Pens jumped onto the power play because Dean McAmmond didn't train in the offseason.

That first power play seemed to take about an hour.
It was stopped halfway through so Daniel Alfredsson could make out with the Swedish fans.

That gave the referees time to realize a Senator shot it out of his zone over the glass.
5-on-3 City for a while.

Kennedy looked solid on the half boards during that business.
That 8-minute penalty was killed.
The Senators could have used that momentum to score a goal quickly.

But they decided to wait about 5 minutes.
Shean Donovan was like a bee in your car during the playoffs last season.
He gave us all a reminder of that when he poops one past MAF.
1-1.

The Senators hate being competitive, so they put the Pens back on the power play soon after.
Alfredsson and Joko Ruutu had a shorthanded 2-on-1.
Ruutu could have put it home, but Alfie wanted the fans to touch themselves.
MAF with the stop.

The Sens killed that off, but they didn't feel at home being 5-on-5, so they took another penalty.
Jason Spezza thought there was a 13-year-old boy in the box, so he took a holding penalty.

By this time, the game was sucking the life out of you.
And Fedotenko better change his number, because you see that 6, and you think Christensen is back on the team and you vomit.

Penalty killed. Guess what.
Chris Neil thinks Kris Letang is Gary Roberts and jobs him from behind.
The Pens power play was beyond poop by then. It was liquid that you couldn't even control with your sphincter.

The Pens finally took a penalty when Jeff Taffe did something.
4-on-4 for a while.

Balls. Balls. Period.

The Mario Lemieux Foundation did some house-cleaning
and found some bad-ass stuff in their inventory.

T-shirts, hats, jackets, duffel bags, computer equipment, photo plaques.
You name it. They got it.

They are setting up shop in their parking lot:
Wednesday, October 15 9:00am -- 7:00pm

Where will this be taking place?
It's easier to get to than Lindsay Lohan's bedroom.

1) Take the Bridgeville Exit off of 79S or 79N.
2) Turn left onto Route 50. Turn left onto Hickory Grade Road.
3) Bury it.
4) Turn left onto Old Pond Road (Abele Business Park sign) and follow to the top of the hill.
5) Turn left onto Abele Road.

The MLF office is in the last building on the right.
Bargain Blowout is in the parking lot.

You almost forgot that anguish of waiting throughout an intermission for the game to get back going again.

The second period commenced. A bunch of nothingness took place.
Then Candy stopped Heatley for a driving violation, but Brooks went to the box.

The Sens tried to gain the zone on their powerplay, but a dump-in snapshot hit some Senator in the junk, and the puck landed on Malkin's stick, and he sped in on a breakaway.

. 2-1.

Eventually, the Pens were on another power play.
No dice on that one.
Nothing like your PP starting 0 for 92 to start the season.

Eric Godard comes out trying to start some shit.
He takes a penalty. It costs the Pens.


Heatley desinates a drive past MAF in the high slot. 2-2.
Godard = Stunned.

The Sens started realizing that they could take penalties all game and not be worried.
Hell, they could start scoring if they did.

Spezza took advantage of a turnover and destroyed MAF. 3-2.

The Pens started the third period with two guys in the box.
And they were both defensemen who kill penalties big-time.

But the Pens decided to go on the offensive, getting some solid SH chances.
They killed the 5-on-3 with charisma and balls.

After a while, Crosby carried the mail through the neutral zone, gained the blue line, and surveyed shit. He found Gonchar Rob Scuderi trailing. In the bank.

3-3.

3rd career NHL goal for Scuds, sky-rocketing that goals per game stat to .0136

The teams started buckling down.
Letang took some jobber penalty, and it was killed.

Dupuis caught Ruu on a thumb on a stick-check. Ruu went down like he'd been shot.
No call.

Last minute of play a puck knuckleballs out of Fleury's glove and glances off the post.
No way the game ends like that.

Regulation spent, all tied up at 3.

OVERTIME

With a point in the bank both sides open the game up.
Letang nearly finds Bing in between the circles with a slapshot pass from the point,
but a Sens defender gets a blade on it.
Using a Senator as a screen Staal catches Gerber off guard with a wrister.
The rebound bounces in front, but no ones crashing the net.

With less than a minute on the scoreboard Spezza takes it upon himself to beat the entire Penguins roster singlehandedly.

He tries to chip the puck around Kennedy, but TK's not buying.
Blocking it with his skates he tears down the ice.
Ottawa was in a defensive line change, and their forwards were too busy give Spezza the "dude, WTF?" look.

From the left circle TK ends it, putting the winner past Gerber farside.

Game.

[ NHL Recap ]

STATS

• Kennedy: 2 goals, GWG
• Pens PP: 0 for 7
• Geno: SHG

MISC

• Dupuis dropped to 3rd line, Tanko moved to Crosby's wing.
• Sykora sat out with a tweaked groin. Not expect tomorrow
• TK took his spot on line 2 and was lights out.
• Gerber won't finish the season as the Senators starting goaltender.
• FSN was not in gameshape for opening day, mistakes abound.
• With Malkin's stickhandling, the Senators defense looked like the Steelers O Line
  

Gameday [1]: Pens vs Senators

SEE THIS POST'S COMMENTS FOR INFORMATION
ON WHERE TO WATCH THE GAME ONLINE.

The Deathstar


2:30pm or so.
Darth Vader and some Storm troopers will be doing the pregame.


The game will be on [NHL network], [FSN pittsburgh], and somewhere on the internet.
If you don't know where it's going to be on, should you even be here?

[WXDX ] has the call.


::::::::::

:: There will be a party down Mellon as well. [Penguins.com]

:: It is a big day in Pittsburgh overall.

:: Our boy Kevbo, from teampensblogps3, wanted us to pass along some free concert info.
[Fall Fest] is going down at 1:00pm tomorrow.

:: And Pittsburgh will be celebrating its 250 birthday.[PG]



::::::::::::::::::

Just in case you forgot:


SUCCCCCKKKK IITTTTTTTT


:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

So it begins.




Lets kick the tires, and light the fires.


Go Pens

Na-Na-Na-Na, Na-Na-Na-Na, Hey, Hey, Hey, Goodbye

Pesonen was cut today, sent down to the minors. [ Pens ]
Getting used to the BE A PRO camera mode down there will be a chore for him.

Of the other bubble players, Biz Nasty and Bill Thomas made the team.
We haven't had a good look at Bill Thomas yet.
But there was probably some dude on your high school's A/V crew named Bill Thomas.

It's All Part Of The Plan. Pittsburgh Penguins Season Preview.

Late into the night of June 4, 2008, the lights went out. The memory is still fuzzy.

We can’t even remember what it felt like to watch Nicklas Lidstrom hoist the Cup on Mellon ice.

[Actually, yes, we can remember it.]

And while it hurt, for some reason, the Volek-esque pain never came.

Don’t get us wrong. Watching the Wings win the Cup was Vomit City.

But it wasn’t the stomach punch or even the crippling "can’t get out of bed for 5 days" type of loss.

It wasn’t Volek. It would crap in Garry Valk's mouth.

It wasn't even as debilitating as Tom Fitzgerald's goal in Game 7 in 1996.

The Wings were better. We all knew it.

We didn’t want to admit it, but we were just happy to be there.

Talbot's tying goal in Game 5’s triple-OT classic was the pinnacle of the season.

It was upstaged roughly two hours later when Sykora put it home.

Oh, here comes the hangover.

Oh, the Pens have lost too many players.

Pens fans better shoot themselves in the ass.

What retarded sportswriters and people around the NHL don't understand is,

Pens fans can't be more pleased.

For the last 3 or 4 years, free agency was the last thing on Pens fans' minds.

We just wanted our team to stay in the damn city.


Right now it looks like Paul Bunyan just took a shit.
But it will soon be magical.

For once, we didn’t have to worry this offseason. It feels great.

A new arena is on the horizon. Our team can spend to the cap.

Our team has 2 of the top 10-15 premier talents in the NHL.

Probably 3 of the top 50-60.

And they're locked up for a while.

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But we, as Pens fans, have been told to shoot ourselves.

Why?

Oh, because Ryan Malone left.

He's a so-so player who played top line for half of the season by default because Crosby was hurt.

The Lightning ended up throwing way too much money at him.

Then the "tornado" gained steam when Hossa rejected the Pens' contract offer and pulled the worst back stabbing since [Shawn Michaels gave Marty Jannetty sweet chin music in Brutus the Barber Beefcake's Barbershop.]

[Mark A]

It was a full-fledged monster when Malone and Roberts left

and Hossa signed with the Red Wings.

After the dust had settled, everyone from [Puck Daddy] to [Joe Starkey] and back to [Mirtle]

has nearly buried the Penguins because they lost too much in the offseason.

So, even though we don't have to fret over our team leaving,

we should just phone it in this season.

That seems to be the prevailing opinion.

The reasoning "Runner's up Curse," just doesn't seem to do it for us.

Not only are the Penguins not going to drop off from last season. They are going to be better.

Why?

[We list all the reasons, but if you really want to know? Mark Recchi isn't on the top line to start the season, jokes.]

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:: ONE YEAR OLDER

Yes, everyone is aware of the SCF-loser hangover curse.
Those teams, such as Tampa Bay and Ottawa, are in huge cap trouble.
They loaded up on rent-a-players (plural), and it wasn't enough.

Plus, those teams didn't have a core nucleus of talent who weren't even in their primes yet.
Advantage: Penguins.

:: F Hossa

Wahhhh the Penguins lost Marian Hossa.
Waaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

He was like the college relationship we all had once. The sex was aplenty, and it was good.
But there was no meaning, and in the end, it was better to just walk away before you got AIDS.

Look, Hossa was great. He really was. But he was great in the playoffs.
He had minimal to no effect on the Pens regular-season success in 07-08.

For the money the Penguins didn’t spend on Hossa’s large contract,
they were able to get some unreal quality.

:: HAIL SATAN


[Mikie J]

Satan is all business.
[Empty Netters] made a great point early this year in saying that since his rookie year,
only 11 players have scored more than him.

He will benefit from the Crosby Halo Effect.
Satan's never played with a player of Crosby's caliber.

:: WHY SO SERIOUS?


[Daniel L]

We don’t understand the gloom and doom about the players the Penguins lost.
Gary Roberts was a beast. He left his mark with all of us. Hell, we still wear the wristband.

Ryan Malone was a hometown kid who made good. He had a hell of a season.

Jarkoo Ruutu was insane. He is a guy you loved to have on your team.
Adam Hall -- whatev.
BGL -- good fighter, solid human. Whatev.

Really, are those losses all that staggering?

Roberts is 41 years old. He just didn’t fit here any more.
Recchi could still score, but he couldn't keep up with the speed on this team.
Same situation here. We wish him the best, as if he cares what we wish him.

Ryan Malone, before last season, was a so-so average player.
He got a chance to play on the top line with Malkin when Bing went down.
The points started piling up.

He isn’t worth $5-million in any country.
Ruslan Fedotenko is going to make us forget about him.
More on that shortly.

Rutuu is a tough loss, but he is getting older.
Matt Cooke is a younger version, with a touch more of talent.
Talk about a seamless transition from a old player to youth.

Adam Hall missed like 300 games last season, so if you are getting your balls all jammed up,
go to hell.

BGL is a good guy. His mere presence last year was important.
We liked BGL. How couldn't you?
But he sometimes had the attitude of, "Do I really have to fight? Fine," sometimes.

:: TANK AND COOKIE MONSTER



Once again, Ray Shero has shown he can get the best for his dollar.
Ruslan Fedotenko is clutch and has a Stanley Cup ring.
We’re not going to make any crazy predictions, but Tank is going to be nasty.
Matt Cooke is a feisty SOB that has played in tons of big games and is a younger, better version of Ruutu.


:: GARDEN OF EATON

With Gonch and Whitney both sidelined, the defense is on the backs of Scuds, Sydor, Eaton, Gill, Letang, and Go-Go. And we all wanted to get rid of Sydor? Ray Shero made sure he was deep with the d-men, and it has paid off.

Besides Gonch, last season the Pens had trouble getting points from the Defense.
With Letang and Go-go, we could be seeing some solid numbers.

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:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

OWNERSHIP



Beast.


::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

GM



Beast 2.0

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COACH

Of the last 5 Penguins coaches, none of them were able to keep the job for 3 complete seasons.

Eddie Johnston was the last to do it, and one of his was the strike-shortened '94-'95 season.

Part of consistency as a team is not having a different guy in a suit behind the bench every other season.

This will be Therrien's 3rd year. Already he's 2nd in franchise history in wins.
At a couple points through his tenure he's been in tight spots, with some calling for his replacement. But after the playoff run, HCMT is sitting comfortably and he's earned some slack.

That being said, if the Pens drop 3 straight, someone will once again start calling for his head.

But it's gonna take a lot more than a few losses before Therrien's job is in question.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

FORWARDS




Crosby is a robot.
Every question he answers, every moves he makes, every pass he makes,
is all calculated and followed through with exemplary precision.

Malkin? He introduced himself at the season-ticket holders meeting by saying "Hi, People."
He's the wild card. And it's great.

That's what makes these two mesh.
One thing people don't realize is that they have yet to play a full season together where they are both completely healthy.

They push each other, and that in turn pushes everyone else.

Each will have snipers, Satan and Sykora, by their sides.

The biggest question is, where will Jordan Staal play?
After a tough year, Staal is going to be unreal this year. You can feel it.

Guys like MR. KENNEDY and Max Talbot are what the new NHL is about,
and like we said, Ruslan Fedotenko will be money.

The real story though is depth. Yhe Penguins are deep, and that is what is important. Last year injuries were aplenty, but because of depth, the Penguins were able to find success.

It all is a testament to Ray Shero.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

DEFENSE




The Pens defense corps is hurting, reiterating the importance of depth.

Whitney's out until at least December.

Gonch could be back in time for the playoffs.

That'll open ice time for Gogo to step and prove he can contribute at the NHL level.

It also leaves a hole on the point in the powerplay and in the neutral-zone transition.

Count on Letang to audition to fill that role.

He didn't make the roster out of camp last season, but he manned up and eventually made the squad.

At the very least, you can mark him down for some shootout game winners. [ Youtube ]

Eaton played 36 games last year, and 35 the year before that.

When he's on the ice, he is a shutdown defenseman.

If he can suit up for 70 or more games this season, it would take our defense to another level.

Darryl Sydor was scratched most of the postseason.
He was inserted into the lineup for Game 3 of the SCF, and the team was more cohesive.

Over the offseason, there was talk in some circles about moving him.

Then he looked expendable. Now he's an integral member of the defense.

Go ahead and put Scuderi in the group, as well.

Brooks Orpik is just one of the guys we could afford to keep because Shero didn't throw money bags at Malone or Hossa.

[ jeffe ]

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

GOALTENDING

Over the past 3 seasons, Marc-Andre Fleury has grown into an elite NHL goaltender.

He entered the league talented and too quick for his own good.

In a short time, he's vastly improved his positioning and composure.

And he's still only 23. At this rate, it's scary to think how good MAF could be between the pipes.

Even if he does handle the puck with the grace of Michael J. Fox.

Last year, Conklin came up big when Fleury went down. This season, the backup role falls to Dany Sabourin. Even if MAF stays healthy, Sabourin is going to be key.

John Curry.

We don't know much about him. He's yet to occupy an NHL crease,

but Shero decided to take him with them to Sweden to fill the extra roster spot.

If nothing else, it's good to know what Plan C is.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

In conclusion of this freight train, it's time to piece everything together.

Being the underdog is great. Everyone and their mother have inked the Pens as such.
Good. Great.

The only important cog the Pens lost in the offseason was Ryan Malone.
All the Hossa talk aside, he WASN'T THE REASON we got to the playoffs.
He was part of the reason why we ABSOLUTELY COASTED through the East in the playoffs.

Maybe this season, the Pens may actually have to play a Game 6 here or there
against the beleaguered Eastern Conference.

And a quick aside on Malone: He's not worth what he was given.
We don't care who you are or where you're from.
He may be in the prime of his career right now, so he'll be tapering off by the end of his 5-year deal.

Speaking of primes of their careers, the Pens youthful corps of studs aren't even close yet.
And they have the experience of a trip to the SCF.

The Pens season will break down to two things:
A) Marc-Andre Fleury's health.
B) The blue-liners holding their own.

Anyone thinking the Pens' offense will taper off this season is high.

How quickly everyone forgets how the Pens were more than treading water last season
with a motley crew of Ryan Stone, Jeff Taffe, and the like.
Oh, and Crosby was out, too.

Don't let anyone talk you into thinking the loss of Hossa and Malone is the end of the world.
It's only just the beginning.


Go Pens

Gameday[Preseason]: Pens @ Joke

[Hartwall Arena, Helinski]




Forgot the H, dicks.


There is limited info about this game.
It is not on TV anywhere, maybe it will be streamed online somewhere.

No clue.



Go Pens

Great Wide Open.East Preview

We're only doing this so at the end of the year we can make fun of ourselves about how wrong we were.

We didn't finish all the season previews, but who really gives a shit about that now.

The East should be a wild ride this season.

Here is how we believe it will play out



1. Washington.

--A Pittsburgh Blog picks a Washington team to win the conference. Stunning we know. But A.O., like Bing, has reached his unstoppable phrase. Say what you want, but erase the piss poor start last season, and the Caps were insane down the stretch. They play in the worst division in hockey, so they will rack up a sick number of wins. Semin, is the on verge of scoring 35-40 goals, the defense is somewhat better than what people think, and like we said, A.O is an ass, but there is little doubt he is going 60-45 this year. The only think that can derail everything is the joke that is Jose Theodore.


2. Pens.

It is going to be a great race with the top three teams all season. Pens are winning 50 this year. Mark it down.


3. Habs.

Montreal will be in the hunt as well all season. Their offense is nasty, but their D is weaker than Guy Carboneau's ball sack.



4. Boston

Surprise team of the conference no doubt. First they get back Patrice Bergeron,who got crushed last year, add Marc Savard, and Phil Kessel and the Bruins will make a run.


5. Flyers

It will be close with the Pens all season, goal tending is a huge issue, but their offense will take over games.


6. Devils
As long as Brodeur is alive, he is making the playoffs. Their offense gets help with Rolston.


7. Sabres

It feels strange to leave the Senators out, but it will be hard to believe the Sabres are going to miss the playoffs under Lindy Ruff two years in a row. Ryan Miller got himself a contract, Derek Roy is solid. And Vanek should be better. They still finished with 90 points last year. That has to count for something


8. Rangers

Terrible loss of ol'double J, but the Rags should be fine offensively. Their defense is so overpaid it is disgusting, but frankly there is no other team in the east that we think can make the playoffs.



::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::


9. Toronto
Yea they are bad, but all Ron Wilson does is make the playoffs. It would not be shocking to see him sneak in.


10. Senators
They can still make the playoffs, it just seems they are on the decline. Their D is solid, but after their top line, can they score?


11. Hurricanes

There time has passed, they'll be better when they have Jordan Staal in a few years.


12. Tampa
Yes they won't be last, but to make a 20-point turn around in the standings



13. Panthers
Mud.


14. Islanders
Bad times

15. Your high school team



16. Thrashers

joke

Sick

Thanks to[ Zach L] for throwing this our way.

New NHL commercial featuring bing.

But Can You Smoke Out Of It?

[Penguins.com] has all kinds of pics from the Pens in Sweden.

The strangest one is the pic of the Arena the Pens are playing in.

What the hell is this thing.





More great pics taken by [Dan Potash]


Fri Godis is swedish for Free Candy

Go Pens