Sleeksays

Tim Sassone, Chicago Beat Writer, November 25: Is it being a little too greedy to think the Hawks can go 6-0 on this road trip? Wednesday's game in San Jose won't be easy, but the Sharks can be beat and the Hawks almost did it last week at the United Center. The Hawks led 5-4 going to the third period then took a couple dumb penalties and wound up losing 6-5. It's on to Anaheim Friday and the Ducks aren't anywhere near as good as they were when they won the Stanley Cup. The Hawks close the trip Saturday at Los Angeles against an improved, but nothing special Kings team. Rudy Kelly, BoC Blogger, November 29: The Blackhawks have lost both California games (against San Jose and Anaheim) this weekend. Let's make it one more so Earl has to bust out the ol' rape graphic again. Well, apologies for the absence this week, but with siblings in town for Turkey Day, I was away from the computer for a bit -- but I've had myself a great week. I was even in Row B for Fri...

You know, I probably come up with a hundred different line combinations between games, and yet Terry Murray always manages to come up with a line that completely blows my mind. The Frolov-Stoll-Handzus line is one such line, and yet it's different from the others because it doesn't make me want to kill someone. The line is actually pretty awesome. All three can play defense very well, all three can put the puck in the net, and all three can play heavy minutes. The line did a fairly good job at shutting down Patrick Kane when they were out there (he got a goal off a line change and an assist on the power play) and contributed 2 goals themselves. If the Kings are going to heavily rely on 2 lines like they have been, they might as well put their best players (and Kyle Calder*) on those lines. *I'm actually kind of worried about Calder. My brother was at the game yesterday and reported that people were actively decrying Calder's existence, and there were shouts of, ...

LA Kings (9-9-3) vs. Chicago Blackhawks (10-5-6!) 1:00 PST, Fox Sports Prime Ticket Anze Kopitar and Dustin Brown have been attached at the hip since Kopitar came into the league. Brown gave Kopitar a steady hand to feed the puck to, while Kopitar seemed to elevate Brown's game from that of a third-line grinder to a top line power forward. Both guys owe much of their success to one another and it's hard to imagine the two of them on different lines. But is it time to break them up, just to see what happens? Dustin Brown's game has evolved these past two seasons. Kopitar used to be the dynamic playmaker of the two, but Brown has taken it upon himself to carry the puck a lot more this season; that's good, but Kopitar has looked a little lost when he's not the one carrying the puck into the zone. It's like two best friends in middle school, but one came to high school with breasts grown over the summer. It might be better off to throw Brown with Stoll and Fr...

LA Kings (8-9-3) @ Edmonton Oilers (9-9-2) 7:00 PST, NHL Network, TSN What is up, douche bags? This is Lubomir Visnovsky, El Diablo , and I'm running things around here from now on. You may be thinking, "Hey, where's Rudy Kelly?" Well, last time I saw that sniveling son of a bitch he was running towards the Arizona boarder with his pants around his ankles pleading for me to not shoot him in the back, so I don't think you're going to be seeing him for a while. (Not so funny with piss running down you leg, are ya Rudy?) Now I'm in charge, and I'm going to share the real story behind my stay in Los Angeles, and why I am going to get Dean Lombardi. What? Yeah, that's what I thought. I was born on the mean streets of Topolcany, Czechoslovakia. We were so poor we couldn't even pronounce the name of our growing up. I was good at 2 things: shooting pucks and killing capitalists. Naturally, I had the opportunity to do one more than the other...

No, it's not Claude Lemieux. That dude's skating in the AHL, not the NHL, and despite some people speculating that this move might be made to intimidate the Detroit Red Wings (uh...I don't think Lemieux's intimidating anyone in the NHL at this point, but interesting theory), we won't be seeing him in San Jose unless he wants to buy Doug Wilson a pizza or something. Of course, Darren McCarty just got sent to the AHL too, so they can sell some minor-league tickets promoting Avs-Wings circa 1997. That could be fun. In the meantime, Evgeni Nabokov will return in net today against the Chicago Blackhawks. The crowd gave Nabby a good welcome-back chant on Saturday night when he was shown on the in-house camera. As well as Brian Boucher has played, I don't think anyone's unhappy about having Nabby back between the pipes. That is, except for this guy . Chicago comes in on a hot streak and they're thinking sweep even though they're only halfway through their s...

For the first week or two of its release, I bandied about the interwebs playing NHL '09 with a group of whacky Canadians. Aside from their silly accents, these guys were GOOD. They played like ... dare I say, a team. Soon enough, though, Time Warner Cable put it in my pooper (metaphorically, I hope). That meant an internet connection as consistent as Oprah's weight and a tragic inability to fight for the polygonal Cup with my Canadian pals. Eventually, the team either dissolved or decided that it would be best if we saw other people. Enough background, here's the deal: I started an EA Sports League team called Battle of Sedins and my roster includes only my doppelganger Sad Panda. This saddens and enrages me. So, if you have a copy of NHL 09, an X-Box Live account and a modicum of digi-talent, message/friend request/whatever me on X-Box Live so we can represent for our blogging gangstas. Not sure what kind of demand there will be with this, but at first it will definitely ...

Derek Armstrong- 11:21 TOI, 0 G, 0 A, -3, 0 SOG, 0 PIM Brian Boyle- 11:19 TOI, 0 G, 0 A, -3, 0 SOG, 4 PIM Raitis Ivanans- 9:59 TOI, 0 g, 0 A, -2, 0 SOG, 8 PIM I'm not even mad, I'm impressed.

LA Kings @ Calgary Flames (11-9-1) 6:30 PST, RSW (Regehr Sucks Wang?) Record: 8-8-3 (49 Goals For, 49 Goals Against) Special Teams: 16.7 PP% (19th) , 84.1 PK% (10th) Top Scorer: Anze Kopitar, 15 points Best Forward: Dustin Brown? Best Defenseman: Drew Doughty Biggest Surprise: Drew Doughty/Erik Ersberg Biggest Disappointment: Anze Kopitar (It's only 19 games in, but tomorrow's Lubo Day so I'm doing this now.) All coaches search for a balance between top-line talent and depth with their forward lines. At the beginning of the season, the Kings were running 3 lines that were of relatively equal strength, with Brownitar on the top line, Frolov/Handzus on line 2, and O'Sullivan/Stoll on the 3rd. These lines helped spread out the Kings' talent but probably did so a little too much and the Kings had trouble hanging with the top-level talent on other teams. Then Terry Murray apparently had a stroke and screwed with the lines for about 4 or 5 games, banishing O...

John Zeiler is dumb. If you watch the video, Adam Foote looks back behind him twice and sees Zeiler coming at him, and you can see him assume that there's no way Zeiler is going to hit him because it would clearly be boarding. Foote is so positive in this assumption that he doesn't try to protect himself at all. You could even argue that Foote was daring Zeiler to board him. And that's what Zeiler did. He plowed in and boarded the fuck out of Adam Foote. I know some people say that Foote deserved it, or that it's an unfair advantage for a defenseman if a forward can't be aggressive when getting the puck, but the NHL has made clear that if you hit a guy in the back and he hits the boards with his face then you are getting a penalty. John Zeiler hit Foote in the numbers, Foote hit the boards with his face, Zeiler got a penalty. Sounds fair. I only wish Zeiler had gotten the death penalty instead. Well, not the death penalty, that's a little far; maybe a ...

Here are a few photos from the Sharks 7-2 thrashing of the Washington Capitals on Saturday night. Evgeni Nabokov returned to the lineup to backup Brian Boucher, and he is expected to start Wednesday night against Chicago. More photos and notes from the game are available here , and postgame comments from the coaches are available here . Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis was kind enough to answer a lot of questions for me about technology and the NHL prior to the game here , and Offwing.com and AOL's Eric McErlain also answered a few questions for me about the Capitals here . Naturally Jody Shelley and Donald Brashear fight when I am in the tunnel going from one side of the rink to the other, but hockeyfights.com posted a video clip of the fight here . I am the first to admit I was not as positive about Shelley when he was with Columbus, but scroll through some of his fights this season on HF. He is having an incredible season, and Todd McLellan is throwing him out on a line wi...

Colorado Avalanche (9-10-0, t-12th in west) at Anaheim Ducks (11-8-3, t-4th in west) Ah, we finally arrive at the conclusary installment of Burke Week, a five-day gander back at the Anaheim legacy of Brian Burke. Part I: Defending three "bad" Burke moves that I don't think were that bad. Part II : Criticizing three Burke moves that I don't think get enough flak. Part III : Nothing but shout-outs. Part IV : What I like about Burke the roster-builder. And now we arrive at Part V: Scattered final thoughts , where I squeeze everything I've missed into a final post for the series. We'll start with some counterpoint: Two things that I didn't like about Burke the roster-builder. Regret One: Europe, Where Art Thou? Since Brian Burke's second year in Anaheim, there has been a fairly rigid three-player maximum on players from Europe -- Teemu Selanne from Finland, Sammy Pahlsson from Sweden, and the back-up goalie (first Ilya Bryzgalov from Russia, now Jona...

Who has his arms raised and loves scoring goals? This guy. -Drew, check out Stastny's face. -What... oh my God. Gotta admit, it looks pretty sharp. I hate the crest but the jerseys look pretty amazing while the action is going on. My favorite part are the socks, to be honest. If they put the crown from the regular jerseys on the front, I could see these jerseys becoming full-time. What do you guys think? *** Damn, no hand in this one either. -John Zeiler should be shot into the Sun. -Jarret Stoll should have about 30 goals by now. -Drew Doughty played 29 minutes last night. -When is Kopitar going to create a goal for himself?

LA Kings (8-8-2) vs. Colorado Avalanche (8-10) 7:30 PST, Fox Sports West The Stars have imploded and just lost their best player. The Coyotes haven't sparked offensively and their youth hasn't quite lived up to the height so far. The Ducks look to be rounding into shape after a slow start but aren't quite the dominant team they've been in years past. The Sharks... well, the Sharks are amazing. But after them, there isn't a team that has really made its mark in the Pacific Division. Why not the Kings? They're sitting at .500 right now despite losing their best defenseman in the 2nd game of the season. Their top scorers from last year have underperformed, their goaltending in the first 10 games of the season was subpar, and they just now put together a legitimate top scoring line. And yet they're right there. The Kings have a legitimate shot to make the playoffs, assuming the Stars continue to fall apart and need to use the next month to build up poi...

WOW. Someone just played Panic's entrance music. If things looked bad for the Stars just a few days ago, now the team is pondering meteor shower insurance. Rudy posted the news but if you have anti-scroll disease, Brenden Morrow is out for the season. The Stars are effectively "fixed." As in they've been de-balled. With Marty Turco having a mini-meltdown and Brad Richards giving weepy interviews in emo shirts, trading away Jussi Jokinen and Mike Smith is looking closer to Bochenski for Versteeg these days. Honestly , Richards had enough positive moments in the playoffs that he gained a ... sort of flattering nickname in the "Five Dollar Shake." No Pulp Fiction jokes for him now, though. Although perhaps a "do I LOOK like a bitch?" might work. So, with chicken little getting on the first trip to DFW Airport, I thought it might be fun to look at the different ways this mess can shake out: 1. The put-your-head-between-your-legs-and-pray approa...

So, you may have heard there's this little thing called, erm, BlackArmor debuting against the Caps on Saturday night. It's black (duh) and not a heck of a lot different from the old black jerseys. Guess those early reports were wrong . (The good news? There's not a Seagate logo to be found. Fortunately, Euro-style sponsorships haven't crept into the league as some had feared.) Still, you guys know that I'm just a teeny tiny bit superstitious. The old black jerseys were seemingly cursed, at least for the first few seasons. I don't have specific numbers but I believe that the team's record when wearing them was roughly 0-19573893-2. They did eventually start winning with the black jerseys on, so whatever curse they had was apparently shaken off. History does tend to repeat itself though, and with the Sharks wearing the new duds on consecutive nights (Caps and Wednesday night against the Blackhawks), I say this: if you lose both games, burn them. Burn them all ...

You know, I've been predicted every season for the past 6 seasons that the Stars were going to falter, and every season they've made me look like a jackass. This season I finally don't predict a letdown and this looks like the season they finally falter . Just thought you'd like to know how this is affecting me personally.

-Can't score? Check. -Can't keep the puck out of their own zone? Check. -Takes 2 penalties, including one when the opposing team has the puck stationary behind their own net? Check. That Zeiler-Boyle-Ivanans line is terrible. Can make Derek Armstrong a coach, waive Zeiler and bring up Matt Moulson and Ted Purcell? *** The Maxi-PAD line was matched up against Ovechkin's line all night, with Dustin Brown pretty much shadowing Ovy all night. Ovechkin was getting frustrated and in the third period took it out on Dustin Brown, blindsiding Brown with a little bit of an elbow in front of the net when the puck was in the corner; unfortunately for Ovy, Brown's skate got up and clipped Ovechkin in the ear. He fell to the ice and rolled around for a little while before he got up and realized he was getting a penalty for interference. Suddenly his ear wasn't bothering him that much anymore. Exactly one minute later, Dustin Brown scored on the power play. Hilarious. ***...

Anaheim Ducks (10-8-2, 7th in west) at St. Louis Blues (6-8-2, 15th in west) Ducks had better have a better start or somebody's going to the dentist! So for Part IV of this series, I thought I'd take a look at some of the ways that Burke was a very good general manager -- things that worked for the Ducks not only on their Cup run but also looking forward. Think of these as a bit of a primer for good ol' Bob Murray, or more accurately, Part IV: What I like about Burke the roster-builder . Lesson One: If you want depth, don't acquire depth players; instead insert talent at the top of your roster. While I've stated before that I�m not overly impressed that Burke had the "wisdom" to acquire Niedermayer, Selanne, or Pronger, I don�t want to take away from the fact that Burke knew what he was going after � a superstar. His focus wasn�t on filling in his roster with supplementary depth players, though he certainly put those pieces in place as well; he was loo...

The Dallas Stars are stumbling worse than a fat chick after 15 tequila shots. Seriously, tonight's loss to the Chicago Blackhawks (6-3) was ugly. The lowlight was Kris Versteeg 's goal on Turco, in which the Stars made the talented rookie look like the second coming of ... well, Jonathan Toews . (My internet connection has been Turco-like in its consistency, but I'll keep an eye out for Versteeg's goal. Link it in the comments/edit this post if you find it before me.) It's easy to blame everything on Turco, but it's obvious that this isn't all his fault. Honestly, it's really hard to pin the tail on this blame donkey.* Could it be that, after being unappreciated and hard working for all these years, the Stars relaxed once it started to believe its press clippings? Did Turco morph into Dan Cloutier ? Can they find a way to blame Sean Avery ? * - Ever wondered what it looks like to die in print? Wonder no longer ... ANYWAY, it's getting harder and hard...

LA Kings vs. Washington Bolsheviks 7:30 PST, Fox Sports West Tonight is Russian Heritage Night at Staples Center, which is a great idea because it gets all of them in one spot so we can capture them. I stopped paying attention to politics in 1989, so I don't know too much, but I do know that commies are bad and I hate them. They tried to trick me with that whole Glasnost thing, but I know what's up: Russians, having failed to take over the world economically, are now trying to take over through hockey. They've infiltrated our nation's capital, led by their furry leader, Alex Ovechkin. His comrades Alex Semin (hehe) and Sergei Fedorov are probably "out" tonight, but I'm pretty sure it's all a ruse for some sort of un-American activity.* Standing in their way? The good, solid, American squad of Los Angeles Kings, led by Drew Doughty, Anze Kopitar and Erik Ersberg. The Kings are the only thing standing in the way of a Russian invasion, and I...

Time to take a break from my normally scheduled Burke Week -- tomorrow I'll get to the positive GM lessons we can learn from the Burke. Today instead I'm just going to toss a few links and call it a day (partially because I feel bad just tossing these at the end of a long post; mostly because I'm lazy) . First off, in keeping with Burke-themed tradition, I was a guest again on The Rink Podcast this week to talk about what the Burke departure means for Anaheim. I'm the first of three guests in a virtual All-Star Game of blog guests -- Steve Lepore of Puck the Media also talks about Versus ratings, and Alanah McGinley of Canucks and Beyond talks about Roberto Luongo's shutout streak. Not my strongest work, but then again, podcasting ain't my forte. Secondly, I wanted to give an update on the guy sometimes known as Kyle J and sometimes known as "the Swede" -- our mysterious comic book contributor here at BoC ( Episode 1: Toronto , Episode II: Detroit )...

A Sharkspage films premiere. Highlights after 20 games to "I am the night, colour me black" by Priestess.

Terry Murray has reunited the Patrick O'Sullivan-Anze Kopitar-Dustin Brown line that was such a surprising success in the 2nd half of last season. If that sentence sounds familiar it's because I wrote it about 3 weeks ago the first time Murray did this; then they played one game together and Murray put O'Sullivan on the 4th line. Now O'Sullivan is seemingly back and I think it's time the line deserved a name. because I had this all set up before Murray dicked them (and me around) . Here's a few options I came up with, and then I'll take a few good suggestions in the comments and have a vote tomorrow. Hooray for democracy! Option A: LAPD, Central Division- This option evokes memories of the old LAPD line (Allison-Palffy-Deadmarsh) , but it has the added bonus of being a little bit more rough 'n tumble than the old line. The name works because their names work (Anze-Patrick-Dustin) and it's similar to the older incarnation because all three had a...

Washington Capitals (10-4-3, 4th in east) at Anaheim Ducks (10-7-2, t-4th in west) NHL's other poster child is in town. Welcome to the second installment of Brian Burke Week, as I ponder back on the Anaheim yester-legacy of the mouthy one. Yesterday I made a case for three moves that I think Burke gets too much flak for ; today it's time for Part II: Criticizing three Burke moves that I don't think get enough flak. A few things (1) I'm not going to include the Todd Bertuzzi signing; that one's so obviously bad that I don't know if it's worth discussing. Just know that my list has these three things plus signing Todd Bertuzzi. I'm still not passing judgment on Brendan Morrison, either (he gets a free pass for a while because two knowledgeable Canucks fans I talked to were shocked that B-Mo was even playing already) . (2) I am not saying that any of these moves are guaranteed to fail -- there's still judgment to be made on all of them. It's jus...

David Amber's Q & A sessions started gaining a lot of attention about a year ago for actually getting hockey players to say something interesting. (Keep in mind this was in a time before Russian journalists were quoting Alex Semin slamming Sidney Crosby ) Getzlaf was Amber's most recent guest and it's a pretty interesting interview . It highlights Todd Marchant not as a stone-handed center but a jokester, provides some interesting insight into the Dustin Penner situation and touches on Getzlaf's older brother, who plays in the CFL. Not bad for North American media.

I've been an independent observer of this whole Dustin Penner fiasco , and like M*A*S*H* or a penis, it just gets better the longer it goes. To recap: The Oilers sign Dustin Penner to a 5-year, $21.25 million dollar deal after his astounding 43-point season playing alongside 2 scrubs named Ryan Getzly and Chris Perry or something like that. Who cares, they've never done anything anyway. There was much gnashing of the teeth from bloviating jackass Brian Burke, who criticized Lowe for ruining both teams; this was followed by a lot of back-and-forth between the outmatched Anaheim blogging contingent and the Edmonton juggernaut. But, in the end, Brian Burke was right: the Dustin Penner offer sheet not only left Edmonton with an overpaid, unmotivated baby, but also screwed the Ducks over when they had an opportunity to win a 2nd cup. To that I say, "Huzzah!" The problem with the Edmonton offer sheet from their perspective was that they were not in the position to of...