Subbanator Strikes First, Asks Questions Later

You've probably heard it all by now: P.K. scores on the PP, or some variation of that clever line, after the Montreal Canadiens defenseman scored his first career regular-season goal on Thursday. He did have one last post-season, but everyone knows those don't really count. Despite it being his first goal this year, and despite all the hype leading into it, Subban is very quietly putting together a very solid rookie season, not necessarily one worthy of the Calder Trophy, but a solid one nonetheless.

"I only look this young in photos... and in person."

As it stands now, Carolina Hurricane Jeff Skinner is leading all rookies in scoring at nearly a point-per-game pace, with six goals and nine assists in 16 games. While scoring should never be the only criterion used to determine who should win rookie-of-the-year honours, it's hard not to be impressed with what Skinner has accomplished up to this point, essentially tit-for-tatting teammate Eric Staal, who has the exact same stats. Of course, Staal should never be used as the yardstick to measure success, because it's clear he's never really lived up to the expectations his 100-point season helped to set a few years ago. Still, hats off to Skinner, especially due to his being just 18 years old and three years younger than his next-closest competition, Buffalo Sabre Tyler Ennis, who has 10 points in 17 games.

Here are the up-to-date rookie-scoring-leader stats:

1. Jeff Skinner (CAR) 6,9 - 15

2. Tyler Ennis (BUF) 4,6 - 10

3. Jordan Eberle (EDM) 4,5 - 9

4. John Carlson (WSH) 2,7 - 9

5. Mark Letestu (PIT) 4,4 - 8

6. Kyle Wilson (COL) 4,3 - 7

7. P.K. Subban (MTL) 1,6 - 7

8. Logan Couture (SJS) 5,1 - 6

9. Taylor Hall (EDM) 3,3 - 6

10. Tyler Seguin (BOS) 3,3 - 6

So, for the record, Subban: quietly impressive, Skinner: incredibly impressive, Taylor and Tyler: slightly disappointing considering Skinner's relative dominance, Ennis: still looks like he got out of juvie a few years too early, and Letestu: it was nice while it lasted.

Caught On Camera: GetReal #4

Avalanche’s Woes Pile on with Acquisition of Problem Child O’Byrne

"Dude, I'm sorry! You can have your purse back!!!"

With Ryan O’Byrne getting traded to the Colorado Avalanche on Thursday, the phrase “we hardly knew ye” must ring strangely true for Montreal Canadiens fans, despite his having played four seasons with the team.

That’s because the now-departed blue-liner only appeared in a total of 128 games in the NHL and three this season, having generally played below expectations and fallen below supposed-minor-league-signing Alex Picard on the team’s depth chart. This of course occurred, oh, I don’t know, about three seconds into the season when, prompted by first seeing Picard play in person, head coach Jacques Martin asked the closest person in his general vicinity: “You mean, it’s legal to have a seventh defenseman that can actually play???”

So underwhelming an experience has watching O’Byrne been that it seems strangely fitting that the song “Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye” (from which the above saying is taken) shares a tune with “The Ants Go Marching One by One”, and thus would serve as an appropriate bid adieu to be played on his way to the airport, onto the plane, and out of town.

Of course, add in the fact that the song is Irish in origin just like O’Byrne and anti-war in nature just like O’Byrne is anti-competitive and one has to wonder how it never caught on as a theme song of sorts for when he skated onto the ice during warm-ups, you know, for those rare occasions he actually made it into the line-up.

For those unfamiliar with him due to his lack of ice time, O’Byrne is best known as the guy who, once upon a time along with then-teammate Tom Kostopoulos, got arrested for stealing a purse, apparently utilizing his underplayed psychic abilities to successfully predict the financial turn for the worse his career would inevitably take just a few years down the road. He also utilized his underplayed scoring abilities to score on his own net on a delayed penalty once, thereby achieving the same folk-hero status as notorious own-goal scorers Steve Smith, Chris Phillips, and Uwe Krupp.

O’Byrne joins a team, whose website currently shows 10 other defensemen listed on the roster (no joke). Granted some of those are AHLers called up due to injury like Colby Cohen and Kevin Shattenkirk, but the point is the Avalanche, in practice and not necessarily on paper, are more deep on D than the Habs, which, granted again, is like saying the Quebec Nordiques got the better end of the Patrick Roy trade. There’s a definite case to be made to the contrary, but you will mainly get dirty looks in exchange.

Now, this trade doesn’t approach one-hundredth of the significance of the Roy deal, with only current QMJHLer Leaguer Michael Bournival coming back the other way. However, the Habs do trim almost $1 million off their salary-cap payroll, meaning the Habs might come out ahead if they’re able to do something productive with that space. Meanwhile, Bournival is projected to be a fringe second-liner or above-average third-liner, meaning the Habs are getting something tangible back in return, but they will have to wait a few years to reap those benefits, with Bournival just getting drafted this past summer. 

As for the Avalanche, they had better get ready to melt in the standings from what can only be described as a “Slow”Byrne... if he somehow hasn’t become a press-box regular one month from now.

The 1-0 NHL Game that Shouldn't Have Been

It will go down in the history books as a 1-0 shutout win for the Anaheim Ducks, but it should be noted that the stars were aligning for a much different result. In fact, it was a night of overall absurdities between the New York Islanders and the Ducks. For example:

1) Career back-up Curtis McElhinney, who wasn't even good enough to play five games a year for the Calgary Flames behind Miikka Kiprusoff, somehow got his first career shutout and actually has a better save percentage than starter Jonas Hiller (.924 vs. .918).

2) The Islanders, despite losing just 1-0, probably have the worst overall blue line in the league without Mark Streit back there to give it some actual credibility, and yet they gave up just 14 shots in the game.

3) The Ducks, despite winning 1-0, probably have the second-worst blue line in the league (despite stars-in-the-making Luca Sbisa and Cam Fowler being on it), and yet gave up just 27 shots on goal. Their average to date this season is 36.6 shots allowed per game, the second-worst in the league, next to the Atlanta Thrashers (the Islanders have for the record only given up 27.9 shots per game).

4) The Ducks have now won five straight, lending credence to the hypothetical notion that the Ducks are actually a good team.

5) Teemu Selanne, getting to the point that he should not only be thinking about retirement but retirement homes, assisted on Saku Koivu's game-winning goal, giving him a share of the team's scoring lead with 18 points in 17 games. Forget the Finnish Flash, the dude should be nicknamed Ponce de Leon for clearly having discovered the fountain of youth.

6) After reading through all reports of the game, Roloson seems to have actually made it through at least one game without suffering a collision with an opposing skates and then losing his mind.

Makes you kind of wonder about this topsy-turvy world in which we live, doesn't it?

There Was no Way Buffalo Was Going to Lose This Game... Unless, of Course, the Shootout Didn't Go as Planned

That's right, the Buffalo Sabres needed a shootout to dispatch the incredibly bad New Jersey Devils in head coach Lindy Ruff's 1000th game behind the bench. It could have been worse. They could have lost. Hell, Ruff could not have even made it to his 1000th game - all with the Sabres - if many of the team's fans had their way. But he did (becoming the 18th coach to accomplish the feat in the process), and his team won, albeit in less-than-impressive fashion. Good thing less-than-impressive does not necessarily translate into less-than-dramatic, with the Sabres scoring twice in 13 seconds, to pull ahead 2-1 in the game's second period. Of course that was before Ilya Kovalchuk didn't even get a shot away in his chance to tie the aforementioned shootout.

The team record for the two fastest goals, which is actually an NHL record shared with four other teams, is four seconds, scored on October 17, 1974 when both Lee Fogolin and Don Luce scored against the California Golden Seals, whose reputation as perennial losers in the league (and the ones that gave up the right to draft Guy Lafleur) may end up holding up better in the long run than that of the Devils when all is said and done. For the record, the Seals were in existence for nine seasons. The Devils have just less than 15 years left on Kovalchuk's contract, meaning plenty of time to turn a once-proud dynasty (or as close as a team could come to being a dynasty in the NHL) into a laughingstock. Kovalchuk's already leading the charge in that respect.

The NHL’s All-Star Festivities Need a Good Visit to a Strip Club

"It's All-Star Weekend. I have to look the part: apparently that of a blind, elderly snowbird missing his seeing-eye dog and raising his arms in frustration."

To borrow from NHL analyst Bob McKenzie, if you put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig, albeit a slightly prettier one.

Now, when he spoke those words (or some version of them) on Tuesday night on television, he wasn’t revealing some sordid secret about his double life as a bestiality enthusiast, nor was he referring to the unethical testing of cosmetics on animals. No, he was talking about the NHL’s latest attempt to dress up the league’s all-star game in more attractive apparel.

As announced on Wednesday, the game, to be hosted by the Carolina Hurricanes, will undergo a dramatic change, whereby captains voted by the players will select their teams through a draft-like process. At a time like this, the all-star game’s more memorable moments should be reflected upon. I’ll give you a moment to think back to your own personal favourite moments...

*Crickets*

Well, that was a waste of a line.

For myself, maybe two incidents spark the greatest reaction: Owen Nolan “calling” his shot against Dominik Hasek in the 1997 game, which, while fun to watch, isn’t nearly that impressive as it should be humiliating for Hasek. What did you think he was going to do, Dom? Go five-hole? I get that Babe Ruth and North American culture as a whole is completely lost on you and you like to live in your own little world, but did you really think Nolan was pointing at the vendor 10 aisles up, looking to get his “food on” and reserve a bag of popcorn for after the game?

And then there was the game two seasons ago in which Montreal fans felt the need to stuff the ballot boxes to try and get six Canadiens voted into the starting line-up, which resulted in defenseman Mike Komisarek, with an incredible 11 total points that season, playing alongside teammates Andrei Markov, Carey Price, and Alexei Kovalev. Probably more shocking was that Kovalev took home most-valuable-players honours with two goals, an assist, and the shootout winner.

Clearly the puzzle wrapped in an enigma and shrouded in mystery that is Kovalev is finally solved: get him to play in a game that doesn’t actually count, and he tears it up. Because that’s what the all-star game amounts to: a nothing game that usually attracts two types of people: the casual hockey fan that is attracted to bright, shiny objects like the goal light going off time and again, and the rich who enjoy seeing their kind get richer when the MVP goes home with a new car for which they could pay using their last game cheque.

If the league is so intent on putting the all-star game in new duds, dress it up completely differently, how about getting it to try on the emperor’s new clothes, strip down, and reveal it for what it really is: a marketing stunt that isn’t aimed at the game’s actual fans, but one hoping to attract new ones. Considering the plight of the sport in a market like Atlanta, for example, where the game was played just the previous year, I think it’s safe to assume it’s not working out too hot. Or, for an apt simile, about as hot as the sport is in the Sun Belt states.

Now, I’m not saying the league should get rid of the game altogether, because it adds a healthy dose of credibility, but reinventing it doesn’t do a world of good when the inventor is starting off with the same spare parts each and every time. The breakaway challenge has been a dud, oozing about as much excitement as the latest Meryl Streep action thriller. The North America versus the World games, billed as this era’s cold wars, were exactly that... a lot of hype for nothing. And the off-year for the event last season for the Olympics was like a breath of fresh air, just like moving from Beijing to Vancouver was.

Still, let’s call a spade a spade here. The game barely adds any value to the league and changing it every so often takes away from that aforementioned credibility, to the point that outsiders might be prompted to ask: just what exactly is so wrong with the way that it was before? In word, “everything”, but it will always be “everything” no matter how it is played, but those potential fans don’t need to know that.

Wouldn’t you rather keep living the lie that it’s a very entertaining weekend that even its participants can’t wait for every year? Like a prom-date invitation accepted out of pity that you just can’t wait to be over, the players often treat being named to the game like jury duty. It’s something you have to do that you normally wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole... kinda like a pig wearing make-up. You just don’t know where it’s been, or who it’s been with...

... For the record, I actually like McKenzie, so please don’t take anything said in this piece as a sign of disrespect. I said he wasn’t revealing some deep dark secret about his double life as a bestiality enthusiast.

Alberts Takes Two Penalties, Leaves His Mark on Game, Darche's Face

There were many possible storylines that could have potentially shaped the Montreal Canadiens' 2-0 victory over the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday.

For example, on the Canadiens' side of things, you had the fact that Montreal's $8-million-man Scott Gomez was mired in a slump and on pace for 18 points this season, or $444,444.44 per point, for all you math whizzes out there. So bad had it gotten that Maxim Lapierre was put on Gomez's line yesterday to help get him going, with head coach Jacques Martin clearly trying to employ the old "Do you want to turn out like him? Do you?" approach as a way of hitting home and sparking an epiphany of sorts deep within his oversized paper weight.

You also had the newly formed PhD line of Benoit Pouliot, Jeff Halpern, and Mathieu Darche, which was aptly named not only for the three members' initials but also because it takes a doctorate to understand just how the three have been able to develop scoring chemistry with one another when one member is a career minor-leaguer, another would be well on his way to becoming one were it not for the fact that there appears to be a shortage of lanky, lazy, and inconsistent scoring wingers in Montreal, and a third whose days of scoring at an other-wordly pace of 0.50 points per game are well behind him.

As for the Canucks, they were looking for their seventh-straight win, goalie Roberto Luongo was returning home, and head coach Alain Vigneault was in search of his 300th career win against the team that first hired him.

As it happens, Gomez didn't get a point, neither did Lapierre (big surprise on both fronts), the PhD line was held off the scoresheet for the second-straight game, thereby restoring some sense of normalcy to the line-up, the Canucks and Vigneault lost, and Luongo got outshone by former-Jaroslav Halak-understudy Carey Price. Did I leave anything out?

Oh, and it was the least likely of culprits, Canucks defenseman Andrew Alberts, that actually had the biggest impact on the game, making this hit on Darche and later taking another dumb penalty that allowed the Canadiens to actually leapfrog over the New Jersey Devils for the honour of not having the league's worst power play. That's right, the Habs now have scored an amazing four times on 51 opportunities to move ahead of the 3-for-46 Devils. Way to go Alberts. Is it too late to get Shane O'Brien back from the Nashville Predators?