Who's Travis Walsh? An Apparent Magician with the Puck, that's who

This from Saturday night, in a game pitting the Muskegon Lumberjacks against the Cedar Rapids RoughRiders in the USHL. Many fans tend not to know that the USHL is the American equivalent of the CHL, but this video will definitely prove that the talent level isn't necessarily below par south of the border. What's most impressive is that Travis Walsh is a defenseman. Let's just hope for his sake he's not the next Marek Malik.

You Don’t Know what It’s like to Sing the Blues, but Saint Louis Does

Let me start off by saying that Edmonton Oiler Shawn Horcoff’s hit on Saint Louis Blue Andy McDonald on Saturday was about as dirty as a martini that’s really heavy on olive juice... it’s unfortunate and interesting to look at, maybe even leaves a bitter taste in your mouth if you’re a Blues fan, but illegal? No.

Really, after looking at the replay about five times, I’m still not exactly sure it can be labelled as a hit as much as an accidental collision after McDonald lost his footing entering the Oilers’ zone. That Taylor Hall scored the game-winner off the giveaway only added insult to injury, literally. The point isn’t that things were going so well for the Saint Louis Blues, because they weren’t, but that things were going so well for McDonald. Whichever way you look at it, neither he nor his team really needed this right now.

Of course, things like that tend to go without saying, and yet sometimes they bear repeating especially if the victim has suffered through concussions in the past, as McDonald has, most significantly in 2002-2003. He missed 50 games that year, his first full season with the Anaheim Ducks, including all 21 of Anaheim’s incredible playoff run to the Stanley Cup Finals against the New Jersey Devils.

At the time, McDonald was arguably a fringe NHLer, who at the age of 25 had yet to really solidify a spot as a top-six forward or team up with Teemu Selanne and Chris Kunitz to enjoy his greatest success. That really puts into perspective just how crushing these types of injuries can be, how much potential they can wipe away with a single split-second check. That isn’t to say McDonald is the greatest Saint Louis Blue that ever laced them up... that honour obviously belongs to goalie Marek Schwarz.

I mean, clearly McDonald was the beneficiary of Selanne’s superstar skill to the point that he was made into a point-per-game player from 2005-2007. It nonetheless can’t be denied that McDonald has become a legitimate secondary scoring threat since then. He was leading the Blues in points and goals when he got injured, with 17 (8) in 25 games. He was admittedly also held pointless in four games before then, but that really points more to the Blues’ woes than it does his own.

Prior to Sunday’s victory over the Vancouver Canucks (without McDonald), the Blues had lost five-straight and 10 of their last 13. The Blues are just one of those up-and-down teams, with which you never know what you’re going to get. Heading into this year, with the team’s acquisition of Halak, people were considering them realistic dark horses in the West. This after they were essentially duds last season, one year after being the hottest team in the entire league following the All-Star break en route to being ousted in four games by the Canucks in the first round that year.

"Stop as in 'make the bleeding', not a save."

Almost miraculously, the Blues are still holding down the seventh spot in the Western conference. Were it not for goalie Jaroslav Halak’s early-season heroics, people might very well be talking about the Blues in the same vein as the Islanders nowadays... up a river without a paddle.

As such, you have to feel sorry for Blues fans as well as for McDonald as each’s futures are about as cloudy as that very same dirty martini at this point. I’d suggest one to help calm the nerves, but with injuries also to David Perron (concussion), T.J. Oshie (ankle), and Roman Polak (wrist), one has to believe that Saint Louis’s collective blood-alcohol level, at least among hockey fans, is already well above the legal limit. When the phrase “what’s one more?” can just as easily refer to injuries or concussions as it can drinks, you’re in trouble. Here’s hoping the Blues and McDonald find their way out of it.

Islanders just too much for Flyers... for about 36 Seconds

We won't get into how, technically, the Islanders' second goal on Sunday shouldn't have counted because of the referee's incompetence in whistling the play dead earlier than it took the team to hire Garth Snow after replacing Neil Smith as general manager four years ago (and that was pretty early on in their search for a replacement for Smith; hell, it was pretty early on in their search for a replacement for Mike Milbury). For all intents and purposes it was a goal, and even if the ref intended on blowing the whistle a few milliseconds before the puck reached Philadelphia Flyers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky (meaning the play should have been dead at that point, when he intended to blow it, down on his knees and all), it was nice to see the Islanders get a call just one time, because God knows they needed it, and a few hundred others up to this point this season.

I mean, you can kind of see how the ref would assume that Bobrovsky would make the save on Frans Nielsen. For one, it was a routine save. For another, it was just 30 seconds after the previous goal, meaning a goal being scored was doubly unlikely. Finally, it was the freakin' Islanders!

Still, however nice it was to see the Islanders get a break, the Flyers responded with two quick ones of their own against Islanders goalie Dwayne Roloson to turn a 2-1 deficit into a 3-2 victory, bringing into question the very questionable goaltending situation on the island.

By far, Roloson has the better numbers between him and Rick DiPietro. Roloson has a decent 2.50 goals-against average, compared to DiPietro's horrid 3.76. Roloson's .913 save percentage also easily trumps DiPietro's .874 (of course, no offense to Roloson, but so would my grandmother's .895 in her senior league). Roloson even has one assist to DiPietro's none, and, somehow has compiled two less penalties in minutes. Evidently, DiPietro got the extra penalty, two minutes for unsportsmanlike conduct, after throwing a tantrum upon realizing that the local hospital he frequents stopped serving his favourite flavour of Jell-O at lunch. He's clearly due for a return visit after playing through a third of the season unscathed.

Oddly enough, however, Roloson can't seem to win as often as DiPietro. The loss yesterday was Roloson's 11th, to go along with two wins and one overtime loss. DiPietro meanwhile has a 3-4-4 record. As such, it begs the question: does head-coach Jack Capuano go with the goalie that gives his team the best chance at winning, or the goalie that actually wins, although "wins" is used very loosely here. It would probably be more accurate to say "loses less". It's a fair question, but one that doesn't have a relevant answer.. the Islanders are screwed no matter what. Even once the likes of legitimate talents Kyle Okposo and Mark Streit get healthy, the Islanders will find themselves way out of playoff contention, and attention must turn to next year already. Hardly the kind of mindset you want your team to have in early December, but one that is unavoidable with the team already 16 points out of the last playoff spot in the Eastern conference.

For the record, the two goals were not the fastest in Islanders history, with the team actually scoring five in a mere 2:37 in a January 1982 game against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Among those were goals 16 seconds apart care of John Tonelli and Bryan Trottier. How depressing it must be to realize that even when this edition of the Islanders does something right, they're still so far away from matching the success of the team during its dynasty years. I wonder what Billy Smith is up to these days.

Blackhawks' Depth Take a(nother) Major Hit with Injury to Kane

Yes, the Chicago Blackhawks still won 4-2 on Sunday, despite star Patrick Kane getting injured in the first minute of play. And, yes, the Hawks are in fifth place in the Western conference, despite everyone counting them out this off-season after they were forced into trading away about a third of their Stanley Cup-winning line-up.

Still, there's little denying the fact that Kane, not including Sunday's game, is one of two point-per-game players (Patrick Sharp) on the team and arguably their most valuable, that he was in the midst of his hottest streak of the season, scoring 12 points in the last nine games, and that the Hawks were thriving as a whole during that stretch, going 6-3.

And, oh, yeah, there's also the fact that they were playing Calgary, hardly much of a challenge even if they had to play two men down. I mean, yeah, the Flames did account for one of Chicago's three losses in those last nine games, winning 7-2, but those were not the Flames we've come to know and pity... those were the Flames that had just gotten rid of, coincidentally, Patrick Kane-impersonator Brett Sutter, and had just had the benefit of getting a load of tremendous proportions off their collective back with something to prove. Needless to say, a much different team now that the reality of the situation, that cabbie-suckerpunching Sutter's no cabbie-suckerpunching Kane, has sunk in and that losing him doesn't really alter the make-up of the team all that much... they're still a bunch of gross underachievers that wouldn't win consistently even if their opponents were to be handicapped for an entire game... which is what they proved yesterday.

In any case, now that Kane is out, the Hawks need to realize that they won't have the benefit of playing the Flames every game. Admittedly, head-coach Joel Quenneville said that it's nothing really serious, but he preceded that by saying: "Kaner will probably be out a bit. We'll know more [Monday]." So what to gather from that is that hockey nicknames are so ridiculously stupid that players sometime even add a syllable for no apparent reason, and that it could very well be serious. No one really knows yet.

For the record, when the team was without Marian Hossa for five games in late October, early November, the team went 2-3, with losses against the Edmonton Oilers and the New Jersey Devils. Ouch. As such, no injury on any team should be taken lightly, especially seeing as Brett Sutter is currently in the AHL.

Hypocrisy of NHL on Full Display with Latest Non-Suspension to Glencross

The NHL has to learn from its mistakes one of these days... at least you have to hope. But, until that day comes, we should enjoy the ride that is the Colin Campbell experience.

Calgary Flame Curtis Glencross got nailed with a fine on Friday, two days after he delivered a cross-check to the face of Vancouver Canuck Keith Ballard. In all honesty, it was pretty tame stuff, but when one looks back to how Glencross’s teammate Olli Jokinen got hit with a three-game ban for a similar infraction on Phoenix Coyote Wojtek Wolski, just a few short weeks ago, one wonders just what is going on in Campbell’s head.

With all the rumours and vicious innuendo being spouted online and in the mainstream media about him recently, one would think that Campbell would be extra vigilant in his decisions so as to escape any unwanted second-guessing. But it would seem that Campbell is not one to back down from his apparently God-given right to make weird-ass decisions. As such, it’s easy to imagine that he made this latest one out of sheer principle as if to say “no blogger, no scandal, no fake artist on earth can influence how I do my job”, which is actually kind of a noble thought... that is if his uninfluenced decisions weren’t so laughably nonsensical.

I’ve written before that the league’s decision to suspend Jokinen, who was a first-time offender, three games was somewhat of an odd choice, but I tried to rationalize it. But there’s little way to rationalize this latest incident... maybe because Jokinen was the third man in an altercation between Wolski and Niklas Hagman and Glencross was just exercising his right to smash in the face of a guy who was directly in his? That right there means a difference of three games? So, by that logic, if I got into a barfight and then did my opponent the decency of stabbing him in the front rather than from his side, I’d be able to buy my way out of trouble? Good to know... if only Campbell was my local police commissioner anyway.

What’s most puzzling is that Glencross is not a first-time offender. In fact, and this is where it gets good, he got suspended for a blind-side hit to the head of New York Ranger Chris Drury once upon a time. When was that time? Oh, in November of last year when he felt the overwhelming need to use his shoulder as a battering ram on an unsuspecting Drury’s head, an act that resulted in a three-game ban in its own right.

Think about that for a second... Glencross blind-sided Drury, with a shoulder to the head and got suspended, before the Marc Savard-Matt Cooke incident, before the rule came into effect, before Campbell told everyone how much he wanted to suspend Cooke, but couldn’t for lack of a rule in the rulebook. Huh???

Is it just me or is Campbell really not making life easy on himself? I don’t know if he’s just naturally confrontational and likes being the object of everyone’s attention, but this is getting ridiculous. Obviously, he didn’t mean for it to become public knowledge that he’s a potty mouth and takes an arguably unhealthy interest in plays involving his son, but, in this instance, he could have done the easy and the right thing and given Glencross three games, prevented himself any scrutiny, and put all this behind him. Instead Glencross gets nothing, people are forced into comparing Jokinen and Glencross’s suspension histories, and, bada-bing, bada-boom, yet another inconsistency in the way Campbell and the NHL do business is discovered.

I’m not going to get into the implications that the NHL really could have suspended Cooke if Campbell really wanted to and just didn’t because he has it out for Savard, not just because saying it in passing is just as good and takes up less space, but also because it’s been said to death before. There’s no point kicking a dead horse. Thankfully, Campbell is still very much kicking himself, meaning he, and the NHL in turn, will continue to be the gift that keeps on giving. Just in time for Christmas, no less.

Respecting the Jersey is a Lot Easier when You Have a Team like the Bruins Do

Of course, this newest Boston Bruins commerical was conveniently released just recently, with the team dismantling the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday, but that fact certainly doesn't take away from the Bruins being destined for greatness in one form or another in the near future. With the team already shoulder-deep in depth, Marc Savard is finally back, the team likely has another top-three draft pick coming this summer, and the goalie Pierre McGuire thinks will be the best in the game isn't even getting a whiff of the net with Tim Thomas playing light-out hockey. Of course, no one should put that much stock into what McGuire has to say because when he sees a player he likes he tends to get about as overexcited as a kindergartner hopped up on sugar that sees a brand-new commercial for the greatest toy in the world mere weeks before Christmas. Nevermind that it's made in Finland, has faulty wiring, and has a tendency to flip its lid every once in a while during a shootout gone awry. Still, there's no denying Tuukka Rask is going to be great and the Bruins are well on their way as a team.

By the way, wouldn't it have made sense to have Terry O'Reilly land a few punches after he gets soaked, just for added comedic effect? Maybe that's just me and my sick sense of humour.

Brown Should Wear Number 2, Because He Is the Sh**

Here is Los Angeles Kings captain Dustin Brown doing his civic duty by taking out the trash in the form of Florida Panthers defenseman Dennis Wideman. Of course, he promptly disposes it on his team's bench, but that's beside the point. It's true. If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything and, in this case, apparently become a garbageman (sorry, sanitation engineer) or, if you want to get technical, hurt people for a living. Of course, hurt people legally. See the things he can do when he's actually doling out clean hits and not blindsiding people like he did the Minnesota Wild's Antti Miettinen a few months back?