The 2013 NHL Season Thread

[Corvus]

You know what, I'm OK with a one game suspension. Every time someone gets concussed it's probably not a bad idea.

I gotta wonder about Hossa's long term ability to keep playing, it seems like he's extremely vulnerable to any head contact. He could easily get another blow just as hard as the one from Hansen from any random hit or incidental contact.

[Sodboy13]

Concussions are a frightening injury because the medical community is just starting to comprehend them, it seems. As sports fans, we're used to a fairly fixed equation when it comes to injury, as in "Well, he has a _____, so he'll be out for __ to __ _____s." Whereas with concussions, it becomes "Well, he's out, and he'll come back when he can come back, and it might look like he's getting better but then he'll get worse for no discernable reason." Sports are supposed to be escapist entertainment, and instead they're putting our unpredictable frailty at the forefront by taking out stars like Crosby and Hossa for who-knows-how-long. That makes things less fun.

[The Six]

These Flyers-Penguins games in Pittsburgh will never not always be completely nuts.

Fixed. Double-negatives are a big no-no on these boards.

Using apostrophes for plurals are all the rage, though

[Sodboy13]

Good news, everyone! The Blues-Avalanche game actually ended!

[BLUELANDbeliever]

Great night of NHL action for only being a 3 game schedule day.

[Maz]

Good: Through it all, the pens kept battling.

Bad: The pens still let the flyers get to them and still gave up too many softies. The Flyers are not a skill team, stop making them look that way.

Flyers were selling penalties and the Pens were buying. Can't get caught up in the fact that it's a big rivalry. Keep your mouth shut after the whistle and just play hockey.

Exactly. Someday the Pens will realize that. They rack up so many goals on the Flyers, it's just a shame that anymore they let them goon just as many back until the odd nice one from Vorachek or Giroux saves the day.

[NEW.ERA]

When your two best players are Jarome Iginla and Joey MacDonald, you're probably not going to last very long in a game. I get that they're the Kings (whatever that means) but that was just another typical Flames effort.

Long gone are the days of blue collar, lunch pail hockey. Also first game all year they've been booed off the ice, at least the fans were vocal and paying attention for once.

[Cosmic]

You coach for a decade and a half in a city and see if you're not loved and missed in some capacity.

It's like a divorce or a breakup. We all wanted it to happen, knew it needed to happen. Then shock when %^@ got real and he actually got fired. Now a little bit of remorse: what just happened? What did we do (Yes, I know the fans didn't actually do it)? Like Lennie with his little puppy. Will we find somebody else?

The good thing is that it would be hard for the team to do any worse this season, so the bar is set pretty low.

[The_Admiral]

I gotta wonder about Hossa's long term ability to keep playing, it seems like he's extremely vulnerable to any head contact. He could easily get another blow just as hard as the one from Hansen from any random hit or incidental contact.

Thanks, concern troll!

It's most likely just my bias from them being the team I watch more than the other 29, but it feels like the Blackhawks are routinely abused with no recourse. The stuff like Thornton on Toews or Mitchell on Toews or Torres on Hossa or Canucks on Everyone get all the attention, but there's all the little stuff. I mean, I can tell you that Marcus Kruger gets destroyed more than Mr. Bill. And yet there's nothing they can really do about it. The whole "fight to show you won't take it" thing doesn't work because they have fought and still kept taking it. And straight-up going after offenders doesn't work, because no one liked to fight John Scott and Bollig/Mayers just get instigator penalties when they do. (Which always raises the question, which fights are not instigated? Do the fighters need to mail each other identical memoranda of intent and have them postmarked on the same day for the fight to be considered uninstigated? In fact, isn't it more apt to say that when a person lays a hit so dirty that it requires the opponent's teammate to abort the game's fundamental premise of putting the play object in the designated space in order to just rush over and start beating the crap out of the guy, that that fellow has done the instigating? It's such crap.)

So what is to be done? I mean, under the Bowmans' watch, this is always going to be a finesse team (or in the case of 2011, as much finesse as Dale Tallon's Salary Cap Capers allowed). And that should be okay; this is the kind of team that the NHL should want at the forefront, not the plugapaloozas in Phoenix and Nashville that make the game unwatchable. I don't want to sacrifice a roster spot for a goon, even if it did work. But man, this team just takes a lot of crap.

[BrySmalls]

You coach for a decade and a half in a city and see if you're not loved and missed in some capacity.

It's like a divorce or a breakup. We all wanted it to happen, knew it needed to happen. Then shock when %^@ got real and he actually got fired. Now a little bit of remorse: what just happened? What did we do (Yes, I know the fans didn't actually do it)? Like Lennie with his little puppy. Will we find somebody else?

The good thing is that it would be hard for the team to do any worse this season, so the bar is set pretty low.

It wouldn't hurt to have GM Regier fired as well since he's responsible for all those bad contracts. For example, see Ehroff, Leino, Regehr, Myers, and Stafford.

[The_Admiral]

I suspect Leino and Ehrhoff weren't Regier so much as Pegula insisting upon making a big splash and dropping a lot of money, no matter on whom. I mean, Ville Leino.

And I think that guy just called Buffalo sports fans, and by extension himself, retarded. Still, it's good to see a Steinbeck reference in the hockey thread and not have it be that Keith Tkachuk just wrote a new book called East of Eatin'.

[drdougfresh]

So what is to be done? I mean, under the Bowmans' watch, this is always going to be a finesse team (or in the case of 2011, as much finesse as Dale Tallon's Salary Cap Capers allowed). And that should be okay; this is the kind of team that the NHL should want at the forefront, not the plugapaloozas in Phoenix and Nashville that make the game unwatchable. I don't want to sacrifice a roster spot for a goon, even if it did work. But man, this team just takes a lot of crap.

Amen (except you probably take more crap than we do because you're actually competitive this year).

Signed,

The Detroit Red Wings

[spartacat_12]

Harry Zolnierczyk, I have never seen you play, but welcome to the Hockey Name Hall Of Fame.

EDIT: if I had to do a police-style sketch of "Philadelphia Flyers player Harry Zolnierczyk," it would look a little...like this:

He now joins the likes of Pete Peeters and Zarley Zalapski.

Hakan Loob.

Dit Clapper

[JQK]

Harry Zolnierczyk, I have never seen you play, but welcome to the Hockey Name Hall Of Fame.

EDIT: if I had to do a police-style sketch of "Philadelphia Flyers player Harry Zolnierczyk," it would look a little...like this:

He now joins the likes of Pete Peeters and Zarley Zalapski.

Hakan Loob.

Dit Clapper

Grant Clitsome

[Sodboy13]

Darcy Wakaluk.

[officeglenn]

Daren Puppa.

[Coast2CoastAM2006]

Alan Bester

[The Six]

Oh crap. Brian Burke is back with the Ducks, as a scout. Somehow I always felt like he'd come back. Guess we're gonna have a return to PUGNACITY, TRUCULENCE, BELLIGERENCE, and TESTOSTEROCITY. I looked at a thesaurus and found BELLICOSITY, too.

HARD-NOSED SLOBBLEDEGOCK.

[The_Admiral]

He's already found a Swedish power forward named Victor Lumberingh.

[ninersdd]

I gotta wonder about Hossa's long term ability to keep playing, it seems like he's extremely vulnerable to any head contact. He could easily get another blow just as hard as

the one from Hansen from any random hit or incidental contact.

Thanks, concern troll!

It's most likely just my bias from them being the team I watch more than the other 29, but it feels like the Blackhawks are routinely abused with no recourse. The stuff like Thornton on Toews or Mitchell on Toews or Torres on Hossa or

Canucks on Everyone get all the attention, but there's all the little stuff. I mean, I can tell you that Marcus Kruger gets destroyed more than Mr. Bill. And yet there's nothing they can really do about it. The whole "fight to show you won't

take it" thing doesn't work because they have fought and still kept taking it. And straight-up going after offenders doesn't work, because no one liked to fight John Scott and Bollig/Mayers just get instigator penalties when they do. (Which always raises the question, which fights are not instigated? Do the fighters need to mail

each other identical memoranda of intent and have them postmarked on the same day for the fight to be considered uninstigated? In fact, isn't it more apt to say that when a person lays a hit so dirty that it requires the opponent's teammate

to abort the game's fundamental premise of putting the play object in the designated space in order to just rush over and start beating the crap out of the guy, that that fellow has done the instigating? It's such crap.

So what is to be done? I mean, under the Bowmans' watch, this is always going to be a finesse team (or in the case of 2011, as much finesse as Dale Tallon's Salary Cap Capers

allowed). And that should be okay; this is the kind of team that the NHL should want at the forefront, not the plugapaloozas in Phoenix and Nashville that make the game unwatchable. I don't want to sacrifice a roster spot for a goon,

even if it did work. But man, this team just takes a lot of crap.

Well Toews did instigate a fight with Thornton last week(and wasn't tossed when he could've been), so I guess they're even now.

Your talking about goons, it's like the Sharks recalled some guy called Pelech who sucks and just fights and has no skill whatsoever. It made no sense as to why the team called him up.