Hot Ice: NHL Thread

[jason voorhees]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

2-0. Awesome goal from Kuz,

The Caps suddenly like when the Red Hood fell into the tub of chemicals and came out as the Joker.

[jason voorhees]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

OH MY.

2-2, with two empty-net man advantages in the last 2 minutes.

Stunning. That Igloo is going to need a new roof.

[jason voorhees]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

Roof came back down.

Caps win 3-2 in OT on a power play.

2-1 Pens.

[Snake Plissken]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

jason voorhees wrote: Caps taking a page out of the Scott Stevens handbook.

Down 2 games ? Aim for the head.

1-0 with 11 to play. Who knows how long Crosby will be out.

That call on Niskanen was bollocks. Crosby was coming into him, not the other way around. More fuel for the Crosby Haters (disclaimer: not a fully card carrying member, but chip in to the collection bucket on occasion. Like this.).

[jason voorhees]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

Slo mo looks much worse than at full speed, and is looking away, but lawd that was nasty.

It certainly looks like Niskanen clearly meant it, in that it's short and direct to the head with his stick. Crosby was flopping over almost backwards, was falling, and was completely out of the play. Niskanen gets low and jumps up, which resulted in getting thrown out of the game.

This was a shot that could end his career.

[ursus arctos]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

Give Ovi some credit for slashing Crosby to the point where he staggers into Niskanen's cross-check

[ursus arctos]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

Crosby's concussion confirmed.

[Snake Plissken]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

The Hockey Gods really hate Washington.

[jason voorhees]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

These Ducks goalies are truly putting on quite the clinic.

I haven't laughed so hard in my life.

If there was a hockey version of the Harlem Globetrotters, say, the Montréal-Nord Mondepantineurs. And if they played the hockey version of the Washington Generals, say, the Ottowa Prime Ministers, these Ducks Josh "5-Hole-Snail-Shot" Gibson and Jonathan "Where's Da Puck, It Must Be In Da Ceiling And Not My Feet" Bernier would play for them.

Maybe there was a worse goalkeeping exhibition in the playoffs, but that first period will always be the one I remember. That was the flood water mark.

5-0 Oilers.

End 1st Period.

[ursus arctos]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

7-1 final

Game Seven in Anaheim. The Oilers have a genuine beef that the series should be over if the reviews had been at all fair.

In other news,

[Muukalainen]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

Presumably the World Championships currently being held are slipping comfortably under the North American radar. Two games under our belts and we've got a lot of rebuilding to do. A laboured 3-2 win over Belarus on Friday was followed yesterday by a 1-5 thrashing by France, surely our most humiliating result ever. I didn't see the game, but apparently the result didn't flatter the French.

[Snake Plissken]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

Holy moley. Did the Ducks advertise that the first two guys to turn up with skates and goalie pads gets to play?

Congratulations to Nashville. They're as far under the radar as you can be at this stage. Have to be favourites in the next round.

[ursus arctos]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

Good to see you Muuk.

The Worlds are on NHL Network here and TSN in Canada, but, as usual, the group stage is getting few eyeballs given the playoffs. I would expect thattochange a bit in the knockouts, assuming both North American teams qualify.

That said, Finland getting spanked by France is worthy of the WTF? Thread.

[jason voorhees]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

Muuk, the good news is that every network pretty much has to have a Sports-only network now, not to mention the NHL having to fill about 18-19 hours a day of programming when the NHL isn't on, so usually between the NHL Network and NBC Sports we usually get quite a few games of every international tournament.

I hope the Oilers win, because Oilers-Preds will be insane.

[Muukalainen]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

Thanks guys. Good to see our old goalie Pekka Rinne still going strong. I know that I've banged on about this before, but he was drafted into the NHL from obscurity, being understudy to Niklas Backström at the time and rarely getting any ice time with Kärpät. It's sometimes strange to see which players make the grade over there and which don't, when one considers how well they have done domestically. Janne Pesonen, Jari Viuhkola and Joonas Kemppainen come readily to mind as really good players who made no impact whatsoever in the NHL. Reminiscing over, back to topic.

[ursus arctos]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

Rinne had developed a bit of a reputation as a poor playoff goalie, but has been rock solid behind an improved defence so far.

Nashville-Edmonton would be compelling viewing and could bring more teams around to building on speed in what has always been a copycat league.

[Muukalainen]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

And so it continues, with a 3-4 defeat by the Czechs, albeit on penalties. We somehow led 3-0 at the first break, but the remainder of the game was almost farcical in its one-sidedness. The Czechs seemed to be skating about three times the speed of our players, and with vastly superior stick handling added in, we spent most of the time chasing shadows. How our goal remained intact throughout the second period, I'll never know. At one point Korpisalo made a blinding save from right in front of the net. He, meanwhile, was looking behind the net for the puck -- he hadn't the first idea where it was. It was only a matter of time though, and the Czechs duly levelled the game in the third.

Our defence is especially dire. If you get the opportunity to see any of the goals then the Czech equaliser just about sums up how poor we are at the moment. (On the other hand, their opener shows how they ran rings around us.) Most of the squad are out of sorts, and on today's showing I reckon you can count 3, maybe 4, players who had a half-decent game. Marjamäki's a good coach, and deserves better than the shite most of the players are serving up for him at the moment.

[Snake Plissken]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

It's just not going to happen for Lundquist, is it?

[jason voorhees]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

I hope not. Another 20 years and we'll get to do a "NINE-DEE FOOOURRR-ORRRR" chant (when calculating the 1940 chant started around 1980.)

At least until he joins Ovechkin or does a Clyde Drexler when he joined the Rockets.

At the core of it all, I don't think he really cares. He has his tv show, he's a permanent legend in New York, and he got to be a star in the city at the height of New York's most powerful or second-most-powerful age.

[Muukalainen]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

That's better, a 5-2 defeat of Slovenia. Against admittedly not the strongest of opposition but no pushover either, we played good ice hockey for pretty much the whole game.

[jason voorhees]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

Snake Plissken wrote: The Hockey Gods really hate Washington.

Indeed. Their names are Sidney Crosby and Marc-Andre Fleury.

Pens-Sens.

Re: Latvia
They be housin' it.
I hope they're as up to snuff if they have a sudden home game when this team skates across the red line.

[Muukalainen]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

Yeah, I've seen that number 11 somewhere before.

The Latvians are going well at the moment, but as you say their sterner tests are still ahead of them.

[jason voorhees]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

I was hoping the Oilers won, if only to say "Pens-Sens Ers-Ors."

Although "Senators-Predators" would work in the final. As it does in real life.

Despite having the '95 cup win kind of marred by immediate threats of the Devils moving to Nashville, I've come around to them in a big way (even if "Smashville" is as dopey as A Pigeon Forge / Smoky Mountain example of fine theatre. ) My reasons are stated:

A) Those cool series with the Red Wings and Blackhawks were cool.
B) Because Canada loves country music so much, Nashville kind of backdoored cart-before-the-tail-wagging-the-horse-riding-the-dog into hockey authenticity.
C) The All-Star game 2 years ago was a transcendent religious experience, and because it happened in Nashville first, it kind of seems like they were the ones who came up with it at a sunconscious level.
D) What were those two letters that got Bob Bradley laughed at in a postgame interview in his 6 days as Swansea coach?

[Hot Pepsi]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

I can't abide Nashville. Tennessee and the country music industrial complex has much to answer for in our current cultural and political crisis. More importantly, I don't like yellow.

Sens are the only hope for a satisfactory conclusion.

[jason voorhees]

Hot Ice: NHL 15/16

Indeed, it's amazing at how much a part of modern cuntry music, Fux News, and right wing Christian/political radio has a lock on just about 90% of American territory. I drove from New Orleans to NJ right after Trump's election loss with human votes, and just about all 20 hours is covered with a mix of those stations.

It's amazing at how country feeds into the myth of getting a girl pregnant at 17, not having an abortion, THEN MAGICALLY SELLING A SOFTWARE PRODUCT TO MICROSOFT will work out for you.

Then having a trailer, a dog in the backyard is Livin' The Dream. Stay right where you are, and leave the power and governing stuff to us. Good luck catching a fish with two heads from the poisoned streams and rivers.

I'm still cheering for Nashville., tho.