The Sin Bin

The Sin Bin is SOJP’s weekly NHL rundown…

Random thoughts of the week:

• Jonathan Toews isn’t going to be a superstar. He’s going to be a super duper star. He’s one of those kids who always looks a step faster than everyone around him. Broken finger? Piece of cake for him. Waltzes back into the lineup and scores on his first NHL shot. Then he followed that up by making the Colorado Avalanche look like a team of Aki Berg clones. The clones were grown in a lab by Walt, a 12^th grade science student. He got a C-minus.

• Speaking of Toews, fuck you, Toews family and ancestors, for pronouncing your name “Taves.” You confuse the hell out of many people. How would you feel if we pronounced our site “Spirit of Jub Plankage”?

• Are the Leafs trying to mimic or outdo the St. Louis Cardinals' nightmare season? Let’s see here…the Cards had a DUI for their manager, a drunk driving death for a pitcher, an exploding eye and a human growth hormone scandal. The Leafs have a DUI arrest, leukemia, an own goal in overtime, and knee ligament damage for one of their top players in Darcy Tucker. It’s not even November and they’re a Wade Belak liquor store robbery gone wrong and a murder/suicide away from topping St. Louis (and at least St. Louis won the damn World Series the year before).

• Everyone’s talking about Ryan Smyth deserving a hero’s welcome when he returns to Edmonton tonight. After all, Jason Smith got his penis licked on the jumbotron a couple weeks ago. Not so fast. Jason Smith was dealt away. Ryan Smyth was dealt away, but not before he turned down a $5.5-million offer because he wanted a $5.6 million a season. And if he was truly Captain Canada, the local boy who wanted to spend his whole career in Edmonton, you think he could’ve put aside his differences with Oilers management and re-signed with the club this summer. Is he Hitler? Clearly not. You could argue he got dissed by Edmonton and Colorado is his first chance to play pro hockey away from home. But a hero’s welcome is a bit much.

• What’s with the Canucks? They used to justify their boringness with stifling defense. Now they’re just boring and kinda crappy. Reminds us of our grandparents running out of Werther's Originals. Without candy at their place, we're left with cardigans and pee-stained toilet seats.

• Pat Quinn wants the Atlanta coaching job, and lots of people surely will herald him as the best candidate, but hiring him could be a big mistake. His style of hockey is pretty much bar fighting/hitting on drunk chicks at bars – stumble all over the ice, yell and scream if you think you’re being treated unfairly, throw yourself into every object and person in site, and hope you score. It worked great in the old NHL, but the new NHL devours Quinn teams. Just ask the slow, sloppy, hung over 2005-06 Leafs.

• Philly: still really friggin’ for real. And don’t expect Joffrey Lupul to slow down too much, either. Last year’s stinkjob made total sense for Lupul. Imagine being him: you grow up in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, play your junior hockey in Medicine Hat and, despite being worshiped by young girls, have to settle for “Jess,” the waitress at the pool hall with the big jugs and boatloads of body odor, because she’s the best-looking girl you can find out there. Then you get drafted by the Ducks and live it up in California only to get banished back to Alberta in the Chris Pronger trade. Of course he sucked last year.

• The Stars team name/number on the front of their new home jerseys is pretty badass. Very football. Maybe they’re trying to re-market the game to Texans as “small, black pigskin on a frozen field with sticks ‘n’ shit.”

• Nik Antropov is ninth in the NHL in scoring. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the governor of California.

• How terrifying/potentially hilarious is Buffalo’s broadcast pairing of maniacal Rick Jeanneret and senile Harry Neale? Do they stay in the press box day and night, urinating in their long underwear, while Jeanneret tosses half-eaten Danishes into the waste basket yelling “ScccoooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRREssss” and Neale analyzes the play? Will Neale eat Jeanneret on air?

• Imagine, just imagine trying to fire Wayne Gretzky. What’s more likely – Don Maloney, GM of the 2-5-0 Phoenix Coyotes, axing the Great One some time soon, or Maloney looking Gretzky in the eyes, crying, shitting his pants, and literally melting?

Power Rankings:

1. Ottawa Senators: Hilary Clinton could play goal for them and they’d still be 8-1
2. Philadelphia Flyers: haven’t seen a turnaround this crazy since the Rams exorcised the Tony Banks demon in 1999
3. Minnesota Wild: unbeaten in regulation, but they always start hot
4. Detroit Red Wings: Zetterberg posterizing Zarley Zalapski in race to become best guy whose name starts with the letter “Z” ever
5. Carolina Hurricanes: they’re mortal, but they looooove breaking Canadian teams’ hearts

Cutesy-Wutesy early season story that’ll be forgotten by Christmas: Pascal Leclaire’s crazy start. Yeah, he should become a good NHL netminder, but he plays for the Columbus Blue Jackets. He’ll see more rubber than – wait a second. Why do people always make the “seen more rubber than a two-bit whore” joke? Trashy whores probably don’t see a ton of rubber. They’re dumb and irresponsible, so they probably have unprotected sex. “Seen more rubber than a Christian girl who can’t wait before marriage”? Better?

Guys we want to see more of:

1. The Chicago Blackhawks. Toews and fellow rook Patrick Kane are churning out highlight-reel goals already. Maybe we’ll get our wish since Chicago will start televising its fucking home games now.
2. Niklas Backstrom. Is he really that good at stopping pucks or is it just Lemaire’s trap?
3. Nicklas Backstrom. Note the “c” added to the first name. Different guy, dipshit. This one’s the Caps center, who some scouts compared to Peter Forsberg before he was drafted. Come on, coach! Put him with Ovechkin.

Devastating lines who are devouring everything in their path right now:

1. Alex Tanguay-Daymond Langkow-Jarome Iginla, Calgary Flames: Tanguay and Langkow are so good at – who are we kidding? Iggy is God.
2. Joe Thornton, San Jose Sharks. Doesn’t seem to matter who plays with him, though Kev the Intern could probably get him run out of town if the two played together. Kev’s season stats: 82 GP, 8 G, 21 A, 29 PTS, -29. “Empty net, Thornton, feeling generous, over to Kev, OH GOODNESS! KEV MISSED IT! KEV MISSED IT!”

The Sin Bin

The Sin Bin is SOJP’s weekly NHL rundown…

Random thoughts of the week:

• Nik Antropov is actually playing “big” for the first time in his career. It’s like he just saw his reflection for the first time, said “Oh, yes. Me six feet, six inch tall. Me biggest forward in NHL” and finally decided to use his size as a weapon. He’s on pace for 59 goals. Sure, he’s more likely to play 59 games and wind up with, say, 22 tallies, but at least he could justify having a tinted visor. That’s hard to do.

• Thank you, NHL, for punishing action and not injury. Ryan Kesler was fine after Jesse Boulerice’s attack, but the action was vicious – far more vicious than Todd Bertuzzi’s attack, in which the kind of wild pile-on you see in almost every game resulted in a broken neck for Steve “we never would’ve heard of you or Kevin Everett if not for your injury” Moore.

• Don’t waste finger energy and type a response to the Bertuzzi comment. The issue is dead. And don’t waste finger energy typing “but you’re the ones who brought Bertuzzi up.” We just wasted finger energy typing what we know you were going to type.

• So, yeah. Last year was just a Stanley Cup hangover for the Pittsburgh Stee – er, Carolina Hurricanes. So much size and speed up front and slimmed-down Cam Ward is a man possessed. If they could add a talented veteran offensive blueliner…look out.

• Don’t be stupid. Crosby will dominate.

• We were worried the Nashville Predators would be uglier than their mustard third jerseys this year, but realized two things:

1) Being uglier than the mustard third jersey would entail going 0-82-0, signing Manute Bol and changing the team name to “The Nashville Holocaust Deniers.”

2) Despite losing Peter Forsberg, Scott Hartnell, Kimmo Timmonen, Paul Kariya, Steve Sullivan (injury) and Richard Partridge-in-a-pear-tree, the Preds still have depth. We all knew Chris Mason would be fine taking over the No. 1 netminding job, Nashville still has a promising young blueline and, while their forward corps is a bit bland – more Star Trek than Star Wars – David Legwand, Jason Arnott and co. can get by on strength and skating.

• Shit, Philly is for real.

• We aren’t the first pundits to say so, but Carey Price had some creepy magic going in his first career start. As you may or may not know, fellow Hab legends Ken Dryden and Patrick Roy also beat the Pens in their NHL debuts. Price just looked so…long. His legs covered the entire net. He’s like Xenia Onatopp from Goldeneye, except we don’t want him to have sex with us and murder us simultaneously. Maybe one or the other, but not both.

• We hope he doesn’t read this because we could be wrong, but is Jordin Tootoo a pussy? He can throw bombs and lay guys out, but we never saw the Dida impression coming after his almost-cheapshot on Phoenix’s Daniel Winnik. Sure, the clothesline Tootoo took to the throat after the play wouldn’t have felt good, but a tough guy, flopping to the ground and turtling? He ain’t on the team for his offense, so what’s he good for?

• The Leafs lead the league in goals allowed, but it really isn’t Vesa Toskala and Andrew Raycroft’s fault. Believe it or not, in 7-1, 5-4 and 5-4 losses, both guys kept Toronto in the game. Without Toskala, the Canes would’ve beaten the Leafs about 12-1; Toskala made 46 FRIGGIN’ SAVES and the Buds lost by just a goal against Pittsburgh; Raycroft did everything he could to get the Leafs to overtime against Buffalo last night, too. They’re kind of like that minor-league goalie who you know is good but plays on a crap team, so his goals against average is 5.60 but he makes 62 saves a game and his parents are furious every time his crappy, fat defense gives up a shorthanded breakaway:

“Oh, this fucking coach doesn’t know what he’s doing! What’s that overweight kid doing playing at this level? Our son doesn’t have a chance.”

“Daniel, calm DOWN! Your blood press--MOVE THE FUCKING PUCK!”

• Remember when Edmonton was 2-0?

• Do big hits still exist, or have we reached a kill-shot-or-nothing era? Scott Stevens’ hits were devastating, but not dirty. No 25-game suspensions or deep moral discussions ensued. Maybe shoulder pads are just too thick and players are just too fast now; seems like every big hit is dirty nowadays.

• Saw a great innovation in a bar the other night: chalkboards in bathroom stalls. That’s progressive. That’s Al Gore progressive. Sure, there’s the off chance it’ll make bathroom graffiti even more enjoyable knowing you’re choosing to ignore the readily available writing utensils, but we applaud the effort.

• Atlanta’s a nightmare, and we shouldn’t be surprised. Ilya Kovalchuk and Marian Hossa can score 50 goals each, but that doesn’t change the fact that Todd White is duking it out with Bobby Holik and Manute Bol for the No. 1 center job. If the Thrashers tank and end up with John Tavares, though…holy shit.

• Columbus deserves some success as a city. What else does it have besides bait shops, barbecues and guys named Glen who know a good lawnmower when they see one? Good on ya, Columbus citizens, for shunning suicide and almost filling the Blue Jackets’ building game-in and game-out. Hopefully this is the year they finally rise to mediocrity.

• Jason Spezza is a douche. We hate the NHL 2K8 commercial. “Whatever, Turks. Goalies.” Funny how the lame finished product is likely the best of 39 takes. Still, we couldn’t pick a better spokesperson for the inferior, arcade-like, hunchbacked stepsister of EA Sports NHL ’08.

• You can beat the Buffalo Sabres, but not if you have less than a three-goal lead and they score. When the overbearing goal buzzer goes off, it’s blood in the water. The fans and players’ pupils dilate and all hell breaks loose. Down 2-0 to the Leafs last night, they scored to make it 2-1, went apeshit after the buzzer, and tied the game 18 seconds later. Insanity.

• We apologize for referencing Star Trek, Star Wars and Manute Bol (twice).

Power Rankings:

1. Carolina Hurricanes – dominating everyone, including Ottawa in Ottawa.
2. Ottawa Senators – ho hum. Punch their playoff home-ice ticket now.
3. Minnesota Wild – unbeaten, yes. Good, yes. But take your hand off your genitals and remember four of five wins came against Edmonton, Columbus, Phoenix and Chicago.
4. Detroit Red Wings – Larkin may have to apologize after chirping a co-worker for taking Henrik Zetterberg third overall in his fantasy draft
5. Philadelphia Flyers – it was more fun when they sucked. Damn Daniel Briere.

Cutesy-wutesy undefeated team whom everyone’s gushing over but will crash back to Earth shortly: Minnesota Wild. Yeah, they’re suffocating and Devilishly boring. They’re Ben Stein incarnate. But their only real opponent so far was Anaheim, and the Ducks are more hung over than David Hasselhoff the morning after he finds out all Baywatch and Knight Rider re-runs have been canceled by every network on Earth.

Guys we want to see more of:

1. Henrik Zetterberg. The guy gets better by the week. No, by the day. He’s always around the net. He appears everywhere. He’s like Nightcrawler from X-Men.
2. Rod Brind’amour and Chris Chelios – we just want to see how they’re doing it/not dying on the ice at that age. These guys are specimens.
3. Ruslan Fedotenko – we just want to see how he’s doing it/not getting placed on waivers at that skill level. Does he not give hope to every beer leaguer and ball hockey star out there? He’s on the top line!

Devastating lines who are devouring everything in their path right now:

1. Alfredsson-Spezza-Heatley, Ottawa Senators: Video game stats nightly. Yawn.
2. Sedin-Sedin-any pylon they want, because it doesn’t matter, Vancouver Canucks: Between the cycling dynamo Sedins and the generic pylon manning the wing week-to-week, that’s a lot of orange on the ice.
3. Gagne-Briere-Knuble, Philadelphia Flyers: Knuble actually deserves credit for keeping his spot on good lines year after year; he’s the defensive conscience.

The Sin Bin

Hockey players are cool. They’re usually humble, they’re absolute cliché experts, and they come from wholesome families with parents who drove them to 5:30 a.m. practices toting coffee and donuts.

Unfortunately, hockey players aren’t particularly literate. So someone has to pick up the slack and report on the NHL. Why not Spirit of Jake Plummer? We played hockey as kids (though we shouldn’t put to much stock into that; Phil Mickelson “dabbled in modeling” as a child) and love the sport. So why not mix stereotypical hockey chatter with dick jokes once a week?

With that, we give you the first installment of The Sin Bin, SOJP’s weekly NHL rundown…

Random thoughts of the week:

• Sitting Vesa Toskala for the Leafs’ first regular season game was an absolute PR nightmare for John Ferguson Jr. It doesn’t matter if Toskala’s save percentage was .014 in the preseason; if you ship off the 13^th overall pick in the draft for a goalie and don’t start him, you’re telling everyone, “Yep, I’m a moron. I mean, odds are this deal wasn’t going to work out in the long run, but who woulda thought we’d know this soon that we fucked ourselves?” Thankfully, Toskala stole the game from the Habs on Saturday, so he may have flopped his way into a secure starting job.

• The San Jose Sharks' new unis are train wrecks. Maybe they were designed by that little kid who draws a random pattern of squiggles on a page and tells you “It’s a spaceship.” Note to every team: just because Reebok gave you those tight-fitting jerseys doesn’t mean you have to change their design and throw hideous stripes and colored shoulders over everything. Some teams look better (Sens, Leafs, Capitals) but most turned their unis into (a) glorified practice jerseys or (b) hideous, busy getups straight out of a beer league that may as well have “Doug’s Auto Repair” stitched on the front.

• Eric Staal’s a good bet to bounce back this year, but we don’t know how he does it. He’s not a particularly good skater or shooter, and he doesn’t really use his big frame to push people around. He’s one of those “always there at the right time” guys who has a sixth sense and finds the puck. Gretzky had the same quality – to the power of 10, though.

• Larkin claims Staal reminds him of “Marlowe Feltmate, this guy who always won the scoring title in my house league hockey. He wasn’t that good but he was so lucky. He’d get a hat trick but two of the goals would be off defensemen’s skates. Man. And who names their kid Marlowe?”

• Ryan Getzlaf is a MAN. A man-child. He just looks bigger than everyone, but also faster, with a bigger stride, and he tosses checkers off him like a youth coach who joins the scrimmage but gets pissed off after one of the kids slashed him and decides to dominate.

• The Carolina Hurricanes didn’t sell out their home opener. A team one-year removed from a Stanley Cup didn’t sell out its home opener. Gee, do you think it had anything to do with putting a hockey franchise in the birthplace of NASCAR? Fuck, Bettman. Wake up. Forget Vegas and Kansas City and give a team to Saskatchewan. There’s nothing to do up there but sniff glue and smash mailboxes with baseball bats.

• Is it just us, or is the Anaheim Ducks' opening schedule borderline criminal? Back-to-back games in England, followed by three more games last week. Five games in seven nights? And a flight across the pond and back? Maybe it’s a conspiracy theory. The schedule maker could be a Canadian trying to end the streak of southern-city-that-barely-knows-what-hockey-is champions.

• The Islanders will indeed lick choda this year, but maybe their top line is for real. Mike Comrie, Bill Guerin and – for Christ’s sake – Ruslan Fedotenko aren’t top-end talent, but the Comrie-Guerin connection is a classic playmaker-trigger combo. And we can’t put it past Garth Snow, Charles Wang and Ted Nolan to claim they’re “trying the basketball thing” and play that line for 40 minutes a night.

• If Peter Stastny is Archie Manning, Paul is Peyton. And Yan is Eli.

• There’s some cool Darwinian shit happening with enforcers in the new NHL. Only the fittest will survive. George Laraque showed up to camp lighter and actually looked like a hockey player in the Penguins opener, forechecking and controlling the puck on purpose. Guys like Wade Belak – a.k.a. nightclub bouncers on skates – were healthy scratches last week.

• Good for Edmonton for (a) keeping rookies Sam Gagne, Andrew Cogliano and Marc-Antoine Pouliot and (b) sticking them on a line together. Why the hell not? The Oil will probably be buried in the Northwest, arguably hockey’s toughest division, so why not develop the kids? John Ferguson Jr. should think about doing the same with guys like Jiri Tlusty and…oh yeah. The Leafs have 0.0. offensive prospects.

• Martin Havlat has to be in the running for most brittle athlete on the planet. Who can rival him? Griffey? The Bears' Mike Brown? Anyone who touches him in a fantasy hockey draft belongs in Special Ed.

• Dear lord, Daniel Briere. The little guy rivals Alex Ovechkin in the goals-that-could-actually-cause-blood-to-rush-to-our-penises-because-they’re-so-ridiculous category. Anyone see him split the D on Saturday? It’s insane that he’s never played for Canada in the Olympics.

• Two goals for J.R.? Bet you he doesn’t hit 10 this season.

Power Rankings

1. Ottawa Senators – rolled through Rangers and Gerber’s playing like he wants Emery’s job


2. Every other undefeated team is a pretender, so fuck ‘em.

Cutesy-wutesy undefeated team who everyone’s gushing over but will crash back to Earth shortly:

Washington Capitals. Ovechkin? Sick like the teenagers call it. The new unis? Sick like the teenagers call it. Their chances of this early season run holding up? Sick like a pre-teen boy after playing with a dead dog he found in a hazardous waste dump.

Guys we want to see more of:

1. Mike Cammalleri and Anze Kopitar – these kids have crazy vision and hands, but they don’t play until 10:30 p.m. and that’s pre-bed bubble bath time for us.

2. Corry Perry – looks like he’s ready to make a jump this year. Should be fun.

3. Nicklas Lidstrom – we’ve seen a ton of him but we want to soak in some more before he retires. If Bobby Orr is on your all-time NHL first team, does Nik deserve consideration over Bourque for the other D spot?

Devastating lines who are devouring everything in their path right now:

1. Alfredsson-Spezza-Heatley, Ottawa: surprise, surprise.


2. Fedotenko-Comrie-Guerin, New York Islanders: The Game Plan was No. 1 at the box office last week, too. Move along.


3. Stastny-??? He played with Andrew Brunette and Czech import Jaroslav Hlinka early in the week, but it looked like he was with Milan Hejduk last night. Meh. So maybe he shouldn’t count on this list.