As the NHL season begins to wind down, trophy speculations begins to heat up, who is going to win what, will so and so be able to take the lead in this category to claim the scoring title. However, on awards voted on by the hockey writers association, it looks like Western Conference players are going to be hard pressed to win awards again.
This isn't saying that there aren't talented players in the East but teams in the West have a far more difficult schedule and that most of the writer's who vote on this live in the East and couldn't care if you lived out west and don't watch any games out there unless the team they are covering is playing them. The main concern here comes from two players who are out West who are likely to be given the snub when it comes to the voted on awards, they are Phoenix goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov, and Canucks center Henrik Sedin.
The reason I say these two will get the snub is because of there location, where Bryzgalov will have tough competition and is an underdog to Buffalo Sabres goalie Ryan Miller, they face tougher competition in the Hart against guys who are big names in the East.
The Hart trophy given to the NHL's MVP of the regular season, and this is where the debate will begin. The main names from the East who will be getting recognition are Washington Capital forward, Alex Ovechkin, Pittsburgh Penguin center Sidney Crosby, and Buffalo Sabers goalie Ryan Miller.
Here are my argument you can make against all three of those players, all but maybe 14 or 15 road games are played in the same time zone. where if the Canucks play a road game in there division, they have to make a time change. The Coyotes are close to this too as they have to change time zones to play 3 of the 5 teams in there division.
The individual arguments are as followed.
Sidney Crosby (PIT): Even though he is one of the premier names in the game, he has probably the most well known supporting group in Evgeny Malkin, Bill Guerin, Jordan Staal, and Sergei Gonchar. Not only that, he is ten points behind the current leader in points and has not looked very dominating this year.
Alexander Ovechkin (WAS): The superstar Russian has missed 10 games this season due to injury and suspension, this may play against him because even when he has been out of the line up, the Capitals have kept on rolling without missing a beat which is part of the Hart Trophy which is most valuable to his team. Where would the Canucks be right now if they didn't have Henrik Sedin or the Coyotes didn't have Ilya Bryzgalov, a place those fans don't want to think about.
Ryan Miller (BUF): The case for Miller is less strong on this but where he has been the best goalie this year, his team currently holds the least amount of points by a division leader.
Here is my current voting if I had a say who the players would be if I had a vote:
1. Henrik Sedin (VAN) - leads the league in points, career high in goals, assists, and points. Plus where would the Canucks be without him
2. Alex Ovechkin (WAS) - having a good year but not as dominant as years past. However team has been successful in his absence
3. Ilya Bryzgalov (PHX) - has lead the Coyotes to the most points in team history
4. Ryan Miller (BUF) - my choice for Vezina but has easier schedule the Bryzgalov
5. Sidney Crosby (PIT) - set career high in goals and has kept the Penguins near the top of the Eastern conference
Also having to do with this, is my biggest screw job of awards handed out in years past:
2003: Peter Forsberg wins Hart Trophy over Markus Naslund. I didn't know you could play only half a season and win this award, this award is for consistency through the year, not just the second half.
2000: Olaf Kolzig wins Vezina over Curtis Joseph. Look above for reason, Cujo was spectacular the entire year where Kolzig was playing in the weakest division in hockey and thrived playing against weak opponents.
1998: Sergei Samsanov wins Calder trophy over Mattius Ohlund. This was obvious that people on the East coast didn't stay up to watch the games the Ohlund was in, even though Ohlund wasn't on a good team, he was a shining beacon for the Canucks when they were suffering.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
Joel Quenville, Shut the hell up.
If you follow hockey you have probably seen the hit, James Wisnewski of the Anaheim Ducks smashing Brent Seabrook of the Chicago Blackhawks into the boards and glass and Seabrook being out on his feet before toppling like the pin that is last to go down on it own. The hit could have been called one of three penalties: Elbowing since he hit him with the elbow, charging, since Wisnewski left his feet, or interference because Seabrook never touched the puck in that playing segment. It was a nasty hit and I agree with the 8 game suspension handed out by Colin Campbell and the NHL. The part I don't agree with is Chicago Blackhawks' coach Joel Quenville's comments after the game.
Quenville has the rare ability that whenever he opens his mouth, he gets dumber than the time before. This is not the first time Quenville has been in my cross hairs for making stupid comments either.
Quenville said that it was the most dirtiest hit in hockey history. Let me channel my inner Edge here, WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONGGGGGGGGGGG. Where this was a questionable play to make it is far from being the biggest cheap shot/dirty play of all time. Here are some of my examples of dirtier plays, 1994 Canucks vs Stars series up to the point where Bure made Churla his bitch with a flying elbow. How about Steve Moore on Markus Naslund, Gary Suter on Gretzky during the '91 Canada Cup. The list goes on before I would declare that the dirtiest hit.
If you are wondering what the other time was, it was early on in the 2003/2004 NHL season when Todd Bertuzzi obliterated Barrett Jackman with a great hit and Quenville said that it was a dasturdly hit that had no place in the game. Watch the highlight you numbskull, Jackman had his head down and Bertuzzi flattened him.
Since I am on the topic of headshots, here is my way of thinking to get it so these don't happen so often. The players wear soft cap elbow and shoulder pads, instead of teaching players to turn away so that the opposing player can only see your numbers, teach them to be more aware on the ice, and take out the worst rule in hockey, the instigator, the rule has no place in the game of hockey and it will make players think twice about going after star players, did anyone ever go after Gretzky the way they can go after Crosby? No, because if they did they would have to deal with Semenko, McSorley, Beukaboom, and about another half dozen players.
So, if you want to get headshots out of the game, try implimenting that and see what happens, oh wait, hockey will become to popular and Bettman doesn't want that, that just leads to more teams being in Canada.
Quenville has the rare ability that whenever he opens his mouth, he gets dumber than the time before. This is not the first time Quenville has been in my cross hairs for making stupid comments either.
Quenville said that it was the most dirtiest hit in hockey history. Let me channel my inner Edge here, WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONGGGGGGGGGGG. Where this was a questionable play to make it is far from being the biggest cheap shot/dirty play of all time. Here are some of my examples of dirtier plays, 1994 Canucks vs Stars series up to the point where Bure made Churla his bitch with a flying elbow. How about Steve Moore on Markus Naslund, Gary Suter on Gretzky during the '91 Canada Cup. The list goes on before I would declare that the dirtiest hit.
If you are wondering what the other time was, it was early on in the 2003/2004 NHL season when Todd Bertuzzi obliterated Barrett Jackman with a great hit and Quenville said that it was a dasturdly hit that had no place in the game. Watch the highlight you numbskull, Jackman had his head down and Bertuzzi flattened him.
Since I am on the topic of headshots, here is my way of thinking to get it so these don't happen so often. The players wear soft cap elbow and shoulder pads, instead of teaching players to turn away so that the opposing player can only see your numbers, teach them to be more aware on the ice, and take out the worst rule in hockey, the instigator, the rule has no place in the game of hockey and it will make players think twice about going after star players, did anyone ever go after Gretzky the way they can go after Crosby? No, because if they did they would have to deal with Semenko, McSorley, Beukaboom, and about another half dozen players.
So, if you want to get headshots out of the game, try implimenting that and see what happens, oh wait, hockey will become to popular and Bettman doesn't want that, that just leads to more teams being in Canada.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
A Recap of the 2010 Olympics
Well, the Olympics have been over for a couple of weeks and should give my views of what happened.
I'm going to start off with the positives of what happened at the Olympics and then get to the negatives.
There were lots of positive things coming out of these Olympics, whether it be Canadians actually stepping up and not choking on a big stage taking home the most gold, athletes redeeming themselves after a bad race and coming back to win in another event, the patriotism Canadians showed that even took American speed skater Shani Davis by surprise. But I am just going to list them here:
1. The hockey: The only major team sport at the Winter Olympics did not disappoint, big hits, big goals, and unbelievable saves.
2. Jon Montgomery: Canadian athlete who won gold in the skeleton was very charismatic and even ended up on Oprah.
3. Stephen Colbert: Enough said
4. The closing ceremonies: Everyone remembers the gaffe of the fourth arm not working and they were able to make fun of that and let Catorina Lemay-Doan light the cauldron
There were lots more that are there but I am not going to try and write a novel.
The Negative:
1. The exploitation of the death of Joannie Rochette's mother: I am not bashing her performance, or that she skated. All I am saying is that the media just put too much into this and didn't allow her a moments rest, especially after she won the bronze medal. Watching her do interviews it looked like she just wanted to go and be alone or at least not have cameras shoved in her face.
2. The announcing: I called this before the games began, at least they let Chris Cuthbert call the gold medal game but they stuck him with Pierre Maguire (Oh well, I guess I can't have everything), there is a lot more here that I could talk about but that is an entire novel.
3. The death of the Georgian luger: Not much more needs to be said here
4. The between period analysis on TSN and CTV of Men's Hockey: Nick Kypreos continually made his points very easily and expertly and made Darren Pang and Bob McKenzie look like complete fools for talking as hockey experts.
5. The singing at the opening ceremonies: Whether it be the obvious link sync of Bryan Adams who didn't have the microphone up to his mouth at the start of the song, K.D. Lang destroying a Leonard Cohen masterpiece, or Nikki Yafonsky singing of O Canada making a four year old's attempt Nessun Dorma sound like Pavarotti, the singing sucked, period. And here is another question, why was there no Ben Hepner (native British Columbian opera singer), Shania Twain, Avril Lavigne, hell, I would have taken Celine Dion over K.D. Lang.
6. The hosts that were in the International Broadcast Building: I was able to watch Olympic events on CTV and NBC and the hosts were awful, the exceptions to this were James Duthie and the morning hosts on CTV and Al Micheals on NBC. Lisa Laflamme was awful at best, Brian Williams (Canadian) was reminding me of the Canada-Soviet brawl in the '80s at the world juniors, Bob Costas was plain boring, and I can't remember the name of the person who did the Olympics on NBC after Costas but she could have used some lessons and she might have been decent.
7. The Canadian song for the Olympics: If you haven't heard it, don't. Every time I heard this song I thought a castration would be less painful. These guys even have the best song for hockey at there use and don't use it before any of the games (Yes, the original Hockey Night In Canada theme). Instead we get stuck listening to an Ontario girl who probably has connections to CTV singing on of the worst songs to ever be recorded.
There are more but I don't want to torture you people any further than this, you don't want to read all day, so take care and Happy St. Patty's day
I'm going to start off with the positives of what happened at the Olympics and then get to the negatives.
There were lots of positive things coming out of these Olympics, whether it be Canadians actually stepping up and not choking on a big stage taking home the most gold, athletes redeeming themselves after a bad race and coming back to win in another event, the patriotism Canadians showed that even took American speed skater Shani Davis by surprise. But I am just going to list them here:
1. The hockey: The only major team sport at the Winter Olympics did not disappoint, big hits, big goals, and unbelievable saves.
2. Jon Montgomery: Canadian athlete who won gold in the skeleton was very charismatic and even ended up on Oprah.
3. Stephen Colbert: Enough said
4. The closing ceremonies: Everyone remembers the gaffe of the fourth arm not working and they were able to make fun of that and let Catorina Lemay-Doan light the cauldron
There were lots more that are there but I am not going to try and write a novel.
The Negative:
1. The exploitation of the death of Joannie Rochette's mother: I am not bashing her performance, or that she skated. All I am saying is that the media just put too much into this and didn't allow her a moments rest, especially after she won the bronze medal. Watching her do interviews it looked like she just wanted to go and be alone or at least not have cameras shoved in her face.
2. The announcing: I called this before the games began, at least they let Chris Cuthbert call the gold medal game but they stuck him with Pierre Maguire (Oh well, I guess I can't have everything), there is a lot more here that I could talk about but that is an entire novel.
3. The death of the Georgian luger: Not much more needs to be said here
4. The between period analysis on TSN and CTV of Men's Hockey: Nick Kypreos continually made his points very easily and expertly and made Darren Pang and Bob McKenzie look like complete fools for talking as hockey experts.
5. The singing at the opening ceremonies: Whether it be the obvious link sync of Bryan Adams who didn't have the microphone up to his mouth at the start of the song, K.D. Lang destroying a Leonard Cohen masterpiece, or Nikki Yafonsky singing of O Canada making a four year old's attempt Nessun Dorma sound like Pavarotti, the singing sucked, period. And here is another question, why was there no Ben Hepner (native British Columbian opera singer), Shania Twain, Avril Lavigne, hell, I would have taken Celine Dion over K.D. Lang.
6. The hosts that were in the International Broadcast Building: I was able to watch Olympic events on CTV and NBC and the hosts were awful, the exceptions to this were James Duthie and the morning hosts on CTV and Al Micheals on NBC. Lisa Laflamme was awful at best, Brian Williams (Canadian) was reminding me of the Canada-Soviet brawl in the '80s at the world juniors, Bob Costas was plain boring, and I can't remember the name of the person who did the Olympics on NBC after Costas but she could have used some lessons and she might have been decent.
7. The Canadian song for the Olympics: If you haven't heard it, don't. Every time I heard this song I thought a castration would be less painful. These guys even have the best song for hockey at there use and don't use it before any of the games (Yes, the original Hockey Night In Canada theme). Instead we get stuck listening to an Ontario girl who probably has connections to CTV singing on of the worst songs to ever be recorded.
There are more but I don't want to torture you people any further than this, you don't want to read all day, so take care and Happy St. Patty's day
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