Craig effing Adams

Thanks to Jason Seidling, there was an article linked to on the Penguins home page all about why Craig Adams is amazing and everybody should shut up already.

"He might have just eight assists in 68 games this season, but the gritty forward does so many little things that help add up to victories."

Indeed.

Thank you, Jason!

Skates, Plates, Ducks and Canucks

Last night was the Penguins' Skates and Plates charity dinner. Here are some obligatory photos of cute boys in tuxes.

That man is looking at Kris the way the woman should be.

I wanted to do a post about Alex Ponikarovsky but I got sidetracked again. The last time I wanted to do it, I got distracted by the OMG MATT COOKE IS THE EVIL!!! all over the internet. I think it's adorable that he just got here and is already doing charity things. I'll get more into him at a later date.

Dude. nice looking salad.

Dapper Duper.

I don't know what is happening to the Ducks. I hesitate to say Jonas left something in Vancouver during the Olympics because 1) I always hesitate to place all the blame on goalies and 2) I adore him.
They have lost to Colorado, Phoenix, Montreal and Columbus since the break. Sometimes your goalie can steal one for you and other times, you have to get one back for your goalie.


I watched parts of the Montreal v. Vancouver game last night. I like watching Vancouver. I think I might try to start watching them more.


"She's Out of My League" opens Friday. Here's a little about the movie.

Stars beat Capitals in SO

Turco! hee!


I *heart* the goal cam. Somebody should do a montage of goal cam's greatest moments.

I'll start this off by stating the obvious

I love Matt Cooke. I think he's an important part of our team. He is one of our best penalty killers. He gets in the heads of our opponents. The tape to tape passes between him and Jordan are sick. He does many "little" things that have a lot of us begging for a new contract this summer. He also does a lot of things that make me cringe. His ability to "toe the line" between dirty plays and clean plays are sometimes worrisome because of the blurry NHL rulebook.

His hit on Savard yesterday was a clean hit by definition.

He did not receive a penalty for this hit. He didn't change speed. He didn't change direction. He didn't lift his arm. He just finished his check. I still feel like he had time to pull back because Savard A) had his head lowered and B) didn't know he was coming. The hit was necessary. The hit to the head was not. Which, I guess, is easy for me to say never having played professional hockey. It is important to note that Marc Savard is made of glass.

The hit is being compared to the Richards hit on Booth.

I'll start this part of my post by saying I'm obvioulsy not a Flyers fan. My views on this could be tilted or biased. Mike Richards received a major and a game misconduct for his hit on Booth. Looking at this hit, I see Richards charging Booth. His speed changes. His direction changes. He appears to lift himself up a bit. I see an intent to injure (for which he received the game misconduct). Mike Richards was not suspended.

Do I think Richards should have been suspended? Yes, without question.
Do I think Cooke should be suspended? No. Why? Because Richards wasn't and that hit looked way worse.
Do I think Cooke will be suspended? Probably. His name is Matt Cooke and he is a "repeat offender". Which is funny because if you're a "star" player, you don't get suspended for wrong-doings so you will never have the "repeat offender" tag sewn onto your sweater. Other than Alex Ovechkin, who was suspended earlier in the season. (Which, I believe, was more for his benefit than anybody else's. Nobody wants this guy's career cut short. Or at least nobody should.) So he now wears that "repeat offender" tag, right?

If the league is going to crack down on head shots, the punishment has to be consistent. In a just system, both Richards and Cooke would have been suspended for blows to the head. Intentional or not. They can't continue to suspend certain players. They can't pick and choose who gets a few games off and who doesn't. The suspension should be no different if your name is Cooke or Richards. Or Avery or Crosby. Or Carcillo or Malkin. Not that Crosby or Malkin are known for blurry plays, I'm just sayin'. It's not fair and it has to be addressed. There has to be sustainability no matter what your name is.

I'm not going to blame Savard or Booth for taking blows to the head. But. Isn't there a reason keeping your head up is a lesson taught very early in your hockey career? "Keep your head on a swivel", guys.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery to Marc Savard.

On a less serious note, if Cookie does get suspended, we solve our too many forwards problem when Billy G gets healthy (or stops being old).

It would help me greatly

if Jordan Staal committed some douchery at some point. My love for him is approaching unhealthy levels.


He was credited with the OT GWG last night and he did this.

"Staal approached members of the Penguin’ communications staff after the game to say he did not touch the puck and should not have been awarded the goal."

What a man. I can't handle him sometimes.

(obligatory Staal v. Staal photo)

I am anxious to see Alex Ponikarovsky this weekend. I know little about him. I know he's a plus player and that he has 19 goals (so far) this season on a bad team (Leafs). I also know that he is a left-winger from Kiev because that is also what Fedotenko is. I hope one of them can play right because they both should be with Geno. I'm not really torn up over losing Caputi and I certainly don't mind that we gave them Skoula (to turnover to the Devils). I wish them both well but I'm hoping for better from Poni.

I don't know if they were doing it on purpose or not, which knowing them probably, but Steigy and Bob kept making horse-related comments in regards to Malkin. I have a feeling they are going to get a lot of use out of Alex Ponikarovsky's nickname. I'm not talking about the "Ukraine Train" one either.

Leopold is fine. I resent that he has that #4 on his back though so I can't really get into specifics about him right now. At one point last night, he backed right into the camera to rub it in my face. I didn't appreciate that at all. Not at all, Mr. Leopold.

I feel bad for McKee being dropped to the 7th Dman position. I was happy to see him get a little playing time last night (5 minutes 40 seconds, yikes)... but, truth be told, I haven't really missed him all that much. Probably because Kris and Brooks and Sergei and Mark and that new guy have been blocking shots all over the place. Sorry, Jay! *kisses* It was pretty cool to see him flip that guy over his back last night though. (I think it was him anyway, I meant to check but forgot.)

I was glad to see Billy Guerin getting scratched last minute because of "back spasms". I think it was because Jay McKee was sad and Billy G is old.

During a face off in the 1st period, Matt Cooke took a 2-minute unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for... wait for it... GETTING.PUNCHED.IN.THE.FACE. Unreal.

Speaking of Ruslan Fedotenko (you know, from before), he has three points and is a +2 in the two games since Olympic break. Now he is only a -14 which is still really ouch. I stand firm that most of those are not even a little bit his fault. I hate when they do a line switch and the new guys can't get out there fast enough to stop the goaltender's raping. That happens to him a lot. Trust me. I've been paying close attention to that. It feels like is part of my job as a fan. I've done it with Kris since forever and I started doing it with Craig and now with Feds. I have to. It helps my defense when people go all stupid about plus/minus. Craig Adams is and always will be a hero on this team whether he scores or not and no matter what his plus/minus happens to be (-8 in case you are wondering, but you shouldn't be wondering because it matters not in his case because he does soooooo many other things. good things).

One of my favorite parts of watching last night's game was an exchange between Errey and Steigy. Bob goes, "Prospal has quite a tan. I wonder where he was during the Olympic break." And Steigy goes, "he was in Vancouver playing for the Czech Republic." lols

Dubinsky is an awful human.

Avery cracked me up when he mocked Max Talbot. *must look for youtube* He's still an ass, but it was funny. I love that Max laughed about it.

We own the Rangers. If we wouldn't have gotten the two points from that game, it would have been a huge disappointment considering our boys were dominant for about 97 percent of the game.

Fleury let four goals in on like 12 shots. WTF? Johnson let in no goals on like 3. Which, yeah he only faced three shots but if we're going to go all average-y, Fleury would have let one of those 3 in. He threw his stick like a lawn dart while Johnny was all calm and cool skating to the net to stop the madness. There was a scary minute when he didn't have a stick but Leopold (with is body) and Talbot (with his quick stick) helped stop the, what at the time seemed inevitable, molestation of yet another of our goaltenders. MAF was sour looking sitting on the bench because the boys were able to do for Johnny what they seemed unable to do for him. It's hard to place blame because it's a team but 4 goals on 12 shots. Four?

A non-Penguin related hockey news note: I adore Jonas Hiller. He was (mostly) spectacular in the Olympics. I had another dream about him last night. And I didn't even see him or hear mention of him yesterday. Weird. I don't have those kinds of feelings for him. My adoration of him is non-romantic in nature (I think so anyway) but in my dreams, I always have those swoony he's my boyfriend feelings about him (but it's hard to tell sometimes after these OMG! HE IS MY BOYFRIEND kind of dreams). Well, except for that one time when it was about him saying he's a bad singer and then singing and then my husband and I were both like "WHAT?!?! YOU ARE NOT A BAD SINGER! YOU ARE A GREAT SINGER! THAT WAS AMAZING!" See? Weird. Last night's dream was about some minor doesn't even matter play in the basement kind of goalie tournament that he was kicking ass at. Or maybe he was giving lessons I don't remember. It was in some kind of church or school type place in some big cafeteria type room and he kept sending me to his locker and/or his car to get different goalie masks for him. One of them was a plastic frog mask. Like the kind that have the elastic band to hold it on your face. You know like you buy for your kid for Halloween. People were coming at him pretty hard and I was worried that the frog wouldn't protect him but he assured me that he would be fine. Anyway, I felt gooey about him and he had a lot of groupies and I thought they were funny. See again? Weird. I don't know why I sometimes share some of these bizarre things with people.

So anyway. Onto the Stars, boys. Reach for them and bring them down.

And now we're getting ready for the Olympics

I haven't blogged in a while. Heaven knows it's not because I've had nothing to say. I've just been busy. I guess. So our boys lost to the Preds yesterday in a shoot-out. I didn't even think it was possible for us to lose in a SO.

Kris Letang has been a monster. Brooks Orpik has been a... well, he's been not throwing people onto our goalie, so he's been great. And! And! He scored a goal yesterday. The teaming of them together helps to keep my heart beating. Jordan is, as always, a beast. I'm not sure how I feel about Jordan and Geno on the same line. I love Cooke-Staal-Kennedy so it's hard to be unbiased. Feds is a -16 now. How does that happen to him? Everybody likes to talk about how terrible he's been but I don't see it. I think he's pretty great. He wasn't one of my favorites last season but I've been loving him this season. As an aside, he is breathtakingly gorgeous in person. wow. But I bumped into him, or rather he bumped into me, after I was already loving him. Sidney Crosby is a machine, man. MAF has been questionable at times. Billy G is a liability most times. His presence on the PP makes me cry. I'm guessing they feel some sort of obligation to him. That's the only thing that makes sense. And I guess if Sid wants him there... Well, let us hope that this two week break does him good. He should sleep for two weeks and Jay McKee should soak in an ice bath. Speaking of Jay McKee, he went to visit Children's Hospital one day after practice. He's a beautiful man. Hockey players are like no others. *sigh*

We made it through to the trade freeze with only one trade. Nate Guenin for... somebody who is an offensive defenseman. This makes me nervous. I worry about losing any of our offensive d-men but mostly I worry about losing Letang (of course). I have a few other worries but none of those would have as much of a negative impact on my happiness and well-being.

gah. work. More later.

USA! USA! USA!

Okay, it's official

I am in love with Pascal Dupuis.

Dude is on fire.