You know what the best part about Thanksgiving weekend is?
Stuffins!
But you know what the second best part is? Wall-to-wall hockey. So join us please for an open thread for today’s hawt Devils/Islanders action, as well as all the other games on slate for Saturday night.
Posted in Open Thread | 48 Comments »
Welcome back from the holidays, Gentle Reader! We hope that everyone had as lovely a Thanksgiving as we did here at stately IPB Manor. We also hope that you’re enjoying a tasty lunch of leftovers with this game, just like we are.
Whoops. We thought this game started at 12:30. Ha! It didn’t. Fortunately, we managed to discover our mistake early in the game…
FIRST PERIOD
18:20 Oh! There’s a game going on!
17:20 Uh oh. Clarkson gets hit by a shot from Chara and has to be literally dragged off the bench. Meanwhile, we’re all in a panic because this game is in standard def. NOOOOO!
16:06 Oh. Whoops. We’re just on the wrong channel. No worries! It’s in HD! Man, we’re a wreck today.
14:23 The Devils get their first offensive-zone possession that we’ve seen today (maybe they dominated the first 1:40? We’ll never know), and as Rask easily stops a Corrente shot, Pookie remarks, “I’m impressed any of the Devils made it to this game on time.” Schnookie: “Seriously. They were all sure this started at 12:30.”
11:49 Play has resumed its usual position in the Devils’ zone, and Fraser takes a penalty on Bergeron to stop a scoring chance. MSG decides to give us a replay of Bergfors drifting around the zone instead of the infraction. It’s like a little taste of Versus for the holidays.
9:59 By the way, we were vaguely fond of the Bruins last year, and we hate them this year. The difference? Lucic is always hurt these days. We’re not afraid to admit how shallow we are. Meanwhile, maybe Looch might get injured less often if he stopped insisting on living “pants-optional”.
9:02 Marty’s big citizen test is Tuesday. We hope he knows his presidents!
6:48 Right off a faceoff (in the Devils zone, natch), Krejci interferes with Sestito Puente. That’s something guys do at their own risk – Krejci’s going to wake up some morning to find severed cayenne pepper heads in his bed. Meanwhile, Chico tells us that the Devils’ PP needs to be good today, what with Clarkson being out. We feel it needs to be good today, what with the way the Devils can’t seem to gain possession of the puck at even strength.
5:45 Travis taps the puck into the goal, but sadly, the officials are a bunch of assholes who think that the rules need to apply here, so they wave the goal off because it only got into the net thanks to it being off the moorings. Worst rule EVER!
5:34 Travis whiffs on a wide-open, on-its-moorings net. We all chorus at the television that Travis is fired, and Pookie adds in horror, “I’m a stuffin behind – this is worse than Travis missing that shot!” (For the record, for last night’s dinner we followed the New York Times suggestion of baking stuffing in muffin tins; that way you get a whole bunch of serving-size muffins of stuffing, each with a delicious, buttery crust on all sides. After a few glasses of champagne, though, none of us could successfully say the phrase “stuffing muffin”, so we changed the name to “stuffin”. Cold leftover stuffins? Are insane.)
2:45 The shots are apparently 9-8 in favor of the Devils. That’s a pretty remarkable statement about how little the Bruins managed to do with their dominant puck possession and territorial advantage up until the Devils PP.
0:00 Hey! At the buzzer for the end of this period, Marty tied Patrick Roy for most minutes played by goaltender in NHL history. Pookie puts it best when she says, “That’s so cool.” Pause. “Marty’s the bomb.” Doc happily informs us that the Bruins are planning to make an announcement about this at the next stoppage of play in the next period. That’s nice of them.
We get an interview with Sestito Puente, and he looks shifty, like a guy who’s carrying luggage filled with illegal cayenne peppers.
SECOND PERIOD
19:50 We unmute a few moments late coming back from intermission, and miss whatever Doc and Chico are saying about Clarkson. We’re assuming the story is that he took a shot in the leg from Chara and won’t be back anytime soon.
19:00 Well, Marty is now the minute-iest goalie of all time. Chico thinks it’s poetic that his first career minute was against the Bruins.
16:54 Doc wishes aloud for an icing so that we can hear the arena announcement of Marty’s record instead of having to go to commercial. And as if on cue, the Devils ice the puck. It’s uncanny! (The announcement is quite nice, and MSG picks up a shot of some Bruins fans standing to applaud him.)
16:28 Okay, Devils, you can stop icing the puck now.
15:54 Marty is being asked by his team to show off exactly why he’s a legend (Chico’s word), and Pookie suddenly sighs, “It’s going to be so hard when we have to learn to watch this team with an average goalie. If that.” Pause. “Of course, we survived Clemmensen.”
14:10 The teams are trading icings, so MSG takes this opportunity to remind us of some of Marty’s other notable career records, specifically the 570 wins and 102 shutouts. Chico gets rambling about the shutouts and declares that Rask is also “in the running” to get the shutout record, and declares that he’s gonna find out how many shutouts he has, because he’s sure people are wondering. Yes. We are consumed with the question of how many shutouts Rask has in his career. We will never be able to rest until we find out. So thank heavens Doc steps in to inform the world that the grand total for Rask is two. He is indeed in the running to get to 103.
12:43 In the brief flurry of activity between icing whistles, Doc mentions that Sobotka has been hitting everything that moves. Pookie pipes up quietly with our “Wire”-themed nickname for Sobotka, “CANS!”, but her mouth is full of pins, so it lacks its usual enthusiasm. It’s probably more appropriate for the sleepy pace of this game to give such a subdued “CANS!” anyway.
10:15 WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! The Devils finally decide to take a foray into the Bruins zone, and after Rask shuts things down on one shot, the Devils swarm the net off the ensuing faceoff and Zach scores by shoving the puck and Rask’s leg into the goal. It’s 1-0 Devils, and even Chico has to admit that there’s something not entirely kosher about that play. The puck’s not frozen, so the official can’t blow the whistle, but if that had been scored against Marty, we’d all be pretty pissed about it. In the end, though, the consensus is that that’s the “new NHL” for you, with the defender not being able to take Zach out of the play, and frankly, we’ll take it! WOOOOOOOOOO!
9:08 Peters and Thornton fight. It’s so not interesting that we’re not even going to get out our fight picture (which is the only thing we like about fighting).
8:13 Langer takes a penalty, but we fail to see what it’s for. Considering it’s Langer, it was probably stupid.
6:48 MSG gives us a replay of the Langenbrunner penalty, and it is, as we suspected, a dumb one. Savard nails him with a sneaky little cross-check that goes undetected, and Langer goes nuts trying to get back at him. Chico makes some weird groaning noise while trying to best display his outrage and disgust with how questionable that call is. We wonder if Chico’s maybe watching a different bit of footage right now than we are.
6:30 Zach’s motor is warming up after the early-morning start today, and he gets behind the Bruins point man to start a shorthanded rush that yields a good shot from Travis and a penalty on a Bruin. Replay shows the slashing call is a bit of a phantom one, but Chico just waves that off. Because he’s only a little bit of a homer.
3:20 The Bruins just can’t handle Zach at all! He draws another slashing call while rocketing toward the Boston net as the ice, as Doc would say, shifts to favor the Devils a bit here in the second half of the period.
2:47 Well, that PP wasn’t long for this world. Rolston, ever the worst hockey player in the world, slashes Wideman in front of the Bruins crease. Chico insists that it was too minor a slash to count for anything, even though Wideman looks hurt on the play. Doc, bone-dry: “So in terms of slashes, you’re looking for something that will render a guy like Captain Hook?” Zing!
0:43 The Bruins squeeze every bit of advantage out of their 20-something seconds of PP at the conclusion of the four-on-four, but Whitey and Marty are heroically up to the challenge.
0:00 We get an interview with Zach. He seems to be trying out some new eyebrow aerobics, and it’s freaking our cameraman out.
THIRD PERIOD
19:48 Marty tries to clear the puck from the trapezoid, but it hits a stanchion, bounces out in front, the Devils D can’t recover, and Wheeler ends up tying the game. It’s 1-1, and why did we manage to get back in time for the end of this intermission? Poop.
16:15 We’re discovering now why we don’t often diarize matinee games, as we’re all puttering away on a variety of projects. It seems the game is still going on, though. It’s a lot less interesting now that we know the Devils aren’t going to win 1-0. Hmph.
14:46 Andrew Peters turns the puck over to the Bruins on the near boards in the defensive zone, setting up an easy pass to an attacker in the slot. Schnookie: “Andrew Peters is the worst hockey player in the world…” Pause. “Whose name doesn’t rhyme with ‘Blian Blolston’.” Pookie, “Good catch there. I was going to be like, ‘There better be a qualifier on this…’”
12:02 This entire period has been played deep in the Devils zone, and Chico decides now’s a good time to point out that the ZZ’s are “not controlling the puck the way they need to.” Yeah, none of the Devils lines are.
9:21 After forcing a turnover at the Devils blue line, the ZZ Boogerforses get a three-on-two. They don’t score, but they also don’t get an apology from Chico.
8:43 The fuck? Doc’s talking to us about how “if the playoffs started today”, the Devils and Bruins would meet in the first round. It’s November. Why is Doc talking about this?
5:22 You know what’s been more fun for us today than paying close attention to this game? Finishing up processing our pictures from our trip to the Museum of Natural History on Tuesday.
1:20 Doc and Chico have been talking up how the Devils managed to eke out a regulation win on their last trip to Boston thanks to last-minute heroics by Zubrus. Then they sigh heavily and remind us that Zubrus is injured.
0:42 Boomer: “If I could choose, I’d take having a strong period in the third over having a strong period in the second.” And how.
0:04 Whitey breaks his stick on a shot attempt at the high point, and then gets stuck racing back on the ensuing Bruins’ rush without his stick, but the Bruins manage to get around him with ease. Thank goodness Marty’s in net.
0:00 Regulation time ends in a tie, but Travis goes off to the bench in agony after blocking a shot after that last faceoff in the Devils zone. You know what, Travis? The guy on your team wearing the pads to protect himself from shots like that? He’s pretty good.
OVERTIME
4:13 Travis has miraculously survived his misadventures in shot-blocking, and is on the ice with Zach for the second shift of the OT.
1:45 Marty finally freezes the puck with a good glove save after what’s been a delightfully frenzied extra frame. It’s always fun when two teams spend 60 minutes locked in a battle of the wills, then just throw caution to the wind and go crazy in OT.
0:00 In some wonderful alternate universe, this counts as a tie. In this universe, the Devils get more shootout goals than the Bruins, and get the win.
Posted in Boston Bruins, New Jersey Devils, Running Game Diary | 41 Comments »
We’re going to be taking a bit of a computer sabbath here at stately IPB Manor for the holiday, so we hope everyone has a happy, safe, wonderful Thanksgiving, with lots of good families and friends, good food, and good hockey. And those of you in Canada or beyond, have all those things on a regular old Wednesday and Thursday.
Cheers!
Posted in Holiday | 5 Comments »
Well, here it is, Gentle Reader — the highly anticipated second chapter of Margee’s brilliant “Spooking Sidney”. Get ready for thrills and chills, action, adventure, and heartbreak. We are so proud to be posting this great work of literature, and hope you enjoy this installment as much as we did.
* * * * *
“Flash!” a voice hissed from the dark.
“Thunder!” Colby Armstrong responded, extinguishing his cigar on the gritty brick wall behind him.
Jordan “Gronk” Staal peeled back the heavy drapes cloaking the windows. In the lamplight, Army could see that he was dressed in military garb and his face was smeared in camouflage makeup. Gronk looked around the room with a look of detectable irritation. Following on his heels was Evgeni Malkin, toting a large, black drawstring bag over his shoulder. He was dressed and made up like Gronk, as usual.
Marc-Andre flipped into the room with a back handspring so delicate, his feet barely made a sound as they hit the floor. He was wearing a black catsuit and ballet slippers. With a quick brush of his fingertips, the drapes were closed and he leapt to the chaise lounge, perching himself on the thin armrest, squatting, balanced on his toes. He made no sound, but glanced around furtively. A lookout.
“This is your idea of a safehouse?” said Gronk, helping Geno lower the bag to the floor.
“Haven’t you ever heard of hiding in plain sight?” said Army, his shaking hands betraying him as he tried to relight his cigar.
“We could smell that smoke halfway here,” snapped Geno, swatting the cigar from Army’s mouth, disdain in his Midwestern drawl. “We’re asking to get found out.”
Army massaged the bridge of his big, beautiful bird nose. It took two hands. He wished Ryan Whitney were there. Ryan Whitney always knew what to do. Colby Armstrong wasn’t ready to be a single father.
“You didn’t power cycle him, did you?” said Army, untying the drawstring. Cindy was inside, limp. His glossy eyelashes grazed the top of his cheeks and Army couldn’t help but run his fingertip tenderly along the fringe. He looked so sweet when he was in Standby.
“We had to,” said Jordan, reaching under Cindy’s UnderArmor top to switch him back on. “He was malfunctioning or something. He kept saying Ryan Whitney’s name over and over again.”
“Damn it, Gronk! That was grief, not a glitch! Could you at least have put some proper clothes on him? You can’t treat him like a robot.”
“Don’t you ever,” said Staal, his hissing mouth mere centimeters from Army’s big, beautiful bird nose. “Ever accuse me of treating him like a robot. You haven’t been here, Army. You don’t know what Geno and Flower and I have to do for him. We’re here every day making sure he’s included in all the team activities, trying to keep the dancers from spraying Dom on him when we take him to the Champagne Room, protecting him when Sergei Gonchar puts magnets in his jock or when Max Talbot tries to use him to look up things on Wikipedia. You have no idea anymore, Army. No idea.”
Gronk jabbed an emphatic finger in Army’s direction and stormed away to the wicker couch. Geno joined him, slinging a comforting arm around Gronk’s shoulder. The whirring sound of Cindy Crosby powering up was the only sound in the room.
“Chris Kunitz is dead,” said Cindy, his speech slurred as his software lurched into action. “I just got a Google Alert…in my head… it’s on Puck Daddy…”
The full humans in the room exchanged concerned looks. Cindy seemed shaken. This is one of those times, Colby Armstrong thought, that it was so tempting to erase this file from his memory. But Cindy would have to know pain to know his humanity.
“I’m sorry, Son,” Army knelt to him, stroking the mess of jet curls. “We didn’t want you to find out this way.”
The police had found Kunitz that morning in his beloved maroon PT Cruiser. The authorities wouldn’t say for sure what happened. But, after dipping into his supply of Cubans to use as a bribe, Colby Armstrong had found out the truth. Chris Kunitz had been suffocated, and they’d found the imprint of a sternum on his face. As if someone had pressed his face into their chest until he’d stopped breathing. Almost as if he had been hugged to death…
“This is the second one,” said Cindy, leaning his head, filled with a thousand worries and CPUs, to Army’s chest. “This is the second mother of mine to die.”
“Third,” said Army, as the faces in the room snapped to attention. “It’s the third.”
“Third?” growled Gronk. “What do you mean, ‘third?’”
“The woman who called herself ‘Mrs. Crosby.’ The one who Lemieux left Cindy to be raised by. The one who sold him to the Canadian government and Reebok in some Faustian bargain of hockey servitude… they found her last week.”
“How?”
“Choked,” Army sighed. “She was tucked into bed too tightly and it cut off her air supply.”
“And the computerized whore is missing, too?” said Geno, aghast.
They sat there in silence, the reality of their situation sinking in with an audible clang. Even Cindy, with his human instincts only beginning to take shape, seemed to sense how dire their position was.
They were all thinking the same thing: They were the only ones left. They were the only ones left who knew that Mario Lemieux had fathered a child with a robot prostitute named Sydney. And that the android baby grew up to become one of, if not the, greatest hockey player of his generation (deal, Ovechkinites).
“Lemieux,” said Flower, still perched on the thin edge of the chaise. His eyes were closed and his hands pressed together. “Lemieux has killed them. And we are next.”
“Then why are we hiding out in his pool house?!” Gronk leapt to his feet, indicating their surroundings.
Perhaps Mario Lemieux’s pool house was not the best place to hide from a murderous Mario Lemieux. But Colby Armstrong knew from their flight through the streets of Amsterdam that Cindy was too bottom-heavy to tote long distances. Especially without the brute strength of Georges Laraque to do the heavy lifting. And since Army was one of the few people who knew that Mario Lemieux could not swim and was, in fact, terrified of chlorinated water, he’d had to hope that Lemieux would never venture out past the first sixty acres of his property.
“Do you know how many brothels, or whorehouses, or bordellos, hooker’s apartments or Chick Fil-A’s Geno and I could have called in favors to? We could be eating chicken biscuits or cookies that hookers baked, instead of sixty-five acres and a putting green from the guy trying to kill us!?”
Army looked to Cindy. He was still prone, his head poking out of the nylon laundry bag used to carry him there. Cindy swiveled his downy head towards Jordan Staal.
“Don’t yell at him,” he said, his balled fist poking through the fabric of his nylon casing.
“It’s okay, Cynthia,” said Army. “He’s right. We have to get out of here.”
Flower, Geno, and Gronk rose in decisive unison. Flower cartwheeled to the sliding glass windows and peeked through the crack in the drapes. Cindy struggled to get to his feet. He was still mostly in the laundry bag, and that, combined with his normal inability to negotiate non-ice surfaces, made for a difficult getaway.
Army hoisted him out of the bag. Cindy was clad only in his Under Armour top and his quintuple-XL boxer briefs. They wouldn’t get anywhere toting an underwear-clad Cindy Crosby through the streets of Pittsburgh. Imagine how many female Duquesne undergraduates alone would end up following them!
“We have to get him some clothes,” said Army. “Flower, there should be some cruisewear in that closet. Grab him a shirt. Maybe we can make some pants out of the drapes.”
Flower wordlessly tumbled to the slatted closet door. He opened the door cautiously and stepped inside.
“We can go to the Chick-Fil-A in Moon Township, or the whorehouse in Robinson Town Center, or the Chick-Fil-A that turns into a whorehouse after midnight in Fox Chapel,” said Gronk, his hand covering the mouthpiece of his iTouch.
Army waved him off. He didn’t care where they went, as long as his Cindy was safe. He hugged Cindy close and whispered in his ear that they’d be okay. That they were all going to be okay. And Army wanted so badly to believe what he was saying.
“Fox Chapel it is,” said Gronk slipping the phone into one of the many cargo pockets of his army pants. “But we’d better get moving. The day shift girls start soon. You don’t want to know from them, believe me.”
Gronk was right.
“Hey, Flower,” called Army. “Did you find anything?”
Flower emerged from the closet, his skin was a wan gray, even in the dim light. Instead of his customary grace and gymnastics, Flower shuffled loudly out of the closet.
“I have found something,” he said. “But not something he will be able to wear.”
“Like what?” said Cindy.
“I found this,” Flower shuddered. “And this. And the rest of her.”
The rest of them were horrified to see that in one of the goalie’s hands was a limp, lifeless, severed arm, with several frayed cables where the shoulder socket should have been. And, in the other, was the disembodied head of Sydney Crosby, the robot prostitute.
Posted in Challenge, Laffs, Our Minds Are Blown, Sid Crosby | 35 Comments »
Before we launch into tonight’s open thread, we have a few thoughts:
1. You know what sounds really disgusting? Having a broken — or even partially broken — kneecap. Zubrus has our sympathy, at least when we’re not throwing up from how disgusting that sounds.
2. One of the reasons we love this time of year is that we cash in all our credit card reward points and spend it all on Williams Sonoma Christmas candies. The crown jewel of those candies is the Peppermint Hot Chocolate, and last night we broke into our stash, thereby officially kicking off the holiday season at stately IPB Manor.
We aren’t complete Christmas freaks, though — we only staged this photo on that “5 Golden Rings” dessert plate because we just bought it and haven’t found a cupboard place for it. It was sitting on the counter, and it was closing in on midnight, and we hadn’t taken our 365 picture for the day. We’re just lazy.
So when we bought the hot chocolate, we decided that it was going to be a couple of weeks before we were going to get around to making marshmallows, so it made sense to buy some of the gourmet marshmallows Williams Sonoma sells. We had to choose between chocolate and vanilla flavored ones, and opted for vanilla. As it turns out, they did not taste like vanilla. You know what’s even more disgusting than a broken kneecap? Peppermint hot chocolate with butterscotch marshmallows.
3. We kind of had no idea the Devils were playing the Stars tonight. WOO HOOO! Patty and Myra and Hub and the Kid are all gonna be cryin’ into the butterscotch/peppermint hot chocolate Gatorade of losers tonight, while we drink deep from the flagon of Champagne of winners.*
*Or vice versa. We’ll see.
Posted in Dainius Zubrus, Dallas Stars, Insightful Non-Hockey Commentary, New Jersey Devils, Open Thread | 241 Comments »
Before we start tonight’s diary, we’d like to take a moment to direct your attention to a worthy cause. Our wonderful friend Jean Lea, owner of the most magnificent stitching shop in the world, The Attic Needlework in Mesa, Arizona, hosts an annual silent auction of handmade Christmas tree ornaments to raise funds for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. The auction is happening this Saturday (Nov. 21), and we are feeling very triumphant here at stately IPB Manor because Boomer’s contribution, a collection of little Christmas houses stitched in silk on linen, are the ornaments with the highest set minimum opening bid. Um, not that it’s a competition, but still. Boomer’s a superstar. Heh. If you’re in the market for handmade Christmas tree ornaments and other decorative items, and would like to learn more about the auction (they do take bids over the phone and email), check out the Attic’s website.
Meanwhile, on the ice, the Devils are sporting a fancy new look, one that’s got 100% more Dean McAmmond and Tyler Eckford. Apparently Doc would like the Devils’ new look to be 100% more orange, though, because during the pregame, in talking about the Predators’ two big ex-Devils, he waxes poetic about the good old days when Steve Sullivan and Jason Arnott were Flyers. See? We’re not the only ones!
FIRST PERIOD
16:17 We kind of get caught off guard at the start of the game thanks to finishing off dinner, and when we turn our attention to the game, we are surprised to discover McAmmond is wearing 11. Sentimentality, thy name is Lou.
15:16 Wha? The Devils appear to be ready to clear the puck, with Rolston dawdling along while gaining possession in front of the net, and suddenly Arnott pokes the puck through his slow-poke feet and beats a completely startled Marty to make it 1-0 Predators. When Chico wonders how that play even happened, Pookie explains the obvious, two-part answer: Marty loves giving up goals to ex-Devils, and Rolston is the worst hockey player on Earth.
13:42 The Devils get the opportunity now to get a power play goal and be right back in it, as Chico would say.
11:42 The Devils do not get a power play goal to find themselves right back in it.
11:25 WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Colin White is a goal-scoring machine! Or at least Colin White shots are goal-scoring machines. Zach and Travis combine, after a failed attempt at a goal-mouth feed, to retrieve a rebound, feed it out to Whitey at the point, and then set up enough traffic in front to allow Whitey’s shot to beat Rinne (or maybe deflect the shot past him). It’s a 1-1 game, and Chico tells us that Whitey has switched to fancy sticks, on Zach’s recommendation. We are surprisingly charmed by the thought of Zach pressuring Whitey into buying sticks that have fancier features than the workmanlike variety he would normally choose. Pookie: “Zach probably gets kick-backs from Easton. He’s like Bob Vila.”
9:00 Doc is confident that the goal is going to be credited to Zach eventually, and tells us that’s a six-game goal-scoring streak for him now. Schnookie: “You know what? I think Parise’s for real.”
8:41 Tootoo is on the ice, and with him comes those annoying “toot” train whistles from the crowd. If Frisby is participating in that at this game tonight, he’s banned. And we’ll know, Frisby.
6:29 Oh dear. Chico is now trying to tell us about the Finnish version of baseball, as related to him by Pekka Rinne this morning. Or rather, Chico is threatening to tell us about it later, to which Doc says, “I’m looking forward to this.” Pookie: “That makes one of us, Doc.”
5:36 We come back from commercial to Chico telling us about this Finnish baseball, and this is what he ends up telestrating:
The game is called “pesapallo”, and Pookie cracks that Finns everywhere would look at Chico’s illustration and be like, “That guy’s insane. Our game is just like baseball. Where is he getting these ideas?” Then she looks it up online and reports, stunned, “Either Chico’s actually right, or he’s constructed an elaborate Wikipedia ruse.”
0:52 Oh god. The tooting. Make it stop!
0:22 Sometimes Zach’s the gong-er, and sometimes he’s the gong-ee. He gets a mini-break here, but only has time for a midrange slapshot that Rinne stops and deflects out of play with his head. After the whistle, Patty and Tootoo take coincidental minor penalties. Probably because Patty can’t stand listening to that stupid tooting anymore.
FIRST INTERMISSION
The break in action here is a great opportunity to check out this really cool video of what is essentially a human keyboard that we saw on Mental Floss today.
SECOND PERIOD
19:00 Zach starts his second period by cranking a giant shot at Rinne. Pookie: “Zach looks like he wants to score a real goal tonight.”
18:52 Zubrus starts his second period off with a bang by blocking a shot that leaves him hobbling sadly to the bench.
17:13 Clarkson tangles with Tootoo, probably just to silent those dumb whistles, and ends up getting a penalty for holding.
16:03 Two of the Devils PKers lose their sticks, so the Preds are, as Doc exclaims, playing a 5-on-2, but before anything horrible can happen, Patty coolly breaks up the attack and clears the zone. Good penalty killing is so foxy.
13:36 It is a shooting gallery in the Devils zone right now, but the Predators keep failing to register actual shots thanks to lots of missing the net and shockingly smart play by Eckford.
12:35 The Devils put on a clinic of terrible defensive-zone turnovers and generally looking completely hapless in their own end, and Schnookie finally shouts in exasperation at the TV, “You guys are all fired!” Just then, a tic-tac-toe passing play down low by the Preds gets broken up by some an extremely calm, deft Devils d-man. Pookie: “Whoa. Who was that? That wasn’t—no, he got sent down…” Schnookie: “That was Mottau.” Pookie, shocked: “Applesauce??”
10:50 Before an offensive-zone draw for the Devils, MSG+ gives us a close-up shot of Peters and Tootoo yapping sort of lamely at each other. We spend a few moments making up a series of not-very-funny conversations they could be having, and Pookie finally breaks through with: “Peters says ‘Give a hoot. Bench me!’” It’s hard work, people.
3:15 Yikes. This period is almost over. It seems like the Predators have been the better team so far.
1:54 Pookie: “The one thing I’m getting vibes about is Zach scoring a real goal, and it seems like he’s not going to. And the Devils are playing like crap. I can’t believe my vibes could be wrong.”
0:16 The one Devil not playing like crap? Marty, who makes an amazing kick save on a point-blank shot by Tootoo after Marty had missed a sweeping stick check around the side of the net.
0:10 Eckford takes a penalty on the rebound after Marty’s huge save.
0:00 Doc tells us as the teams head to the dressing rooms that the Devils had 12 shots in that period. We don’t believe it. As we wait for Gel-O to appear with our intermission interview, Doc reads a promo for the Devils game on Wednesday the 25th, at which fans 18 or older will receive a compact fluorescent lightbulb. Which is a nice idea, but we’ve already switched to CFLs. If we go to that game, can we have, like, game-used equipment or something cool instead?
THIRD PERIOD
Before the puck drop, Doc suddenly starts talking over some flavoring shots of Nashville, “It’s Nashville. There are lots of places here for a duck.” Sure enough, we then see Chuck the Duck perched in the foreground of a shot of a local act performing, and he seems to have a garbage can tucked under his wing. Doc is puzzled by the garbage can. We can only assume that Chuck is a heavy drinker.
In other news, Zubrus will not return to this game.
18:51 Stupid Jason Arnott. He scores after some good puck movement by the Predators PK. It’s 2-1 Nashville.
16:06 This game blows.
15:21 WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! This game doesn’t blow anymore! Of all the crazy things, Dean McAmmond — Dean McAmmond — carries the puck around behind the Nashville net, hanging on to it until Zach starts crashing the net, then tosses it out in front for Zach to tap through Rinne. 2-2 game, and Schnookie asks Pookie, “Does that count as a real goal for Zach?” Pookie: “No.”
11:00 When asked by Doc, Chico informs us that no, Zach does not ever get tired.
5:56 Not more tooting!
5:12 MSG+ gives us a photo tour of the various Devils fans in attendance in the lower bowl, but neglect to show Frisby. Did he wear a Predators sweater tonight? To be better attired for using his tootoo whistle?
4:48 The official announcement comes down that the scorers have credited, at long last, the first Devils goal to Zach. Chico wonders why it took so long, and Pookie posits, “The smoke finally turned black.”
4:01 We are puzzled. A timeout has been called, out of the blue, and we hope aloud that it’s one of those terrible McTavish-type timeouts that cause the other team to lose to the Devils. But then we find out it was Lemaire who called it. Crap. Now the Devils are never going to win!
0:00 Okay, so the timeout wasn’t the Devils’ undoing. They get to the end of regulation tied at two. We’ll take it!
OVERTIME
3:22 A pair of Predators run into each other while trying to gain the Devils zone and cough up the puck. Rolston pounces on it, darts up the ice, and tries to blast a shot through Rinne, but alas, even when he’s being good, there’s still too much “worst hockey player on earth” in him to make a play like that work.
1:49 Marty gets completely hung out to dry when Andy Greene and the Iron Boar spend about a month waiting to invent the perfect play when they have full possession of the puck behind the net before finally coughing it up to the Predators in front. Marty is, however, up to the challenge.
0:00 Well, it wasn’t the Devils’ best game ever, but it also wasn’t their worst. We’re not too upset with a tie, all things considered.
SHOOTOUT
We don’t normally have anything to say about the shootout, but tonight Doc makes a point of telling us that ZZ Pops is taking the shootout, going in Zach/Langer/Travis order. Pookie sniffs, “It’s more Z Pops Z in this case.” It should be noted that one of the little house ornaments that Boomer made for the silent auction we mentioned at the start of the game had an error in the pattern. When the panels were all assembled into the little house shape, instead of saying “Home Sweet Home Christmas”, it says “Home Home Sweet Christmas.” Pookie dubs this shootout order the “Home Home ZZ Pops”.
Zach fails to score on his shot attempt, and then this Santorelli kid beats Marty by skating at full steam directly at Marty and then lasering a shot right through him. We crack up. It’s the Lord Nelson move – never mind the maneuvers, just go straight at him. And then what the hell???? Travis, needing to score to keep the shootout alive, loses the puck when it bobbles over his stick, but manages to keep his forward momentum while reaching behind himself to backhand what one presumes is meant as a face-saving lame-assed shot attempt… that catches Rinne completely by surprise and skitters into the net. Of course, the next shooter for the Preds scores on Marty, so it’s all for naught, but that might be the funniest shootout goal we’ve ever seen. We can now all let go of that first time Scott Gomez scored by totally whiffing on his shot (which was charming the first time, then cheeky when he did it next on purpose, then became proof of what a complete dick he is every time after), because there’s a new “adorable shootout goal by mistake” sheriff in town.
Posted in Nashville Predators, New Jersey Devils, Running Game Diary | 150 Comments »
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Wherein We Investigate Sestito Puente’s Connection To An International Cayenne-Smuggling Ring
November 22, 2009 by Schnookie
We are, as you know, very serious investigative journalists here at IPB. We know that that a good story can be hiding just around the nearest bend, and we’ve got great noses for news. And so it was last night, after the humiliation of watching the Devils pathetically lose to the Stars while we were hanging out with a bunch of Stars fans, that we were the perfect targets for a scoop that seems to have come from out of nowhere.
In our immediate postgame fits of depression, we turned to a sure-fire pick-me-up to get our minds off the lousy game: the 2010 Seed Savers Exchange catalog. If you have ever looked at a seed catalog, you’ll understand — it’s so cheerful to gaze upon picture after picture of glorious vegetables and plants, and to make mental lists of all the seeds you’ll order in January, even though you’re selecting about six times as many plants as can fit in your garden space. It’s all sunshiney and imaginary and full of rainbow dreams and promise of a newer, better life. In short, the opposite of how we felt after watching that Devils game. A few pages into the catalog, all thoughts of hockey had slipped away.
But when you’re a hard-hitting journalist, you can’t ever fully turn off your hockey brain. And when we got to page 35, the fourth page of the pepper section, we caught the first scent of a huge story. Here’s what we saw:
Yeah, you heard that right: the Joe Sestito family of Troy, NY. As in the Sestito Puente family? We were on the job, and we weren’t going to let this story go.
First we hit up our usual sources to see if we could find any evidence of a connection. Several hours of questioning (read: looking up Tim Sestito on the roster on the Devils website) yielded this juicy tidbit: our very own Sestito Puente is from Rome, NY. That’s kind of like Troy, NY, but not quite. We were going to have to dig deeper, and it was going to take some creative thinking, because the Devils website wasn’t giving us anything else.
We’re not easily deterred when we’re on the hunt, and we deployed our Pulitzer-caliber skills to find out whether Rome and Troy are close to being the same thing. What we found out may surprise you. They are not. Our sources were reluctant to go on the record about this, but we wouldn’t let Google Maps off the hook that easily — in the end, we determined that Troy is 116 miles from Rome, and we even got driving directions. Yeah, we’re just that good.
Our sources were raising more questions than they were answering now, so it was time to go to our guy on the inside. This source is the one we keep for only the direst emergencies, because the only way we can get him to talk is to cash in on a some favors he owes us from those wild times in that lawless place that time. You know what we mean. We don’t want to cash in those chips for just anything, but this Sestito Puente-Cayenne seed connection was too good to let go. We called on our source. We don’t want to give anything away, but suffice to say, his name rhymes with “Bloogle”. What “Bloogle” told us was to follow a lead with a shady outfit called “Johnny’s Selected Seeds”, and believe you us — Johnny didn’t disappoint. In fact, he shocked us:
Passed along to Joe Sestito by his brother? Who participates in an active Italian seed-sharing community in Toronto??? Good God. What had we uncovered?
We’ve found our answer. This has to be the same Sestito family, because Tim Sestito plays hockey, they play hockey in Toronto, and these Cayenne lords are “swapping” their seeds in Toronto. We don’t think we’re jumping to conclusions when we suggest that young Tim’s hockey trips to Toronto as a child were probably a cover for this Cayenne trade. In fact, schoolboy Tim was probably the ideal Cayenne mule — all towheaded and lisping through those missing front teeth, and charming the border guards with his looking so adorable in his little-kid hockey gear. How many pepper plants have been brought into the country this way? Youth hockey is so much easier to traffic your international hot-pepper product through than the complex system of underground tunnels that the vege-banditos have traditionally used to get across the US-Canada border. The Sestito family is brilliant.
And we got the scoop.
To celebrate our awesomeness, we think we might just plant some of those Sestito Puente cayenne peppers this coming summer. We hope they taste like hockey.
Posted in Devils, Devils Miscellany, Insightful Hockey Commentary, News and Notes, Our Minds Are Blown, Peanut Gallery, Sestito Puente | 45 Comments »