Good evening, Gentle Reader! Tonight’s got a full docket of games but before we sit down to tune in, we’re going to spend a little quality time with the grill. It’s a truly beautiful day here at Stately IPB Manor — the Hockey Gods are surely taking pity on us for last night’s games and have sent us perfect pork-and-bacon kebab weather — and our just-starting-to-leaf maple tree is asking for someone to bask in its canopy for a few minutes. So until we return, enjoy MON/BOS (Will the game be a fast-paced, high-scoring affair? Haha.) and PHI/WASH (Will Ovie & Co. show up? Will Philly continue to set the tone?). We’ll check in later with our thoughts and kebabs.
– Mmmmmmm kebabs…
– Hm. We’re getting the Ducks feed. This only makes our need to see Dallas win that much stronger. However, we are treated to an ice-level interview with Ryan Getzlaf who is asked about Corey Perry’s triumphant return. “Corey Perry. Corey Perry. Corey Perry. Oh, and let me please just add, oops, my shirt fell off.”
– Speaking of Corey Perry, we’re hoping his “triumphant return” is as effective as Alfredsson’s was.
– What? No Bouche? But who’s Bertuzzi going to jump? Oh, right. Anyone in a black uniform. Or white. Butzi’s not very discriminating, is he?
– What is this, a Devils game? The Stars further cement their status of “The Devils of the West” by getting a goal called back and a penalty against when a Star skates carefully around Giguere at (but outside) the top of the crease. There was a country mile between Hagman and the goalie!
– The Stars arena plays “Turn Me Loose”. As avid fans of “Wet Hot American Summer” we can only assume this is a sign that all the Stars need to do is strategically place a single hay bale in the way of the Ducks and their motorcycle in order to win the series.
– A Duck takes a penalty and Hayward complains, “Well, that was marginal!”
Schnookie: I can think of something else that was marginal!
Pookie: Yeah, your I.Q., Hayward!
Schnookie: Uh… I was talking about that non-goal…
– Well, that was a fun game! The Stars, playing, we assume, in blissful unawares that there’s a zany tornado wrecking havoc on the greater Dallas area, totally outworked the Ducks. That series is turning out to be waaaay more interesting that we could have hoped. We’re super psyched that we don’t have to wait more than 24 to see if the Ducks can stave off elimination. (We’d phrase that the other way around, but we’d be afraid that a certain superstitious Stars fan would never read IPB again.)
– We’d like to be watching the Sharks/Flames Series O’ Confusing Momentum Shifts, but we’re being held hostage by Blersus and the PHI/WASH OT. We don’t think we need to tell you, Gentle Reader, who we’re rooting for. Or rather, we refuse to type here who we’re rooting for since it is so, so wrong. But… It just playoffs!
UPDATE:
– This Sharks/Flames series isn’t inflaming our passions, really. Maybe it’s the late start time, or the… um… okay, fine, it’s the late start time. We acknowledge that both teams are perfectly cromulent, but we’ve both gotten sucked into writing IPB Living posts and putting in a few stitches, so we don’t have much to say about this game, which the Sharks (as of this writing) seem to have the game pretty firmly in hand. And thus endeth another night of Around The Dial. Join us again tomorrow for the Devils elimination night Game 5.
