Hard! Hard! Hard!

Around 11:20 or so on Wednesday morning, we had the following exchange via IM:

Pookie: Hey, according to TG, the Devils have the whole day off in Vancouver today! I wonder what they’re up to.

Schnookie: Drinking and whoring!

Well, guess what, Gentle Reader? We have photographic proof that at 11:40, at least, they boys were neither drinking nor whoring! They were doing the next best thing — curling! Today the Devils website did something it hasn’t done in ages and has posted interesting off-ice content about our boys, in this case, photos from the team’s trip to a curling rink for some of that fun-times team building that Bobby Holik pooh-poohed so unnecessarily. The photo gallery is available on devils.nhl.com. We took a gander, or two, or a thousand, at it after the one and only Morgan brought it to our attention this afternoon, and we’ve got some questions.

Question the first: What’s with the dress code? What were they told to wear to the curling lanes (lanes? Is that the right word?), and how did they end up in such a wide array of styles of dress? We’ve got just in this picture alone Paulie in a suit with dress shoes, a bunch of guys in informal athletic wear, and Langer (more on him later). In a later picture we also see Mottau in full suit/dress shoe splendor. Were they, like Morgan suggested, told to wear curling clothes and those guys didn’t believe it? Or were the guys in suits all out of curling clothes after hitting up curling activities on their own in previous cities on this trip? Were they playing “suits vs. skins” but it was cold enough in the rink that the skins guys got to wear sweats? And why no middle ground? Does Lou still taser guys who think about wearing jeans and t-shirts?

Question the second: Dude, Langer, what is going on there? Is it just us, or is he wearing a cashmere bathrobe and pajamas? Boomer suggested that wasn’t Langer at all, but rather a homeless guy the team adopted for a fun curling outing as an act of charity. The more we think about it, though, the more it makes sense. We mean, if we were told before seeing the pictures that one of the players was going to appear in baggy plaid pants, we’d assume it’s either going to be Patty and that’s his dress suit, or it’s Langer in pajamas.

Question the third: Paulie is wearing his sliding curling shoe on the opposite foot from most of his teammates; does this mean he’s left-footed as well as left-handed? We’ve read that he can shoot both-handed at basketball, so if he was pressed, could he curl ambifootedly, too?

Question the fourth: We don’t understand curling footwear at all. Yes, we know that’s not a question, but it needs to be said. Schnookie was supposed to be taking a 90-minute online training at work today and spent the majority of that time studying this set of pictures and trying to figure out the shoes instead. And she got nowhere with it.

Question the fifth: Speaking of footwear, check out Pando’s dress socks! Henceforth when celebrating his accomplishments, PandoNation shall bedeck the streets of the capital city with gray pin-stripe argyle sock fabric. And speaking of footwear, why does Pando seem to have different styles of curling shoes on each foot? Is he ambifooted, too?

Question the sixth: How does Pando curl, anyway? Is he the guy who always drops his rock into perfect defensive position? Can he never be the hammer? Does he just smartly bank his stone off the glass to get it safely out of the zone every time he takes a turn?

Question the seventh: Why is Zach wearing nurse shoes?

Question the eigth: When Schnookie pointed Zach’s nurse shoes out to Pookie, Pookie rather pathetically suggested all the other guys were wearing the same ones (they’re not). That got us wondering if the guys buy their own sneakers, or is it like getting office supplies at Pookie’s workplace? Do they just fill out a little form on which they check a box for “sneakers” on a list of athletic gear, specify in “notes” which size they are, leave the form in their stalls, and then in a few days the sneakers are delivered to them? If that is the case, it still doesn’t excuse him, though, because the other guys are all wearing normal shoes, and Zach’s still in nurse shoes, which means he specified that’s what he wanted when he filled out the “notes” section of his form.

Question the ninth: If the curling ice melted into a giant lake, which Devils would sink and which would, oh say, swim?

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Merry Woolgathering

It’s a lazy Monday night here at stately IPB Manor. We’ve got one more game diary on the docket before we go dark for the holidays on Wednesday and Thursday, so tonight we thought we’d gather a little wool about the state of the team. No, silly, not the statbitty state of the team, the unexpectedly hilarious tra-la-la-feelingsbits state of the team. You see, Gentle Reader, sometime in the last two months, the Devils have gone from down-in-the-mouth (TM Vinny “Fly On The Wall” Lecavalier) about Marty and other injuries, to being laugh-a-minute jokesters. Don’t believe us? Well how about about these stories and quotes from out of Devilstown.

– First up is TG’s report that the Devils have finally gotten on board with that decade-old trend of having a pre-game soccer activity. After years of being the lone Devil willing to kick a soccer ball around, Patty has, at long last, figured out how to strong-arm his teammates into being like everyone else in the league. Yeah, we’re as surprised as you are, Gentle Reader, that he couldn’t even manage this when he was captain. Unless this is all part of his plot to steal Langer’s C, a plot we’re positive is either in full swing or is totally imaginary on our parts. Probably the former. Anyway, our favorite part of TG’s story about the soccer game is this sequence of money quotes:

“‘We all know Paul Martin is a (multi) sport star, but he’s definitely not a soccer star, let’s put it that way,’ [Bobby]Holik said.

Martin said he played soccer during the summer as a kid. He also starred in football, basketball and baseball in high school in Minnesota. He said he has one soccer skill over Holik that doesn’t come into play in their pre-game fun.

‘Bobby can play, but he can’t run,’ Martin said.”

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Zing! We can only hope Blobby’s like Bud White, and will fuck Paulie for that if it takes him the rest of his life.

What this whole thing has got us thinking, though, is that Zach appears to be notably absent from the list of soccer participants (although Travis, shockingly, is not. Is he going to lose his membership in Shot Club now that he’s also in Soccer Club?). This can mean only one thing: Zach is trying to start a loosey-goosey pre -game cribbage activity for the guys to warm up and team-build around. He probably kneels on the concrete floor of the bowels-of-the-arena hallways before games, wearing his hockey skivvies, the laughter and camaraderie of the soccer game echoing around him as he meticulously sets up all the pegs in his cribbage board. And when it’s all set, suddenly a soccer ball comes bouncing down the hall, slamming into his cribbage board and scattering the deck of cards, and then Paulie comes bounding after it, showing off how well he can run and arrogantly stepping all over the board and sending the pegs skittering across the concrete into the far corners of the hallway. Zach makes some exasperated sighing sounds, watches Paulie trot back to the soccer game all smiles and triumph, then he knits his bushy little brows, gathers up all the pegs, resets the board, and waits for it all to happen again.

Also, if asked, Zach would say things like, “Bobby can play, but he can’t count.”

– Second is Rich Chere’s survey of the Devils favorite Christmas tunes. Most of the guys choose rock and/or roll versions of holiday songs, such as “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, David Bowie’s “Little Drummer Boy”, or The Boss’s “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”. Boring! Much more interesting was Clarkson, that boneheaded dullard we love so dearly, choosing a ditty performed by Alvin and the Chipmunks. Or Tommy Albelin picking a traditional Swedish song. He’s such a silver fox! Or Patty Elias picking a Mariah Carey song. No wonder he wasn’t mentioned in the discussion earlier this season regarding whose iPod gets used in the dressing room. However, the two things that stood out most were:

1. Travis answering “Jingle Bells” only to have Coach Sutter answer “‘Jingle Bells’. That was said with humor.” We can only hope they were standing right next to one another; Travis responded first and then Sutter snickered and gave his answer with lots of eye-rolling and air-quoting. Poor Travis.

2. Bobby Holik answered “Music means nothing to me.” Looks like someone needs a heaping dose of the Power of the Arts!

– Thirdly, is another gem of a quote from one of Rich Chere’s articles, this one in response to Travis getting the deciding goal in the shootout against Philly just a few days after Jason Blake beat Clemmer on a shootout spin-o-rama. Chere asked Travis if he’d consider doing a spin-o-rama himself, and Travis responded: “I’d probably fall. Actually, I know I’d fall. I wanted to keep it simple.” If you were told last season that three people associated with the Devils would be supplying us with more laughs this season than in all the prior ones added together, would you have guessed those three people would be Rich Chere, Brent Sutter, and Travis Zajac? Yeah, us neither.

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New Nicknames

We just had this exchange:

Pookie: I want Zach to have a new nickname. I think I’m going to start calling him “Scrap Iron”. Think it’ll fly?

Schnookie: But we already have the Iron Boar. That’s too close.

Pookie: Right. How about “Scrap Piglet”?

Schnookie: Nah. “Scrap Suckling”.

Pookie: Absolutely! And Travis can be “Squire Squab”!

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It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year, Unless You’ve Been Naughty

Now that it’s after Thanksgiving, that means it’s full-time Christmas Season! WOOOO! It also means the quarter mark of the NHL season has passed, so Santa has a substantial enough body of work to assess when he makes his list of which Devils have been naughty and which have been nice. Sure, he’s still got a month or so to check the list twice, so these are entirely unofficial results, but we’re proud to say that we have spies in Santa’s workshop who have smuggled out — at great personal cost, no less — the preliminary draft. Let’s take a look at who on our team can expect a shiny new hockey stick for Christmas, and who’s in line for a honkin’ lump of coal.

Forwards:

Dainius Zubrus: Nice After spending last season being the 6’5″ Sergei Brylin, Zubrus has spent the last few weeks being the not-flakey Jason Arnott. We knew it! We knew he could be a good linemate for Patty! We don’t expect him to keep this up for very long, but even for just a few games, it’s worth a great present from Santa.

Zach Parise: Extremely Nice Santa should stop two or three times at Zach’s house this year for how extraordinary Zach’s first quarter has been. When all was darkness and despair, Zach was a bright shining light of talent, heart, and third-in-the-league-in-goal-scoring. We’ve been hearing for years that Zach is all but guaranteed to be the next captain of the team (we personally are pulling for Travis, but that’s a whole other post) and so far this season, we’ve seen why. When everyone else was content to say the season was a lost cause, Zach said, “Pshaw! Lost cause my arse! I’ll score fifty goals! What? Our defense and goaltending sucks so bad it won’t help? Whatevs.”

John Madden: Undecided Is it just us, or does it seem like Madden hasn’t been playing this year, even before he was injured? Santa has no idea. He’ll probably put him on the nice list, just because Madden’s a stalwart and a cranky-pants, but he’s our stalwart cranky-pants.

Brian Rolston: Naughty Oh, some people might say you can’t judge Rolston because he’s been injured all season, but you know what? That’s exactly why Santa’s stuffing his stocking with nothing but coal. You can’t go filling Devils fans with hope by being the first sought-after free agent to sign with New Jersey, then fail to make the power play instantly awesome right out of the gate, and then get injured in such a way that no one knows when or how you’ll ever be back, and have that injury happen to be the starting point for the most devastating team-wide run of injuries we’ve ever seen. No, Brian Rolton’s on the very top of Santa’s naughty list.

Brian Gionta: Nice Enough to Not Get Coal But… We had high hopes for Contract Year Gio. Those hopes haven’t really been fulfilled. He’s not been terrible, but we’re hoping Santa’s elves don’t knock themselves out making Gio’s toys this year. Give him a wooden train or two, but make them small enough to be packed in a suitcase come Trade Deadline Day.

Jamie Langenbrunner: Naughty, But Surprisingly Only Barely Langer can thank his lucky stars that Zach is a superstar and Travis remembered how to play hockey this year, because the resurgent ZZ Pops line is the only thing saving his petulant, stupid-penalty-taking, ineffective-captaining, open-net-missing, sucking-on-the-point-on-the-PP, craptacular ass. It’s hard to imagine what Patty did to make Sutter hate him so much, because there’s no way in hell that Langer is any better a captain than Patty was. But again, he’s the Pops for the Poppers (and that’s “pops” as in “lousy old man”, not “pops” as in “he’s what makes the offense pop”), so his lump of coal will at least be attractively wrapped.

Blobby Holik: Naughty There’s nothing Holik could have done to make Santa put him on the Nice List because, come on, Santa’s no dummy.

Mike Rupp: Nice As a jolly, fun-loving guy, Santa surely must love Rupper, what with his big grin and easy-going manner. We love Rupper, too, especially since this year’s he’s getting one of the greatest gifts we can bestow upon a Devil: The IPB Order of Pleasantly Surprising. That’s right, with Asham off being predictably bad with Philly, Rupper’s taken over the mantle of that player of whom we’re mostly likely to say, after a high-energy shift or an expected goal, “my, but I’m pleasantly surprised!” What fourth liner could ask for more?

Travis Zajac: NICE!, With A Capital “N-I-C-E” He’s still a tiny bit afraid of the acorn, but Travis has not only remembered how to center the ZZ Pops line, he’s become even more dynamic doing so. Santa is going to pile mountains of toys under Travis’s tree (that’s what she said!) to reward the way he’s become a dynamic, confident, powerful player in every zone. Of course, we fully put forth that we are totally blind to Travis’s flaws, but apparently so is Santa.

Jay Pandolfo: Nice, As Always Santa, like every important person of influence, is a citizen of PandoNation. Pando could have been sucking so bad that he was a healthy scratch every night and he’d still get every present he asked for. Sure, he’s not scoring as much as he was when he was in a contract year, but Santa doesn’t expect goals from Pando. We all spent half of last season with our hearts in our throats waiting for Pando to overcome his tragically shifted bits, but this year he’s bucked the teamwide injury trend and been his usual stoic, penalty-killing, defensively delightful emperor-god self. Santa will reward that handsomely.

Petr Vrana: Naughty Vrana Vrana Vrana! No matter how many times Santa sees his name on his list, it still doesn’t make him an NHL player.

David Clarkson: Nice Looking Santa’s elves are expected to be creative (no one wants the same dolly or toy truck year after year, do they?) so it would only follow that Santa would appreciate creativity in his gift recipients, too. So far this year, Clarkson has shown a shocking willingness to attempt moves other than his patented Clarkaround. Sure, those other moves aren’t really resulting in a huge increase in points, but as long as Clarkson’s still one of the prettiest names on Santa’s list, he won’t need to worry about making space in the coal bin. Santa may be smart, but he’s also pretty shallow.

Patrik Elias: Nice-ish, But Trending Nicer There was a time this season when Patty was heading up the Naughty list, but Santa’s been swayed by his recent resurgence. It might be because he’s got the same linemates every night for the first time in the Sutter Era (thanks to all the injuries making it impossible for Sutter to keep shuffling guys as much as he’d like to), it might be because Zubrus has been possessed by ghosts of the A Line, and it might be because he’s suddenly realized that with Marty out, the team MVP award is up for grabs (psst, Patty — as long as Zach’s on the team, that award’s not actually up for grabs), but whatever the reason, Patty’s playing decently again. For that, Santa will be bringing, like, an orange to put in the toe of his stocking, and maybe some shampoo, like a friend of ours always got in her stocking as a kid. He’ll need a few more good games before Christmas if he wants to upgrade past hair care products.

Defense:

Sheldon Brookbank: As a Defensmean, Naughty; As a Forward, Nice Santa doesn’t usually do the conditional thing (if there’s too much wiggle-room, the elves get confused), but in Brookbank’s case, there’s not much choice. Maybe he’ll get a Transformer in his stocking that goes from coal to toy and vice versa depending on where Sutter puts him in the line-up.

Colin White: Nice He didn’t spend the beginning of this year devastating the Devils d-corps with an eye injury, so Santa’s bringing him that pony he’s always dreamed of.

Andy Greene: Undecided Uhhh… right. Santa’s highly likely to accidentally fly right over Greener’s house, completely forgetting that he’s supposed to stop there.

Paul Martin: Nicest! Two seasons in a row now we’ve seen the team go into a tailspin when Paulie’s missed more than two games due to injury. No, he’s not the Niedermayer replacement we were promised (remember those days, Gentle Reader? Ha! Sigh.) but he’s clearly the North Star leading the d-corps to respectability. He’s also played well enough to convince Sutter to let him have carte blanche in the offensive quadrants — now if only he can convince all of us (especially his father) that he can finish. Fortuantely, Santa’s a Devils fan (we mean, duh! Whose team colors does he wear? Yeah. We rest our case) so making the nice list isn’t contingent on being a good finisher. (Unless your name rhymes with Blian Blionta.)

Bryce Salvador: Super-Duper Nice The Iron Boar went from “guy who was so bad in the playoffs last year that it was later reported that he was playing with an injury” to “guy we don’t really like being a Devil” to “Pookie’s fifth- or sixth-favorite Devil”. That’s quite a trajectory of niceness!

Mike Mottau: Naughty Sorry, it’s too soon after his deserved two-game suspension for Santa to be bringing Mottau the guitar and dog he asked for when he was a kid. Sure, it was an accident that he threw such a dirty hit, and he truly didn’t mean to hurt anybody, but still. Santa can’t go rewarding that kind of behavior. If Applesauce really wanted those things, he should have waited until after Christmas to go around hitting people in the head.

Anssi Salmela: Nice, And Batshit Bonkers Finally — finally — there is a d-man on the point on the Devils power play who will wildly fire the puck no matter what things look like in front of the net. And more than that, he so loves firing the puck no matter what things look like in front of the net that he is remarkably capable of retrieving it after it ricochets off people in front and keeping it after defenders have been able to stop his ill-advised shot attempts. But he’s crazy! It’s marvelous! We love it! And so does Santa.

Johnny Oduya: Much Nicer Than This Time Last Year Santa’s all about rewarding improvement, and for that, Oduya’s going to get some wicked awesome educational toys that teach fine motor skills — just like us, the elves don’t want Oduya regressing back to his “dropping the stick at every key opportunity” ways.

Goaltending:

Marty Brodeur: Naughty Every other record that Marty’s approached in his career has caused his game to go into a giant tailspin — just look no further than every time he approached 48 wins in a non-shootout season. So we fully expected that trait and his traditionally slow starts to seasons to combine to make the first two months of this year excruciating as we waited for him to round into form before surpassing Patrick Roy on the all-time wins list. So what does Marty go and do? He comes out of the gate on fire, plowing his way mercilessly toward the wins and shutout records. But that’s not how it was supposed to be! More than that, he changed his mask. As soon as he put on that douchey, stupid, website-promoting mask, we all knew bad things were going to happen. And oh how terribly, terribly bad those things have been. We hope he enjoys his giant lump of coal this Christmas, and more than that, we hope that “MB30″ mask of his makes him happy this June when he’s watching one of his rivals accept the Vezina. In the meantime, we’ll just keep vomiting on the floor every time we have to hear the words “Scott Clemmensen, New Jersey Devils starting goaltender”.

Kevin Weekes: Naughty Sure, it’s not his fault, but he’s naughty by circumstance here. If he’d been even remotely passable as a starting goalie, we’d all have been spared the Clemmensen Reign Of Terror.

Scott Clemmensen: Naughty Just… no. He’s still on Santa’s naughty list for the way he whined to The Sporting News about how unfair it was that he had to sit on the bench because the Devils were giving too much playing time to a guy who can rightly consider himself one of the all-time greats. And now that he’s smugging it up after games with Stan Fischler about what a total bad-ass goalie he is just because the Devils finally had to pay for putting all their eggs in one goaltending basket, he’s doubly on Santa’s shit list. In fact, Santa isn’t even going to bother giving him coal, because to add insult to injury, Clemmensen’s been very good in net simultaneously with being very bad. No, Santa’s just not even going to stop at Clemmer’s house. He’s going to be like us and keep pretending Clemmer isn’t even on the Devils roster. Wait, Clemmensen who now? Isn’t he the guy who couldn’t crack the Leafs depth chart last season? Sigh. Is it March yet?

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Applesauce and Acorns

Today, Mike “Doc” Emrick was given the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award from the Hockey Hall of Fame. We know there are a lot of people out there who don’t care for his call, but we think those people are idiots we can’t say anything about Doc that will change their minds; we also know there are a lot of people who think Doc’s the best in the business and know that this award is well earned. We will never, ever forgot Doc calling the overtime of an absolutely insane Devils-Flyers game back in the late ’90s. The action was the fastest, most furious stuff you’ll ever see and Doc kept pace as only Doc can. When ESPN showed the highlights later they didn’t bother doing their own analysis — they just shut up and played the entire overtime with Doc’s call. That’s Doc in a nutshell for us. We consider ourselves as lucky to have had him as our play-by-play man as we do to have had Scott Stevens on the blueline, Marty in net, and Pando leading the charge. (Shut up! We heart Pando!)

Speaking of nutshells, we decided to celebrate Doc’s Hall of Fame career by making a cake. A very special cake. A cake that answers the question: what happens when you combine Mike “Applemotherfuckingsauce” Mottau and Travis “Acorns” Zajac.

Forget JMFJ, AMFS is where it’s at!

Travis’s abacus.

That’s right, it was time for a little applesauce cake, baked in miniature acorn molds. (That’s right, when Schnookie said earlier that we were “cooking up an idea for a post” she meant it literally! Hahahahaha! We crack us up. Sigh. When does Marty come back?) After some furious mixing, stirring, and baking, we had a handful of adorable acorn cakes that were good but not great — like Travis! — and which needed a touch more spice — like Travis! — but were better the more we thought about them — like Travis! (In the end the consensus was the recipe has the potential to kick ass — like Mottau!)

The cakes were so much like their Waldorf Kid inspiration, we figured they’d be appropriate medium for testing Travis’s math skills.

Hey Travis, how many months is Marty going to be out?

Three to four! Right!

Hey Travis, how many Devils are on IR right now?

Very good! When Pauile Martin was added, that brought the total to six!

Hey Travis, how many goals are you going to score this year?

What?!? Two?? Come on, Travis! You don’t have to believe that bunk about you being a playmaking defensive center! You can score acorns! You can, you can! You can’t? Fine. If that’s the way you want to be. So, how many is Zach going to score?

More than you can count? Sweet! We’ll take it!

Hey Travis, overall, how’s the season going to end up?

Is that a hill of beans? Not funny, Travis! Not funny at all.

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Woolgathering With IPB On The First Day of Fall

Happy First Day of Autumn, Gentle Reader! It’s a cool September night here, and we have pre-season hockey on our television. Sure, it’s just the Rangers vs. the Senators, but it’s hockey enough to get us gathering a little wool about training camp and the season to come.

– Coach Sutter was quoted on Fire & Ice saying, “There is no reason to believe Patty can’t have a career year this year.” Au contraire, Coach. There are puh-lenty of reasons Patrik Elias can’t have a career year this year. Those reasons begin and end with “because he’s Patrik Elias”.

– Tom Gulitti is providing updates on the pre-season game in Philly. The Devils had three early PPs, including two five-on-threes, and yet didn’t score a goal and only managed four shots. Who says training camp is too short? Clearly the boys only need two solid practices before they’re ready to be playing in full mid-season form.

– While watching the Rangers-Senators game, MSG gives us a rundown of key rule changes, including that all face-offs after a penalty will be in the offensive zone. This causes Schnookie to froth at the mouth: “Great, so now Bobby Fucking Holik can lose all the face-offs on the PK. Let me tell you, if Bobby Fucking Holik gets even one second of time on the penalty kill I’ll… rant and rave ineffectually. And you can take that to the bank!” So it begins, this Second Bobby Fucking Holik Era. So it begins.

– Travis was recently featured in a Q&A on the Devils website, and it totally cracked us up. The highlights include him admitting that yes, New York has better pizza than Manitoba (shocking!), the horrifying confession that he pumps himself up for games by listening to Nickelback (NOOOOOOOO!), him listing his girlfriend only third out of the five things he’d take on a desert island (she comes after Xbox and a television, and is probably thrilled with his priorities), and him not including Zach at all on the list of five things. In fact, in another answer, Travis refers to Zach as “one of my better friends on the Devils”. That… doesn’t sound very enthusiastically pro-Zach. Does that mean Zach actually is one of Travis’s friends, or is that like saying the Blues third jersey is “one of the better third jerseys in the NHL” — that’s really damning with faint praise. We guess Zach’s glad his answer to “what five things would you take on a desert island?” didn’t get printed (it was “Travis, Travis, Travis, Travis and Travis”), and he still cherishes his half of the “BFF” locket more than Travis ever will.

– We are beyond thrilled that so many games will be carried in HD this season. We’re even getting this Rangers preseason game in HD! Preseason! In HD! Will wonders never cease? (Side note: While watching our summer viewing, we were gobsmacked to hear a character in one of the early seasons of Murder, She Wrote referred to HDTV. So Jessica Fletcher had heard of this a bajillion years ago but it’s only now that we’re finally getting it?! WTF, TV Gods? Where have you been all this time?) There is however one problem. You know us, there’s always a problem, right? Because of the additional HD channels, our sports package is all rearranged. MSG is now channel 634. We’re not sure we can handle this. It’s been 621 for as long as we can remember. We don’t handle change well. It’s bad enough that FSNY isn’t called FSNY anymore. We have to learn a new name and a new number!

– In case you missed it, the Devils annual “we pretend to have interesting behind-the-scenes content on our website” photo gallery of head-shot day is was up on the Devils website. It featured some darling pictures of Zach, Paulie, and Pando we were going to discuss, but it seems the window for pretending to have interesting behind-the-scenes content on the website is even shorter than we were expecting. The life of a Devils fan is never easy, is it?

– Last but not least, we’d like to humbly draw you attention to a collection of season previews presented over at ModFan. That’s right, ModFan lives! Today you’ll find an amuse bouche of in-a-nutshell season predictions for the Eastern Conference. Tomorrow, we’ll post the Western Conference. Bon appetit!

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Project Training Camp, Or: The Greatest Imaginary Blog Post Ever Written

Remember how yesterday we waxed poetic about those days when a blog post idea just finds us, instead of us having to labor excessively to produce something half-assed? Well guess what, Gentle Reader! It happened again today! We were finishing up dinner and something marvelous happened: we either stumbled across some old pictures on one of our laptops from our trip to training camp last year, or we had the TV on and it was set to TCM while they were showing the James Cagney movie G-Men. One of those things. We’re not saying which one. At any rate, we realized we simply had to share these photos of the Devils in their full training-camp splendor, to help brighten these brutally hockeyless dog days of summer.

The first thing we saw at training camp that day lo so many months ago was the boys doing some loosely-organized stretching. Here’s Paulie Martin, notorious non-stretcher, in the background leaning against that column, doing his best to limber up his hamstrings while the coaching staff mills about in the foreground.

That Paulie! He’s such a hard worker!

Meanwhile, Zach and Travis were at the other side of the training facility, Zach in his black woolen turtleneck and Travis in gray sweats. While Captain Fuck This Shit wandered between them, conducting their stretches, Travis worked his stretchy rope things attached to the wall, and Zach defiantly held his indian clubs at his side.

“Can’t make me do indian club stretching!” he snotted, but one stern look from Langer made Zach fall into line.

The Devils have the finest indian club facilities in the NHL, it should be noted. No one else works the indian clubs with the kind of focus and dedication that the Devils training staff has, and that’s why you see so few indian-club related injuries on the Devils in comparison to other teams. Also that’s why you see the Devils so far surpassing all other teams in the areas of hockey that require the skills needed to wave bowling pins around one’s head.

Once most of the stretching was done, Coach Robinson did a little mano-a-mano work with Johnny Oduya to practice the best way to respond when you’ve dropped your stick in the middle of intense pressure in your own defensive zone. Because Whitey is a seasoned vet, he already knows to roll around on the floor in a panic, so he was able to opt out of the drill. You can see him in the background, staying warm with the jumprope.

Whitey was looking every which kind of hot in his short shorts and midriff-baring top, especially when Coach Sutter strutted through in his tight gray sweatpants. Grrrowl!

That’s a lot of hott!

So while it was really awesome to get to see world-class athletes working out with state-of-the-art equipment, the real highlight of our trip to training camp was when the fighting practice started. Ever wonder why the Devils are such feared heavyweights? Because they are students of aesthetics; they value the art of fisticuffs, and the traditions. Behold:

The blows they land are not as important as the composition they strike. Function follows form when you’re a Devils goon. And look at the classroom environment! The boys drape themselves over the high-tech gym apparati like pommel horses and lightly-stuffed gym mats, and soak up every pearl of wisdom bestowed upon them by Coach Sutter. There’s a reason the Devils were a playoff team last season — the seeds of success were planted in the early days of the preseason.

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