Devils @ Thrashers, 4/6/10: Open Thread

Today we don’t need to be looking for that baby deer one more time, because we’ve found a baby turtle:

This is what Boxworthy looks like after he’s been shrunk to the size of a silver dollar. Or rather, this is what he looks like after he’s been shrunk and has somehow managed to crawl out of his suddenly comically-oversized butler’s uniform.

We don’t know what this is a sign of, because the reason this baby turtle was even spotted in the first place was because Schnookie was desperately searching the grounds at work for her missing iPod. While Pookie was at the dentist getting three fillings. After having picked up some kind of stomach bug yesterday. While on vacation. So was it a good day or a bad day? Is the turtle a harbinger of joy or fate mocking us? The only way we can find out for sure is to see how the Devils play, and how the rest of the hockey action tonight pans out.

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Devils vs. Thrashers, 12/28/09: Argh! Tivo Delay!

It feels like it’s been a thousand years since we last saw the Devils, and it’s going to be a couple extra hours beyond that for us tonight, as we’re on tivo delay. We’ll try to post our increasingly incoherent thoughts, though, as we watch the game in the increasingly late, late night tonight. It should be fun!

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Devils @ Thrashers, 2/6/09

It’s Friday night, so that means it’s open thread time! Go Devils!

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Devils vs. Thrashers, 11/01/08

First of all, we’d like to wish a giant Happy Birthday to the one, the only, Boomer! (We celebrated her half-birthday in May because November 1st is way too close to Christmas for gift giving, but we couldn’t exactly let her birthday-birthday pass without cake, could we?)

In a few hours we’ll know how much the Devils appreciate Boomer’s years of dedication and sacrifice for her love of the team. Dedication in driving 90 minutes one-way to 41+ games for all our years as season-ticket holders and sacrifice in letting herself get hit in the head with a puck shot by Wayne Gretzky (or Sheldon Souray depending on how much you want to embellish the story). And no, we’ll not let the long IR list excuse them when if they lose; we’ll just know that they don’t love Boomer as much as they should. Shame on them.

Secondly, we’ll be offering up some woolgathering and/or post-game reaction (most likely the latter, since we’re all a little fried after battling a tough corn maze this afternoon — we can only assume navigating a corn maze is a lot like trying to coach the Devils d-corps), but in the meantime, please enjoy an open thread!

7:40 p.m. We spend most of the first 15 minutes of the first period being more interested in watching one of our cats chase her tail underneath a sheet of tissue paper than we are in the game. By the time we’re paying attention to the game, we’re all a little tipsy from our wine and the Devils’ fourth line is on the ice. When Bergfors’s name is mentioned in the play-by-play, we start with our old Simpsons joke from the Berglund days, and Pookie says, “Bergfors is the new Boogerlund.” Schnookie retorts, “You mean Boogerfors.” Bergfors promptly scores from an atrocious angle, and Pookie cheers tipsily, “Way to go, Air Force Boogerlund!” Maybe you had to be there.

7:45 p.m. Oh, we haven’t mentioned yet how peeved we are that the Rangers and Islanders are both playing tonight, so of course it’s the Devils who aren’t in HD. But because it doesn’t suck enough that Cablevision has shunted us to the Crap Channel, they’ve given us an especially horrible picture. It’s a good thing we’re not diarizing, because we can’t tell all these guys apart. Hell, we can’t even see the puck. Yes, we’re glad the game’s on TV, and we’re glad we’ve got Doc and Chico calling it, but with this poor quality picture, we might as well be watching it on the radio.

8:05 p.m. We go to a commercial break with the Devils holding a 3-0 lead and Marty down in his crease, clearly in pain. Look, it’s one thing for the Devils to not want Boomer to have a happy birthday, but the Hockey Gods too? Not cool. What did she ever do to you, Hockey Gods?

8:21 p.m. It’s no secret that we are not fans of defensemen leaving their feet to block shots, and as soon as Weekes comes in for Marty, the Devils d-corps immediately starts doing that left and right. This makes it pretty clear to us that going down to block shots is a definite statement by a defender that he doesn’t trust his goalie.

8:38 p.m. It’s 6-0 at the second intermission, and really, you can’t help but feel bad for the Thrashers. We just looked up “fantastically atrocious” in the dictionary, and sure enough, there’s a picture of them. Poor things.

8:54 p.m. Our intermission show features a pitch from Al for some sort of post-game show (we’re not sure what the actual thing was, because we don’t pay attention to Al) on which Stan Fischler will be telling viewers about how Jacques Plante was the first goalie to wear a mask. Wha-huh????? Since when???? Why have we never heard about this before??? Gah. Stan.

9:32 p.m. Well that’s a bit more like it! Scoring 6 is a lot more enjoyable when the Devils aren’t also giving up 6. And while we’re hardly confident with him in net, we’re so happy for Weekes to have played well, especially in the same week that he cemented his place in the All-Time Most Favorite Devil pantheon by dressing as Arlette for Halloween. See, Weekesie? We love you. So don’t take it personally that we’re going to spend the next two days sending “happy elbow” vibes Marty’s way.

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Devils vs Thrashers, 02/15/08

Yikes. 7:00 creeps up on us in a hurry tonight, and we just barely get ourselves settled in front of the TV in time to behold the Devils taking on the Thrashers. And it’s a good thing we did get here in time, or we would have missed Doc’s really bizarre outfit. Pookie says of his suit: “That’s like the guy who came up to the desk today and said, ‘I want to print out a picture of this school bus.’” Pause. “‘Made out of butter.’”

FIRST PERIOD

18:07 It seems there’s every which kind of “first place” on the line this evening; if the Devils win, they’ll move into first in the Atlantic, and if the Thrashers win, they’ll move into a tie for 10th in the conference, aka “First in the Southeast”.

17:24 We are too busy fretting that Pelley being sent down to Lowell means something Janssen-related to really note what’s going on. It seems, at cursory glance, that the teams are kind of meandering up and down the ice.

14:53 Zach walks niftily out of the corner for a snappy little shot that Hedberg handles without trouble. Now we’re a bit distracted by the report from Boomer that she had been invited out “by a gentleman” to the theater tonight. Schnookie: “Who?” Pause. “Would invite you to the theater?” (For the record, Boomer didn’t think twice. There’s no theater on Devils gamenights, thank you very much.)

13:52 Oh, we’re paying attention now! Thanks, Holik, for crashing deliberately into Marty to wake us all up, and put the Devils on the PP. On the replay, Chico “explains” the infraction smugly, “Bobby is… not the best skater here I guess.”

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Devils vs. Thrashers, 12/02/07

This is madness — a 5:00 Sunday start? But this is the time of day we feel like we should be watching harness racing or the daily roundup from the dogtrack and feeling like toothless degenerates! Well, we’ll instead turn our degenerate attentions to the Devils-Thrashers game, which is, bizarrely, the first weekend home game for the Devils since opening night, or something like that. Who came up with this schedule, anyway? And should we expect the usual “Devils home matinee against a Southeast team” outcome (read: “awful”), or does this count as a night game? Will the Devils only be half sucky?

Doc and Chico set the broadcast going with a cheerful revisiting of Zach’s hat trick from the Canadiens game. We don’t complain. (And it’s noted Zach is now in the top 20 in scoring in the NHL! Holy jumpin’!) We then turn our attentions to Marty’s awesomeness; Chico says, “It’s hard to come up with new things to talk about with him, but all you have to do is wait for the next game and he’ll so something new! Then you’ll have something to talk about!” Oh, Chico. Don’t ever change.

FIRST PERIOD

18:55 Chico tells us that, based on there having been an exchange of long-range shots by the teams, both teams are really showing off that they’ve got great legs today. It never ceases to amaze us how he loves to make these sorts of proclamations after just a minute of play.

17:30 The Devils have a long shift of sustained offensive-zone pressure, complete with good bounces off the backboards, beating flat-footed defenders to loose pucks, and missing chances with wide-open nets.

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Devils @ Thrashers, 11/23/07

What is this we see? A non-division game? Does the NHL front office know this is happening? Of course, nothing’s ever good enough for us, and we can’t help but kick things off by complaining that the best we can get after enduring nine straight Atlantic Division opponents is the Thrashers. It’s almost like it wasn’t worth the wait.

As it turns out, Thanksgiving was not kind to Patty, who is flu-y and out tonight. Who will we complain about if he’s not skating? Gio’s sure got his work cut out for him in this one. (Oh, and we told Patty to stay away from the oyster stuffing, but did he listen? He’s incorrigible.)

Doc and Chico lead off with a warning that Kovulchuk is really good. Yes, we’ve noticed that about him, and it’s only one of many reasons we’re so thrilled about the Devils’ chances here.

What the hell? We go to commercial and see what seems like a 10-second spot for something called “Headbangers”, a large bowling action figure toy. Pookie: “Forget a new laptop. I want that for Christmas.”

FIRST PERIOD

20:00 Before the puck is dropped Doc and Chico tell us Don Waddell was at a mall at 5:00 this morning getting a great sale price on a table saw. Surely this is something the Devils can exploit later in this game, right?

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