Some thoughts about tonight’s game, which we watched on TiVo delay and weren’t finishing up until it was going on 1 a.m. (that should give you an idea, Gentle Reader, of how much we enjoyed it):
1. Let us never speak of this again.
2. If he’s going to keep taking stupid-assed penalties, we’re going to start calling Langer “Captain Shit Shit Shit” instead of “Captain Fuck This Shit”. And for brevity’s sake, we’ll shorthand that as “Captain Shit-Cubed”. (If brevity is the essence of wit, we’re pretty sure “Captain Shit-Cubed” is its molecular foundation.)
3. When there was some question about the nature of the injury that was keeping Patty out for most of the first half of the game, we decided the problem was that someone untied that ribbon around his neck and his head fell off. The trainer managed to tape it back on, but got it backwards on his first try. The Devils understandably sagged a bit after seeing such a ghoulish scene in their dressing room during the first intermission, but in the end, a little elbow grease and a whole lot of athletic tape did the trick, and Patty was back to his old ineffectual ways before the night was out.
4. Marty’s finally starting to play the way we expected him to right out of the gate this season. Specifically, like the way he always does when he’s closing in on a record. Even more specifically, like poop. (We’ll be fair and concede that he pulled a Marc-Andre Fleury tonight, rather than just plain sucking; he made a lot of saves that he shouldn’t have, but only gave up goals he shouldn’t have, too.)
5. The defense is starting to play defensively a lot like the way we expected them to right out of the gate this season, based on how they looked last season. Specifically, like poop. Even more specifically, like poopy poop. (We’ll be fair and concede that the defense had a very good offensive game tonight.)
6. We normally yawn in the face of fighting in the NHL, but we saw two examples of fighting being used for good instead of evil tonight. First was Clarkson doing his “losing his helmet, and then getting up from the ice looking like the cover of a romance novel after a fight with a much bigger guy” thing and sparking the team back to life. Second was Rupper doing his henchman duties with gusto on Zach’s behalf after Hollweg had the temerity to hit Zach. That fight was awesome. We actually think Rupper was beating Hollweg with his own helmet while Hollweg was still wearing it. That’s hot. (It should be noted that as soon as Zach took the hit from Hollweg, we started cracking that Zach was lying on the ice, ringing a little silver handbell, and shouting weakly, “I say! Henchman! Henchman, there’s work to be done!” And then as soon as we’d said it, there was Rupper, earning his keep.)
7. After watching an entire game of him, we still don’t care about Luke Schenn.
8. Shootouts are stupid, but they’re even stupider when it’s going on 1 on a worknight, and we’re all exhausted, and we just want this game to be over for god’s sake.
9. PaulieMartinNation has no idea how to process what it saw tonight. More on that tomorrow.
