Random Thoughts On A Quiet Saturday Night

– For a variety of uninteresting reasons, Pookie arrived at work this morning with about 20 minutes to spare and a hankering to find videos about Beaks on YouTube. She found this:

When she sent the link to Schnookie this exchange ensued:

Pookie: I found a HILARIOUS video of Beaks and CoreyPerry CoreyPerry. Fighting in Juniors. At the end of a playoff game.
Schnookie: Oh my god.
Pookie: I was laughing out loud in my car. It was Muppet Baby Douchebags.
Schnookie: I’m honestly not sure who I’d think wins that. Of course, we’re ALL winners here.
Pookie: It was like what I imagine baby peacocks would be like if they were chimpanzees learning life skills by copying their parents.
Schnookie: (After watching the video) Oh my god. That’s a beauty. I love Beaks tossing his head. Like, I’m sure he thought, a wild stallion. He looked like Beaks of Chincoteague there. A little wild pony.

– For a variety of uninteresting reasons we ended up discussing Principal Skinner and Superintendent Chalmers during dinner tonight, which, of course, spiraled into an exchange of Simpsons quotes. When Schnookie pulled out the “how will anyone know it’s a Honda without the H?” scene, Pookie suddenly declared that Looch had eaten the H off all the Hondas he’s ever seen. Schnookie agreed, because Looch just loves to eat the letter H. Pookie then remarked, “That’s why that Bruins/Habs game was such a melee. Looch just sees all those little H’s on the sweaters…”

– Boomer made us all laugh really hard after dinner when she tried to read aloud the blurb about Nora Roberts’s upcoming release, Catching Fire, a romance novel about smokejumpers. Boomer launched into the first sentence of the blurb, “There’s little as thrilling as firefighting…” but said instead, “There’s little as thrilling as firefarting.” We still haven’t stopped shrieking with laughter. Being a grownup is grand.

– We got a crazy new fisheye lens for our camera today. VE Mats loves it.

So does Rollie.

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Did You Know?

That the Devils are fifth overall? That they’re only two points behind the Penguins?! That they’re 8-2-0 in their last ten games?!? That they’re four points behind the league leaders with two or three fewer games played?!?! Wowza! The things you learn when you bother to check the standings before mid-March!

Other things that stood out as we marveled at the after-one-month standings:

– The Sharks have as many points as the Avs, but don’t seem to get any press for it. Must be everyone’s finally really learned their lesson when it comes to SJ.

– Schnookie’s been saying all along that the Rangers were going to do their usual coming out of the gate strong only to tail off starting in November. She’s a genius, that one.

– There are two teams that have identical records. One team’s coach is on the perpetual hot seat. The other is being lauded as a rejuvenated genius. Who are the teams? Why, the Flyers and the Sabres, of course. (Obviously, the situations and expectations of the two teams are wildly different, but it’s still noteworthy to us because everything we’ve heard around the water cooler [and by "heard around the water cooler" we mean "read on Puck Daddy"] suggested to us that the Sabres were tearing it up while the Flyers were having a disastrously slow start.)

– The Hurricanes are worse than the Leafs. Good thing we didn’t go on record picking the Canes for the Presidents Trophy.

– We did go on record picking the now-24th-overall Ducks. Are we chagrined? Hell no! Instead, we’re looking forward to the wild second-half that’s going to catapult Getzi and his compatriots to the top.

Yes, yes, Gentle Reader, we know. Looking at the standings this early is a foolish exercise, but… watch out for those Ducks.

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Wherein We Tackle Very Important Issues

We haven’t done much to hide the fact that, for the first few weeks of this season, we haven’t really been paying very close attention. At the very outset it’s all just a blur of fuzzy, happy “hockey’s back!” vibes for us, and since then we’ve been anticipating and then participating in Patty Party. So now that Patty’s back (In Dallas) we’re ready to hunker down and take some stock of the hockey landscape. Here are some of our thoughts:

– *Meow Mix jingle*

– We really liked that the Devils won fairly deliciously in Pittsburgh last night.

– We really, really liked that in addition to the old reliable players like Brodeur and Parise, the keys to the win included fresh faces like Bergfors, Egg, and Fraser. Let the youth movement begin! Or, at the very least, let the young players continue to score fluke goals against a kinda shaky Fleury.

– We really do not like that the delicious win in Pittsburgh came at the expense of Pando and Paulie. All kidding aside, the Devils are a markedly worse team without Paulie than they are with him. All kidding front and center, that’s saying a lot, because even with him, they’re awful. No, really, just kidding. Now, we are not surprised that it was Butthead who broke Paulie, because that’s just the sort of thing Butthead does. We already had his name engraved indelibly in the ledger of officials enemies of PaulieMartinNation, and now his name is being added again. What surprised us, though, was that it was Rupp who broke Pando. Of all the guys PandoNation thought we’d have to add to our ledger of official enemies, Rupp was probably the last one we’d have considered. We mean, we rode in an elevator with him once, and he seemed so jolly and nice! Turns out we were lucky to get out of that elevator alive.

– Based on current trends in the NHL’s injury-reporting system, we can predict already what the prognosis is for Pando and Paulie: they’re both going to be out for “weeks”. This “weeks” thing is even more annoying that the “upper/lower-body injury” thing. Just give us a window, okay? Or someone make clear now that “weeks” means “less than five weeks, because once we get to five, we’d be saying ‘month(s)’”.

– Based on current trends in the NHL standings, we can predict that our preseason choice of the Ducks for the Presidents Trophy might be wrong. Might.

– Based on current trends of the first nine games of the Devils season, our preseason prediction of Lemaire being a terrible choice for the new head coach might be wrong. Might. We might not currently hate him. Might.

– Based on his performance so far this season, Brian Rolston is the almost certainly the single worst hockey player to ever lace ‘em up. Almost certainly.

– Based on his performance so far this season, Travis Zajac might be super-dreamy. AcornsNation is so proud to have splintered off from PandoNation after annexing those western territories. Especially now that Pando is surely out for “weeks”.

– Based on the performance of the Devils in last year’s playoffs, we are never, ever, ever going to look at current trends and try to extrapolate them into some sort of prediction, though. So we’re just saying that nine games in, we like the Lemaire hiring, hate Rolston, and swoon for Acorns. Of course, 58 minutes and 40 seconds into Game 7 against Carolina, we thought the Devils were going to advance to the second round, so make of all of this what you will.

– We have absolutely no idea how the landscape of the NHL looks right now. Because we think looking at the standings this early in the season is stupid (other than to be cognizant that our Anaheim Presidents Trophy vigil can probably be called off), we don’t know what anyone else’s record is. And because the NHL thinks it’s really cute to keep scheduling all 30 teams to play at the same time on the same night, we don’t ever watch any teams other than the Devils (and in the last week, the Stars).

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IPB Investigates The Nefarious Goings-On In Anaheim

After reading about Kevin Lowe’s absolutely delightful bitch-slapping of Brian Burke, we have just two thoughts. The first is that we’re very impressed at Lowe finally growing a pair and taking some solid swings in Burke’s direction after a year of letting Burke make him into a laughingstock (although we suspect it took Lowe a full year to formulate what he wanted to say. He doesn’t seem like the kind who’s very good with the snappy comeback, and it’s just Burke’s fault for continuing to belabor the “Kevin Lowe is a nincompoop” point long enough to give Lowe time to think up a retort beyond just “I’m rubber and you’re glue — whatever you say bounces off me and sticks on you”). The second is, of course, “Wait, what’s this about Niedermayer?”

There are probably a lot of people out there who are tantalized by the suggestion that there were some Nefarious Goings-On behind the Ducks signing Nieder in 2005, and really, there are countless possibilities that Lowe could be hinting at. What we’re listing here today, though, are a handful of the most probable possibilities. We mean, Lowe might be suggesting Burke had aliens abduct Nieder and melt his brain with gamma-ray guns, but we find that highly unlikely. More likely? These:

– Burke disguised Dan McGillis in a Scott Niedermayer costume, and then sent him to sign with the Devils. As soon as the ink was dry on his contract, McGillis tore off his latex mask and whipped a small tape recorder out of his pocket, which he used to broadcast Burke’s pre-recorded cackles of glee and long, monologuing proclamation that he, not Lou, is the greatest GM in all the land.

– Burke tied Scott Niedermayer’s framed portrait of himself hoisting the Stanley Cup over Mt. Logan to a railroad track then monologued that he wouldn’t free it until Niedermayer signed a contract with the Ducks. The monologuing dragged on long enough for Neider to stealthily crept to the tracks and quietly untie his precious, precious vanity shot, freeing without signing any paperwork. When Niedermayer triumphantly announced he’d undone Burke’s plan, Burke promptly sued him for breech of an implied contract. Niedermayer appealed, but the rest of the NHL brass, google-eyed over and in awe of Burke’s big bag law degree, informed Niedermayer, “He’s right, Scott. You’re a Duck now.”

– Burke kidnapped Ken Daneyko, then, at the conclusion of a long, “I’m a criminal mastermind” monologue, demanded Nieder from Lou as ransom.

– Burke framed the New Jersey Devils defense corps for a string of small-town bank robberies. Thanks to his influence with the League front offices, Lou managed to avoid any suspensions or jail time for his regulars, but in compensation, he was forced to let Nieder go. The league then held a closed-door, secret Niedermayer lottery, which Burke rigged by freezing all the ping-pong balls but Anaheim’s; when Bettman went to draw the ping-pong balls he remembered the scandal surrounding his mentor’s frozen-envelope draft lottery fiasco in the NBA back in 1985, so he picked the only room-temperature ball in the field. Bettman didn’t notice Burke’s monologuing about what a genius he is because it’s like white noise when the GMs meet.

– Burke drugged the sugary sweet that’s Lou’s one weakness — Sno-Balls — and while Lou was passed out from tainted Sno-Ball consumption, smuggled an all-too willing Niedermayer out of New Jersey while tearing up the Lifetime Devil contract Niedermayer had signed while high a day earlier (and monologuing about his own genius).

– Burke left a series of fake voice mail messages for Nieder in his Lou impersonation, making it sound as though Lou was insulting Nieder and vowing to make the Devils as bad as he possibly can as long as Nieder’s under contract. He managed to hang up before he started monologuing.

– The sheer, overwhelming force of Burke’s douchebaggery was more than Nieder’s douchebag-lovin’ heart could resist. And what’s more nefarious than that?

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