A few minutes after I posted the video (and my writing on the subject) last night, I saw another clip on TSN where the panel discussed Zack Kassian’s hit on Petr Senkeris. As you’ll see in this clip, to Bob McKenzie‘s credit, he’s no longer really disputing the fact that Kassian’s hit on Senkeris was high, calling it a “pretty obvious” penalty. Good for him.
As for our friend Mr. McGuire, it would appear that he has abandoned his novel Chinstrap Impact Postulate (by which the wearer of a helmet may – remarkably – cause himself to be struck in the area of the teeth, otherwise known in this logical construct as “the chest”, simply by loosening the chin strap). Ah well, theories and theses are often abandoned rather summarily in the hurly-burly world of exploratory physics. Replacing the Chinstrap Impact Postulate, however, is a Theory of Temporary But Extreme Random Opacity, according to which some unknown physical phenomena appeared near centre ice at the HSBC Centre last night, and then briefly disrupted the properties of all light waves emitting from the general vicinity of this collision, causing certain portions of the event to be temporarily but totally obscured from view.
I wish him better luck with this theory.
Oh, and to the YouTube commenters who want to talk about the Czech player “having his head down”, “needing to be more aware, etc.” – please wipe the spittle off your chins and go back to watching Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em 9. You’ve missed the point again.
Not pictured: Tin Foil Hat Mr. McGuire Should Be Wearing
Like most of Canada this time of year, I was watching Canada/Czech Republic at the World Junior Hockey Championship from Buffalo last night on TSN. For the second game in a row, Team Canada started in a bit of a sleepwalking mode and surrendered an early goal. Also for the second game in a row though, the young men on this team (to their credit) sucked it up and stormed back to dominate the game. By the end of the first, though the score was only 2-1 for Canada, it was clear that this game was going to be a rout; in the final half of the period, long stretches of play had unfolded without respite in the Czech Republic’s zone. It was only a matter of time before the Canucks lit the lamp a few more times, and the Czechs were showing no signs of any offensive spark.
That is indeed how the game unfolded, with Canada cruising to a 7-2 win. So dominant were the Canadians in this game that it became a bit of a dud as far as entertainment value goes; with the result never really in doubt after the first ten minutes, there wasn’t much to keep a viewer glued to the tube in this one.
What little excitement there was ended up being provided by Zack Kassian’s second period hit on Petr Senkerik. Specifically, the excitement arose from the fact that Kassian hit Senkerik in the head (not to mention rather late). Kassian’s bodycheck appeared to knock the Czech forward unconscious. He was removed from the ice on a stretcher, and Kassian was assessed a five minute major penalty and a game misconduct.
Now, I have watched this tournament and cheered for Team Canada every holiday season for as long as I can remember. I want Canada to reclaim the gold medal pilfered from us last year by a plucky American squad. I have nothing against Zack Kassian.
But Kassian’s hit on Senkerik was a blow to the head. I saw it. The referees saw it. Probably something like 4 million Canadians saw it. For some reason, though, TSN analyst and notorious loudmouth Pierre McGuire either didn’t or wouldn’t see it. Almost immediately following the play, he began braying that Kassian was being penalized unjustly. As he did so, TSN’s own replay clearly showed – from two angles – that McGuire was wrong. It is not possible that he failed to see these replays, which were shown numerous times by the network. Having noisily and publicly committed himself to a differing version of reality, however, the obnoxious McGuire continued to assert something that was, and is, obviously not true: that Kassian had hit Senkerik in the chest with his shoulder. To my eyes and ears, McGuire came off as stubborn and ridiculous as he repeatedly decried- and I do mean repeatedly, no horse being too bereft of life for Mr. McGuire to administer yet another beating – the inequities visited upon Kassian by the presiding officials. Silly and annoying, but mostly harmless.
Where McGuire took things to another level was during his post-game analysis as part of TSN’s panel. Unsurprisingly, the stubborn McGuire clung to his misguided version of events; incredibly, however, he actually claimed that the impact was caused by Senkerik’s failure to properly secure the chinstrap on his helmet. It was good of TSN’s Bob McKenzie to gently, if only implicitly, chide McGuire at the outset of the panel segment (McKenzie claimed that when he first saw the clip, he thought Kassian had struck Senkerik’s chest, but that after reviewing the clip again, he had begun to believe it was a head shot), but someone on the panel, either moderator James Duthie or McKenzie himself, ought to have called McGuire on the ridiculous assertion that Senkerik’s loose-fitting headgear was responsible for the impact. McGuire’s assessment of these events makes about as much sense as a person believing that John F. Kennedy would have fared better that fateful day in Dallas if only he had been wearing more sturdy footwear.
Nobody on TSN called McGuire on his ridiculous blabber; HiR:tb’s elves in the A.V. department, however, took a wee break from chug-a-lugging egg nog and sleeping under their desks to bring you the following video summary of the incident:
Neither a Hall, Nor a Bough of Holly. Contains One Fewer Ball Than Most Brett Favre Pictures
A very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone who’s visited this blog this year! May the season be spent with those with whom you are close, and may you share laughter, a hot meal or two and each others’ company.
I am pretty sure the…uh….Maple Leafs Wizard (?) on the right is asking somebody – anybody – to pull his finger. If I were that…uh…Maple Leafs Penguin Snowman (?), I would take a few steps to the left, lickety split.
I have no idea what the hell the significance of the above snowglobe scene is. What better way to return from an extended absence?
You may have noticed things have been a little slow around here over the last month and a bit. Furious G has arrived, safe and sound – 7 lbs, 1 oz., on November 10th. Since then, things have been a bit of a whirlwind within the Juniorvanian borders. Mom and Dad are learning, slowly, how to live up to their newfound honorifics. Squeals and screams have been deciphered, cuddles have been had, sleep has been both had and interrupted, and many MANY diapers have been changed. The incidence of the word “swaddle” in our everyday speech has skyrocketed. Through it all, we’re falling into a routine of sorts, though the new reality seems to include occasionally feeding the cat at four o’clock in the morning.
Furious G and Daddy have spent a few nights already watching the Leafs together. Especially in November, there were a lot of tears from both of us. More recently, things have been a little bit better.
I look forward to spending a little bit of time at the keyboard somewhat more regularly in the not too distant future. Until then, in case I don’t manage to achieve my objectives on a near-time horizon: Seasons’ Greetings and all the best to you and yours!
The CFL isn’t a lot of things. It isn’t Hollywood; it isn’t the Big Time; it isn’t the NFL. It’s an eight team league that plays a variety of football not played anywhere else on the planet (unless there’s some sort of Bring Back the Posse tribute league in Vegas about which I have been shockingly undereducated). The CFL is a league that is really only truly beloved in the hinterlands of a country that is itself more or less one giant hinterland. Thus do the Toronto Argonauts perenially play their home games before a mostly empty stadium, while Taylor Field in Regina (that’s in Saskatchewan for you ‘Mericans – oh, and um, Saskatchewan is a province of Canada) is crammed to the rafters with watermelon-headdress wearing, frighteningly pyrotechnic fans of the green Riders.
So yeah, the CFL is almost by definition parochial and, at least when compared to its counterpart to the south, the over-the-top, everything-would-be-better-if-we-just-had-more-Hank-Williams-Jr. musical introductory sequences (complete with dancing girls! exploding helmets! a jet-engine-loud soundtrack!) NFL – mercifully small-time.
That’s what the CFL is not. As for what the CFL is, it is excitement. Consider the final play of last night’s Argos/Alouettes game. I’m not saying every CFL game ends this way – it doesn’t – but CFL games are far more likely than NFL games to feature last minute heroics; whereas the NFL is prone to endings that feature twenty-two enormous men standing around and watching the final minute of the game clock count down, the CFL much more frequently ends with a bang. There is no better example of this than last night’s Argos/Alouettes game.
To set the stage, here’s what was on the line: the Argos needed a win last night to keep their hopes of hosting a playoff game alive; lose, and they would have to beat their fiercest rivals, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, in Steeltown to advance to the Eastern Final.
Toronto erased a ten-point fourth quarter deficit, scoring the tying touchdown with 1:42 left in the game. Continuing the list of “things you don’t routinely see in an NFL game”, the Argos were still throwing the rock when they got the ball back. Unfortunately for them, that led to a guy named Etienne (go ahead, search the NFL rosters, see if you can find one of THOSE down south) making an interception that allowed Montreal to be in position to attempt a game-winning field forty yard field goal on what figured to be the game’s final play.
Now, because this is Canadian football and is therefore exciting, it isn’t as simple as “line up and see if the field goal kicker can split the uprights from that far out.” This is so because in Canadian football, teams can score a single point on a missed field goal, if the defending team is unable to advance the kicked ball back out of their end zone (or if the kicker is able to propel the ball all the way through the opposing end zone). The bottom line is that the Alouettes didn’t need to make the field goal to win, they only needed the single point. Meanwhile, the Argos had to hope like hell that the Als missed the field goal, and prepare to ensure that any missed attempt could be summarily ejected from their end zone. Thus did the Argos have their kicker Noel Prefontaine standing in the back of the end zone with receiver Mike Bradwell; together, these two were tasked with corralling the ball on a a missed attempt and propelling it back out of the end zone to preserve the tie via the “kick out” play, which is exactly what it sounds like. Prefontaine and Bradwell were to preserve the tie and keep the Argos’ hopes alive for a win in OT. That’s not exactly what happened.
Instead, the final play of the game featured the ball being kicked back and forth FOUR TIMES in total, then finally being recovered in the Argos’ end zone by Montreal’s Dahrran Diedrick – for a touchdown. To recapitulate: in just a few minutes, the apparent imminent outcome in regulation time veered from “easy Toronto win” to “tie game”, to “chip shot field goal for a Montreal win”, to “single point for Montreal win”, to “tie game”, to “single point for Montreal win”, to “tie game” and back to “touchdown, Montreal wins.” Keeping in mind the importance of the game to fans in Toronto, Hamilton and Montreal, I can’t help but imagine how that play unfolded last night, with groups of people across the country alternately popping up off the couch and celebrating an apparent victory, only to be racked in the next moment by paroxysms of fear as their heroes seemed to about to suffer defeat in a rapid and vicious turn of fate.
I’ve embedded a YouTube clip of the play below. Great stuff. Show me an NFL game with anything like the wild swings of fortune in this play.
Tyler Seguin will outscore Phil Kessel tonight. There is an outside chance that it will be mentioned that Toronto traded a draft pick that became Mr. Seguin in order to obtain Mr. Kessel tonight. The over/under on the number of total references to this fact is the first Vegas over/under line in history to be expressed in scientific notation, owing to the enormous size of the number involved;
Tuuka Rask will continue to exist, while Andrew Raycroft opens the bench door for the Dallas Stars, and John Ferguson Jr. continues to have a job in the National Hockey League;
Milan Lucic will fight – and break – Mike Komisarek again.
As an aside, I noted that Boston is expected to give tonight’s start in goal to Tim Thomas; no doubt the insertion of the burly and aggressive backstop is Claude Julien’s attempt to defend against the Leafs’ offensive plan. You know, the one where Colton Orr bowls the opposing goalie over and Tim Brent shoots the puck off him and into the net.
Sweet Jesus, I hope Kessel gets a goal tonight. Just out of curiosity, I wonder what it would take to actually shut the media up on the “Kessel can’t score against Boston” front? A hattie? A five-spot? A Sittler-esque ten point night?
It’s between the second and third period of the game against the Penguins as I type this. The Leafs are up 4-3 following another late period surge by the Penguins.
I am prepared to decree that we have a team. We have a team that skates hard and forces turnovers. We have a team that plays together. We have a team that is able to play reasonably competent team defence. We have a team that can play a smart road game – ignore the fact the zebras are screwing you, play with urgency but also discipline, pounce on the chances you get, take an early lead to get the crowd out of it and above all, stick to the plan.
We’ve got a team.
Think of this: the team effort and systematic forecheck that the Leafs have managed to consistently rely on has tonight masked relatively weak efforts by Kessel and Bozak. Kessel has been mostly a non-factor in this game so far, but it hasn’t mattered because guys like Mike Brown, Clarke MacArthur, Mike Zigomanis, Colby Armstrong and Tim Brent have been busting their butts, causing havoc (and lots of turnovers).
Our team dominated the first half of the first period so thoroughly, the Penguins didn’t have a shot on net until the fourth minute of a Luke Schenn high-sticking double minor. Poor fortune saw the shot go in, and worse fortune saw the Penguins (who seemed to briefly come out of a coma following that goal) add another late in the period. Refusing to surrender, the Leafs stormed back out in the second period and once again imposed their will on the Penguins with speed and determination. They regained the lead and The Monster came up with an enormous post-to-post save on Max Talbot (UPDATE: right, except that the save was on Pascal Dupuis, as NHLCheapshot points out in the comments below) to preserve a one goal margin at the time. Shortly thereafter the Leafs counterpunched again and built the lead to 4-2 on a bang bang pass from Grabovski to MacArthur in front of the Pittsburgh net.
The Penguins turned up the heat late in the second and for the last four minutes or so of the period, carried the play. Gustavsson came up with another huge save on Malkin on a play that saw Malkin awarded a try from the penalty spot – that the enigmatic Russian promptly fired wide. A late marker from Crosby (on which the Monster could not be faulted) raised the possibility of a third period collapse and a mere moral victory.
It could still happen. As I type this, there are 14:00 left in the third period, and it has to be said that the Penguins look more desperate and a bit more organized. Orr has left the game after getting clobbered by Engellard (who?) and Grabovski has taken a shot off the foot, leaving the Leafs possibly undermanned. Clarke MacArthur has just deposited the puck in the stands to give the Pens a power play.
But I don’t think it’s going to happen. I believe in this team. I believe in them so much, I’ve switched seats in my living room. They can overcome any jinx that would ordinarily prevail. The Leafs will win this game and go 3-0.
Questions Will Become Answers: Tim Brent Edition ('shop lifted from a comment by loserdomi on PPP)
Who the fuck is Tim Brent? It’s a question that has circulated in the Barilkosphere – sometimes semi-seriously, mostly in jest – since some time after he signed with the Toronto Maple Leafs organization as a free agent on July 6, 2009.
Now, there’s “Ilya Kovalchuk free agency”, and then there’s “Tim Brent free agency.” This past summer’s production of Waiting for Kovalchuk, for example, featured (in the pre-circumvention ruling days, anyway) daily updates from multiple media sources about the complete absence of any development relating to Kovalchuk’s status. To give you an idea of the level of media interest in Burke’s signing of Tim Brent, a Google News archive search shows that the Toronto Star has exactly one reference to Brent’s career with the Maple Leafs in 2009; it’s an almost parenthetical reference to the fact that Brent had signed a one-year deal with the Leafs, wedged into the body of an article that is 100% about something else – the signing of Francois Beauchemin.
The Barilkosphere’s own beloved meeting place, Pension Plan Puppets, had (on the front page*) but an offhand reference to the acquisition of Tim Brent: again, an almost throwaway mention of Brent’s contract in a larger piece devoted to the signing of Rickard Wallin, for goodness sake. Keep in mind that PPP is a site frequented almost exclusively by highly motivated Leaf fans; the kind of place that generated weeks of discussion and heated debate over the signing of Brett Lebda this summer. On the day AFTER Lebda signed, PPP Princess Karina was moved to put up a post reassuring PPP users that the apocalypse had not occurred and seeking to heal rifts of geologic size that seemed to be developing among the faithful on this most contentious issue. It generated 310 comments.
There is a reason for the differential level of interest of course; Ilya Kovalchuk had 338 goals in 621 NHL games when his marriage with the Devils was finally given the Blessing of Gary this past September. Tim Brent, by contrast, had exactly one goal in 18 games (over 3 separate seasons) with Anaheim, Pittsburgh and Chicago. Click here to continue reading Who the F%#% is Tim Brent?
Office Wendel Oversees My Productivity at Work. Imagine how little I'd get done if he weren't threre threatening to punch my blood out?
Wendel (well, actually my framed autographed picture of him – that is, the one I keep in my office, not the one I keep at home) wishes you a Happy Thanksgiving.
Know what goes great with turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy? Four points in the “W” column, my friends. All of them earned against either dirty, dirty Habs or ridiculous Senator types. Enjoy your celebratory repast, my Canadian friends; and don’t worry, McMericans, your (wrongly scheduled) Thanksgiving and its attendant turkey will come soon enough.
Watched the Leafs’ home opener last night; originally scheduled to be at a prenatal class, my plans changed when Spouse came down with a cold. Because of work thingys, I ended up getting home a little late, which was fine because we could PVR the game. It rocks skipping over commercials, and my timing was pretty awesome because I ended up catching up to real time right in the middle of the second intermission, so I could watch the end of the game with my virtual peeps at PPP.
From scanning the Interwebs earlier today, there seems to be a lot of angst out there about the opening ceremonies before last night’s game. Whatever, I zoomed over most of the malarkey before the game. Was happy to see the 48th Highlanders still a part of opening night tradition, and I stopped fast forwarding (that’s a verb, right?) when I got to the part with the water from all the ponds being collected and used to make the Leafs’ ice.
Say what you will; yes, it’s corny and cheesy, but I liked it. I liked that the whole ice surface got turned into water by the lighting effect. I liked it (among other reasons) because Spouse pointed out that water douses fire, and the Habs do that thing where Brian Gionta a much larger child skates around with the torch before a game, then touches it down at centre ice and sets the ice “aflame”. Water douses fire, as sure as paper beats rock. Eat it, Habs.
Thoughts about the game: Gunnarsson was bad. Schenn looked shaky at times, as did Beauchemin in the early going (though I thought Francois turned it around later in the game, with one notable exception I’ll talk about in a minute). Komisarek was awful. Kaberle was excellent, showing on a couple of smooth solo forays up the ice the apparently effortless way he can dart somehow calmly up ice past all (or at least most) defenders in a flash. Terrific. Phaneuf had a solid first game as Captain, I thought.
At forward, there was less that was remarkable. Nice to see Tim Brent notch a goal to start this season; it would be nice if that were some sort of omen about this mostly under-talented team adopting a lunchpail mentality and chipping in with a concerted effort to score by committee as and where it becomes necessary. Kessel looked very good and sincerely happy to be back playing games that count. Versteeg had some nice moments on the Power Play. Kulemin played a solid two-way game and continues to get better. Nice goal from Clark MacArthur; more worrisome was the somewhat underwhelming performance down the middle from Bozak and Grabovski, though neither made enormous glaring mistakes of any consequence.
More than anything, the story of that game was the steadiness of J.S. Giguere. The Leafs were up to their old tricks, taking a late penalty and then brutally brain-cramping in the closing minute of the game. Our defensive coverage for the final eighty or ninety seconds of that game looked as though it was planned as an homage to everybody’s carnival favourite, the Tilt-a-Whirl, with Leaf players orbiting one another, spinning and lurching around unevenly and generally making one feel nauseous. Francois Beauchemin in particular looked bad during this final sequence, weakly attempting to clear the puck at one point on a backhand to the right point that instead made the shallow carom off the boards and failed to clear the zone, setting the scene for one final frenetic scramble in front of Jiggy and a game-saving stop that mercifully prevented yet another Habs OT game. That stop – it had a reassuring and cathartic quality to it, as Bruce Arthur noted in his column today. Begone, ghost of Vesa Toskala.
One game, and one game only. Two points under the W column, and cue the chorus of clucking MSM journalists who take time out from their shrill blizzard of sage columns pedantically warning Leaf fans (unspecified, figurative, mostly non-existent outside of talk radio) not to obsess, despair and overreact about the future of Nazem Kadri, to write a shrill blizzard of sage columns pedantically warning Leaf fans (unspecified, figurative, mostly non-existent outside of talke radio) not to obsess, celebrate and overreact about a single win in an 82-game season.
