Yesterday we debuted, with great help from EA Sports and XBox 360, a fun summer series to help us kill time and show off what all of the new free agent acquisitions and top draft picks will look like in their new duds.
Speaking of duds, today's photo shoot features one team who played like duds all regular season and another one that played like duds, eventually, in the playoffs.
That's right it's time for the, perhaps, much improved Tampa Bay Lightning and the happy-to-stand-pat Washington Capitals.
Tampa Bay's Victor Hedman excuses himself away from new Capitals forward Brendan Morrison.
Kurtis Foster unleashes the beast towards goaltender Simeon Varlamov.
New Capitals forward Mike Knuble dares to deke past Vincent Lecavalier.
Mattias Ohlund tries to escape the pursuit of Alexander Ovechkin.
Stephane Veilleux shows how to celebrate best on an empty net.
Now here's where you folks come in. Who do you want to see next? Red Wings exiles donning the Indian in Chicago? Marian Gaborik in Ranger blues? Ryan Smyth and his mullet in Los Angeles?
You make the call and the top two choices get featured next - just make sure the teams you select have, you know, actually made a move or two. Leave your suggestions in the comments or find your way to Twitter to let me know. I'm pretty easy to find there.
I'll come out and say it and I don't give a crap what it makes you think of me or my opinions.
Sidney Crosby is a gift to us all.
I know what you're thinking now...
"OH SHURE HOCKY JOE! U R A BETMAN SUCKUP!! LOLZ!1!"
Right, sure, whatever.
Like it or not, Sidney Crosby is awesome and the NHL is a million times better off having him, his talent and his presence around than without it.
Is he over-exposed? Maybe to NHL fans, but not to the world that's for damn sure.
Is he a great player? Fuckin' A right he is.
He's phenomenal and his talent is a once-in-a-generation kind of talent and we're blessed as NHL fans to have three other players in the NHL that are on that same kind of unearthly level of talent (Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Lidstrom).
Are NHL fans pissed that three of those four players are playing in the same series in the second round? Maybe the jerk-off fans that are self-loathers are - but me? I'm tickled. Gary Bettman is tickled too, no doubt, because he gets to see the two prizes he cares about most finally have their "Bird vs. Magic" series.
Never mind that it's taking place in the second round, that's irrelevant. What matters is that it's happening and, as of right now, it's absolutely electric.
Just like most things in the NHL, sometimes things happen that help amp up the story. Sometimes when superstars collide, the best is brought out of them. Case in point, Game 2 of this series. Hat tricks from both of the superstars (their first hat tricks in the playoffs) including this stirring series of bombs from Alex Ovechkin:
As it goes, as it has always gone, when you're the home team and your home guy nets a hat trick, the hats come out on to the ice. It's a tradition that's been around since the dawn of time (give or take an epoch) and it's awesome. Flat out, it's awesome.
Unless you're on the visiting team.
Enter the man in the white uniform and the black hat, Sidney Crosby.
"People kept throwing hats," Sidney Crosby said tonight. "I was just asking if he could make an announcement to ask them to stop. I mean, the first wave came and then I think they were all pretty much picked up, and then more started coming. So for us, we just wanted to make sure we kept kind of moving and kept the game going, wanted to try to get back in it. So wasn't complaining about anything."
Ah, jeez.
Listen, I get that he's being the captain of the team. That's good, that's fine, that's the admirable thing to do. He's also being brutally honest with the press when asked about this.
As a person who has done plenty of sports interviews and gotten nothing but Athlete-speak from them, to get a freaking gold mine of a quote like this is awesome because then jerks like me cite your website, give you more hits and all that fun.
No, they ain't sippin' on some sizzurp - that's straight Haterade.
When your name is Sidney Crosby though... Stuff like this gets a lot more run. Like it or not, Sid's got the reputation for being a whiner. As a fan of hockey, it sucks more than life itself to see that one of the most marketable guys in the league, the like-it-or-not face of the NHL is labeled a big pansy bitch.
That sucks a lot and it drives me nuts to see Sid continue to do things that feed into this image. I want him to be Captain Cool, I want to see him make people that hate him shut up by delivering every damn time. I want him to be The Terminator and crusher of souls. As an NHL fan I want the biggest name and the league's icon to be the man.
Simple as that.
In a series that features the two guys that are fighting to be the A #1 icon of the game, some folks might point to this game as the one that separates them for good. They both deliver hat tricks in stunning performances. Ovechkin with his bomb shots and Crosby doing the down and dirty work in front of the net putting home rebounds.
Had the Penguins won this game, Sid would rightfully be getting the praise for throwing a change up at the Capitals and doing things differently. Sure, maybe that quote gets some more run, but at least that can get spun off to make him more of an honest-to-badass villain. Like, say...
"Hey ref, tell these chumps to stop throwing hats - this game is fucking over with because I said so."
Cutthroat? You better believe it. Cocky? As hell. Bad-ass? Hell fucking yes it is.
Instead, reality deals us a Capitals win with Ovechkin waving his junk at everyone because he's that damn good. In his case, being a Russian helps add to his allure. The interviews are tougher to do with regular schmoe reporters because his English skills are mostly limited to Athlete-Speak.
So now what's the fallout from this for Crosby? He unfortunately solidifies a reputation that's already been made bad enough to handle by a well-paid PR firm.
After all, when you're playing a rough game like hockey where there's a delicate balance between being a cocky braggart and cutthroat competitor, being a crying wuss wins you no favor and makes the job of sticking up for your boy even harder.
At least if I was Sid, I'd be happy to have the guys at The Official PensBlog on my side, I'd hate to see how they'd handle having that kind of ammo to use against him. For that alone, I'd hope to never leave Pittsburgh without a Stanley Cup or two if I were him.
What kills me about all this is that I enjoy how Sid plays the game and he makes it so incredibly difficult to love Sidney Crosby the player. Whether it's the opinion of the other players that he's a whiner or the consistent cries from fans all over the NHL that he's a diver on top of all of that... It's incredibly hard to embrace him as the MAN when there's a guy doing all of those things that you admire playing against him. It creates an instant divide amongst fans.
You're either a Sid fan or an Alex fan.
Simple as that.
When you're put on the spot after a tough game, a tough loss particularly, and you're getting a thousand different questions about the game and someone mentions the other guy, the other big gun outshining you for a night and you're frustrated that you couldn't do more than your own three goals and your answer is to just blurt out that you wanted the officials to make an announcement about the hats being thrown on the ice for the other guy's hat trick...
The best way for Sid to answer all of this is to flip the script and do it right back and let the fans at The Igloo shower the ice in hats. Then to do it again the next game and not relent.
Sid's shown us he can wear the Black Hat and be the villain by driving hockey fans nuts with these things like whining and diving, now it's time to fully embrace the darkside. Be comfortable with being thoroughly hated in places like Philly and Washington and New York.
Score that game-winner in overtime some night and then proclaim afterwards that you knew you'd get it all along. Sid is referred to as "Bing" over at PensBlog, but I'd rather seem him break out something a little more like another cocksure legend:
Is it wrong to want all of our new hockey heroes to be bad-asses? I don't think so.
Since a lot of you are new to this page and probably weren't keeping tabs with me last year for the playoffs, let me dust off something I said last year after the results of the First Round were completed:
The only real downside to the Capitals losing is that it prevents us from seeing Sid the Kid and Evgeni Malkin from taking on Ovechkin and Backstrom in the second round. Say what you will, but Bettman had the perfect opportunity to take what he learned under Stern and to put it to use to set up a real dazzler of a matchup.
Much like everything else, however, Bettman fails to put the hit out to guarantee this will happen.
Now let's see how (bad) Gary wants the fix. If the #Canes beat the #Devils we get Sid vs. Ovechkin.
In my head I had one of the greatest creative minds of the modern sports entertainment era, at least he was for a while, in mind as I wrote this. I thought about it last year when Washington stormed back against Philadelphia only to lose in Game 7 to the Flyers and there it was in my head again this time as the New Jersey Devils had a 3-2 lead on the Carolina Hurricanes in their Game 7.
Some say a man fitting this description was seen in the tunnel at The Rock shouting, "Just go down Marty!"
Would Lil' Gary put on his big boy shoes and put in the call for the Devils to lay it down or would it play out legendarily like this:
In a series that had so many great goaltending performances from both Martin Brodeur and Cam Ward and two teams that truly left it all out on the ice and given everything that I was able to witness all throughout this years NCAA Hockey Tournament, I didn't think the NHL had it in them to produce a finish to a game that so thoroughly stunned me as this one did.
Doc Emrick and Chico Resch from MSG+ with the call:
Un-Freaking-Believable.
I mean... This is the New Jersey Devils, the team that made sitting on a one-goal lead the new black in the 1990s. This is Martin Brodeur - The Franchise - The Legend.
How in the blue hell did this happen? This stuff doesn't happen to the Devils. It never does... Well, unless you're the Ottawa Senators.
It's hours upon hours later now and this one just stuns me. Jussi Jokinen is the new cursed name in the swamps of New Jersey? The same guy that was waived by the directionless Tampa Bay Lightning? That Jussi Jokinen?!
Shocking.
What's more shocking about all of this is that Herr Bettman got his wish. With the Hurricanes beating the Devils, that set up a second round date between Sid the Kid's Penguins and Alexander the Great's Capitals - a playoff matchup that people have been dying to have happen.
Sure, it's not for the Conference Title or the Stanley Cup - but for the press and the attention and the real bad blood there is between these teams it might as well be.
Two of these four second round series are now set to be, potentially, the best series of the entire playoffs. Anaheim did their job and disposed of a gutless Sharks team to set up a date with the Red Wings and then you get the headliner between Pittsburgh and Washington.
This isn't to say that Chicago and Vancouver is going to stink, far from it, as that's going to make for an incredible tilt and the Wonder Boys in Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews are going to have their hands full in dealing with Vancouver's system all backstopped by the new stud Roberto Luongo.
Boston and Carolina would be a lot more fun if, say, Herr Bettman's Southern Conquest wasn't involved and the Hurricanes were wearing blue, green and white and celebrated each goal with some Brass Bonanza.
Then again, getting Ric Flair prominently involved in hockey really isn't so bad and given that it took the Hurricanes to overthrow the Devils to make Gary's Dream Match-Up come to fruition... Well maybe it's worth looking into.
Being that this is a hockey site, we enjoy bringing up ESPN failures in hockey coverage. ESPN has provided a jackpot of hilarity today.
It started this morning when ESPN insisted that Mike Green and Donald Brashear were being looked at for potential suspensions for their actions in Game 6 against the Rangers.
I'm sorry... Mike Green?! The same Mike Green that isn't noted for his defensive prowess at all?
The jokes haven't ended there today for the World Wide Leader.
If I might get my "Jump To Conclusions" mat out, it looks like ESPN has upset the space-time continuum courtesy of old-school 80s video gamers.
Code Of Honor: Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Start
This afternoon, word started circulating around Internet forums that if you visited ESPN's website and entered in the Contra Code you would find an amusing result.
Obviously I'm an easy sheep to snare but this was worth it to give it a look-see. Click to enlarge it, of course:
It's like Napoleon Dynamite's Trapper Keeper crapped on ESPN's homepage.
I don't know what's funnier about this, NASCAR being front page material or the unicorns or the horse from 80s kids show Rainbow Brite being prominently involved.
Whoever the mad geniuses behind these presumably unrelated pranks are are hilarious and deserve a pat on the back.
That is unless they've hacked everyone's computer - which in that case I'd like them to be burned at the stake while tarred and feathered.
Like I said, this is loosely related to hockey but too hilarious to NOT share. I'll call this karmic retribution for being wholly ignorant of the NHL.
Donald Brashear is a bad motherfucker, there's no getting around that. He's also a really lame fighter too on occasion, I guess some guys need proper motivation or to not be a complete wuss.
Whatever.
It's not always a knockdown drag out affair with Huggy Bear Brashear
Thanks to Colin Campbell's amazing and unpredictable Wheel of Justice, this:
OK so it's not just that hit, it's the pre-game nonsense he instigated with the Rangers Colton Orr and... well, insert whatever other reasons you might want to toss in for having the suspension be six games. Dirk over at On The Forecheck has the hands-down winner on his Twitter page to this point:
It sucks to be Donald Brashear. He got 1 game for the pre-game shove, 1 for the head shot, and 4 because it's Ulysses S. Grant's birthday.
Beauty.
Truth is it's one game for the pre-game shenanigans and five for the hit.
Was Brashear wrong here? Absolutely. It's a reckless hit. It's a hit coming full force on Blair Betts while he's unsuspecting and that's not necessary in the NHL.
I find myself watching this over and over again and trying to figure out what the motivation is here for Brashear and if Betts is in the wrong at all (ie: head down, admiring his pass) and while Betts is caught flat-footed and somewhat admiring, it stands out to me as a prime example of everything in hockey happening a lot faster than in other sports.
Check out the YouTube video above once again. Betts gets the puck at the :12 second mark, has the puck away and down the ice at :13 and Brashear clobbers him at :14. I know there's big heaps of fractions of seconds involved here but that's a span of two seconds where Betts goes from safe to dismantled with a highly questionably timed hit.
TWO SECONDS!
Incredible. This does boil down to Brashear crossing the line between hitting a guy who has a basic idea the hit is coming and a guy that has no clue it's coming which gets into all sorts of grey area stuff as far as the NHL is concerned. After all, guys who get caught skating with their heads down get creamed and concussed the same as guys that are caught watching their passes as if they're Monet paintings.
Does this put Betts in a different category at all? Brashear was on the ice the whole time and, let's face it, he's not out there to score goals or play rock-solid defense. Betts was looking to dump the puck in deep to get the Rangers a line change and Brashear was looking to, for lack of a better phrase, light a fire under his team - a team that's been criticized all playoffs long for being physically soft.
Sending a message in a different sort of way? Probably, but now Huggy Bear is going to have to pay the piper for six games.
The Capitals aren't really going to lose too much not having a guy who has averaged about 3:25 of ice time in the four games he's played in this series. Brashear is so vital to the Capitals that he didn't suit up for the first two games of the series, the same two that Jose Theodore yacked away at home.
Betts, meanwhile, is likely out for Game 7 and the Rangers will miss him dearly. He's played an average of 10:44 per game before having his day shortened in Game 6 and logged over 13 minutes of ice time in Game 4 which the Rangers won 2-1 and held Washington's power play to an 0-6 performance, much thanks to Betts' work.
A fan of old time hockey, at least if the kind they played in the 1980s counts at least. A guy who's fed up with watching the game he loves being handled and managed by folks with the intelligence equivalent to that of the common, everyday puckbunny.
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