We couldn't have been more wrong.
It looks like more of the same for the Pittsburgh Penguins. And don't call us quitters but we don't see a franchise high 100+ points on their way to a fourth place finish this season with all of the injuries.
Jordan Staal will be out 3-4 weeks after colliding with Mike Rupp in the Penguins game against the New York Rangers and injuring his knee.
And then James Neal broke his foot. Yes, you read that right, BROKE HIS DAMN FOOT and is out indefinitely.
Then Craig Adams re-injured his knee colliding with Brooks Orpik during practice.
WHEN WILL IT STOP?!?!?!
It's beginning to be a little ridiculous.
Other injuries include Nicklas Backstrom taking an elbow to the mouth from Rene Bourque and suffering an apparent concussion.
NOT ANOTHER ONE!
Bourque was suspended for five games. Fine.
And this is not Bourque's first suspension this season. What gives? Why is this happening right now? Who knows but it's starting to get tiring.
Let's add Backstrom to the concussion list.
Along with Ottawa Senators defenseman Chris Phillips who is day-to-day with a mild concussion after a hit in their game against the New Jersey Devils.
Another injured player is Tom Gilbert from the Edmonton Oilers. The player who hit him, Daniel Carcillo, has been suspended for seven games.
Does anyone care about safety anymore? Jeez.
Oh, and here are a few other links that depressed us:
- The Toronto Maple Leafs placed Colton Orr on waivers and from Brian Burke's comments it sounded like he did it to make a point about enforcers being an antiquated position in this day's NHL.
- John Tortorella was fined for the comments he made about the officiating after last Monday's Winter Classic game.
Fining him just made the NHL seem guilty.
- The NHLPA has killed the realignment plan that was suppsoed to happen last season. Just another bad thing on the way to a dying CBA and negotiations coming soon.
- During the Vancouver Canucks / Boston Bruins fight-fest yesterday, the referee threw Milan Lucic out for 'leaving the bench on an illegal line change' to get into the scrum happening on the ice. It was a mistake as the league later found out and the automatic game misconduct and suspension was taken away.
- In the same game, Brad Marchand submarined Sami Salo and now faces a disciplinary hearing tomorrow.
Of course. It was stupid play and he should be punished.
Like we said, does anyone care anymore?
- And can we count a trade as bad news? The Lightning traded Blair Jones to the Calgary Flames for Brendan Mikkelson.
- We received an email a few days ago from Megan about ESPN's lack of coverage of hockey during their annual memoriam of important sports figures passings in the year. We know it's been some time since that happened but it's still making us angry.
Here is Megan's email to us:
What a joke! Not one of the players who died this summer were mentioned in their Memoriam. No major mention of concussions, WNBA players made the notable new comers list, but not the reigning Calder Memorial winner Jeff Skinner or runner up Logan Couture, they mentioned the NCAA football realignment but not the NHL's, not even Bobby-Lu's "Tire-pumping" made it into the quotes of the year section, even though it lead to a riot! What is it going to take for ESPN to take their heads out of their asses and show Hockey the respect it more than deserves!
"The Worldwide Leader in Sports" neglected to cover the death of an entire hockey team in a plane crash in its year in review, but found time to feature lines from Deion Sanders' NFL induction speech. Three times. SportsCenter doesn't care about hockey beyond Sidney Crosby and the team that wins the Stanley Cup. Everyone knows that, but completely ignoring what happened in Yaroslavl, the deaths of Rick, Derek, Wade and every other hockey figure who passed away this year is disgusting. But hey, we got a 5-minute segment about how exasperated ESPN's talking heads were over Tim Tebow's winning streak. So that's something. Sorry, didn't mean to rant, but come on! How much of a joke can one company be?
Some good news?
- Everyone's starting to love the secret Swede on the Ottawa Senators: Erik Karlsson. He's becoming quite the hit.
- Esbee sent us this video after Cam Ward scored his first NHL goal. He's an adorable human being.
- Shea Weber was cleared to land and we couldn't have been happier.
He made his first game back against the Dallas Stars.
- We love when stars from other sports love hockey.
Especially when they're good looking and have a nice bromance with some of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
- Sports Illustrated had the Top 15 Underrated Hockey Players. We agree with most of these except for Pavel Datsyuk because seriously, who doesn't know that this guy exists and what he brings to a team?
- Jarome Iginla finally got his 500th goal. Good cause we couldn't take much more of NHL Tonight mentioning it after every damn game the Flames played.
- And lastly, congratulations to Shane Doan's first NHL hat trick after sixteen seasons.
Seriously, we were actually cheering for this when we saw the highlights last night. What a human and what a reaction.
We apologize for this post but we're frustrated and have been for a while. It's our way to vent.
Let us know what's bothering you. Vent away and we shall reply in the comments section.
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