I'm sorry

I should not have taken it out on you. You know how I get when you lose a game you should have won, I have been drinking, and I have been denied my Fullerton. Did I mention that I was drinking?

I didn't really watch the game. I am, therefore, not in a position to judge except to say that losing 6-2 against a team like the Foreurs is totally unacceptable. Is it lonely down there in the basement? The other 5 bottom dwellers all got points last night. Val d'Or got 2, Lewiston got 2, Bathurst got 2 and, Baie Comeau and Chicoutimi went into shootout with the BC Drakkar walking away with 2 points. This does not bode well for you my sweet ungulates.

I am just going to check the newspaper now to see if Cam says you battled hard but did not get the lucky bounces. Wait a sec... nope! Willy Palov's article says nothing.

I just wanted to let you know that it is not about lucky bounces. It is about being in the right place at the right time. You can't blame all of your failures on 'lucky bounces' for the other team. In truth, the 'lucky bounce' is a rare thing... and it actually involves some puck bouncing stuff. Remember the time we were playing Saint John and the puck bounced over Amyot's stick, over Mayer's stick and landed right near a Moosehead who was facing an open net, who then did not fan on the shot - that is a lucky bounce combined with right place/right time stuff AND net hitting skillz.


About last night:

• Mark Yetman got the start but was pulled before the start of the second period for having allowed 3 goals on 10 shots**. Yetman gets the loss.
• Mathieu Corbeil played the second and third periods allowing 3 goals on 27 shots.
• Raffaele D'Orso allowed 2 goals on 35 shots and had an assist. Oh la la. See ladies - there are benefits to playing the puck.

Moose were 0 for 6 on the PP, while the Foreurs were 2 for 5. Our special teams need to smarten up. They were doing OK for a while there but in recent games have gone completely kaboomy. Mooseheads have the worst power play in the league with a 14.2% efficiency. They have also allowed 11 short handed goals this season. Sad really!

Tomas Knotek got both of the Moosehead goals with assists by Jessyko Bernard *hugs*, Justin Pender (same old tip in of a Pender shot from the blue line- welcome back), and Ben MacAskill. At some point, in what little game I did watch, I heard John Moore cooing over Charles Bety. Good for Bety, now he can start a bromance with our radio announcer.

The good:

• Piette is still coming out on top in the faceoffs, winning 13 of 23.
• Jessyko was throwing his weight around. 3 hits.
• Eric Louis-XVI was able to play.
• Pender returns.
• Knotek, because 2 goals is never bad.
• pictures
  

The bad/the ugly:

• Mark Yetman. I don't know what those shots looked like but the numbers are ugly.
• Eric Louis-XVI was there in name only.
• Giving the Foreurs 5 power plays.
• Kevie (stars- oh hooray), Frankie (don't poke my goalie in the face) and Rafie combining for 4 assists + a goal by "les sourcils" Sauve. I love them but technically they are the enemy.

I still can not decide if anymoose deserves cookies.


The Future:
Tonight the Moose play the Rouyn Noranda Huskies, the only team in the league with a zombie on their roster. Yeah, you heard me right!

What! You didn't know that Brad Yetman was a zombie? He totally is! He was bitten by a zombie on Dec 29 2008 and had transformed into a full fledged zombie by January 16th. Shawinigan knew that he had the zombie virus. Being a top tier team they feared some sort of punishment from the CHL come playoff time, especially considering that they are good enough to be Memorial cup contenders this year. So they went ahead and traded him on Jan 9th to an unsuspecting Rouyn-Noranda, just days before 'the rage' kicked in full force.

So there you have it: Rouyn Noranda 53 points, 22 ahead of the Moose, and up by one zombie.

Our 'pet the Yeti'* says he does not want to allow defensive defencezombie Yetman to get a goal against him. Given the outcome of last night's game I wonder if the two Yetmans will even be given a chance to battle (HA) it out. I, for one, want Brad to get a goal. It will be a league milestone. First goal ever scored by a zombie in the CHL.


*as opposed to, oh say, 'fear the Yeti'. Nobody fears Mark Yetman.
** I had originally said 3 in 9... cuz the Q game page is inconsistent between its goalie stats in the team section and its shot stats at the bottom of the page.
edit - i watched a bit of the first from the archives. Honestly how many sticks and pucks did the moose take to the face?

The trade post

The Keven move:
Apparently the Sea Dogs did have more to tell me, since yesterday they traded Keven Guérette-Charland, third member of my Sea Dogs Holy Trinity, to the Val d'Or Foreurs for a 3rd round pick in the upcoming draft. Bastards. Don't worry sweet 'Kevie', Francois Gauthier will keep you warm.

The Tomy move:
In a totally smart move, Moncton have picked up 'mah boo' Tomy Joly. This reduces the number of times I get to see Tomy for the remainder of this season from 3 to 1, since we only have one more home game against the Wildcats.

Moncton was the only contender left that had not made any major moves. JOLY is a MAJOR move. They have just acquired that goal scoring they needed. Look-it Saint John (stoopid chumps), he was not even that expensive - one 1991 player and two 2nd round draft picks.

Moncton are now a whole world of hot. I fully expect Tomy Joly and Zach Sill to naked mudwrestle for the job of my #1 'Moncton boyfriend'. Bet'cha didn't know I was cheating with Sill - I totally have been. When I see Sill, I start to drool a bit... just a little, from the corner of my mouth. It is embarrassing.

Yowza!!! It burns my eyes it is so hot.

The Goalie Swap:
The other biggie is the swap of goaltenderie creatures Marco Cousineau and Nathan Dunnett between the Baie Comeau Drakkar and the Drummondville Voltigeurs. Dummondville has said that their acquisition of Cousineau, 2008 third round draft pick of the Anaheim Ducks, will not effect the status of current netminder Antoine Tardif. It may end up being more of a 1A, 1B situation in Drummondville, and they are already bragging that they have the best goaltending tandem in the league.

Here is the deal with these boys:

Antoine Tardif was supposed to be God. A first round draft pick of the Bathurst Titan, he was a projected NHL draft pick until he injured his ankle in January of last year, which is unfortunate because he did not get to play behind a much improved, post X-mas trade period, Titan team (run-on sentence, I know). A mis-diagnosis of his injury left him sidelined for the rest of the season, and in the summer when he underwent arthroscopic surgery.

He was traded at the Q draft (Tardif and Masse were the 'futures' from a X-mas deal made in 2007 between the Volts and the Titan) to Drummondville. Since then Drummondville have gone from being the bottom-feeding worst team in the league to contending for top spot. Some people say their only weakness is in nets.

Statistically:
2008-2009 - 2.81GAA, 0.889 sv%; 31 G, 23 W, 6 L Volts
2007-2008 - 3.52GAA, 0.892 sv%; 34 G 14 W, 15 L Titan
2006-2007 - 3.56GAA, 0.872 sv%; 31 G, 14 W, 13 L Titan

Antoine would have great eyebrows if he would just tidy up the ridge; he has a touch o' unibrow.


Marco Cousineau has had an up and down career in the Q. He was originally drafted by Baie-Comeau in the 12th round, #204th overall in 2006. In 34 games with the Drakkar this season Cousineau has 9 wins and 25 losses, with a 3.67GAA and 0.888 save % (ugh, still better than Mark Yetman). This is in stark contrast to last year's regular season stats when he backstopped a more defensively minded, and (almost) league leading Drakkar with 34 wins and 19 losses in 58 games, to finish with a 2.81GAA and 0.903 save %, the 4th best GAA in the league. Mind you, despite being second best team in the league the Drakkar were upset in the first round of the playoffs by the Oceanic.

Cousineau's play so far this year hearkens back to his first season in the Q, 2006-2007, when the rookie netminder had only 4 wins and 12 losses in 23 games played, for a wretched 4.20 GAA, and 0.863 save % (ugh, still better than Roger Kennedy). Will the real Marco Cousineau please stand up?

Did Anaheim make another brilliant draft choice?...their picks from the Q are all terribly suspect. Anyway, we will not know until we park Cousineau's ass into a net behind another good team and then see how he fares. This is how it works... bad teams can make good goalies look like shit, at least if you are just looking at their stats. You need to actually see a boy play in a variety of situations before you can properly assess his skills. It is the age-old adage: Is it the playa', or the system?


Mo' stuff:
The Oceanic were all after Cousineau's ass but they did not land him. You see, these fools picked up 'the Gouge' at the draft (look at that face hair - it is a cornucopia of douchebaggery), when they could have been going after Bobby Nadeau or Timo Pielmeier, both were, and still are, much more cromulent choices.

Anyway, now that their chance to get Cousineau has fallen through they have their sights set on Bobby Nadeau. MY Bobby Nadeau (you need tweezers boy). Bobby and I like to play eye contact games when he is in Halifax. Actually, I play eye contact games with every goalie (except Yetman, who does not skate around during pauses in the game) because I am a huge goalie-loving skank. (edit* - they did not get him...yet, but 20's can be traded whenever)

Moose vs Eagles: Game 2. Thank the Gods for wins.

Quick notes:

Why don’t the refs just get on their knees and suck Robert Slaney off. Frack (someone likes Battlestar galactica). I mean we still won, but get real refs….I could see some of those three power play goals coming. They will haunt me in my dreams. Someone keep an eye on that little bitch. Just because he is smart that does not mean there is a force-field of invincibility around him. Moose - don’t leave him alone beside the net.

Now that I have had a brief brush with insanity I hope I can recover. Yetman got the third star of the game after stopping 29 of 33 shots (17 of which were classified as dangerous). Bryce Swan is now eligible to apply for God status, and bless RD Chisholm’s little soul. If young boys can crush out on older chicks like Shannon Slaughter, there is always hope for chicks like me (theoretically- and that is all that matters). Oh, and that Marchand guy with the funny eyebrows got the first star because our local media likes the guy with 3 assists more than they like a guy with two goals (take your pick of Corsi or Swan) - even if the guy with two goals has the game winner (Swan from Knotek and White puppy).

Hooray for Keven and Fully. My other favorite # 22 Keven Guérette-Charland had a hat trick tonight and received the first star of the game as Saint John defeated the Acadie-Bathurst Titan 5-2. I will have to look up some good cookie recipes - I promised Simon cookies and it looks like the Dogs are indeed pulling this off. Travis Fullerton was the third star with a 0.939 save percentage and 31 saves on 33 shots (with 15 dangerous shots) and Francois Gauthier was the second star. Talk about Pavlovian conditioning- I have lost my knickers and I am drooling already but I haven’t even seen the game. Sea Dogs – you are #1 on my to-do list. Not only that but the Titan appeared to have pulled Champion and put Brad Dyke in for the last five minutes of the game. What is the point… and where is Szostak? That boy gets no love.

more later....

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NHL news:

Canadiens are #1

Give cookies to Keven Guérette-Charland

Keven is the Saint John Sea Dogs' nominee for the Marcel-Robert Trophy. You can read an interview with Keven at the QMJHL site. Then you can preheat the oven because this boy deserves freshly baked cookies. Plus Charland had a goal and an assist tonight (just like our #22) - so he gets extra chocolate chips in his cookies.

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There were more total and complete blowouts in the Q tonight. Who knew it was going to go down like that? Look at the Moose double-digiting all over Victoriaville. Victo was playing goalie-go-round - and we all know that GGR never ends well. However, Victo are dirty so they totally deserve any spankings we are able to hand out. Victo are all elbows everywhere- they have so many arms with so many elbows it is as if they are the Vishnu of hockey teams. What a bunch of dirty bastards and yet they get 6 penalties and we get 9 . Go figure. The penalties last night (or lack thereof) were a total joke as well. If I must say so though- hooray for our awesome PP tonight - 3/6. It's all OK until somebody gets hurt, and then I will demand Victo blood (more blood).

The stats around the Q were crazy tonight : 3 shutouts and 4 blowouts (unless you also want to consider Saint John vs PEI a blowout, I would say no)

Lew 0 Cap 3
PEI 3 SNB 7
SNL 4 Bat 5
Vic 1 Hal 11

Rim 3 BaC 0
VdO 0 Rou 9
Que 1 Chi 10
Sha 3 Gat 9

As for baby Roy - well check it out on TSN. There is a video link and everything. Poor, fancy, best GAA in the league, Bobby Nadeau. He is a lover, not a fighter. I only condone goalie fights when both goalies want to fight, but not when one boy suddenly goes batshit crazy, skates all the way down the ice and attacks the other goalie while he is just standing around at his net. There were 118 penalty minutes handed out this game - and check out the number of penalties in second period. How were there even unpenalized players available to play the game?

You know what I have noticed - Telus division teams are dirty. When Quebec was here they were dirty, Rimouski was also dirty, Victoriaville - dirty. I missed Chicoutimi (work X-mas party, but hockey would have been more fun) but I bet they were dirty too.

There were too many Moose to love tonight so if I have to choose one boy to kiss well then -
Kisses to Guillaume (two goals from a defenseman). Hugs to MacMillan for almost singlehandedly killing what felt like 2 minutes of a 4 minute double minor, and for being a +5 with 1 goal, 2 assists and a star. I am also blowing kisses to P-O for being so cheerful and smiley despite having to keep his ass parked on the bench.