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?

A quickie

Hockey Canada has posted the results of the latest scrimmage from the men's under 18 training camp. The game was tied 2:2. Screaming Eagles netminder Olivier Roy (team White) made a boo boo that allowed for the first goal of the game and Maxime Clermont (Gatineau) allowed both goals against team Red, one of which was scored by Matt Brown (Moncton).


Nathan over at the Asylum had a lot of Q links that need following up on, so I suggest you just go check out his mad house.

One thing I must link to however is a hockey news article about Maxime Sauve (Val d'Or). Maxime is endowed with one of my highest honours by being dubbed 'les Sourcils' but he is also a source of frustration for me, and not only because of our past...for I am sure that as a member of an opposing team, he will continue to frustrate me for years to come. For you see, my team could have had 'les Sourcils' were it not for a desperate grab to get 'the hometown hero' for all of 4 months. We gave in and partook in a three way, and like all three ways, we came out of it feeling a bit huseliused.

For those who do not know (everybody who follows the Q knows...and they point and laugh), during the Christmas trade period the Mooseheads traded our MIA 2007 first round draft pick David Gilbert (age 16) and a couple of future draft picks to Quebec for Maxime Sauve (age 17) . Then we turned around and traded Maxime Sauve and a couple more futures (including first rounders) to Val D'Or for Brad Marchand (age 19).

The logic behind this fuck-fest was that Brad Marchand is a 'proven winner'. He won a President's cup in his rookie season with Moncton, he got to the QMJHL finals with Val D'Or, and he was a member of 2 gold medal winning Canadian IIHF under 20 teams. Also, being a hometown boy, he would put butts in the seats...and put butts in the seats he did.

However, it turns out that Brad (26GP, 10G, 19A = 1.115 PPG ) was barely more productive in the second half of the season than Maxime Sauve (32GP, 14G, 19A = 1.031 PPG) who was playing on a far weaker team. It was excessively frustrating to watch him play goal-less game after goal-less game. He was all moves, no finish; all dazzle, no razzle; all fuckidy-fuck, no orgasm. Furthermore, Brad's tenure with the Mooseheads was frought with the rumor that he was disruptive, had an attitude problem, and induced a schism in the locker room.

We (sadly) will never know what takes place in hockey locker rooms (naked towel fights?). What we do know is that the Mooseheads played like poo for most of their second half and ultimately crashed and burned in the playoff semi-finals, getting swept by the Gatineau Olympiques following two heartbreaking OT losses at home and two complete ass whoopins on the road...and in his very last ever game as a QMJHL player Marchand was benched.

Only time will tell how these boys compare, but since both Sauve and Marchand will be tested at the same Big Club - the Boston Bruins, it will make for about as fair a comparison as one could make. Their fate is in the hands of Chiarelli. But what I am really pissed off about is the eyebrows.

We traded Sauve (left) for Marchand (right). Un-fucking believable.