Shawn Thornton sees red

Bruins enforcer Shawn Thornton took an accidental skate to the face. He was finishing his check behind the net, Fernando Pisani tripped over a teammate, Thornton fell as well and landed face-first on Pisani's skate blade. Fortunately for everyone involved it was a relatively superficial cut and Thornton was able to have something of a sense of humor about it afterwards. The interesting thing is that as Thornton is being escorted back to the Bruins bench by a referee, someone yells something from Blackhawks bench that infuriates him. Thornton needs to be restrained by the ref to prevent him from diving into the enemy bench with blood streaming down his face. This is obviously the healthy reaction. I could not find an embeddable clip of it (fuck you ESPN!). There is a pretty good clip of it on the Sports Grid that was recorded off of someone's DVR so it will probably get taken down by the NHL sooner or later. There is also a clip of his post game interview that is worth a watch.

Instead I'll include a clip of Thornton pounding on Matt Cooke from Cookie's first game in Boston after essentially ending Marc Savard's career. I noticed a couple of things after gleefully watching this somewhere between 1 and 11,000 times. First Thornton went for his helmet then realized Cookie wanted to fight helmets on, forcing him to punch Cookie in the hard plastic a couple of times before disgustedly ripping off his helmet. Second Cookie obviously went into the fight with the intention of getting punched once and going down, much to Thornton's disgust. The Bruins enforcer is a veteran of many fights so when he goes off protocol and hits a player whose fallen you know he did not feel like he got a good shot in there. Of course we should expect this sort of behavior from Cookie who much prefers cheap shots to physical combat.

Goalie fight???

GOALIE FIGHT!!!!



Well...kind of. See what happens here is Thomas kind of grabs onto Price with both hands, then they dance around for a bit, then Price goes for a wild, roundhouse right and Thomas falls down. It was not exactly Mike Vernon versus Patrick Roy, but still...Original Six goalie fight!!! Tim Thomas on his big moment via the Boston Globe:

“It was getting into an outnumbered situation,’’ said Thomas, called to duty when Price left his crease to join the jostling. “That’s what I was thinking when I was getting down there. He was more than willing to fight. I had this big old plan. I was going to grab his right, then I was going to throw lefts, because I know he’s bigger and taller than me and has the reach on me. I thought I could do a better job of throwing lefts than him. When we went to grab, he got a good hold of my right arm and I got nothing. So then I was like, ‘Now what do I do?’ He’s got a big right cocked and ready to come.’’

Now that is the definition of standing up, er falling down, for your teammates! He may have let in six goals last night but Thomas showed that with the exception of stopping the puck, he was willing to do whatever it takes to win!

Old time hockey

The video pretty much speaks for itself. The thing is, Dallas is actually a really good hockey team this year, despite what they showed last night.

Playoff update

My distaste for the Bruins is not a secret. That being said, their potential elimination of the Buffalo Sabres makes for a deliciously juicy Eastern Conference playoff picture. The NHL does not subscribe to a bracket style playoff system, so after the first round the highest remaining seed plays the lowest remaining seed, and the two middle seeds battle it out. Had the seeds held, the Capitals would once again be facing off against the Penguins in round two. With both Boston and the Philadelphia Flyers on the verge of upsetting their higher-seeded opponents, Washington and Pittsburgh look to be the top remaining teams in round two. That sets up the potential of a Caps v Pens eastern conference finals, which is what everyone wants to see anyway.

Wrapping up Wednesday night's action, the Caps won going away and the Canadiens goalie was not happy about it. Hey Carey, don't want to see the other team celebrate in front of you? How about making a fucking save? The Bruins won in double overtime. They actually scored THREE goals in this game. Of course, it took them nearly a half a game longer to reach that lofty total so let's go ahead and call that an average offensive night. The most exciting game of the night was Vancouver's 6-4 win in Los Angeles. This game saw 5 goals scored in the third period, or as many as the Bruins and Sabres scored total in almost 5 periods of play.

Alexander Ovechkin is a beautiful man

He is either the prettiest ugly man or the ugliest pretty man in the world, I can't decide. I mean seriously, it's not a face you'd want to see at any point, ever, but he does shit like this:



That's actually harder than it looks. Coming soon...I'll learn how to hide those behind a link! Naw, I'm just kidding, that seems hard and I'm very stupid.

Get PUMPED America! The weekend of Martin Luther King Jr's birthday we inaugurate our nation's first ever non-white president AND they play the most diverse of games in the world, hockey, as the Capitals host the Bruins. Anyone? Anyone? Well, Willie O'Ree played for the Bruins. Wait, the Boston team broke the color barrier? You mean the same city whose baseball team had a quota for black players until the 70s? Hockey for the win, bitches!