Monday, May 31, 2010

pardon my language, but....

...you have GOT to be fucking kidding me.



.

monday randoms: remember this thing ??!

so it's been three weeks since the last installment of monday randoms, mostly cause i've been a busy little bee... i will totally admit that i've also been absent because i'm thoroughly gutted by the state of affairs at the top of the calgary flames' food chain, and i'm not even sure what to write anymore, since everything that comes to mind (regarding my team of choice) is a total buzzkill....

- gio, bourque, and backlund all played in the world hockey championships that was eventually won by the czechs. nothing really notable, here, except that ray whitney was the canadian scoring leader, and gio scored more goals bourque. also notable: either mark messier doesn't know how to build a team, or you just can't put a winner together when nobody wants to play... the thing that pains me the most about the WHC is that it is the third pillar for the triple gold club, and who even cares about that tournament ?!? i mean, i don't understand how it gets to be compared to a stanley cup and an olympic gold ??!? i guess it's too late to change the criteria but methinks a world junior gold in its stead would have offered a FAR more impressive trifecta.....

- i'm officially scared about how good the oilers might be next year. paajarvi-svensson looks about ready, and we all know eberle's gonna play. mix in an actual goaltender and that team will be fun to watch AT LEAST. i'm not sayin' they're gonna win the cup or anything, i'm just sayin' that oilers fans can start to smile about things again. plus they don't have to watch staios old himself all over the defensive zone anymore....

- domebeers is my new favorite thing (next to the just-minted term "staios will old himself," which is pure awesomeness).... i was on the fence at first but i've gone all-in; i'm completely sold on the mix of intelligence, quirkiness, opinion, and brutal unabashed sarcasm.... if you haven't already, drop by for a read.

- darryl sutter's stay of execution is preventing me from getting a job. more turnover in the office would provide more openings for an interested, yet unqualified, person such as myself...

- i realize this has nothing to do with hockey, aside from the fact it was built at tim hortons. there is nothing better than daring someone to do something randomly strange, yet unremarkably distasteful, and having the result look a little something like this:

yes, that's a turkey sandwich on an m&m longjohn.... GENIUS !!! huge props to dgb for having the balls not just to order it, but to EAT it.... ;) also, congrats to dgb for having initials that look a little bit like beaker from the muppet show, eye-less and from the nose down. :P

- philly lost a tightly contested match to the hawks but even with the loss, i have to wonder if they won't be the more confident team going into game 2 tonight. both teams could easily tighten up defense, but if leighton can regain previous series form, it'll be WAY tighter... also on the flyers' side ? the legend of cooperalls, rocky, the hossa curse, the ghost of pelle lindbergh, and hextall's goal. against them ? mike richards manhandling the wales, and chris "elbows" pronger..... i must admit they'll most certainly lose the cup if the hockey gods ever awaken to realize how godawful their jersey's nameplates are....

til next week, my friends.
:)

Friday, May 28, 2010

sutter(s) dismissal countdown: day 85: black thursday

well, my friends: it seems as though we can stop the sutter(s) dismissal countdown clock at 85 days, since ken king announced that herr sutter ain't goin anywhere (and that means that brent's job is presumably safe and our team is gonna suck into the foreseeable future). yesterday will forever be dubbed "black thursday" by yours truly, cause i honestly think it'll mark the beginning of a brutal and depressing period for my favorite hockey team.

in the past few months, i've often compared my team to the toronto maple leafs (and not because they finished the season comprised of almost 30% former buds players) and i gotta say this is one more step towards that end. i lived in toronto during the john ferguson junior era and i watched him make mis-step after mis-step when it came to trades, drafts, and watching good players depart as UFAs. totally. depressing. and that's what i fear for my team now.

the 2008/2009 season ended with the calgary flames dressing a short bench because of blatant cap mismanagement. while i've heard rumours that this was actually the fault of michael holditch, and not darryl sutter, the fact remains that (by the nhl rulebook) my team should have forfeited those last matches, and likely didn't because bettman would have had to refund a whole lot of season ticket holder money. the fact that nobody got pink slipped following this debacle probably makes dale tallon wanna puke.

the 2009/2010 season was marked by a series of head-scratching trades, by the sutter regime, that were unquestionably the result of a man under pressure. was it the ownership group telling him to make the playoffs at all cost ? possibly.... or was it his own realization that a non-playoff year would totally jeopardize the safety of his own job ?? no doubt.

while i hated the jokinen for lombardi, prust and a first rounder trade on deadline day in march 2009, i can actually somehow give darryl a pass on that one. he clearly hadn't looked at olli's underlying stats, and he obviously hadn't watched him play much, but he really believed that #21 would help his team win. i can also give him a pass on dealing phaneuf for what's starting to look like a very expensive sack of pucks (ian white notwithstanding, though i doubt very highly that ian white will make it through the summer in a flaming C), though i'm definitely concerned by the rumours that darryl hadn't shopped dion around the league, and possibly could've gotten a better deal.... what i cannot (and WILL not) get past is that he traded a young, workable 7th defenseman AND A DRAFT PICK for an overpaid, overaged, underable defenseman with very little to offer for his 2.7 million dollar contract, that further reduces the cap space to sign GOOD players.... oh, and i'm not sure when i'll get past the fact that he gave up on dustin boyd. these two acts are inexcusable and reprehensible in my book, and symbolize why the calgary flames are going to be mediocre at best for the next two to three years (minimum).

JFJ was given five years at the helm of the maple leafs and dug the team into a suitably deep hole in that time. i fear daz will do the same, get canned in the next 365 days, and we'll spend years trying to get out.

i can't even talk about this anymore, i'm too busy trying to decide which eastern conference team to cheer for next year. ps: i hope philly wins the cup for the following reasons:

1. the hossa curse
2. mike richards not just TOUCHING the wales but essentially ASSAULTING it.
3. one word: cooperalls.

see ya more often around these parts as i'm back to unemployed !
:)

Monday, May 17, 2010

backlund on backlund


Thank goodness that mickis has time to write. cause i sure don't. bless'im for being the only author at hitthepost to ever share anything these days.... bummer he's totally unaware of it.

ps: someone should tell poor backlund that he's not playing in the world cup.
;)


On Monday, we went out into the Calder Cup Finals with the Heat Abbotsford.
Then I thought of course that the season was over and that it was time to take time off and rest ... But that did not happen when I got a call by Bengt Ake Gustafsson, just minutes before I could go on the flight back to Sweden where he said he wanted me to come and represent the Swedish national team and play the World Cup. I got a big shock but was very happy and it was not on the map that I would say no! The only problem was simply that my luggage was checked and would go all the way to Gothenburg. So when I landed yesterday Thursday here in Germany at Frankfurt Airport, so I got and Mats Naslund GM for the national team trying to stop my bags before they were flown home. We managed to stop them but it took almost 1.5 hours to get all the bags when they apparently got a little scattered! But finally I got the bags and we could take the car and drive an hour to arrive at the hotel in Mannheim where the World Cup is played. So I got to the hotel at 15 times and it was just to eat lunch and then sleep until 17 o'clock before it was time to go up again and get ready for my World Cup debut.

It felt really cool and fun to slide on the ice with all the guys in the Tre Kronor jersey. Even if I had slept little and had a long trip so I felt quite refreshed and I still think the match went pretty well and I had so much fun!
I had to play 11 minutes and had three shots on goal. It was a bit strange to play on the big ice again and outer wing but thought I could handle it well anyway.

Tomorrow is a new game and then waiting Canada. There will be a tough match with a lot of speed and tough game! Should be fun to play against my teammates Rene Bourque, Mark Giordano and extra fun to play against my former teammate Tyler Myers who I played with last year in Kelowna. I hope we win so I do not invite him to dinner when the free food tastes much better!

Today I just rested all day and tried to take back some power from a busy week with much flying, migratory, poor sleep and colds.

It feels really good to have the same timing as Sweden again and be in Europe and have been so close to home! Must run now hockey final weeks of this season and then go home and take a much needed rest!



Monday, May 10, 2010

monday randoms: all about the 'nucks.

i didn't get a chance to write last week cause i was craaaaaazy busy working on a volkswagen commercial. have you ever looked at the spelling of volkswagen ? it's not english.

anyhow, i spent a bunch of time out in drumheller this weekend and it was a lot like the town's second syllable.... no offense to drum, i'm sure it's rad. but the job blew.... ;)

anyhow, here's some stuff for and from htp friend and regular commenter, goad. i've got eff all to say about anything flames-related (even though gio and bourque are reppin' canadia at the big show overseas, and the hitties took the whl crown), so this is gonna be a quick post, with a lot of canucks references. i must say that i really like goad a hell of a lot, i think he's a pretty awesome dude and our differing allegiances have resulted in a pretty nice little friendship.... which is precisely why, when i look at his young daughter in his adult-sized jersey, i smile. still, i'm somewhat saddened that she will lead such a hard life as a nucks fan..... ;)

- goad emailed me these to point out that canucks managment care more about their ladies than flames management, and i gotta say it hurts but he's right... that's a WHOLE WALL of ladies jerseys (and not a pink one in sight) !!! also ? the merch store at the garage is ugly. but so's bobbylu and he's still rather annoyingly effective. ;)



the thing that pisses me off the most, though, is that over a year ago i was musing about making "i heart (nickname) " shirts -----like gio, lombo, kipps etc, and the fucking dirty nucks merch team did it first.... upsetting. infact, if i didn't hate them so much, i'd probably really like them. ;)



- mikeH took off to salmon arm last weekend and had to put up with even more canuckleheads:

- and finally, mikeH also discovered this gem:


- i bought new nailpolish the other day cause it looked like a really nice true royal-ish blue.... it wasn't until i got it on my nails that i realized it was totally canucks blue. also ? it's called "pacific blue." ugh.

- i still think the nucks are gonna beat the hawks, if for no other reason than to totally toy with my emotions; one minute you think they're gonna be eliminated, and the next minute bobbylu is standing on his head. *hate

i guess that's it for now. i apologize for my truancy. also ? i'll be in the hat for a few weeks comin' up, so if anyone's around lemme know.

:)
[sutter(s) dismissal countdown: day 68]