Comin' Closer to Home!

by Anne

This morning, Buffalo (ok, technically West Seneca) native and former St. Louis Blues forward, Lee Stempniak was traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs for Carlo Colaiacovo and Alex Steen.

Yay! Woooooo!!! He may not get as much press as Kaner, but its nice to see WNY hockey players doin' their thing around the NHL!! Too bad I must dislike him now... jk!

The Only Thing About Tonight That Was AWESOME

by Anne

Ok, winning was awesome, and snapping a 13 year home losing streak is awesome, but mostly tonight was blah for me. Three goals in the first was obviously awesome and causing a goalie to be pulled always makes me smile, even if that goalie is someone as lovable as Many Legace. However, after the first, most of the rest of the game was kind of a snooze fest with a few "this is unnecessarily stressful" moments sprinkled in for color. God bless goaltender interference penalties.

Nice to see Lee Stempniak get a goal, most people booed as they would any goal, but I'm realizing that most people don't know he's from West Seneca. He's no KANER, after all, haha. Jay McKee played but didn't do a whole heck of a lot, hence the reason he was almost benched for this one.

Anyway, the win feels good, but nothing feels better than this:

Look at Goose leaping out of the net to hug Hank.

If only there were video of the awesome "I just scored a goal!! I NEVER do that!" shimmy he did after! I actually got to watch that goal which is pretty awesome considering I have a habit of having my back to the action when goals are scored. Playing with Rivet definitely seems to have improved Hank's game and playing with Teppo seems to have improved Toni's. Alas, it seems last year's uhhh "dynamic duo" are separated for good.

Yayyyyy!!! The looks of pure joy on Goose and Pie's faces make me all warm and tingly inside.

Let's not forget our "Adam Mair Funny Face of the Night" shot:

Apparently this mythical "Tim Connolly" is hurt, I wonder why this was reported considering he no longer exists.

My former boss was there tonight, we did not have a lengthy conversation and I am OK with that. My high school economics teacher also purchased some foodstuffs from me tonight and did not show any signs of recognition whatsoever.

Daniel Alfredsson's creepy shorter twin brother who must apparently be a Sabres fan was there and stood around me a lot. Seriously, this guy looked EXACLTY like Daniel Alfredsson, it was crazy, I wish I had my camera.

Speaking of my camera, there is an epic FAIL moment in the 300 level signage that I need to take a picture of. I can't believe no one has ever mentioned it before, or seems to even notice the error. Foolishness.

Oh and, Yoyo, Mary J. Blige? Really?

Nasher FINALLY scored a goal tonight in a loss to the Arizona Desert Dogs and Peter Mueller had 1 assist in the win. Can you believe Shane Doan has NEVER had a hat trick? He had two goals and an assist tonight and his elusive hat trick still awaits him. 897th NHL game tonight, still no 3 goal game. Yeesh.

I'm going to bed before hearing anything about the Chicago or Vancouver games so let me just predict:

Congratulations to Patrick Sharp for scoing 16 goals and 9 assists and congrats to Big Bear for scoring 12 goals and 52 assists and for curing depression and sadness throughout the world with your pudgy little chipmunk face.

I don't think I'm really that far off the mark with my predictions. Thoughts?

As I was writing that last pararaph Taylor Pyatt and Jonathan Toews scored. There's only like 9 minutes left in the 'Hawks game, Sharpie better get crackin'.

Free beverage upgrades at Starbucks does do wonders for bad moods though, I must say.

VOTE NOW. VOTE OFTEN. VOTE TEPPO.

Hey, Hey U-S-A!

by Anne

So 17 players were named to Team USA today with QUITE a few familiar faces. From NHL.com:

Among the 17 players named are three of the top-10 rookie point getters in the National Hockey League, including forwards Patrick Kane (Buffalo, N.Y./Chicago Blackhawks/1st, 21-51-82) and Peter Mueller (Bloomington, Minn./Phoenix Coyotes/4th, 22-32—54) and defenseman Tom Gilbert (Minneapolis, Minn./Edmonton Oilers/10th, 13-20—33).

Team USA’s roster features nine players who have previously played in the IIHF World Championship. The group includes defensemen Keith Ballard (Baudette, Minn./Phoenix Coyotes/2004, 2007) and Matt Greene (Grand Ledge, Mich./Edmonton Oilers/2007); forwards David Backes (Minneapolis, Minn./St. Louis Blues/2007), Dustin Brown (Ithaca, N.Y./Los Angeles Kings/2006, 2004), Jeff Halpern (Potomac, Md./Tampa Bay Lightning/2005, 2004, 2000-01), Patrick O’Sullivan (Winston Salem, N.C./Los Angeles Kings/2006), Drew Stafford (Milwaukee, Wis./Buffalo Sabres/2006), Lee Stempniak (West Seneca, N.Y./St. Louis Blues/2007); and goaltender Craig Anderson (Park Ridge, Ill./Florida Panthers/2006)

In addition, 14 of the 17 players are 25 years old or younger, including defensemen Ballard, Greene, Gilbert and James Wisniewski (Canton, Mich./Chicago Blackhawks); forwards Backes, David Booth (Detroit, Mich./Florida Panthers), Brown, Dustin Byfuglien (Minneapolis, Minn./Chicago Blackhawks), Kane, Mueller, O’Sullivan, Jason Pominville (Buffalo, N.Y./Buffalo Sabres), Stafford and Stempniak.

Rounding out the first group of players named to the U.S. roster is Paul Gaustad (Fargo, N.D./ Buffalo Sabres).

This article implies Pommer is FROM Buffalo. Interesting...I guess you can't really put that he was born in Quebec. And no one but a Sabres fan would ever know, actually.

Woooo!!! Staffy! Pommer! Goose! Kaner! Stampy! Wooooo! Buffalo representin'.

Sidenote, Goose is old and has never played with the IIHF so he gets his own paragraph? Haha. No word on Millsey yet. John Tortorella's evil plan may not have worked. Anderson does have the NHL record for most shots without allowing a goal. He had like 92 or something. Wowzas.

Game +/-

By Anne


"What we call despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope." -George Eliot

I'm trying to stay positive, SabreNation. It's one of my few character traits I have left, even in times of great despair, I usually manage to stay upbeat. Therefore, I shall soldier on.

Let's start with +:

+Millsey gave his usual solid effort, we can't fault him for allowing those 2 goals, especially that goal lead by Mara's slapshot from the point, that was just a bullet.

+Pommerdoodle and his line plus Soupy had some beautiful passing and playmaking on their goal.

+Adam Mair is still effing terrifying. Just look at December of the Sabres 2008 calendar. Would you want to take a face-off against that guy? I certainly would not

+MSG had a special on Staffy and his guitar, it was my only swoon-worthy moment of the night.
Update: The Sabres actually posted the video of Staffers and his guitar. They never do that, they must know how deep my love runs.

The embed code effed up my entire post, so here's the link

+Rick and Harry had some great exchanges:

Harry: The Sabres are 1/29 on the power play in the last 8 games.
Rick: That is not good.


Harry: There's Sean Avery, he's about as popular as a rattlesnake at a picnic.

Thanks, Harry!

+Yeah, I really can't think of anything else. Drury didn't score?

-:

-Not only was the game suck-tastically terrible, MSG's audio kept cutting in and out.

-The puck spent an abysmally little amount of time near the Ranger's net for most of the game, we just couldn't keep it out of our zone.

-There were so many power plays, including a 5 on 3 and we capitalized on NONE of them, the Rangers really know how to take the pain and block those shots. We tend to put TimmyHo in that position where we all know he's not going to risk taking a puck to the head...again.

-The first Ranger goal was basically scored because we couldn't get the puck past the blue line.

-Fucking Orr rolls over Millsey and there is no penalty and NO ONE teaches him a lesson. HE, WITHOUT TRYING TO STOP, CRASHED INTO MILLSEY AND HIS NET. Paetsch tried to go with Avery, but he's a pansy and wouldn't go, and the Sabres sent a message to the NHL, go ahead, fuck with Millsey, we won't stop you. He's only our best player, it's cool.

-Grizz took a header into the net like 19:00 into the 3rd. Great. Wonderful. Splendid. I need to change the subject. There's so much more I could say, but my hockey ulcer is not pleased.

How many Staal's are there? Ok, I know there's 3 in the NHL: Marc, Jordan, and Eric, but they're everywhere. Don't forget little Jared who plays in the OHL. MY GOD MR. AND MRS. STAAL, WHAT DO YOU FEED YOUR SONS?

Eric, Marc, Jordan, and Jared:

In much, much happier news, Buffalo son Patrick Kane was named NHL.com's 2nd star of the night when he ended a nine-game goal-less streak when he netted 2 goals and 1 assist last night as the Blackhawks slammed the Blues 6-1. And Lee Stempniak, West Seneca native, scored the only Blues goal. What a night for WNY natives!

Unfortunately, Manny Legace was injured after the 1st...and the backup let in all 6 goals. Ouch. Swarek has only played 11 minutes with the Blues so far this season and was clearly not prepared to play.

Kaner and Stempniak....wanna come home and play some hockey? Yeah? Yeah? Contracts? Phooey!

A woman my grandfather is friends with happens to be Kaner's great aunt. This I didn't know until around Christmas time. How exciting. Although, in South Buffalo everyone is related.

Kimmo Timonen has one of my top 10 favorite names of active NHL players. TEPPO is clearly #1. Dion Phaneuf makes the list, as does Rod Brind'amour. The MTL lineup has some fantastic names as well.

Let's end on a happy note. Check out Staffy, his buddy, his guns and his guitar. Look away from the worn-out hole in the crotch of his jeans...he's so badass, he doesn't even care. Oh Drew Stafford, why must you relentlessly force me to love you in spite of it all?