Marian Hossa Goal

Hockey. Marian Hossa. Sick Goal. Enough said.

Marian Hossa goal against Tampa Bay 12/13

Hockey

The NHL season started.

When your team plays deep into the playoffs for the first time in ages, the NHL off-season is thankfully quite short.

I missed the below hit in the preseason but the newly discovered www.thetwolinepass.com didn't. If you're a hockey fan I suggest checking the site out. It's quite excellent. A nice addition to my bookmark toolbar.

Dion Phaneuf hits Kyle Okposo

Hockey is pretty much the coolest sport on earth, aside from football. And rugby. Ron Artest even goes to hockey games. That's how cool it is.

Also, I posted a Milan Lucic fight from the other day...here's another one. This time he beat the living shit out of Jay Harrison. At this rate, Lucic is going to bloody someone up every 3 days. It's going to be an awesome hockey season.

Happy Monday.

Woah. Hockey Fights Are Back. And Ties Are Stupid...

Hockey. It's coming back...soon. Like Thursday I think.

I know the Chicago Blackhawks start the season in Finland or Korea or Iran or some really stupid place on earth so I'm not overly positive on when the NHL kicks off their ice charades. It's soon.

Part of the reason I do enjoy hockey is because you can fight during the contest. Make a big hit on the other team's star player? Star player's goon teammate is going to find you and try and slit your throat with his skate.

Marc Savard, one of Boston's superbly talented players got raped earlier in the game by ginger-boy Chris Neil of the Ottawa Senators. Milan Lucic, as noted by his Serbian name of destruction, doesn't like when that happens.

He tries to shove the smaller Neil around and make him mad. Neil responds by shoving back. Lucic, like any good Serb, decides when the puck drops, just to hit Neil in the nuts with his stick.

Neil, like any good ginger, quickly responds because he has no genitalia and begins to fight Lucic.

Lucic gets some good shots in and Neil actually hangs tight in the fight before it ends with Neil's face looking a lot worse than Lucic's.

Either way, it's professional athlete's, who could kill you and me, fighting in the middle of a pre-season game and the refs allowing it. That's why hockey is great. It's a sport full of talent and skill and huge hits and fights. Plus, some teams have hot ice girl cheerleaders too.

** On a side note...the NHL used to have ties. Teams would play 60-minutes of hard fought hockey and then go to overtime. If the teams tied at the end of overtime, the game ended in a tie. That's retarded, I know. Thankfully, nowadays, the NHL forces a short OT, then goes to a shootout to decide the winner. OT is neat. Shootouts are awesome. Ties are for losers.

The NFL, thankfully filled with non-losers, rarely has an OT game end in a tie because the teams are so exhausted from brutally destroying each other that one team usually screws up and allows a TD or field goal or safety and ends the game before OT can end with no scoring.

That leads me to last night's softball game that my co-workers and I played in...

We played our second game of the season, in typical Chicago fall fashion - a little warm weather, diagonal rain, wind, darkness, coldness and dust. We played a good team that got out to a big lead and we came back to tie it up, take the lead, and go back and forth with this team for 6 strong innings.

When the 6th inning ended, tied 14-14, the ump looked at his watch, and yelled, "TIME!! The next game has to start now! Game ends in a tie!"

...what?!?...a tie??? Are you f*cking serious?

We were pissed. Both teams agreed that this sucked. The game before ours went long and we started late. Now we had to end on time so the two teams behind us could play? It's not like it was 0-0 either. Both teams played well and still had another inning or two in them before we had to hit the bar...but nope. Game ended in a tie.

I couldn't imagine being a professional sports player and having to end the game in a tie. NFL football ending in a tie? Rarely ever happens. NHL? Nope, not anymore. Baseball? Aside from the All-Star debacle a few years back, no more ties. NBA? They'll play till 1,000 points are put up or Vernon Maxwell snaps and kills both teams. For Christ's sake I've seen a 3-day Cricket match take place in London so a tie wouldn't happen. And those f*ckers stopped to drink tea in the middle of the match!!

...which leads me to two final points...

1) Ties are f*cking retarded. Two teams go to battle and one comes away a winner. Wars don't end in ties. Sports shouldn't either.

2) Soccer is for weirdos. Soccer games end in ties. They flop all over the field for 90 minutes, scratch and scream at each other, and kick a ball. Soccer games end in ties. Soccer sucks.

That's all.

More Spooning With A Stranger coming soon. I enjoy writing too much to take prolonged breaks for actual real-world work. My plan for fall is to grow a beard, wear flannels, drink hot-alcoholic cider, and write. Hope it works out.

Hockey Fighting Can NEVER Be Banned

The Chicago Blackhawks played the Vancouver Canucks last night. The Blackhawks had been in the process of shitting lots of big bricks over the last few weeks while forward Patrick Sharp sat out with an injury. Once Sharp returned, the Hawks picked it back up.

The Hawks were sitting 4th in the Western Conference with the Canucks right behind them in 5th. After three periods, the Hawks trailed 3-0 and started to realize that not only might they lose home-ice advantage in the playoffs, they might have to face the Vancouver Canucks again in that series. So they forearm-shivered the Canucks' goalie, Roberto Luongo, in the face. And when goalies get forearm-shivered in the face, fights usually break out. For a brief while, I thought a goalie fight might happen but it never fully materialized. Fortunately, for the Hawks sake, they at least won the fighting portion of the game. Ben Eager made the Canucks' Kevin Bieksa look like he got in a fight with a tiger, while Alexander Burrows participated in the ultimate hockey bitch move by pulling hair. The end result of the brawl resulted in the hilarious image of six Blackhawks sitting in the penalty box.

Bad news: Hawks are tied for 4th with the Canucks holding the tiebreaker advantage. Good news: the teams really could meet again for a playoff series.

*Also, a side note, hockey fighting truly can't be banished. Our Monday Link Dump is going to include some random sports fighting clips and there is one noticeable thing about NHL fighting; it is allowed to happen. Hockey players are allowed to go at it, while the team watches, and the refs wait. Once a guy falls down or gets his face smashed in, the fight ends. It's a respectable thing that allows hockey to stand apart from other sports. It allows for a certain edge and outlet for certain situations in the game. The NHL cannot condone the banning of fighting.