That was one hell of a game. Roberto Luongo and Peter Budaj put on a goaltending clinic out there. The both made a lot of highlight reel saves. I'm guessing the stores are all out of those I Believe in Budaj buttons.

Oh, and TJ? Good luck with the apartment hunting in Denver.

Bigger recap tomorrow...

Joe Sakic will not be on the ice in Vancouver on Wednesday. Although his MRI was negative, he's not yet ready to go and did not make the trip to his home province. The next chance for him to play will be on Saturday in Edmonton. (The Oilers, by the way, claimed Jesse Boulerice of Lake Erie off of waivers today).

Tony Granato said in the above article that Arnason would play on Wednesday. With McCormick returning from his leave of absence (our condolences to him on his loss), that leaves one more forward to be scratched. It won't be TJ Hensick (or, it better not be). I'm guessing Marek Svatos or David Jones (I'd lean towards the former, as he watched most of the 3rd period from the bench on Saturday).

Before people go nuts with the anti-Arnason talk, I (as usual) think it's worth giving him a chance. I want to see how he responds to the scratch. If he still plays like a wet noodle after his first healthy scratch as an Av, then the gloves can come off. Until then, I'm anxious to see if the wake up call got through. Here's his reaction to the benching:

"In hockey, lots of things happen," Arnason said. "It's the nature of the game, I guess. What are you going to do, right? It was the coach's decision. I wasn't happy about it. It's the way it goes sometimes and you have to move on.

"The team pulled out a win, so it was good. I didn't play as good the first five (games), but lately I think I've played a little better."

Asked if he felt Granato was sending him a message, Arnason said: "I'm not sure if that's what they're doing, but it's been a long message. We'll see."
I have no idea what that last bit means. I guess we'll just have to see how it goes on the ice.

I know the Scott Parker story has been given coverage today by both the Denver Post and Joe over at MHH. While I think that would normally be plenty for a player like Parker, I do think the story is worth looking at a little deeper.

The Sheriff was re-signed by the Avs on June 24th. At the time, the deal was a bit surprising for two reasons. One was that Parker had played in just 25 games for the Avalanche; with plenty of other players willing to drop the gloves, his services really weren't needed by the club. The other was that Parker signed a 2-way deal, meaning he would make less if he was sent to the minors ($500,000 / $100,000 were the reported numbers). And, with guys like Laperriere, McCleod and McCormick expected back, a move to Cleveland had to be in his future. While he probably wasn't going to have a lot of teams beating down his door with offers, wouldn't it have made sense for him to at least wait a week (for the start of free agency) to at least test the waters? Was there some sort of ultimatum from the Avs? Was there a threat to pull even the 2-way offer off the table if he wasn't signed by July 1st?

And then we fast-forward to preseason, with Parker playing several games. I think we were all a little surprised when Parker made the final cut over TJ Hensick and Per Ledin. Hensick, you may recall, had a terrific camp. Ledin's was not as terrific, but, unlike Parker, he's on a one-way contract and will make the same amount of money ($600,000) whether he's in the AHL or NHL.

Why would Parker make the squad over either of those guys? I think we might have gotten an answer the following day, when Parker was placed on the IR with a concussion. In true Avalanche fashion, Parker had apparently been injured in a fight 7 days before, yet no one, including Adrian Dater, knew anything about it. The fact that the Avalanche front office was playing games with injury information wasn't news, but, in my opinion, the timing of the transaction was. Parker was IR'd the day after teams pared their rosters to 23 players. While the "injury" was news to the media and fans, it wouldn't have been to the team (or, at least, it shouldn't have been). Had the Avs IR'd Parker the day before, they could have kept Hensick or Ledin. Instead, a week-old injury is suddenly announced the day after the roster was cut down. Why? My thought at the time was that the Avs were making room to claim a player from the waiver wire (Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers, perhaps?). Obviously, that didn't happen. Perhaps no one useful was waived, or was grabbed by another team. Or, perhaps the timing was just an odd coincidence. I'm pretty sure we'll never know.

Then, 10 days later, Parker was quietly reassigned to Lake Erie after clearing waivers. To my recollection, there was almost no discussion of this news. Dater gave it those two sentences in his blog, and just one at the bottom of this article on Milan Hejduk. I found a little longer article here, and even that one was light on information. No one seemed to have any information on Parker's injury. Was he healed? If not, was there a reason the Avs kept him the NHL roster for a week and a half before demoting him? Conventional wisdom was that the Avalanche were sending him down to save money (and cap space), but if the move was simply financial, why wait?

As we've now heard, Parker apparently never reported to Lake Erie and they didn't seem to be missing him in Cleveland as it took 3 weeks for the Avs cut him for failing to report. How was he traveling to Cleveland? By foot? Even on his Harley (I'm just guessing he owns one) he could have made that trip sooner than that. Why 3 weeks? If he, as Dater's article implies, was still injured an unable to play since the demotion, wouldn't he be at least expected to check in with team doctors? And, for that matter, why is there no mention of the October 17th reassignment on the Lake Erie website? Geez, you almost get the feeling that the club knew he had no intention of showing up.

So, let me see if I have this straight. Scott Parker signs a 2-way contract with a team that doesn't need him a week before he could field offers from other teams. That contract will pay him $100 grand if he gets sent to Lake Erie, something he had to know was going to happen. Before the season starts, Parker gets injured but he and the team keep that a secret for a week. The team delays putting him on IR, forcing them to cut one of their players. Later, they send Parker to the AHL in a move to save money, but, for some reason, they keep Parker around to collect an NHL paycheck for an extra 10 days or so. Then, once they finally get around to demoting him, the club they are sending him to gets so excited that they forget to even announce the move. After three weeks, someone finally notices that the 6'5 tattooed behemoth with a crazy beard is missing and tells on him. The Avs cut him. Parker, apparently annoyed that he's losing $400,000 by being demoted, gives up an additional $100,000 he would have been given to watch games in Lake Erie in a suit.

Does that sound right...to anyone?

If it's been reported somewhere, I've missed it. Kyle Cumiskey has been sent back to Lake Erie according to this transaction page. I'd say that's pretty accurate, since Cumiskey played for the Monsters on Sunday (wearing the A, no less).

Not that it's a big deal - with Hannan healthy enoug to play on Saturday, this move was going to happen sooner or later. It just would be nice to have a little official notification (which I'm sure someone will point out to me within the hour).

According to AD, Cody McCormick has left the team for personal reasons and David Jones has been recalled. Hopefully, everything is okay with Cody. Also, Joe Sakic is expected to play tomorrow against the Predators.

Darcy Tucker is under fire today, and I don't just mean from the folks bashing him on the message boards. Despite a rare solid game for Tucker against the Wild last night - he had the lone goal as well as a couple of hits - the buzz this morning is on his low hit on Nick Schultz:

Six-and-a-half minutes into the third period of the Wild's 3-1 victory, Tucker was called for clipping after he went for a low-bridge hit aimed at Schultz's knees. An angry Schultz drew a roughing penalty in retaliation.

"My concern is at the end of the second, he tells me he's going to come and take out my knees, and then he actually does it," said Schultz, who got into a verbal exchange after a physical exchange late in the second. "It says everything you need to know about that guy."

"He's been that type of player his whole career, and you don't need that in the game. It's something we're trying to get away from -- hits to the head and taking out guys' knees. It's just a gutless play."

Adrian Dater adds the following embarrassing summation of the Avalanche's Dick Cheney policy:

When Schultz was saying this, Tucker was headed to the showers, so we never got any comment out of him. But we’ll be sure to tomorrow. Although, knowing the Avs, they find a way to make him somehow conveninently unavailable to the press.

Thankfully, I haven't seen a lot of those types a hits in the league. I remember seeing the play last night, but had to go back to my Tivo to watch it again. Tucker is definitely going in low on the play. There's no way to corroborate the accusation that Tucker told Schultz earlier that he was going to go for his knees. I just can't tell if that's an intentional attempt to injure or not. But, If it is, they need to throw the book at Tucker - there's no place for that kind of crap in this league. And they probably will.

Obviously, Tucker has a bit of a reputation for those kinds of hits. In fact, when I googled "clipping" for a definition of the penalty, I found the following wikipedia entry:

Clipping was instituted as a rule in the National Hockey League in 2002, following a low hit on 26 April by Toronto Maple Leafs forward Darcy Tucker on New York Islanders captain Michael Peca. The hit occurred during a Stanley Cup playoff matchup between the two teams, and Peca was unable to play for the remainder of the season. When the NHL added the new rule, the videotape distributed by the league showed the hit as an example of a clipping penalty that would result in an automatic game misconduct.

Here's a thought: if you are getting penalized for a penalty the league because of you, you might have a problem.

http://www.denverpost.com/avalanche/ci_10916037?source=rss

Sakic doubtful with the back (but we knew that, since yesterday Tony Granato said he'd likely play tonight) and we know how that all works out in Avalanche land.

Hensick has been recalled and is expected to play. Here's what the lines may look like, based on info from Dater and the RMN:

• Stastny, Smyth, Hejduk


• Arnason, Wolski, Jones


• Hensick, McLeod, Svatos


• McCormick, Lappy, Tucker

Also, there's no specifics in that RMN article, but Aaron Lopez does say that the defensive pairings were tweaked in practice as well, so it wouldn't be a shock to see some different groupings on the blueline too.

EDIT: Well, scrap all that. Jori is reporting that Jones has been sent down and Kyle Cumiskey has been recalled. So, your guess is as good as mine on the lines.

So far, Brad Richardson is not off to a tremendous start with the LA Kings. Richie has played in only 3 games, and when he has played, he's played sparingly (like the 6:29 4th line minutes he mustered against the Avs). Last night, I happened to be watching the Blues - Kings game, and was totally caught by surprise by a scrum after the whistle. With all sorts of tough guys on the ice, the two people who ended up squaring off were former Avs Brad Richardson and Dan Hinote. It wasn't much of a fight (which you can watch here), but it certainly was surreal to watch. I don't think Richie is going to earn more time as an enforcer.