Wake me when it's over...
We don't need to spend much time with this one, do we? The Avalanche and Panthers "battled" it out at the whateveryoucallit building in Florida. Officially, it was a hockey game witnessed by 16,132 Floridians. In reality, it was a coma-inducing snoozer.
The Avalanche scored as many goals as they earned: zero. Supposedly, they had 23 shots in the game, but I suspect some grandfatherly scorekeeper took pity on the fine fellows in white.
The Panthers didn't play all that much better, but did manage to, you know, score. Former Avalanche forward Brett McLean went into the game with 0 goals to show for his $1.7 million annual salary. Of course, he scored the first - and game winning - goal. Richard Zednik, after knocking Ruslan Salei out of the game by tripping him into the boards, also added a tally and Bryan McCabe scored an empty netter to add insult to what was already rather insulting.
The only "action" (and I'm using that term very loosely) was some physical stuff. Zednik started things off with his cheap shot on Salei (one of the few penalties the refs actually managed to see). Keith Ballard leveled Cody McCormick with a clean hit later in the first. When McCormick started taking revenge on Ballard, cheap-ass bitch Nick Boynton came flying in - something he's been very consistent at in his career. Ballard later repeated that hit on David Jones and this time it was Adam Foote taking umbrage. Both Ballard hits seemed clean (he got a penalty on the 2nd, probably because the refs didn't want the Avs to explode). Man, I wish we could get guys who could hit like that. There was more - Ian Laperriere was after Ballard the whole game, but could only get Nick Tarnsky to fight. Some guy elbowed Paul Stastny, etc etc. It all would have been really compelling if it was mixed with an actual hockey game. No dice. I can't have my two hours back, and I'm certainly not going to waste any more of my time on the thing.
Cody McCormick replaced TJ Hensick on the 4th line (duh?). Salei played 4 shifts after the hit (looked a lot like an upper body injury) but then sat the rest of the way. Or maybe he fell asleep. Any other questions, the ITCS report is up.
- This was supposed to the first chance for the Stewart brothers to face each other in the NHL, but Anthony was a scratch by the Panthers.
The Avs host the Phoenix Coyotes on Thursday. The Coyotes have one player on their roster under 6'.
I'm going to let Adam Hersh sum it all up for you:
I tried as hard as I could to think of one, single, solitary good thing that happened in today's game, but sadly, there is absolutely nothing worthwhile to write about.