we did it!

More thanksgiving excellence..

THE SABRES WON AGAIN! :):)

good job boys. I like this new "winning" thing.

And I stick by what I have noticed before- the scruffier Derek Roy looks- the better he plays. And he looks pretty hot with a beard, so carry on my man, carry on.

ahhh Star Wars is on. Good old school Star Wars. I LOVE it! Han Solo is my hero.

That is all. One more day in Louisiana. Tomorrow is my grandma's surprise 80th bday party. She has NO IDEA. it's gonna be awesome!

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to my American buddies and Happy November 27 to my Canadian buddies. ;)

I am thankful for many things, including my super fam, my great friends, the internet for hockey updates anywhere, a Sabres WIN!, food, shelter and love.

I'm in south Louisiana with my great fam. We ate way too much food and had a ton of fun.. good people and good times. it's fantastic.

The only drawback about being down here is no hockey.. specifically no Sabres. I missed Royzie scoring 2 goals!!!!! but yay that he did. and they won. Well done lads, well done.

I will be in the land of no hockey until Sunday so keep me updated. And woooo go SABRES!

Oh and there was no Hockey SAB this week because I'm on vacation so you'll get one (and maybe 2) next week.

Later and GO SABRES!

http://www.thehockeynews.com/articles/20227-Getting-To-Know-Willie-Mitchell.html

TOTALLY Adorable "getting to know you" interview from THN with Willie Mitchell. He's awesome. If I had to pick a Canuck, he'd totally win. Not only is he foxy, but he seems articulate and sweet too. Awwwww.

And that's it. The Sabres are annoying me. A boy is annoying me. Lots of things are pretty annoying right now so I'm just trying to be Zen and only think about good things.

Oh and WHY do the boys have to play Boston again? Puke. Also, who came up with this completely jacked schedule? you fail NHL.

Boo Hiss

The Sabres are depressing me.

I barely listened to the game tonight- I was out and about- and I turned it off multiple times in favor of a new cd I bought. When I got home I turned the game on in time to see Derek Roy score but it was not enough. The only good thing about tonight is that I get a Roy goal (FINALLY) for my fantasy team, and Joey MacDonald is also on my team so I get a win. Yay for that, boo for everything else. I'm tired of them losing. It only contributes to the other crappiness I've been feeling the last few days. Everything was going super great and now I'm not so sure. :(

Basically I'm cranky and pms-y and I don't feel like being all fun and hockey happy because hockey makes me sad right now.

Yep.

BLAH.

enough is enough

Yay Royzie scored a goal! and had an assist, but the boyos still got told. I only saw the last 3 mins of the game. Yick. I HATE the Bruins!

Know what I don't hate? Spitz dill pickle sunflower seeds! I found some when I was in Canada this weekend and my life is happppppy. :) I used to buy them when I was in Utah but have not seem them since. I tried to buy some from their website but they won't ship them to the US. Boo. So I had to import my own. WOOHOO!

And it's Wednesday again- they keep sneaking up on me- so it's time for your weekly Separated at Birth:



-Shawn Horcoff of the Oilers

AND



-Actor Max Casella

That's kind of eerie. Separated at Birth? YOU be the judge! :)

ah-ha!

Derek Roy has a groin pull. Hmm. that doesn't really explain his lackluster offensive production. Blah. get healthy dude and START SCORING GOALS! PLEASE! (because you know I will never drop you from my fantasy team anyway)

I thought he played pretty chippily (is that a word?) on Friday at times and it reminded me of old school Derek. I miss old school Derek. blah.

Didn't see a lick of Sat's game. I was in Hamilton. They won on sat and Sunday too. WOOHOO!

For some reason I thought the boys were playing last night. Of course not, because I actually could have watched the game. Last Fri (when I was AT the game) was the first time I'd sat down and watched a whole Sabres game in forever. They always like to play when I can't see them. Like tomorrow, or Friday and Sat. ARGH. Who put this damn schedule together anyway? Why was I not consulted?

I did watch Adam Mair's piece from The Sabres Show last night. Hahaha that was awesome. he's kinda hot. sometimes. He's also a little creepy. But I love fact that he's almost 30- that means he's older than me! YAY! (something that's getting more and more rare these days.) I looked at the roster for the Amerks the other night and I am older than all but one of them. GEEEZ! that's Ill.

And I think that's it for now..

ugh

The Sabres reeked Friday. Well that's not entirely true. When they had the puck they were pretty good. Leclaire was sick and they couldn't get past him. But when they didn't have the puck, they ran around like chickens with their heads cut off. IDIOTS!

I didn't see last game because I was in Hamilton watching some AHL hockey which was worlds better than the crap the Sabres have been feeding us. It was the Bulldogs and the Amerks. And Hamilton won, woo! I never really liked the Amerks (since I was a Syracuse Crunch fan before I was a Sabres fan) so my dear boys Pommers, Royzie and Miller were dead to me until they became Sabres. Now I don't really care about the Amerks anyway but it's less of a quandry.

Today is round 2 of that series and then a skate with the team. Woo! Not that I know any of the guys who play for Hamilton, but my friends do so that's cool.

And it's supposed to lake effect snow tonight. Gross. I wouldn't care except I'm driving back from Canada and my friends have to get back to Ohio tomorrow so it needs to chill with that. Driving + lots of snow falling very fast= SUCK!

ahh no!

I know Alix isn't going like this and neither does my fantasy team (though I am playing her this week) but Kevin Bieska is out for 2-4 weeks with a broken bone is his foot! :( Poor guy. I LIKE him! He's good for my team. Grrrrr.

Sabres/Blue Jackets tonight. Section 325 Row 1. YAY!

cbj

Check it:

Tomorrow (Friday), I'll be at HSBC checkin our fellas for the evening as they play "Look at me, I'm" Rick Nash and the Blue Jackets.

I think some of you might be there too. Want to meet up? e-mail me or hit me on facebook if we are friends (and if we aren't facebook friends, WHY NOT?) and we can rendez-vous.

WOOOO! :)

sexytime

Here it is- the link to what most of you have probably already seen, the Rangers Men's Journal photo shoot.

WHY IS IT THE (grossbadguy) Rangers?

Though I have to admit, Lundqvist and Naslund look pretty damn sharp. Redden is decent. Drury and Gomez are dead to me so they can't look good.

When are they going to profile the Sabres? I think we should compile a top 5 guys from each team to do their own "Men's Journal" shoot. Here are my Sabre suggestions:

Derek Roy
Paul Gaustad
Patrick Lalime
Hank Tallinder (gotta have the Swedish guy in the suit, they are apparently 5 yrs ahead of the North Americans fashion-wise, just ask Wade Redden).
Craig Rivet

Suggestions? Arguments? We have a lot of fine lookin fellas on the Sabres, so it's hard to pick just 5. Who would you pick? And if you aren't a Sabres fan (I know there are some of you out there) or you know another team better, please share your picks for them.

I'm going to throw in some Red Wings too, since I know them pretty well:

Henrik Zetterberg
Andreas Lilja
Nicklas Lidstrom
Chris Chelios (yeah he's older than dirt but he looks pretty good in that rugged, swarthy way)
Chris Osgood - he still looks 19 years old but he's got a killer smile :)

And that's all I've got.. for now. Please discuss!

hometown

Tonight's SAB is West Seneca's own son Lee Stempniak, who came home to Buffalo and scored a goal. (Just like Patrick Kane last year, I guess we have a soft spot for the locals.)

I'm not feeling too verbose (weird, i know), so I'll just get on with it. Bet y'all wish I'd do that more often, eh? LOL



-Lee Stempniak of the St. Louis Blues

AND



-Actor Matthew Broderick

Separated at Birth? You be the judge. :)

P.S. The Sabres won. YAY!

We like to party

and by party I mean allow soft goals to kill our lead. Ugh Sabres, STOP letting them come back dammit!

I thought Petey's fights were actually pretty good, especially for him, Koci is a nasty piece of work and I dont know much about Janssen but Petey definitely held his own and got some punches in, which is more than he usually does. Well done, lad.

ARGH Royzie just blasted one off the post. a little to the left, buddy.

Legace has a 33.96 GAA for this game and .571 save %. That is PAINFUL. He's on my fantasy team. I might as well just concede the goalie stats for the week. I'm currently tied for 1st place points wise in the echl league. I'm one win shy of #1 though so I come in at 2nd. I'm in 7th in the IPB Amazingleague. Not too terrible. (of course that's where I have Legace with those stellar stats so who knows where I'll end up after this week.)

Oh and Alexander Semin is incredible. He has 5 points tonight- 2 G 3 A- and he's on my team! WOOO!

Speaking of Caps, Tyler Sloan is back in Washington. He's trying to keep himself in the NHL and it's awesome!

I love it when Hank Tallinder scores, he looks SO HAPPY! Must be because he knew that Heather B was at the game. :)

WHY don't each of the NHL's teams do a sexytime photo shoot like the skanky Rangers did with Men's Journal? I mean that's just not fair to the rest of the hockey world who HATES the Rangers (even if some of them look pretty nice in a suit)?

Oh crap. Timmy is broken again. Or at least not on the bench. He did get a nasty hit earlier in the period. Boo.

That's all the rambles I have for the moment. Time to finish the game and then read my sweet good book. Oh shoot and find a SAB. Stay tuned..

In Defence of Pavel Bure

Ooh today on the Hockey News's e-mail newsletter there was a link to an article about how Pavel Bure should be in the Hockey Hall of Fame. I could not agree more. I have talked about it before, but Pavel is my first and always hockey love. If Lance Links (a kid my sister had a crush on) started my watching hockey in the first place, Pavel Bure kept me there. He was electrifying, he was incredible. Bure had inhuman speed, but more importantly, he had the skills to make that speed DANGEROUS. Speed will only get you so far (i.E. Max Afinigenov) But Bure had amazing puckhandling skills. He could control the puck at warp speed and he made goalies look silly. On a consistent basis. He was pure artistry on the ice. And he scored goals- lots of them.

But he never recieved the mainstream media that you'd expect from someone so talented. he shied away from the interviews and profiles, because deep inside he was a very private person. Also, keep in mind that he was raised in the Soviet Union and life was different then than it is now for the Russian born players. So the media villified him and that hurt his reputation, even though he was poetry in motion on the ice and sold oodles of tickets. I think that's the biggest reason he's not in the Hockey Hall of Fame. He also never won a Stanley Cup but you can't blame that on him. Stanley Cups are won and lost by TEAMS. He owned all players in playoff goals in 1994, the last time he made it past the 2nd round of the playoffs. He never played for a truly great team, and never with a superstar center. What he did do was lead all players in goals in 1994, 2000, and 2001. In 2000, he also came within TWO point sof breaking the Gretzky/Lemieux/Jagr trifecta that owned the Art Ross Trophy for highest point-scorer for 2 decades. That's not nothing.

Campbell from THN Has this to say:
The two arguments against Bure are that his career was cut short by injury and he never won a Stanley Cup, but both of those are quite easily debunked.

First of all, having a short career didn’t hurt Bobby Orr or Mike Bossy and it should not be held against Bure that his back gave in to the rigors of playing in the toughest league in the world. Had he spent the first half or two-thirds of his career playing in Europe and piling up Olympic gold medals and World Championships against inferior competition and in a much less rigorous environment, the way 2008 inductee Igor Larionov did, Bure would have his path to the Hall of Fame cleared already.

Secondly, it’s not Bure’s fault he didn’t win a Stanley Cup. He came agonizingly close to doing so with the Vancouver Canucks in 1994, a spring in which he led all NHL players in playoff goals with 16. Although Bure only played in the playoffs five times, he failed to average at least a point per game just one of those years and his 70 points in 64 playoff games stacks up favorably against a lot of players with Hall of Fame credentials.

But it was his sustained excellence during the regular season – particularly in goal scoring – that sets Bure apart. He played just 702 games, but scored 437 goals, just 47 fewer than Hall of Famer Darryl Sittler, whose 484 career goals came in almost 400 more games than Bure played. In fact, Bure’s average of .623 goals per game is third-highest in NHL history among the league’s top 100 goal scorers behind only Bossy (.762) and Mario Lemieux (.754).

I think the numbers will speak pretty well for themselves. Not to mention that he was Rookie of the Year in 1992 (the same year Nicklas Lidstrom was a rookie! And beyond the .623 Goals per game. he also averaged 1.11 points per game. Not bad at all. (For reference, here are some other players points per game: Mike Bossy- 1.50, Jagr- 1.25, Sakic 1.19, Lemieux 1.88 (!) Gretz- 1.92, Ovie- 1.24, Sid 1.38) **But also keep in mind that all of those guys except Ovie and maybe Bossy, are/were centermen which means they are setting up a lot more plays, thus leading to more assists and points. Pavel was a Right Wing.

I think that's it. I've been wanting to post this for ages. I think it's an embarassment to the hockey hall of fam committe that they didn't induct Bure, especially when they had 2 open slots. That's like a slap in the face. Next year will be Yzerman, Leetch, Hull and Robitaille, since they are up and are all for sure lock-ins so you know he's not getting there next year. It'll have to come late. And that's a shame. Pavel played in the wrong time- he would have thrived in today's obstruction-free NHL. But alas, his body fell apart. (too many cheap shots to the knees?) and he had to retire at age 32.

eek

In which I remind you that I am, in fact, a very hormonal female. Feel free to skip this post, but I had to get it out.

they interviewed Royzie after the game (which was a little rude since I know he was feeling lame after that penalty but whatev) and he wasn't wearing a hat! For like the first time this season. I love it when he does that because then you can see his eyes! Roy has hot eyes. And his hair, I actually really like his hair. *sigh* WHY does he make me feel all squee-y and like I'm 15 again? I'm frickin 27 years old, 2 years OLDER than Mr. Derek Roy. I need to move on. But he's pretty.

And now that I got all that out, I feel slightly more normal.

Back to your (slightly) more intelligent hockey ramblings and observations.

game day

MAN Rayzor is feelin salty tonight. I think he and Harry are about to rumble.

Royzie is killing me tonight. He keeps almost doing good things but not quite. What is WITH him this year?

Taking a penalty in Overtime= NO NO BAD DEREK!

And the Sabres lose in OT. To the Thrashers. Again. (well the other was a shootout but same idea.) I don't like these guys. They aren't that good but they always play up to the Sabres and Buffalo doesn't respond. Most of the game was pretty okay but this always seems to happen against them. Grr.

That's really all I have. I missed the first period but yay for Mac getting a goal- it was a good move adding him to my fantasy team, and Royzie, though he sorta sucked, had 2 pp assists so that's good as well. I am currently leading in both of my leagues. yay! But my goalies are dropping like flies. Manny Legace should be back soon, but he's been out, Marty is done for a while, Nabokov just got hurt till I don't know when.. ARGH! Osgood is the only one still chillin, and hopefully I don't lose him too- he's on BOTH of my teams!

My sis gets home sometime on Sunday so I'll be spending the weekend in Watertown, probably without internet, unless they can magically connect it tomorrow- I should have scheduled it, but I didn't think of it. SO if you don't hear from me until Monday, don't be afraid.

Crazy

Eeek do we really have to wait another day until the Sabres are on again? Ugh.

I was playing with Google Analytics earlier (inspired by Shara's ramblings of earlier and since I haven't done it in a while I thought I'd dig it..

October 9 was a popular day for my humble blog. I got 57 pageviews! WHOAAA!

And seriously, people who search my blog- I DON'T KNOW WHERE TRAVIS RYCROFT IS PLAYING THIS YEAR. I have not spoken to Rykes in more than 2 years. Got it? I know he's hot, I know he's a great dude, he's a fun hockey player. What I *DON'T* know is anything about his current life. But you keep searching it. So more power to you but just be aware that this blog is not a hotspot for Travis Rycroft sightings. ;)

I think the best search term I saw was "heatherB style". I did use that exact phrase once but it's a cool one since HeatherB is awesome.

And I had a visitor from the United Arab Emirates- how cool is that? (they actually have hockey there too, btw) and one from some weird hard to pronounce town in south central Russia. Fun times.

And that's really the coolness of the day.

P.S. My sis comes home from Iraq in 2 days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Who knows?

I am still distraught over the loss of marty for the next 3-4 months. My birthday game will still be sweet (I mean, it IS 2nd row and it IS the Sabres and I love them and the other Devils fellas too) but no MARTY! Blaaaah. I'll just have to settle for the fact that I can see the supreme hotness that is David Clarkson all up close and personal. That's wicked sweet. I'll try to keep myself under control. No promises though.

Moving on.. it's Wednesday again. how do they keep sneaking up on me? I have managed to cobble together a hockey SAB- it might be a bit of a stretch but I'm feelin it. (and hey, it's my blog so I guess that's all that matters. Comments are always welcome and suggestions are appreciated! there are a lot of wednesdays in a year and I have been too busy to watch much hockey lately- blasphemy, I know!) so I haven't been seeing much to inspire me. So bear with me a little bit. I delved through this week's edition of The Hockey News(inwhich I was able to answer EVERy question on the crossword WOOT) for inspiration. There was a cool article about Simon Gagne of the skanky Flyers. I've always enjoyed M. Gagne, I think he's pretty foxy and he's a good player so I am happy to see him injury-free. (though they had a huge article about Marty last week- first one I've seen- and look where that got him! Be careful Simon!) Oh yes and Simon and I are buddies because it's the French (SEE-mohn) and my name in French class in high school was Simone. :) [And no, I did not pick it for him, just in case you were wondering. he was drafted in 1998 and I was in French class before 1998.]

And now without further ado or babbling, here is this week's Hockey SAB:



-Simon Gagne of the Flyers

AND



-Henrik Zetterberg of the Red Wings

Separated at birth? You be the judge. I am curious to hear what you think. Is it cheating to pick 2 hockey players? I don't think so, and I make the rules so there ya go. ha.

until next time.. adieu!

P.S. Do we really have to wait till FRIDAY for the next Sabres game? What is WITH this?

No Marty?

No Marty? For 3-4 MONTHS?

My game is on December 17. :( That's less than 3-4 months.

I miss him already.

a torn biceps? That sounds super painful. Poor guy.

Now I've got to go goalie shopping for my fantasy team. I am already missing Legace.. eeks!

T-Bone

Wooo the Sabres won 5-0 last night! Good job boys. I saw none of the game so I can't comment but it sounds pretty good from what I read/heard about it. :) Thank you Roy and Pominville for scoring some goals! And Vanek, whatever you ate for breakfast yesterday, keep eating it. ;)

Last night Morgan and I went to San Antonio to see the Rampage play the Providence Bruins. It was a rough game for SA- they lost 5-1. There were 2 bustin fights, one of which the Rampage totally won.. the other was kind of a draw with the edge to Providence I guess.

But the crowd was a lot of fun- we enjoyed laughing at the people on the jumbotron way too much. And the mascot for the Rampage- T-Bone is the best Mascot I've ever seen. He was hilarious.

Hockey is fun in Texas. And it was kinda nice not to have any emotional attachment to the game, so it wasn't too painful when they lost.