GodsendJen

After two and half years of living here in 'Dawg land it looks like I'll finally get the on field evidence I need to shut up all the Georgia fans who surround me daily.  Of course it took my team having their worst season in several years to set this show down up.  The Hokies will be shutting down that 'Dawg offense in the Peach Chick-Fil-A a Bowl on Dec. 30.  The only question left is how much money can I make by accepting the friendly wagers that will surely be offered up by my acquaintences here.

Chick-Fil-A Bowl Information

It's strange how sometimes something you dread can turn out so well.  Atlanta has a miserable record against the Toronto Maple Leafs.  Last season the Leafs beat us 4 times by a combined total of 19 points.  Earlier this season they beat us 4-2. In fact to find the last time Atlanta beat Toronto you have to go all the way back to October of 2003 when we walked away with a 3-2 OT win. Tonight we took a big step ahead as a team and dominated the Leafs walking away with a 5-0 win.  The highlights:

• Marian Hossa had his first Thrasher hat trick. (His last one came when he was with Ottowa in a game against the Thrashers.) 
  
• Kari Lehtonen had his 4th shut out of the season (setting a new single season franchise mark for shut-outs).  
  

The hat trick and the shut out are both impressive, but more so was the way the whole team pulled togather.  The hat trick wasn't just a product of Hossa's puck mastery.  When we found ourselves on the power play late in the game everyone on the ice was trying to get the puck to Hossa.  On the other end of the ice everyone was working hard to help Kari preserve that shutout.  Kari was on fire tonight and its obvious that his success in the last two games has really bolstered his confidence.  It was also refreshing to hear chants of "Hos-sa, Hos-sa" and "Kari, Kari" coming from the crowd instead of the usual drivel.

I agree with most of the things Bob Hartley does with the Thrashers, after all he knows infinately more about hockey than I can ever hope to comprehend.  The decisions of his I've really questioned came during the games where Kari Lehtonen gave up a couple of quick goals and Hartley quickly pulled him and went to Johan Hedberg.  Coming from a football background there are some football thoughts that infiltrate my hockey thoughts.  I think of goalies the same way I think of quarterback and I really worried that getting pulled quickly and being sat for so many games would shake his confidence.  On a night like tonight where our defense was spread thin it would have been easy for Hartley to make another goalie switch.  Hopefully sticking with Lehtonen is a sign that his confidence is up and he's regained Hartley's trust.  The end result was an incredible 5-4 overtime win over the Rangers.  A nice bit of revenge exacted for that loss they handed to us a few weeks ago. Those losses by Carolina and Tampa Bay are just icing on the cake.

For two days I’ve patiently read the incessant whining from Capitol’s fans (and yes, some Thrasher’s fans) about how all fault for Wednesday’s brouhaha can be placed squarely on the shoulders of Andy Sutton and his “cheap shot” on Green with just over a minute left in the game.  These complaints fall under two headings: Sutton is a cheap shot artist who does this all the time and it’s about darn time some team stood up against his brutality; and the Thrasher’s had the game in hand and there is no reason for aggressive play with so little time left.

The Cheap Shot
Sutton’s hit didn’t merit anything more than a two minute roughing penalty.  He’s a defenseman and he hit the guy with the puck when the opportunity presented itself.  That’s what he gets paid for.  Was the hit high? Yes.  I’d prefer Sutton find a way to check Green without getting penalized too, but he was just coming onto the ice and needed to react quickly.    

Uncalled for in a Game You Will Win
This second argument is the one that really burns me.  Anyone who thinks you stop playing aggressive defense because the end of regulation is near needs to have their head examined.  Or better yet, go back and watch some tape of our early season loss to the Hurricanes.  Our team learned the hard way this season that you can’t stop and take a breather when the final seconds are ticking off the clock.  We’ve had teams score twice on us in under a minute.  We’ve had a team score a game winning goal with half a second left on the clock.  If those losses taught us ANYTHING it’s that we can’t blow off the last two minutes of the game.  Thrasher fans who jumped on this bandwagon should be ashamed. We want our team to win and for that to happen we need them to play defense until the final horn sounds.

I’m sure my arguments won’t silence anyone, but the NHL rulings make it pretty clear where the league places the blame. On the Capital’s side you have $30,000 in fines to Hanlon, a three game suspension to Brashear, a one game suspension to Sutherby.  On the Thrasher’s side $10,000 in fines to Hartley and a one game suspension to captain Mellanby.  Frankly I’m surprised, and disappointed, that Hanlon didn’t receive as suspension of his own.  He engineered the first three on three throw-down and I suspect he wanted to meet Hartley in the parking lot after the game and go at it Karate Kid style.  One thing I do know, on December 15^th I’ll be at Philips for the rematch.

Everybody loves panda's.  Cute and cuddly little tree eaters that are notoriously hard to breed in captivity. Researchers have hit upon another tool in this battle on breeding--Panda Porn.  The theory posits that male Panda's who have lived their lives in captivity just don't know how to do it.  Showing them video, especially video filled with sounds of Panda's doing the deed, heps increase the likelihood of a natural mating.

Porn Sparks Panda Baby Boom

I don't typically find much to complain about at the NHL website.  Sure its poorly organized and sometimes cumbersome to navigate but they make tons of high-quality material available to the masses for free.  I can listen to their daily radio show in the morning or games at night, etc.  Today my visit was to cast an All-Star ballot.  As a relative hockey newbie I made some false assumptions about what I should expect from this process.  For starters I assume it would work like the MLB All-Star voting does.  Do it online or at the stadium.  Choose from pretty much any player on a teams roster at the beginning of the season.  Choose to cast the maximum number of votes for any position or only cast votes for players I give a flying fig about. You know, standard All-Star voting stuff. Boy was I wrong.

My first shock came when I learned that you could vote only online.  This might not seam like a big deal given that wide availability of internet service these days, but its an important distinction.  The casual fan who attends a game for the social experience, because a friend had an extra ticket or because they landed the company tickets for the night is likely to cast some votes if an usher spirit girl hands them a ballot at the beginning of the game and collects it near the end of the second period.  Chances are this fan will cast some votes for players on the team he came to watch and maybe punch a few chads for other names he recognizes on the ballot.  This same casual fan, despite spending 8 hours a day in front of a computer connected to the internet, will probably never take the initiative to go out and find the All-Star ballot online and vote. 

But what happens when he does go online to vote? The ballot itself is pretty. It features 10 baseball-card style photo frames with a position listed under the frame and a drop down list of players you can vote for to fill that spot.  When you select the player you can see their photo in the frame and even choose to watch some choice highlights.  There are 5 frames for each division divided into 3 Forwards, 2 Defensemen and a Goalie for each conference. So far, no beef.  I go to cast my votes and find that rather than choosing from all forwards in the eastern conference I'm limited to 30.  Thankfully two of my guys (Kovalchuck and Hossa) are on the list.  No problem.  Frame one goes to Hossa, frame two to Kovalchuck.  Frame 3?  Well I want to write in Slava Kozlov.  He's been on fire and should get some recognition.  I go down to the single write-in slot for the easter conference and choose Slava from the list.  I don't care so much about the defensemen.  None of our guys are on the list and I've already used my write-in spot.  No big deal, our defensemen are improved, but I wouldn't call them All-Stars.  I choose Kari from the list of goalies and go hit submit.  I expect a "Thanks for voting" message.  What I get is an error alert.  It turns out the geniuses at the NHL HQ decided that you must vote for someone in each position slot shown.  I can't help my guys at forward out by not casting a vote for one of their competitors in that third frame.  I can't even make my write in vote for Slava at forward count for that third frame.  I also have to vote for defensemen AND I have to cast a vote for someone at each position in the Western Conference.  My knowledge of individual hockey players is limited to the guys on the Thrasher's roster, a few guys who played for the Caps when I lived in DC and some choice players with our Southeast Division rivals.  All I can say is I hope the NHL honchos enjoy the fruit baskets they are getting from the players at the top of each drop down list this Christmas.  I'm sure I'm not the only person who voted for them just because I had to cast a vote.

NHL All-Star Ballot

I like to occasionally fool myself into thinking people care what I think and even take action.  Another opportunity for this has arrived as there have been 2 recent additions to the Thrasher blogging world.  Someone named Austin has started a Thrashin' blog at http://atl-thrashin.blogspot.com/ and Britt has started one called Girls-LOVE-Hockey-Too at http://girlslovehockeytoo.blogspot.com/.  For those keeping count that raises the known total to 3.5 Thrasher's blogs.  Nine more and we can even it up with the Caps.

I spend way too much time surfing through sports blogs when I have slow time at work.  Some of them are just places I've found thanks to Deadspin, others are devoted to my teams.  The problem with the latter is that some of my teams just don't have a lot of bloggers.  A blurb by Eric McErlain over at Off Wing Opinion really illustrates this.  It appears that the Caps have at least 12 dedicated blogsites of which he is aware.  And those are real fan blogs, not team or local newspaper sponsored blogs.  That's 12 sites for a team that doesn't have much to crow about once you get past Ovechkin.  How many dedicated blogs do the Thrashers have?  As far as I know we only have two.  The overly named Do The Thrashers Have Large Talons blog run by a stat-geek who calls himself The Falconer.   (Yes boys and girls.  Our best Thrashers blog is run by a math nerd whose screen name makes you wonder if it was taken from our Football team.) The second is the rarely updated blog called Thrash Talk run by Brett Lang that mostly rehashes stuff the team put out on its own.

No disrespect to The Falconer, but I think we are better than a 1 and a half blog team.  Jump in the game and get something going.  Unfortunately I don't know enough about Hockey yet to be a jumper-inner but I'd like to think some folks in the feuding tribes at the Nest and the Chicken might have something worthy to say. 

The real stat of the game is that we held the nation's top scoring offense to 7 points and only 80 yards rushing.  Coming into this game Clemson averaged almost 250 rush yards/game.  The Hokie defense was amazing to watch.  I don't know what Bud Foster saw ahead of time but we knew what play to expect on every one of Clemson's offensive snaps.  Everyone knows that the Tiger's tailback tandem carries the workload for them, but we kept managing to send 8 guys to the same side of the field their back chose to run from.  Foster is incredible and watching his unit work when they feel like they have something to prove is always a treat.

After the BC game 2 weeks ago he took away the coveted defensive lunch pail.  When Erin Andrews asked Bud after the game if he was going to give it back to the players now he was non committal.  His response is classic and I hope he was serious.  It was something like "I think I'm going to hold onto it until the players out work me, and they haven't done that yet."  Way to go Bud.  After that performance I'd say you earned the right to carry the lunch-pail another week.

A solid running game and incredible defense.  That is the Hokie Football that made a name for Virginia Tech and I'm so glad to see it return.