Over the last couple/three hours, I've tried and tried to come up with something interesting to say about last night's 4-1 scrimmage over the Oilers.  I started.  I stopped.  I started again.  I got distracted by wanton abuse of a Zamboni.  I typed some more.  I read what I'd typed.  And deleted the whole damn thing.  Other than Jeff Deslauriers rockin' the totally awesome old school Grant Fuhr paint scheme on his mask (and playing out of his freakin' mind)...everything amounted to a giant "Meh".

Frankly, you, Gentle and Always Appreciated Reader (Hi Mom!), would have been much better served if the boys had squandered a 39-19 shot advantage over the worst team in hockey and lost.  Some of you have told me that I'm much more entertaining when I'm frothing at the mouth in seething rage.  Perhaps not coincidentally, so does my supervisor.  Then she sends me to the cubicle for two minutes to feel shame.

But there is one thing my feverish and slightly buzzed mind keeps coming back to when not beguiled by a comely schoolmarm (NSFW...glove tap FHF), and that is the ice surface at Rexall Place.

Apocryphal knowledge has long held that Edmonton is blessed with the fastest ice in the League, and after spending three hours watching the Sens whirl, dervish and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom, it's easy to agree.

So, my question to The Emperor reads thusly: why can't we have that?  Instead of the usual half melted sno-cone why can't Ottawa take the only thing Edmonton does better and make it our own?  Put that ice in SBP and we're damn near unbeatable.  All by itself, the sonic boom from The Angry Chihuahua's pantaloons would be enough to reduce our foes to quivering globs of jello.

Damn the suits on the glass and their nipple stiffies.  Make it happen, Eugene.  I mean, really.  How hard can it be to make ice?

It was my first thought seconds after seeing the replay.  "Oh, for Christ sake, here they come again".  And I was right.  Marc Savard had no sooner come to rest from his unfortunate (and yes, plainly dirty...but more on that later) helicopter ride courtesy of Matt Cooke that the predictable, and oh so tiresome hue and cry went up from the bloviating hordes.  Suspend him!  Fine him!  Fine the coach!  Fine the team!  Ban him!  Fine him, THEN ban him!  Then fold the team!  WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?!

And almost immediately, the usual suspects step neatly upon their usual soapboxes, each on their usual sides of the usual line in the sand to start yelling at each other.  "You're a barbarian!"  "Oh yeah??  Well Mike Milbury says you're a pussy!  At least I think he does!  But he would!  If he wasn't a brain dead moron! And he'd be RIGHT!" and so on, until all sense of perspective is lost in spittle flying invective.  'Twas ever thus, and ever thus t'will be.

Suggestions abound on how to "fix" the problem of indiscriminate head hunting.  Some good (Hey ref!  Just call the damn game like you're supposed to!), some stupidly over reactive (all the better to sell newspapers, right Cam?), some startling in their "holy crap, never thought of that before" degree of perception, and some utterly ridiculous.  And all absolutely wrong.

Everything I've heard so far deals only with the rules around where on the body contact is first made, or what constitutes a clean hit.  All very interesting in a navel gazing academic kind of way but about as effective as The Bryan's speech therapist.  The easiest, quickest and most effective way to eliminate indiscriminate head shots?  Eliminate the "indiscriminate" part.

Eliminate the instigator rule.

I feel robbed.  No Captain, no Great Dane, an emergency call up who didn't hit the ice until the second period (note to The Euge: spring for the chartered helicopter or hire faster limo drivers) and the rest of the team literally blowing chunks between shifts.  I feel robbed.

Put the whole team together and this one isn't even close.  Instead, we're faced with the infuriating bag of fail that is Leaf Nation gleefully smashing their keyboards with their faces and making grunting noises as if the leafs had any hope in hell of doing anything but sucking the balls off a syphilitic donkey.  But hey, a hockey game was played, a score was kept, a result was determined and their team emerged the winner.  Who am I to begrudge them their victory, Pyrrhic as it may be, or their heroes' lack of opposable thumbs?

But yeah...put the whole team together and we wax these asshats.  See you again on the 16th, fuckoes.

I almost feel bad for Pascal Leclaire.  Brought here amidst much hoopla and happiness as "THE SECOND COMING OF THAT CZECH DUDE AND ANSWER TO ALL OF OUR GOALTENDING WOES EVAH!!", he was under enormous pressure right from the start.  Coming off an injury plagued season in Columbus, he now had to face down The Vortex of Suck and Ancient Indian Goaltender Burial Ground that has always been The Palladium/Corel Centre/ScotiaBank Place in a market rabidly desperate for success.  That could not have been an easy thing to do.

Everything began so splendidly once he finally recovered from that pesky ankle surgery that cost him 48 games last year.  Then he broke his jaw while sitting on the bench.  Sixteen games gone...poof.  Then he came back.  Then he sucked.  Then he got a teensy bit better.  Then he got hit in the face.  Again.  Another nine games gone.  Then he came back.  Then Brian Elliott went on a twelve game tear.  Then he sat on the bench.  Then he was finally given a start.  And then he sucked some more; pulled after six minutes in his first game since early January.

Yep, I almost feel bad for him.  Poor guy.  What must he be thinking?  How low, how pitiful must this poor young man be feeling?  Is there nothing, nothing at all, that we, as kind and compassionate fans, can offer in the way of solace?  No ribbon?  No Participant's Trophy?  No "Gee, you did your best but it didn't work out so let's all go get some pizza!!"?  Oh!  I know!  How about a 1500 word apologia about how unfairly you're being treated?

Would that work?  Would dat make our wittle fuzzy wuzzums feel all betters??

Then how about this...

You are a 27 year old man being paid very handsomely to play a game.  Your particular role in that game (for which you are being paid very handsomely you'll remember) is to stop a three inch rubber disk from crossing a little red line.  No more.  No less.  If, for whatever reason, you suddenly find yourself incapable, or without sufficient confidence to fulfill that role to the degree to whcih your coaches, general manager and fans expect....well tough shit.  Grow a set and get better, or get the fuck out of my kitchen.

The rest of the suck after the jump.

Top ten signs you may be suffering from Olympic withdrawal:

#10 -- You've worn out the batteries on your remote searching for biathlon highlights.
#9 -- Your criminal record now includes "indecent display of Official Olympic Codpiece".
#8 -- You've re-upholstered your entire living room in Norwegian curling pants.
#7 -- Your new pick up line?  "Hey baby, wanna see my flying tomato?"
#6 -- You're sporting a brand new tattoo of the Five Rings.  On your forehead.
#5 -- Comparing Canada to Hitler?  Totally acceptable!!
#4 -- You've re-christened your first born "Own the Podium".
#3 -- You find yourself trolling adult boutiques for Lindsey Vonn blow up dolls.
#2 -- You attempt to distract your betters from the soul crushing suckitude of your day job by becoming a whiny bitch.  You lost Ron.  Deal.

And the number one sign you may be suffering from Olympic withdrawal...

#1 -- You completely forget how to play hockey while allowing the New York Rangers the luxury of pretending they're a playoff team.

Pathetically asinine Chicken Little-esque purveyors of certain doom aside, never let us speak of this again.

Whaleicanes tomorrow night (7:00pm, SportsNet East with the apologies). All of your Hartolina news here.  Shake it off and let's do this thing.

Go Sens.

Meanwhile in other news, a bunch of guys need new road beef (the Oilers Ray?  Really??), a bunch of other people talked about it, the leafs count of bona fide NHLers on their roster now stands at four and a half, and The Bryan enjoyed a nice nap.

Welcome Andy Sutton!  You're much more pylon-y than I remember...damn yearbook pictures.

Oh, and Mister Cullen?  I'd like a word.

Well, this is awkward.  That's exactly what I wore to my last performance review.

I was twenty months old when Paul Henderson scored the goal that, as Canadian history books assure us, ended the Cold War, forever erasing the communist scourge from the face of the planet and ushering in a second Golden Age of worldwide peace and prosperity (What was that?  Ronald who??  Peristroi-what??  Berlin?  What the hell does Berlin have to do with anything?  Pffft...the Germans suck at hockey.  Get out of here with your revisionist "history" Pinko!) and while I'm quite sure I celebrated Foster Hewitt's famous call with much gratuitous tossing of the sippy cups and a spirited poop, I can't say I have much in the way of "I remember exactly where I was when..." memories.

On a glorious September evening in the fall of 1987, I was a hideously acne scarred handsome, strapping young lad of 16 standing by myself in the corner strutting confidently about one of Cornwall's only more upscale teen dance clubs, terrifying impressing many a young lass with my manner about the dance floor, a manner described by turns as both "vomit" "suave" and "epilepsy" "debonair".  And on that night, in that club, on a 21" screen bolted high in one out of the way corner of the bar, I watched Larry Murphy, Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux bust into the Soviet zone on a three-on-one with 1:30 left in the third of a 5-5 game.  What followed cemented forever my life-long love affair with the game of hockey.  It truly was THE seminal moment for those of us too young to remember '72.

Or it was, until last night.  Thanks Sidney.

Now that that bit of bother has been dispensed with, we switch our Amazing Multi-Lingual Taunt-O-Matic from the guttural expectorations of those Saxon savages to full Cyrillic.  So help me, I will find the perfect translation of "Evgeni Malkin copulates with diseased Mongolian yaks" if I have to break Google to do it.

But before we do that, a few observations from this latest Kraut Kurbstomp:

• While the very thought of agreeing with Petey McSplooge (TM FHF) makes me want to punch myself in the junk, I'm with him on one thing.  Mike Babcock needs to chisel "Staal-Sid-Iggy" in stone and just leave it the hell alone.  At the very least, when Ovie tries to Jagr-ize Crosby, Iggy will be there to pound him into paste.  I'd pay many many shiny pennies to see that happen.
  
  
• Nice to finally see Rick Nash get off the schneid.  He's been by far our best two-way  forward.  Seriously, the kamikaze forecheck makes me moist.
  
  
• Holy crap, is Ashleigh McIvor stunning.  Sorry, that doesn't have anything to do with the topic at hand but I was just watching the GOLD MEDAL PRESENTATION Y'ALL (WOOT!!) and...well...just wow.
  
  
• I don't get to watch very many San Jose Sharks games, so hopefully I can get a little help here.  How long has Joe Thornton been such a useless fucking lump?
  
  
• And while we're on the subject, remind me again why Cory Perry is on this team?
  
  
• Because it was, well, Germany, it is utterly impossible to gauge how Bobby Lou is playing.  Considering who we're playing tomorrow, I really really hate that.

So it's off to the quarters with our new found lebensraum induced swagger and a date with our old friends (even if it does come three games too early).  That's great.  But a word of caution to our once again shiny heroes, if I may.  Play tomorrow the way you did over the first two periods tonight, and we are totally fucked.  There aren't any more Germanias.

Go Canada.

So yeah.  Just what the hell was that??

As you probably don't recall (but bless you if you do), when the team was announced back in December, I fretted ever so eloquently over the yung'uns on the back end more than anything else.  How would they hold up under the crushing pressure of a home Olympics?  Would Brent Seabrook be able to handle an onrushing Ovechkin?  Who will dangle the car keys in front of Duncan Keith?

It never even occurred to me that Scott Niedermayer and Chris Pronger AND Martin Brodeur (MARTY BRODEUR!!) could shit the bed (okay, maybe Pronger...a wee bit), let alone all do it in the same game.

And yet, here we are.

So other than threaten death and dismemberment unless Bobby Lou starts from here on out, or crack each other's skulls open to feast upon the goo inside, how do we cope?  How are we to come to grips with, and adjust to, our new reality, a reality in which both Brian Burke and Ron Wilson may actually be sentient beings?

I'm glad you asked.

Good heavens.  To judge by the gnashing of teeth, rending of garments and general hues and cries, you'd think the population of our fair nation was made up entirely of British journalists.  "Canada Sucks! Sky Is Falling! Soil Yourselves!!" commentary is something I would expect from Steve Simmons (oh hey, right on cue!) but from people with functional frontal lobes?

We crushed Norway 8-0 (as well we should) but couldn't score in the first period.  We lost a point...and I really can't stress that enough...not a game, a POINT...to a Swiss team punching above its weight and backed by a white hot goalie.  So this obviously means that Steve Yzerman is an idiot, Mike Babcock has undergone a lobotomy to remove everything he's ever known about coaching, five of Canada's seven defenceman have lost the ability to skate and we'll never win a gold medal again in our lifetime?  Please.

Settle down people.  This tournament starts tomorrow night.

More Week One navel gazing of Olympic proportions after the jump.