Time to push!

Eight Days.

Five Games.

Four on the road.

Everything the Pens have worked for this season comes down to these last few games. It is still possible for them to miss the playoffs with an ill-timed swoon.

I don't think that's going to happen.

They play three teams in the playoff hunt - the Canes (tonight), the Panthers and the Habs.

The Flyers are two points ahead of the Pens and both teams have five games left. The Flyers will have the last word, given that they play last.

I think if the Pens earn 8 or more of the possible 10 points, they'll have the fourth seed. Right now, that's looking like a match up with Carolina or Philly.

Let's Go Pens!

Big Hair?

Before I forget to mention it any longer, I was on the Big Hair Hockey Talk Show this past Sunday, talking about the Pens, Flyers and Alex Ovechkin.  You can listen to the show here.

No, I don't have big hair.  Neither does the Wife.  I did enjoy being on the show, however.

Vince Lascheid died

Vince was the guy that played the organ for Pittsburgh sporting events, including the Pirates, Penguins and Steelers.

Here's the link to the Post-Gazette page - check out the incredibly long fingers this guy had.

I wasn't the biggest fan of the organ music at a Pirates game. Vince's take at PNC on "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" was frequently out of time with the bouncing dot on the scoreboard, mainly because of the embellishments he would throw in.

On the plus side, there were frequently clever songs played for visiting players when they were coming up to the plate. It was stuff you probably wouldn't get away with playing the actual song... but a line or two of a melody from the organ? No problem (and most people probably didn't even realize it was happening).

Vince was a Pittsburgh tradition and will be missed. He was 85 years old.

Let's help Ovechkin!

It's a Saturday when the Pens aren't playing. They have the Caps tomorrow in a huge game, and while we don't want to see Ovechkin score a goal, if he does, maybe we can help him with his over the top celebrations.

Here are the top 10 "funniest" goal celebrations. I put funniest in quotes because several of them aren't really funny, but they are classic.

I'd recommend the Palffy celebration for Alex. Maybe with Semin.

Penguins roster for the playoff push

So what does the team look like now that the dust has settled?  Here's the breakdown:

Center

Crosby

Malkin

Staal

Talbot

Right wing

Sykora

Guerin

Kennedy

Adams

Left wing

Kunitz

Fedotenko

Cooke

Dupuis

Defense

Gonchar

Orpik

Letang

Gill

Scuderi

Eaton

Scratch

Godard

So I'm seeing the following lines:

Kunitz - Crosby - Guerin

Fedotenko - Malkin - Sykora

Cooke - Staal - Kennedy

Dupuis - Talbot - Adams

I like this lineup better than any I've seen so far this year from the Pens.  They can mix in Godard when they play the Flyers and bring guys up from Wilkes-Barre in case of injury.

I'm excited to see where things go from here.  This looks much more like a team well-positioned for a nice playoff run.  

Great job by Ray Shero!

Quack!

In case you were wondering (I know I was), Ryan Whitney's first game as a member of the Ducks:

• No points
• Even +/- (though his team lost 6-0)
• 24:19 in ice time (second to Pronger)
• 20:11 in ice time at even strength (led the team)
• 3 blocked shots (led the team)
• Played on both the power play and short-handed.
• 1 shot on net

Except for the even +/-, that pretty much what we saw out of Ryan as a Penguin.

About to be crushed by a Mini Pony

Here's the good news - this blog made the cut for the tournament of the 32 best Pittsburgh sports blogs, put together by Sean over at Sean's Ramblings. It seems like a fun concept, and I'm honored to be a part. I didn't know there were more than 32 blogs that met Sean's ground rules.

Here's the bad news - there are four brackets of 8 teams. I'm an 8 seed, going up against #1 seed PSAMP (Pittsburgh Sports and Mini Ponies).

I'll be shocked if I get more than 5 votes, unless I can contact those loser Habs fans and steal their script from the All-Star voting...

Sadly, I don't think I'd find any Habs fans out there - they're all too busy jumping off of bridges due to the slump of their team. At least here in Pittsburgh, a Pens slump just means that we turn to heavy drinking and become Yinzers. Nothing better than yelling "SHOOT' every time the puck enters the offensive zone.

Firing a coach brings the clowns out of the woodwork

About 2 hours after the firing of Michel Therrien was announced, the Globe and Mail put up a column by David Shoalts with the headline "Lemieux behind Therrien's dismissal".

You read the headline, and you think that maybe Mr. Shoalts has some kind of relevant insight into the Therrien firing. You'd be horribly wrong.

This may be one of the dumbest things I've ever read. It's right up there with Tyrone Carter's brother skipping his date to report to jail to party it up with Tyrone at the Super Bowl (in Detroit), only to have a 6 month sentence turn into 5 years.

Let's take a look at what passes for professional journalism. Feel free to read the article alongside this post. I'll post the relevant sections:

Therrien paid the price because the Penguins went into a swoon this season after two seasons as the NHL's franchise on the rise [...]

Yep - I'm with you there, Mr. Shoalts. He certainly was the scapegoat in this situation.

However, it was not Therrien's fault that the Penguins failed to re-sign Marian Hossa last summer [...] It was also not Therrien's fault that defenceman Sergei Gonchar [...] missed almost all of this season with a shoulder injury, returning just in time to see the coach get fired.

Agree again. Therrien didn't have much to do with Hossa wanting to play elsewhere and Gonchar (and Whitney) getting hurt for large amounts of time.

He goes on to absolve Shero of blame for those two items he cited:

[...] Shero can also plead circumstances beyond his control.

Still hard to disagree here, but wait until you see where he goes next!

That is why the finger of blame can swing toward Lemieux, the minority owner who has a huge say in running the team thanks to his status in Pittsburgh as a minor deity.

What? How exactly is Lemieux responsible for Hossa choosing to sign elsewhere and Gonchar getting hurt? I'm smelling a personal agenda. It doesn't take much sniffing to detect, when you use terms like "minor deity".

Mr. Shoalts goes on to try to explain. It's too long to quote, but he basically says that Lemieux ordered the Hossa trade, and that somehow makes him the person to point the finger at for Therrien getting fired.

The "logic" is all summed up nicely for us near the end of the article:

Any way you cut it, it is a fine business when a couple of good hockey men are pressured into moves and then one of them gets clipped because they don't work out. All Therrien can say today is he has lots of company.

So, it looks like the guy just doesn't like Lemieux. He also doesn't like making any sense.

As it says in the Dilbert cartoon, "Hey! He's getting paid for that!"

Therrien fired, Bylsma new head coach

Wow. You can't fire the players, so you have to fire the coach, I guess.

Michel Therrien was let go tonight as the head coach of your Pittsburgh Penguins.

He was replaced by first year Wilkes-Barre head coach Don Bylsma.

First, with Therrien, Ray Shero basically said he wasn't happy with the direction of the team, and hadn't been for quite some time. That was the long and the short of why the firing happened.

Shero is a class act, even in times of difficulty. As part of the statement about letting Therrien go, Shero said

“We also would like to thank Michel Therrien for his significant contributions to the Penguins organization.”

That's a nice thing to say, and he didn't have to throw in the "significant". He (Shero) also accepted the responsibility for what has happened this year, saying

"Everybody in the room I either traded for or signed to a contract extension. It starts with me. I'm the (general manager)."

Bylsma is the "interim" coach. This is his first year as a head coach, so it will be interesting to see how he handles the Pens. I'm not sure they're ready for a someone that will be more relaxed with them, but we'll be able to see just what kind of leaders are in that locker room.

If Bylsma succeeds and the team makes the playoffs, then I think we see him around next year. If the team continues the descent... then Bylsma is a fading memory when the new building opens.

Let's hope this is the spark the teams needs to turn the corner.

Versus needs some competition

The 2008-09 All Star Skills competition was on last night. The stars put on a decent show. The television broadcast? No so much.

Just to recognize a few of the nice things they did, here are the highlights from my perspective:

• The interview with Geno was nice. Kudos to Malkin for stepping up to the mic when it had to be tough for him.
• The camera angles that they had were decent, and when they managed to capture the event, it didn't look bad.
• Someone was psychic in putting a microphone on Marc Savard, who made the finals of the elimination shootout contest. He was entertaining, and it was fortunate he made it to the finals, or he would have left the ice as everyone else did when they missed.

Now the bad:

• How many attempts did we flat out miss because they were show a replay, or worse yet, showing a player on the bench WHILE THE EVENT WAS GOING ON??? I've never witnessed such poor production work on a professional event.
• Even when they had the event covered live, the camera they used was the wrong one. I'm thinking specifically of Patrick Kane's trick shot where he used the handle of the stick instead of the blade. It would have been nice to have a good angle of him doing that, instead of a view from ice level, where you couldn't really tell what he was doing.
• When the announcers were talking about the flex in the stick blade on the hardest shot competition, wouldn't it have been nice to have a slow motion replay that actually showed the thing slowly enough to see the stick flex? CBS has those nice super slow motion cameras for the NFL. I'm sure they're expensive. I don't care. Buy one and use it. Hockey happens so fast that slowing it down on replay can only increase the appreciation among the casual fans.
• When you're showing the Young Stars game, and there is a developing 2-on-1, DON'T CUT AWAY. They did this a few times, and it was really frustrating to watch. I know that game is all offense, but we want to see guys perform some fancy passing and shooting, not an interview with Jay Boumeester (seriously - he really didn't seem to want to talk, because no one is that bad on an interview intentionally).

I think that's enough bashing for today.

Was the trick shot competition a bit of a letdown to anyone else? Some of the guys pulled off really sick moves (Getzalf especially). Some others (Ovechkin) were a letdown. Using the props were cute, but why use two sticks if you're not going to really do anything with them? Not much skill and a bunch of show that wasn't all that exciting.

I'd say let's hope the All Star Game today will make up for it, but I seriously doubt that it will.

Injury update

No Crosby tonight. Thomas and Pesonen back up to the big club on the Wilkes-Barre carousel.

What? There were games this week?

Yeah, I missed both Tuesday and Wednesday due to traveling. I wish I could have seen the Tuesday game, but I'm glad I didn't have to watch O-Face celebrate hitting the lottery scoring a goal in a hockey game. That gets a bit old.

The Pens play tonight, and have hopefully turned a corner. Just hope the injuries aren't too bad. They obviously can't replace Crosby.

The season starts when??

Can you believe the season opener is THIS Saturday?  There are two games this weekend!  Both against the Sens!  Sheesh...  I have to write the season preview before then.