Habs Win A Close One

The hungry Toronto Maple Leafs did everything they could to keep that shit-eating grin on Mats Sundin's face, but they lost. Unfortunately, the grin remained after the loss, apparently the result of Sundin wearing a mouth guard, rather than him actually eating shit, which would've been AWESOME.

Seriously though, the Habs won in a shootout. The Leafs are arguably the worst shootout team in the NHL and they showed it tonight. Even with Paul Maurice keeping the Zamboni on the ice for an unprecendentedly(is that a word?) long amount of time, the Leafs couldn't shut the door.

Carey Price is good. Vesa Toskala and Andrew Raycroft are a couple of backups who are never going to be 45 game winners in the NHL.

Now.

The Canadiens deserved to lose. But they won. That's what happens when you have a premier goaltender between the pipes. Expect Carey Price to continue to improve, his performance tonight would be easy to overlook due to how easy he made it look. He's unflappable.

The kid hasn't dominated anyone for a shutout yet, but he's gotten his team wins and looked stellar in the process. Stellar. There's a word used to describe excellence in goaltending. A word that's been used far too seldom around here in the last few years.

It's Tuesday, why are there only three games tonight?

The NHL schedule is downright strange. Once again, the Habs will play a Friday-Saturday back-to-backer(sorry about all the hyphons) and this week, they'll get three days off in between. Why not have them play a classic Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday week?

Hopefully the NHL does something about the wacky schedules this offseason. It's getting out of hand. The Habs are coming off a period in which they played six games in nine days. That's too much for any team.

I'm watching the Ducks-Canucks game right now and I can't believe how the Ducks play the game. They are the most physical team out there, with absolutely no control over their emotions. This is the same style that brought them so much success last year, but not having Teemu Selanne and Scott Niedermayer is going to hurt them until they both pull a Roger Clemens and put the Ducks back into the forefront of the race for the Stanley Cup once again.

Only without the steroids.

I'm at practice tomorrow to relay any tidbits and tallywackers I hear from what I hope will be an upbeat and happy group.