NHL 2010-2011: Rick Rypien

Vector wrote:

I don't even think there are cheap seats at GM Place (err...Rogers Arena).

20 dollars standing room for Sens tickets which turned into stealing seats as the place was never actually sold out. Or you could just wait 5 minutes into the first and haggle some decent seats off the desperate scalpers.

might be going to the home opener. The tickets a friend 'won' as a door prize seem to be in limbo.

Cheap seats are $30 - $40 here in Montreal. I actually really like the way they sell them. At the beginning of the season, most of the tickets are made available and are snatched up in a hurry. Then, every month they sell another set of tickets just for that month. It means that if you miss the beginning of the season sale, you still have a chance to go without paying a scalper.

Compare that to Toronto where they (for all intents and purposes) don't sell individual tickets. It's scalper or nothing.

The Blues have a ton of cheap seats on weeknights. You can get seats for as little as $10.

They have a season ticket deal going where you get the seats for half price. The catch is, you pay the other half if they make the playoffs. Great deal, but it sure makes it odd if they squeak into the playoffs.

Cheap Seats? In New York?

Well, define "Cheap". Do you mean "For regular human beings" or do you mean "for douche-whistle Hedge fund managers".

Thank god for StubHub.

4 hours until reality sets in.

Who am I kidding. There is no reality in Leaf land, only rampant hype and speculation.

I'm excited for the start of the season.

The leafs certainly look better in net, but I'm still wondering who'se going to score goals outside of Kessel and their defence has yet to prove that it can live up to what it should be on paper. The Habs have the opposite problem - lots of balanced scoring potential (though with big ? in AKost and Pouliot) and a defence that's better on the ice than it should be on paper, especially when Markov comes back. Price remains an enigma.

The Habs finish anywhere between 6-10, depending on Price.
The Leafs finish anywhere between 8-14, but I can't see them finishing higher with their current set of forwards.

nihilo wrote:

4 hours until reality sets in.

Who am I kidding. There is no reality in Leaf land, only rampant hype and speculation.

I'm excited for the start of the season.

I think the Leafs will win tonight. The Habs defense pairings are Spacek-Subban, Gill-Gorges, and Picard-O'Byrne; the bottom 4 defensemen are incapable of getting the puck out of the defensive zone. It's going to be painful to watch.

On the up side for Habs fans, if Markov isn't playing tonight, we can't injure him on opening night. It seems he's constantly out with injury though.. what is he down with now?

Our defence pairs are kind of ridiculous (although much better on paper than they are on the ice, as Dysplastic says)
Beauchemin - Phaneuf
Kaberle - Schenn
Komisarek - Gunnarsson

I think they're counting on goals from Kessel for the most part. You have to give it to him, he's lived up to expectations so far in Toronto. Very dangerous player. Otherwise, we're hoping that Versteeg will take full advantage of the extra ice time he'll get, and that Bozak, Grabovski and Kulemin will step up.

This is what I'm talking about when I say hype and speculation.

nihilo wrote:

On the up side for Habs fans, if Markov isn't playing tonight, we can't injure him on opening night. It seems he's constantly out with injury though.. what is he down with now?

Recovering from knee surgery. He tore his one of the ligiments (I think it was ACL) after getting hit by Matt Cooke in the playoffs last year. The word is he'll be back fairly soon as he's practicing with the team. If you remember Grabovski's hit on him a couple years ago, the Cooke hit was similar.

Are the Avs going to beat the Blackhawks tonight?

Eh, probably not.

I was impressed by Toronto tonight. Never expected to say that. Some silly turn-overs but good pressure and drive to the net with some surprisingly solid PK work as well.

Also saw the Avs got a win as well. I picked up Stewart and Kessel late in my fantasy draft, so I'm happy!

The Hurricanes "whomped" the Wild 4-3 in Helsinki yesterday. CANES FOR THE CUP THIS YEAR!

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Are the Avs going to beat the Blackhawks tonight?

Eh, probably not.

COL 4-3 OT. Color me surprised.

Doug wrote:

I was impressed by Toronto tonight. Never expected to say that. Some silly turn-overs but good pressure and drive to the net with some surprisingly solid PK work as well.

Also saw the Avs got a win as well. I picked up Stewart and Kessel late in my fantasy draft, so I'm happy!

The Leafs played a solid game, I thought. I don't know that we can call the PK good given that the Montreal PP was so short staffed, but it certainly was effective last night. MacArthur's goal was good to see, and the first line with Kessel Bozak and Versteeg was consistently dangerous.

The PP didn't look so hot after playing well through the pre-season. The difference was entirely that the Montreal penalty killers outworked the Leafs for loose pucks and put more pressure on them than they saw when they were up against AHLers. Once it was set up it looked okay, but hopefully its just a matter of adjusting to playing real hockey again.

I really hate to see the Leafs D lose battles for loose pucks behind their net. Good teams get the puck and get it out in a hurry. These are the turnovers that cost Toronto last night.

Still, I'm happy for the win and I'm happy to have Giguere there to shut the door.

Price didn't look bad at all for the Habs, either.

Any Oilers fans around here? Eberle's first goal last night was pretty:

ColdForged wrote:

The Hurricanes "whomped" the Wild 4-3 in Helsinki yesterday. CANES FOR THE CUP THIS YEAR!

2 and 0, Female Doggoes! UNSTOPPABLE! Atop the NHL with 4 points! SKINNER WILL CARRY MY MANBABIES!

Eh, give me my little victories.

Eberle's goal was nice. The pass to get the two on one might have been better, though.

My Sabres get things started tonight against the Sens. Too bad I won't be watching most of it, as we're going out for dinner for my sister's birthday.

There's always tomorrow.

ColdForged wrote:
ColdForged wrote:

The Hurricanes "whomped" the Wild 4-3 in Helsinki yesterday. CANES FOR THE CUP THIS YEAR!

2 and 0, Female Doggoes! UNSTOPPABLE! Atop the NHL with 4 points! SKINNER WILL CARRY MY MANBABIES!

Eh, give me my little victories.

I am thrilled that they beat a NW Division team.

The Hurricanes sucked last year so I guess this year they'll make the Conference Finals. Freaking Rutherford is a wizard or something.

nihilo wrote:

Any Oilers fans around here? Eberle's first goal last night was pretty:

Very nice play. I wish the Pens could have put together something like that to officially open the new arena, but there were two concerns raised during last nights game. One, do we still have Crosby and Malkin? Second, when did the Flyers decide to play hockey instead of fight? One of those questions is serious and I know that we still have Crosby and Malkin even though they didn't show up yesterday.

Atlanta goalie Ondrei Pavelec just collapsed. I'm reminded of Jiri Fischer. I hope he's okay and can continue his career.

FYI, If anyone is interested in out-of-market games or just more hockey, NHL Center Ice is available as a free trial right now.

Here is more info.

That was a convincing win. It always feels so good to beat the Sens. The game got sloppy at the end, but that will happen in a blowout win like that.

Just got back after a great txgiving weekend, here to share some random thoughts:

- Love the Habs win in Pittsburgh! I love how much the Pens fans hated on PK Subban only two games into his rookie season. You can tell he's already gotten to Crosby, which is great. (Booing Subban after he got high sticked by Comrie was especially funny) Fleury continuoulsy fails to impress me, while Price had a stand-out game which he really needed. Still not happy with Kostitsyn and Pouliot - Frankly, I'd put Halpern on the second line and see what happens. Also, our PP needs Markov back ASAP.

-Love that Edmonton can pull of both a dominating win and an ugly won. Sure, I wish they played better against Florida, but the important thing is that they found a way to get the W despite awful play. They're going to be a great team to watch this year.

- Love how St. Louis is playing right now. With the addition of Halak they just might have become my favorite US team. Just so well balanced and motivated, given that I'll be getting Gamecenter Live I expect to be watching a few of their games, so me and Jayhawker can be best buds.

- I'm still not sure if the Leafs are really good or the Sens are really bad. But they're definitely better than last year, and Kessel definitely has 40-goal potential. Either way I hate the Sens more and am loving their ineptitude.

Starting to look like this season may be what I had hoped last season would be for the Blues. After last year's dreadful performance on home ice, this year's 2-0 start is so welcome. The only down side in today's 5-1 win was that they didn't score more goals, going 1 for 8 on the PP. They missed out on a seven minute PP for christ's sake.

But they peppered the ever loving daylights out of Anaheim, outshooting them 53-14. If I were playing this game on NHL 11, I would have been adjusting sliders. They scored two goals six seconds apart in the first, Crombeen picked up a shorthanded goal when the Ducks turned it over in their own end, and the one goal that Halak gave up would have had most gamers chucking their controller through the TV, as it was one of those shots that bounced from his glove to arm and dribbled it's way into the net.

I really like the make-up of this team.

Looks like the Avs got up to their old tricks last night: score in the last few minutes to even up a game, try to coast into overtime, and in so doing allow a last minute go-ahead goal from the opposition. What does it take to get this team to keep playing hard when they have a lead and to not tap on the brakes when the score is even near the end of the third?

Halak has been great, so far. The one knock I keep reading from Blues fans is that he gives up some pretty juicy rebounds. He lucked out a few times vs. Philly. But the guy seems like a rock.

Dysplastic wrote:

Either way I hate the Sens more and am loving their ineptitude.

This? This is something that I can agree with whole heartedly. I don't think our win on Saturday was because we were so good rather than because Ottawa played poorly. They were slow and the Leafs were all over them from the very start. Toronto is definitely a better team than they were last season though, and it won't take long before other teams catch on to it.

Once they do, life will get much harder for the Leafs, I'm thinking.

I'm pulling for Edmonton to do well - I'd love to see another bunch of young players make a splash in the league. West coast games are so hard for me to watch though. It's like at 10 pm my mind shuts off or something.

I was at the Caps vs. Sens game last night with Krazytaco and his wife. All of us agreed that the Caps were playing with a remarkable lack of urgency. Ovechkin scored the winning goal with 31 seconds left in overtime and I joked that he was probably well rested for it considering he spent a full 6 minutes in the penalty box. The Caps looked content to bury the puck behind their own goal on power plays and gave just about every conceivable opportunity for the Senators to get back into the game. This actually drew boos from a VERY sympathetic Washington crowd. In the end, it just seemed like Alex wanted to get back home in time to catch the last quarter of the Vikings game and ended the game with complete nonchalance.

Dysplastic wrote:

Fleury continuoulsy fails to impress me

Yes, for the love of lord Stanley yes! For a guy that is routinely praised as a top goalie in the league he is horrible. If people just regarded him as average, he'd catch much less flack. I've seem him let in the exact same type of goal (as Montreal's third) so many times.

I've really been enjoying the Center Ice package. After the Pens game Saturday I flipped between several other games and ultimately watched most of the Canucks/Kings game. All in all, 5+ solid hours of hockey on my TV Saturday night. I'm going to have to really consider buying the Center Ice package or the Gamecenter one.

Paleo & other DC area hockey fans - I will be in DC the weekend of January 13th and would LOVE to go to the Jan 14 game against the Canucks. Anyone interested?