Last time I tallied my opinion about East-West games, but the Ottawa-Toronto-Montreal trio is different from the others, because they are Canadien derbies. Oh yes, Winnipeg too, I was so happy that we have an other team in the league. I've been waiting for the battle on 8th of March so much. Against the Sens it was an ugly win, with two great performances, Cody and Cory. Schneider was absolutaley the first star in this game, he showed strong confidence with great puck-handling and perfect gloving. I think he was solid against Chicago too, but on this day he brought the two points to the team. CoHo was the second star for me, he didn't earn any points but he played very dangerously in his every shift, had three shots, hand-eyed passes, aggressive chases, so I'm so satisfied with him. Which I can't tell about Manny. I believe now, that the team would be better without him. If he isn't able to change, when MayRay is ready, MM will be scratched. I hope he can boost up, because we need the good-old Malhotra into the lines. I didn't missed Ballard in the defence, Alberts and Rome play very solidly, Andrew is fearless and a tipycal stay-at-home D, in turn Aaron is offensive enough to work well together. But to tell the truth, the Senators played a little better on this game. The first period was a draw, but they were better in the second. In the first one-third of the third period we did a great pressure, but after taht long shift of the Sedins, Ottawa clearly overplayed us. We were lucky that Schneids raved about victory. The Avs is down now, it should be an easy win, but Colorado vs Vancouver is always an overheated battle.

It was a kind of celebrations' day and the Avalanche assisted for that in a very friendly way. In the first 10 minutes we were a bit sleepy, had some icings but after that we played quite well. Above, I was writing about Malhotra's role in the team, and what a wonder, against the Avs he played absolutaley different from the previous 20 games' performances. He has celebrated his first goal of the season which was a game winner too but he has to be grateful to CoHo who did a teeny miracle on the ice. After leading, we played very patiently which was evolved by Schneider's confidence. He made some big saves, covered the puck when it needed, kept in play by his stick peremptorily which surprised me a bit, because mostly European goalies have this brave stick-handling style. He deserved his 2nd career SO but I think the Avalanche was able to make scoring chances only if they were in powerplay. Kesler's empty net goal was heart-warming on his 500th NHL game all within the Canucks and with this win Vigneault became the winningest coach in our franchise's history with 247 (Crawford needed 98 more games to reach 246). The two funny points of the game were Burrows and special teams. Burr can't pick up a single point at home but now he has got 10 away. And the two organizations started the night with the first and second-ranked PP% in the NHL but they combined 0 for7.

I haven't seen a Yotes game in this season but it is not hard to express that they possibly had the worst match of the year against us yesterday. I had seen some hockey games without penalties, some scoreless games too but I can't remember for a game when a team cannot make a scoring chance in 60 minutes since Bulgaria's national women team lost to Slovakia 82-0 three years ago. They (Coyotes) had a disgusting game, but I'm not too sad about it. Cody was tested once in the first and twice in the third, I hope that he didn't catch a cold on the ice, With this back-to-back SO Luongo can be worried a bit, but I'm sure that he cheered by soul because of his backup's success. So we ruled the game, Schneider's patience sticked over the others spectacularly, Bieksa's positioning, CoHo's ehthusiasm, the willing of the Kesler's line, Lapierre's fantastic spin-o-rama backhander were all fascinating. And Hank's post was priceless, if he had wanted to miss it, he wouldn't have been able to. Now, we are on top, I only wish a shorthanded goal, we should have scored minimum three or four in the season. I have been waiting for the Sharks, I'm so curious that Cory can continue his streak or not.