Nekiestem :)

Sorry for not writing so long, but my class had its school-levaers ball and I was the main organizer and I had no any time for watching Nucks matches, so if I'm not mistaken a dozen matches were being played during this 3-week period. I heard some pieces of information, I know that we are on .500, had a very interesting trade, Luongo is under 90% but I don't know the results, how we played, so I downloaded all of our matches and I try to catch the calendar up. It will be very funny to write about matches you saw nearly a month ago.

After the road trip we had three matches at home in a row, against Rag$, Preds and the Wild. Because Kesler's comeback, I predicted 5 points from us. The debut was against Rangers, the first home game since the season opener. Ryp's ceremony to honour him was touching, I still haven't believed his suicide, I loved his youthful enthusiasm and heart, the league should have to pay more attention for grinders, these kind of unsung heroes, they fight for regard every day. At the pre-game show, I misssed so much Mark Donnelly, I appreciate Jeevyn Dhaliwal, but I would like to hear the fans singing the second stanza of Oh Canada.
It's so controversial to say we had a nearly perfect game in a blank. But that's the truth. We clearly outplayed NY in the first 50 minutes, had numerous chances, hard shots, and they had nothing, except Lundqvist. He was impregnable likewise in January. We did what we had to do, passed when we had to pass, shot from the blue when we had to shoot from the blue etc.. Our centers did a great job at faceoffs (Richards - whose lovely sister, is a teacher in Vancouver - won 4 from 14, awesome work), we forced to penalize themselves in the offensive zone, but we cannot beat the King. After Rupp's goal, I was sure we won't score, after McDonagh's, the team agreed. I don't mind, Kes is healthy, I'm satisfied with our D's (Ballard had his best match in our jersey, Salo and Edler are cruel, Alberts plays very usefully) and I enjoyed the 4th line too. Only Hamhuis and Hansen were invisible. We couldn"t beat a 7th rounder goalie, can we beat an 8th? Let see.

I don't want to waste a lot of time for the Preds match. The better team won. We outplayed them in all segments of the game. In my opinion we did the same as against Rags the only difference was the number of goals. After Daniel's cheeky goal, everybody eased that we are able to score and they made a convincing victory. If Burrows had been a bit calmer, Edler and Sturm had been a wee luck, we would have scored twice as many. Our powerplays were extremely dangerous (in the second period's 5on3 was extraordinaire), Hansen, Ballard and Weise were good enough to get some confidence they needed, Luongo too but for goodness' sake, learn to freeze the puck, the Halischuk goal was embarassing. Otherwise, this Nashville is very creditable with its homegrowns. There were 15 players in the line-up, they had been drafted before and played nearly 1000 matches with only one coach. They are a kind of North-American Athletic Bilbao with Alex Ferguson on the bench. But it's not enough to have a chance against us.

Who was the mad one, who cooked up matinee games? The first period against the Wild was a complete dull. I felt watching an open ice practise, skating was slow, shots were easy to save, fans nibbled their early lunch, it was everything except a hockey game. The only good moments were Mike Vernon between the rows and see a short video about Raymond's recovery. After the slumping 20 minutes the team woke up from the nap and played some good hockey. I was so happy to see Hansen scored his first of the season, I think he played a lot better than his stats shows. MadMax either, I love the way he flusters the opponents with a f*cking big smile on his face. It's absolutaley priceless. And Schneider got a red point too, now he is lot more self-confident than Luongo, I can imagine that he (Lou) is frustrated inside and feels a bit uncomfortable. Good luck Lou, you won't have more than 50 matches this year. Kes is the same as last season, he is our shining star, maybe Datsyuk can be compared with him as a similarly complete player in the league. He is a treasure for us. And the most underrated player of the NHL (Burr obviously) will have to find his scoring stick, in these matches he should have scored 3+ goals. 4 points instead of 5, acceptable.