The Boston fans went from booing Cooke to booing their own team.

 

The Penguins whipped out their balls, and they whipped them all over the Bruins, their fans, and their building.  Other than the X morning show with Tim Benz, it's hard to imagine a bigger, more disappointing three hours for people.

 

There appears to be a giant rat in the background. And that dude with his hand in his pocket?

[thanks to whoever sent this in]

 

If we were Bruins fans, we'd probably light ourselves on fire.

What a gutless, uninspired effort. Thank God Marc Savard isn't alive to see it.

 

But that doesn't surprise us.

No one even came to Savard's defense two weeks ago when it happened.

 

The next time anyone hears anything from the Bruins, it will be at the draft. For all their crowing, the Boston media looks even dumber than it normally does. Some guy actually found a way to make the Cooke/Savard hit about Crosby.

 

Want to know where the Boston media's minds are?

They gave Shawn Thoronto the number-3 star in this game...for fighting Cooke.

 

So now the Boston faithful can pull out their pics of Larry Bird and rub themselves down in fading memories.

 

As for the Pens, looks like we read our Mayan calendar wrong.  One day off.

 

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7:00 PM

 

TD Garden

 

Listen to the game at [WXDX]

 

Know the Enemy:

Something's Bruin

 

They're really angry over there.

We can't possibly figure out why.

 

 

Gameday 71 and no Geno.

 

 

 

"By Gawd!  This is gonna be a slobberknocker!"

 

And the cell is lowered....

 

 

 

We've already mentioned it earlier, but the Boston Herald, one of the oldest daily papers in America and winner of four Pulitzer Prizes, unleashed this piece of fine quality journalism this morning:

"Take Sidney Crosby down every chance they get. He, not Cooke, is the Penguins’ heart and soul. Make him bleed for the sins of his teammate.

Take him into the boards. Knock him down every chance you get. Bounce a puck off his nose if you can. If you get a blind side shot at him, put your body through his chest."

The Bruins may want to focus on winning a hockey game instead.

 

 

Making Crosby bleed won't widen the gap between the Bruins and the Rangers for the eighth and final playoff spot.

 

The NHL has brought in veteran officials for tonight's game.

Colin Campbell and directory of officiating Terry Gregson will be in attendance.

Vince McMahon will be there to order Earl Hebner to ring the bell.

 

Maybe not.

 

"Wait.... oh my gawd!  That's Eric Godard's music!"

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From the [BOSTON HERALD] this morning.

 

 

What's Chara going to do? Look at someone? Joke.

 

 

 

 

But the best part of the Boston Herald's coverage comes here. From some guy named Turd Borges:

 

 

 

He goes on to compare Colin Campbell to Pontius Pilate.

 

This should be fun.

 

Poni up.

 

Go Pens.

 

[Thanks to Jim B. for the tip]

 

 

"You can't beat us."

"You can't beat us."

"You can't beat us."

 

Those were the chants of Devils fans as the Devils went on to clinch a 5-2 victory over the Pens.

We need the video and audio, because we're going to make that our ringtone until the playoffs

 

Look, is it good that the Pens have lost six straight to the Devils? Nope.

But despite the resounding tones of bridge jumpers, we love it.

 

 

Because when the band rolls into New Jersey come Mid-April, the world champs will be left for dead.

If any team on the planet feeds off being not given a chance, it is the Pens.

 

And before we get ahead of everything, the Devils haven't clinched or won anything yet. Tons of hockey to be played.

All these people speaking about playoff matchups are garbage. How did that UPDATED two third seed work out for the Devils last year?

 

Bottom line, once the playoffs start, all bets are off. It'd be nice to have home ice in the first round. There is no easy path to the promise land. If that isn't in you're mind already, no clue why you read this site.

 

And as for wrestlemania tonight against the Bruins.

Bring it.

 

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7:00 PM

 

Prudential Center

 

Listen to the game at [WXDX]

 

Know the Enemy:

Running With The Devils

 

From their gameday:

"But this is Pittsburgh we are playing tonight and it doesn't matter that we are going old school tonight or that we are 5-0 against them this season. The Penguins could care less what NJ is doing and are going out there to win. The lead the Devils by 2 points in a tight race for the division."

 

Two huge games in a row.

Devils tonight and Bruins tomorrow night.

Until the playoffs start, it's going to be tough to find a couple of game that have more potential to impact rest of the Penguins' season.

 

The Pens have a two point lead over the Devils in the Atlantic division.

They also have a game in hand.

A win today would be huge for either team.

 

The Devils have absolutely owned the Penguins this season.

They're 5-0 and could sweep the season series tonight.

 

During the 2009 playoffs the Pittsburgh Penguins proved that they could perform at their best when it mattered the most.

Tonight they will need to do the same.

 

 

For the Penguins:
Evgeni Malkin will not play.

He bruised his foot on Sunday against the Lightning.

 

For the Devils:
Paul Martin will return to the line-up.

He last played on October 24th, 2009.

In that game he was hit in the forearm by a Bill Guerin slapshot and required surgery.

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Head on over to the Rinkotology Blog for info on the Twitter contest.

 

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

eurydice_krg with some solid pics from Pens practice.  LINK.

 

Alex B. -- anthem pic from Jay-Z concert.

 

We're in the process of tagging every photo in Picasa to make them searchable.

It's a mess over there right now.

Link in the right sidebar ---->

 

Go Pens.

 

 

 

 

No clue what's even going on in the March Madness thing. Completely forgot it was this week. But we've always had a pool, so why stop a tradition.

But anyway we have some things to give out.

1st place -- $100 cash + free rinko entry

2nd -- $50 cash + free rinko entry

3rd -- free rinko entry

4th- free rinko entry

5th-- rinko entry

 

The group is through yahoo's pickem.

Group ID#: 164180
Password: mario

 

Whatev.Go Pens.

 

Commentor Stoosh has been around quite a while.

He even has a shirt in Storeblog.
He's banged out beastly Homer-esque comments with a high level of consistency.

Only fitting to give him the reins.

 

...............................

 

For the first time, I officially give you…

Thoughts, Dudes

It’s just too bad there’s nothing to talk about, eh? Oh, wait…

 

• I guess I can kick this off with the topic du jour – the Crusade Against Questionable Hits. Unless you’ve spent your last week with Coach Boudreau coming up with 1001 ridiculous reasons why the league might suspend Ovechkin should he randomly choose to board someone like, say, Brian Campbell, it’s become fairly apparent that every hit that’s even remotely borderline is going to be subject to some sort of scrutiny. If it doesn’t happen with the on-ice officials during the games, it’ll be addressed by the announcers calling them or the media dissecting it every possible way after the fact. Just get ready. Don’t say you weren’t warned. It’s probably going to get worse.

• Keep in mind that we haven’t even gotten to Thursday yet. That, of course, is the day the Pens visit Boston and we’ll likely see new internet trending records for the words “Matt”, “Cooke” and “retribution”.

• Watching a replay of whatever it was that Steve Downie technically did to Sidney Crosby and it’s still amazing to me that all of Crosby’s knee ligaments – and his tibia and fibula, for that matter – remained intact. Still looks to me like some half-assed attempt at a slewfoot.

• Equally amazed that Downie still hasn’t been brought up for a hearing either, although I shouldn’t be surprised. No penalty was called but that may have more to do with the fact that no one really saw the incident happen; he and Downie were the only two players on the left half of the ice when Downie locked him up. Three full seconds passed from the time Crosby sent the puck across the ice to the time he was hauled off his feet. Crosby dishes the puck before he crosses center red and then glides the rest of the way to the Tampa zone. Downie engages him at center red and hauls him down about ten feet inside the Tampa zone. In other words, he had plenty of time and space to break away from Crosby. Crosby wasn’t charging into the zone, so there was no reason for Downie to lock him up in the first place.

• Then again, I’m giving Downie too much credit here. There’s a reason Downie has built up the reputation he has, and expecting him to peel off Crosby in a situation like that is kind of like expecting Eric Lindros to remember to skate with his head up.

• Not sure whose comments following the Ovechkin hit were dumber – Ovechkin arguing that Campbell just fell into the boards (because falls like that routinely cause broken ribs, broken clavicles and grade 2 concussions), Boudreau again pulling the “Well if it was Crosby…” card, or Milbury calling the hit a hockey play.

• Speaking of Milbury, am I the only one who can’t wait until that afternoon five or six years from now when he has to do a Bruins-Pens Saturday game for NBC and Philip Samuelsson – son of Ulf – is patrolling the blueline for the Pens?

• OK, enough of this. There are bigger fish to fry. Mmmmmm,…fish fry.

• That knock at the door is Boudreau and Leonsis. Shouldn’t have typed “fish fry”. My bad.

• Glancing at the standings and some of these matchups in the Eastern Conference are playing out nicely for the Pens. If things stay relatively the same, the Pens would get Montreal in the first round. You’d have Philly and Buffalo beating the hell out of each other in that 3-6 matchup. You’d also get New Jersey and Ottawa meeting in the first round in the 4-5 series. Ottawa’s a well-balanced team that could match up very well against the Devils. Tampa is the team I’d love to see slide into that eighth spot. Tampa would present a much tougher matchup for the Caps than would the Bruins, Rangers or Habs. It’s way too early to tell, but this could set up nicely.

• From the “Fire Mike Yeo” department, the Pens powerplay is up to a 17.3% conversion rate. Even better, the consistency is there. In 13 games played since February started, they’ve scored at least a powerplay goal in nine of them.

• I never, ever, ever thought I’d say this, but as a DirecTV subscriber, it’s nice to have Versus back in time for the playoffs. I kind of like this arrangement, actually. I like my DirecTV service so I didn’t want to switch. So thanks to their little spat with Versus/Comcast this year, I spent about 75% of the regular season not having to worry about accidentally flipping past asstastic Versus broadcasters making another Monday night Rangers-Flyers game worse than it already was. And now with just a few weeks left before the playoffs, Versus comes back into my life as if to say, “We got you for playoff hockey, OK, Stoosh? We know our broadcasts are Sega Genesis quality, our studio looks like it was built in your basement and Beninati’s voice sounds like he’s gargling with a bucketful of gravel. But the intensity of playoff hockey often overrides the audio torture.” Maybe…just maybe, Versus, we can make this work, you and I.