Thursday, December 06, 2012

So we made a song


We'd sing it but we'd like to avoid the embarrassment. So here are the lyrics, sung to the tune of My Heart Will Go On

Every night in the winter
I love you, I hate you
That is how I know you're so dumb

Far across the ice rink
And goal posts between us
You have come to show you don't care

Fehr, in a car, or wherever you are 
I believe that this season is screwed
Once more you locked up the door
And you're gone from my heart 
And my cheques will go on and on

Cups can be won one time
And last for a lifetime
And never re-won till we're gone

Love will be world juniors
The one tourny, to hold to
In my life it's all that, we'll win

Fehr, in a car, or wherever you are
I believe that I'l just watch the Jays
Once more you locked up the door
And you're gone from my heart now
My cheques will go on and on

Not here, no Loooosing to fear
And I know that the drought will go on
We'll stay forever this way
I am safe with my wallet
And my cheques will go on and on

Monday, November 12, 2012

The Ginger Snowflake Hall of Fame: 2012 Inductees

The Hockey Hall of Fame kind of honoured four new inductees this weekend. The ceremony was a little bit unusual this year, since as we know the NHL and NHLPA are stupid. But not to worry, the ceremonies for the Ginger Snowflake Hall of Fame will continue as planned. You can see last year's induction here, and this year's below:

Friday, November 02, 2012

The Prototypical Hockey Fangirl?


Ed note: We like having people write guest posts for us. Here's one by our friend Ashley. You can follow her on twitter: @arguela15

What’s a hockey fangirl?

It’s quite the question, isn’t it? The topic came to mind when Eric Prime asked his followers to define the word ‘Puckbunny’ last September and it got me thinking about how female hockey fans are painted as a whole.

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Halloween in the NHL: 2012 edition

As the lockout drags on, NHL fans are getting a little tired of things, while the players have some extra time this year to plan their Halloween costumes. The owners? Well, we're not too sure what the owners are doing, but we like to imagine them sitting in a smoke-filled boardroom cackling about the misery of others while taking turns throwing wads of bills into a bonfire. 

Let's focus on the Halloween costumes, shall we? (Here's our handy dandy guide to last year's costumes)
As always, thanks to the players and their wives/girlfriends for the pictures. 

Sunday, October 14, 2012

It's our blogiversary!


Today marks the one year anniversary of our first post! One year may not be too long in the blogosphere, but we're pretty proud of ourselves for writing on a somewhat consistent basis through such difficult obstacles as writer's block, laziness, procrastination, forgetfulness. So, yay us!

We've come a long way in the past year. Our readership has grown, we've tried some different things, we've both finished our first year of university, and we've accepted the fact that Roberto Luongo may not be the most evil man in the NHL. Emily has become a full-fledged writer on Blue Bird Banter, and Shelly is on her way to becoming a legitimate fan of KHL hockey (one of these accomplishments is greater than the other). And while we're probably not in the running for the Calder, we're pretty proud of our blog. So we're going to celebrate with the best way we know how, by looking back at our top 5 most popular posts:


Sunday, October 07, 2012

What the Previous Lockout Did to the Leafs (And if this one can do the opposite).

Ed note: you may remember the guest post we made on our friend Will's blog. Will was kind enough to return the favour by helping us out right here.



It's no secret that the Toronto Maple Leafs franchise is an absolute mess. From letting injured players play (Joe Colborne, JS Giguere etc), from the coaching fiasco involving Francois Allaire, all the way to the failure to make the playoffs in the last seven years. Toronto is a basketcase, and it has been since 2005. What some fans don't really think of is how damaging 2005 was for Toronto. Currently, the NHL is locked out yet again, seemingly for most, if not the whole regular season. What this article touches upon is the consequences the last one had on the Maple Leafs, and if the brand new lockout will have the same, or the opposite effect.

Tuesday, October 02, 2012

We don't miss NHL hockey





During one of our usual "waaah the lockout sucks" sessions, we realised there are some positives to having a lot fewer hockey games to watch. Maybe it's cause we're Leafs fans, but we actually have a pretty long list of horrible hockey memories, a lot of which are NHL-related:

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

We made a guest post!

Our good friend Will Collie (not to be confused with the other Will) asked us to write a guest post on his super-awesome blog, The Collective. At first we felt really important and such, but eventually our teenageness kicked in and we (mostly Emily) got really lazy and procrastinated for a while. But no longer!

Join us in saying goodbye to the Leafs that have left us this year by clicking on this link. And while you're at it, you should check out the rest of his blog. Thanks Will!

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Lockouts hurt

I was looking for an appropriate picture to use as my facebook cover in case of a lockout, but I couldn't find one to accurately reflect the FHDJSKFHS I HATE EVERYTHING-ness I'll feel if/when the league doesn't come up with a new CBA by September 15th. So, I made my own. All these pictures come from the Visa Hockey Love Hurts commercial right here. Each picture is 851x467(ish) pixels, so they'll fit on facebook without weird stretching. And here they are! (Click on the image to start the slideshow, then save it for the full size)

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9e6meT5v71r4nr5ao1_1280.jpg

Sunday, July 29, 2012

So much has changed

I was feeling a little hockey-starved, and all this London stuff has made me nostalgic for the Vancouver Olympics. So I decided to watch the Canada vs Russia quarterfinal game with a friend of mine on twitter. And, as it turns out, a lot of stuff has changed in the past couple of years:

  • It is now socially acceptable to acknowledge that Luongo is a good goalie
  • Patrice Bergeron is no longer underrated. It's amazing what a Stanley Cup will do. 
  • "Flyers captain Mike Richards and Blue Jackets captain Rick Nash" ... yeah. 
  • Eric Staal gets pummelled, then shakes it off and goes on for his next shift. Where are the concussion experts?
  • Speaking of concussions, hey Pronger.
  • Gonchar was a presence in this game (sigh)
  • Bryzgalov took over for Nabokov and nobody laughed.
  • So many too many men penalties were called, and nobody made fun of the coaches.
  • Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf were on fire. Not so much these days.
  • Crosby does everything but score and still gets chirped. So, not much has changed on that front.
  • Semin, Ovechkin and Malkin on the same line seemed like a good idea at the time. 
  • Doughty, Bergeron, Toews, Keith, Seabrook, Richards are all suddenly Cup champions. 
  • Scott Niedermayer.
  • Pierre McGuire is still annoying.

Saturday, June 30, 2012

2011-2012 NHL Season Highlights

This year's NHL season was filled with many ups and downs both on and off the ice. Here we look at our highlights for the 2011-2012 NHL season.

#PickPhilPhirst
#PickPhilPhirst was one of Shelly and my proudest moments. Thanks in large part to SkinnyPPPhish and the rest of the PPP crowd, enough people tweeted Joffrey Lupul to get the hashtag trending in Toronto (very briefly, but whatever) AND we even made Puck Daddy. Here's a screenshot to prove it:



Monday, June 25, 2012

Predicting Standings Before It Was Cool

So Emily and I got a little bored waiting for free agency to start and we came up with a super-cool novel idea to predict the NHL standings for next year, for no reason other than pure fun. Obviously it's to be taken with a grain of salt since it's based on a few important assumptions:

  1. There will be hockey next season
  2. Conference alignment, playoff eligibility, etc. stays the same (ceteris paribus)
  3. Suter goes to Detroit
  4. Parise stays with NJ
  5. Bobby Ryan doesn't stay with Anaheim (though we don't know where he'll go yet)
  6. The hockey gods hate Toronto
  7. There will be hockey next season
And here they are, with a brief explanation wherever applicable

Friday, June 15, 2012

Our Picks for the NHL Awards

Our summers so far have been really busy and really lazy and other than some help we got from our friend Will, we haven't really updated here in a while (if you couldn't tell). But all that's going to change because we now present to you our carefully justified picks for this year's NHL Awards:

The Hart Memorial Trophy - MVP as chosen by the Professional Hockey Writers' Association
Henrik Lundqvist, Evgeni Malkin, Steven Stamkos

This is one of the few Emily and I disagreed on. She chose Hank because he had the best sv% (although it'd be kind of hard for Geno or Stammer to beat him in that category), beautiful hair, got his team to the third round (ahem, playoff performance), and was in the You Can Play videos:

This video's always worth another watch

I meanwhile, took a different (and completely unbiased) approach by picking Geno Malkin. Being the MVP means you're going to represent the league, and Stamkos can't do that until he cuts his hair. Lundqvist's hair, meanwhile, is too good and doesn't reflect the blue-collarness of the NHL. So clearly, Geno wins.

Thursday, May 03, 2012

Draft Profiles: Hampus Lindholm


Hey everyone, Will here. Shelly and Emily invited me to do a guest post for them, so here it is. If you’re interested in reading more of what I have to say, follow me on Twitter: @sidstache. (And if you haven’t followed @shell871 and @leafloveremily yet, you’re a loser. Go do that.)

Anyway, this post is the first in a series of player profiles we’ll be doing here at GS for major NHL draft prospects as June 22 closes in. A brief note on the guy I chose to profile: I wanted to profile a non-junior player, since my good Canadian friends Shelly and Emily are surely more familiar with most of them than I am. I also wanted to profile a defenseman, since I play the position myself and am somewhat more familiar with evaluating it than the forward position (and certainly the goalie position). So basically, I decided to profile the top-rated European defenseman in the draft. And without further ado, here he is…



Name: Hampus Lindholm, D

Birthdate: Jan. 20, 1994

Size: 6’2.5”, 196 lbs

Shoots: Left

Current Team: Rogle BK (SuperElit, Allsvenskan)

Prospect Rankings: 4th, European skaters (NHLCSB); 32nd overall
(thehockeywriters.com), 41st overall (thescoutingreport.org)

Scouting Report: There isn’t much information or tape out there on Hampus Lindholm, but I’ll give this my best effort. Lindholm is an outstanding skater, with little work to do in that area; this is the main reason he is a top-50 prospect. Lindholm’s primary use to an NHL team will be as a puck-moving, offensively-minded defenseman. As noted before, his skating ability is elite. He also possesses an accurate shot from the point, and is equally comfortable using a wrister or a slapper from the back end. His passing ability is that of a solid, but not elite, puck-mover. He tended not to be used on the PP for Rogle’s Allsvenskan team (likely due to his youth relative to the rest of the league), but he certainly profiles as a player who could potentially fill the role at some point in the NHL.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

We were bitter

In honour of the recent Luongo-to-Toronto rumours we thought we'd dig up a letter we wrote for him (never sent) just before game 7 of the SCF last year. These opinions are a year old and still kind of valid, except for  OMG THE LEAFS MIGHT GET COMPETENT GOALTENDING. Plus anyone who wants to leave Vancouver for Toronto is okay in our books (although probably not the smartest). So without further ado, here's the letter: 

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Playoff Predictions

For the seventh season in a row, the Leafs are not in the playoffs. That doesn't mean we can't still have some fun with it, though! Shelly and I and our friend Will filled out our NHL playoff brackets on Sunday night. You'll have to excuse the relative ugliness of this post, as we're strapped for time with exams coming up and baseball games to watch. The brackets are pretty straightforward, the only thing to note is that the numbers beside each team from the second round on are our predictions for how many games the series will go.
Without further ado, here they are for your reading pleasure (feel free to mock us when we are inevitably very wrong):

Saturday, March 24, 2012

The Musings of an Indian Hockey fan

While watching a video of Jordan EBERLE talking about his participation in the You Can Play project, I noticed he said he would accept his teammates regardless of race or sexual orientation. As a second-generation immigrant from India, his mentioning race caught my attention.

But first, a little terminology. I've seen a lot of people argue over what counts as racist or what's politically correct. "Racism" itself is defined as prejudice or discrimination based on race. A related, but somewhat different, problem is stereotyping based on race. Most people, including me, mean both of these when referring to racism. I want to point out that this doesn't mean we should stop mentioning race. Your race is something that's a part of you, and pretending you don't notice that someone is black or white or purple doesn't solve anything. I talk about being "brown" all the time. So saying something like "most hockey players are white" isn't racist, it's an observation (whether or not it's informed), but "all hockey players are white" is.

Friday, March 23, 2012

What just happened?

The last two months of the Leafs' season has been almost surreal for me. At the beginning of February, it looked like this team was finally going to make the playoffs, for the first time since 2004, when I was just ten years old.



Monday, March 05, 2012

Olympic Roster Projections

We teamed up with our friend Will to try and come up with a team Canada roster. After a lot of fruitless arguing, we decided we'd make our own rosters, and we did USA, Sweden, and Finland as well. The results were as follows:


Thursday, February 16, 2012

Remembering Luc Bourdon

Name: Luc Bourdon
Position: Defense
Birthday: Feb 16, 1987 in  Shippagan, New Brunswick

Luc Bourdon was born in Shippagan, a small fishing community in New Brunswick, Canada. Raised by a single mother, he was an only child who was diagnosed with arthritis and confined to a wheelchair at age 9. He overcame arthritis to follow his passions in guitar and hockey, work with his uncle on a crab fishing boat, and earn straight-As in high school. Bourdon's skill and perseverance ultimately led him to be selected third overall by the Val d'Or Foreurs in the QMJHL entry draft in 2003.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

The GS All Star Mock Draft 2012

With the NHL's All-Star game around the corner and the experts weighing in on who would go where and which unlucky millionaire would end up with the coveted Phil Kessel Honda, Emily and I decided to make our own mock draft. Here it is, unedited for your viewing pleasure:
(FWIW: we didn't talk about who we were going to pick last beforehand)

Shelly -- in blue
Emily -- in red


Thursday, January 19, 2012

Entitled, Whiny Babies are back at it again

I'm a Toronto Maple Leafs fan. That means my country hates me.

On some level, I can understand that. The Habs and Sens are rivals, and we hate them just as much. The Oilers and Flames don't really do much except complain about the Leafs being on CBC, so I guess we just tolerate each other. Jets fans will probably find something to complain about soon enough. 

But Nucks fans?

We play this team like twice a year. About the only major interaction we've had in recent memory (which counts for a lot because the franchise is still new) is that Mats Sundin has played for both teams. That should make us the bitter ones, right? But we as a fanbase didn't really care about the Canucks. Until we see all this anti-Leafs propaganda coming out of that city. The Vancouver Sun recently came out with this article, which is basically just a crapload of crap. Now, it would be stupid enough if it was just the Sun, but this is a prime example of a trend we've been seeing for a while, which has only escalated since the Nucks' SCF appearance last year. Because, y'know, that counts for so much. Now, let's go through this article, shall we?

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Reliving NHL 36 (Kane and Bergeron)

Many of you have already heard of NHL 36. It's essentially a shorter version of HBO's 24/7, except it focuses on one player and spans 36 hours. There have been two episodes so far, featuring Chicago's Patrick Kane and Boston's Patrice Bergeron, and the league has announced the next one will star Detroit's Nicklas Lidstrom. So for those of us that don't get NBC, and for those of us that want to rewatch the episodes, here are the first two:



I don't really like Kane. Part of that is the fact that I first saw him when he played for the American junior team, or in my eyes was the evilest of all evil people in existence. But it was definitely nice to see him roaming the streets of Chicago with his father (apparently you can be a pro hockey player and roam the streets without people mobbing you, go figure. Unless the camera crew cleared the area, which is pretty lame) and supporting local emergency workers. Definitely an interesting look into the life of a hockey star, one that I don't get to see very often because he plays in the west.


This one had a lot more focus on the linemates and the team than Patrick Kane's episode. Apparently Bergeron was pretty shy around the camera, so I'm assuming the crew had to fill in time somehow. But still, Bergeron's one of the only Bruins I like, so it was annoying having to cringe and shield my eyes whenever any of them cam on-screen. Especially Sequin. Still, it was some nice exposure given to a guy who I think is underrated, or at least underpromoted.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Dear Pens fans



By now I'm sure everyone knows I'm a Leafs fan. I have been since I was born. And then I became a Crosby fan, ad through him, I started liking the Pens. I'd like to think I'll continue watching them post-Crosby era, though probably not as passionately. Whether that makes me a bandwagoner or a fan or whatever, I don't really care. But by investing myself into both the Leafs and Pens, two very different teams with two very different histories, I get an interesting point of view on both teams and their fanbases.

Friday, January 06, 2012

Oh, those Stupid Canadians

O hai.
I'm Canadian.

Now, normally people would think of a passive, overly-nice lumberjack with a pet polar bear in this situation.
(slight exaggeration)

But not hockey fans.


It's no secret that Canada loves hockey. From the 1972 Summit Series to the 2010 Olympics, some of our nation's most defining moments have occurred on the ice. Some call it an admirable love for the game. Others call it pathetic.

Thursday, January 05, 2012

Reimer vs. Gustavsson

After posting a complaint about Gustavsson getting the start in net tonight over Reimer, I've been told that I hate Gustavsson.


Firstly, I want to put it out there that no, I don't hate Gustavsson. I wish him all the success in the world. I greatly admire his perseverance through the death of his parents and his heart problems. I think he has a great work ethic and he really puts his best effort out whenever he gets a start. However, my like or dislike for him does not change the fact that he simply is not an NHL calibre goaltender. A quick look at his stats over the past number of years will show you that.