Say It Ain't So (a-woah-a-woah)

Apparently, the Tampa Bay Lightning aren't finished re-tooling their team. According to TSN (where we get ALL our hockey news apparently), Andrej Meszaros was traded to the Lightning for two defenseman and their first round pick in 2009.

What?

Let's go over the details in a little more detail.

Bryan Murray agrees to a trade for Filip Kuba, Alexandre Picard and a first round draft pick in 2009. He should have asked for the team trainer and a SAW DVD box set cause we are pretty sure that Tampa would have made it happen.

What exactly do Oren Koules and Len Barrie think they are doing?

Don't they need defensemen? We understand that they got one but gave up two and a pick for Andrej Meszaros. Couldn't they have given up a few forwards instead? It's not like they have a shortage of them. Didn't Gary Roberts want to play in Ottawa anyway?

We kinda knew this shit was gonna go down because of the rumors that kept surfacing about Meszaros not wanting to play for only 3.5 million a year. The fact that his agent is RITCH WINTER probably didn't help negotiations much.

He's smiling because Ritch Winter screwed Ottawa yet again

Or the fact that Bryan Murray gets like fourteen-year-old girl when he feels slighted. Out come the claws.

"I thought his first year in Ottawa was real good, I thought his last two years left much to be desired."

Murray must still be reeling from the Wade Redden signing. When Chara left, they threw all the money they could find at Redden so that he would stay. And when Meszaros tried that, they told him to screw Oren Koules's mother.

People don't forget.

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We absolutely love that some Sens fans are jubilant over the news. Do they even know who they are getting? Do they understand the team they are left with? No, they just sing the praises of Bryan Murray and his dumping of the young defenseman who had revolving partners and a bad goaltender to play with.

Yeah, you definitely got the better of that deal Ottawa.


We honestly can't even get into what Tampa is doing. They're all crazy down there. Must be constant sunshine or something. It's like management is giving out free meth during lunch breaks.

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Noodles is heartbroken over this news. Meszaros was one of her favorite defensemen. She had cursed Tampa with Hulk Hogan becoming a season-ticket holder and a breakout of herpes amongst their Ice Girls.

Tampa is heading for fail this season. We wonder who their top D pairing is? If it's Paul Ranger and Andrej Meszaros, Noodles might faint. If it's not, then we won't even care when Tampa fails to win a game against Toronto.

Is that cruel? It's not like we care. It's still the off-season.

Tampa's top defenseman..heaven help them.

Watch, they'll be the team to beat in April. Jinx.

One-A-Day: Pittsburgh Penguins

Pittsburgh Penguins


As fans, we are still getting over the Stanley Cup Finals. We don’t think there has been a series more brutal to our fragile minds than that one. And physically being there when Chris Osgood lifted the Cup over his head put us into the hospital for a few months.


Since the dawn of the Jaromir Jagr years, we have been Penguins fans. It wasn’t because of him, duh, it was because we were old enough to realize that the world didn’t revolve around Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Chef Boyardee.

Don’t judge us because we weren’t alive during the “good old days”. Whatev.

Mario Lemieux is our one and only savior. He is the face behind the face of the franchise. He was the original ‘first-line center’. Mario is the reason that Sidney Crosby is in the Burgh and the reason why there is even a team still here.


We shall forever be in debt to his greatness.

And our children will forever be in debt to the greatness that is Sidney Crosby years from now. We know that he’s gonna be great no matter what anyone says. We just want his ankle to stay away from the boards.

Since the off season started we have heard every ridiculous thing said about the Penguins. That they won’t even make the play offs because we lost Ryan Malone AND Marian Hossa. That Brooks Orpik was given too much money and he won’t be worth the extra money. That Marc-Andre Fleury’s performance in the play offs was a fluke.

The writers who perpetuate those myths in the natural habitat

Honestly, we do not want to diffuse those ideas. Let those idiots have them, we have our own speculations on other teams. But that doesn’t make us an expert on those teams. We know the Penguins and we have faith in the team.


George Michael said it perfectly

Ray Shero is one of our favorite GMs. We absolutely love him but if he ever even thought about trading Petr Sykora we would have put Nair in his shampoo. Just saying that he better watch his back if that happens.


Shero does what he thinks is necessary, what he thinks will benefit the team. Shero does the best he can with what he has in the time allotted and everything works out.

Sure, Marian Hossa left. But Shero signed Miroslav Satan. He is not nearly as talented but maybe, just maybe, he won’t miss the net nearly as much as Hossa did and save us the mini-heart attacks.

And Ryan Malone deserted the Penguins for more money and hotter Ice Girls. But again, Shero signed Ruslan Fedotenko. Yeah, he only had like one goal last season but he wasn’t playing on the same line as a Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin. You tell us, who is better…Crosby or Mike Comrie?


Yeah, that’s what we thought.

And hopefully the injury jinx leaves the Pens this season cause we don’t know if we can take any more broken bones and high-ankle sprains. Noodles is still eating her weight in Oreos because of the Ryan Whitney Fiasco, as she calls it. If he isn’t back by the play offs, we’re taking our grandma’s house hostage.

There’s nothing like a long off season to make us go bonkers and believe that the Penguins are gonna Three Mile Island. But every season arrives and we are just as excited about this one as we were the last one. Every season has its ups and downs and favorite moments, we can’t wait.

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General Manager – Ray Shero

Coach – Michel Therrien


Team Captain – Sidney Crosby

Player(s)Everyone Should Love – Sidney Crosby, Ryan Whitney, Petr Sykora and Brooks Orpik; we love like everyone but we had to narrow it down somewhat

Player We Don’t Love – Dany Sabourin because he will never be Ty Conklin

Who They Got – Matt Cooke, Miroslav Satan, Ruslan Fedotenko, Bill Thomas, Janne Pesonen


Who They Lost – Marian Hossa, Ryan Malone, Adam Hall, Georges Laraque, Jarkko Ruutu, Gary Roberts, Kris Beech, Ty Conklin

Located At – home or the Mellon Arena or the Igloo or the Civic Arena if you’re that old school and pompous

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Hotness Level (on a scale from 1 to Gary) – Gary

Although the Pens had lost Marian Hossa and Ty Conklin and our god, Gary Roberts they are still on fire. What other team can boast Sidney Crosby, Max Talbot, Kris Letang, Marc-Andre Fleury, Jordan Staal and Ryan Whitney as their core of young (and hot) players.

None.

And the up-and –coming boys are adorable as well. It just keeps getting better and better, ha!

One-A-Day: Philadelphia Flyers

Philadelphia Flyers


As much as we hate the Red Wings, we may hate the Flyers even more. For years, the Flyers owned the Penguins, beating the crap outta them physically and on the scoreboard. And we were raised to hate the Flyers.

Even Henrik, who claims she doesn’t hate anyone says that she absolutely hates the Flyers.

And it hurts us because there are so many players that we love in the organization. For example, the trade of Peter Forsberg to Nashville for picks, Scottie Upshall and Ryan Parent gave the Flyers like four more hotties.



Ryan Parent is a freaking Flyer. Kill us. That just isn’t fair.

The Flyers may be a better looking team than even the Penguins. But we can’t count personality cause most of their players are assholes on the ice. And probably off the ice as well.

We absolutely loved owning the Flyers in 06/07. That might have been the best thing that year, with Sid getting six points in one game against them. It was amazing.


The icing on the cake

Then last season rolled around, and with all the changes the Flyers made it was only a matter of time before they returned the favor. Maybe Danny Briere actually did something besides diving and being too slow to get back defenseively.

It sucked that the worst game the Penguins played against the Flyers was televised on Versus.

We couldn’t even hate Joffrey Lupul after that. He’s just too pretty to hate.



The conference finals against the Flyers was amazing. Their whiny fans complained, “Why not us?” on their t-shirts. We can tell you why not…Briere, Hatcher, Hartnell, Jones and Biron.



And what did they ever want vengeance for? No one made them suck two season ago, they did that to themselves. Even Mike Richards, the best center to ever play center, sucked.

And then they took the vengeance thing too far and started breaking necks. Literally. It was like they felt they were entitled to win even when they were still losing.


That’s what started the whole, “Watch your neck!”

The only thing we can hope for is them to fail and the Penguins to take the season series again. But, that shit never happens cause this ain’t MVP, bitches.

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General Manager – Paul Holmgren

Coach – John Stevens

Team Captain –

Player Everyone Should Love – Mike Richards; won’t bad-mouth Sid even when people ask him too, we like that a lot

Player(s) We Don’t Love – Daniel Briere, Martin Biron, Derian Hatcher, Randy Jones, Scott Hartnell, Kimmo Timonen

Who They Got – Arron Asham, Glen Metropolit, Steve Eminger

Who They Lost – Jason Smith, Patrick Thoresen, Jaroslav Modry

Located At – Hell

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Hotness Level (on a scale from 1 to Gary) – 0

We would give the Flyers a higher number because we really do love so many of their players but their bad outweighs the good. Unfortunately. The combined hotness of Jeff Carter, Mike Richards, Joffrey Lupul, Scottie Upshall, Ryan Parent and Claude Giroux just isn't enough.

One-A-Day: New York Rangers

New York Rangers


As much as Noodles loves the Oilers, Henrik may love the Rangers even more. We don’t like to acknowledge that fact since they are a divisional rival and total jackasses in their ‘big market’ way. But we have to let everyone love who they wanna love.


Without further ado, we relinquish the floor to Henrik.

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I have loved the Rangers since…well, since Henrik Lundqvist was called up. He is the namesake for my alter ego, which is a Swedish gay man with impeccable taste.



Let’s explain a little about the Rangers system. They don’t believe in rookies, no one is ever called up unless their last name is a Staal or someone on the big club died. It’s quite unfortunate.

And Sather believes in buying the best team possible instead of growing them in their farm system. I didn’t mind it until he signed Scott Gomez. I refuse to acknowledge that he is in fact a Ranger.



Scott Gomez will be a Devil forever. You can’t just switch like that and expect us to believe that you are no longer loyal to Marty Browhore and Sweet Lou.

One of my dreams in life was realized in the play offs last season. I have always wanted to see the Rangers play the Penguins in a series. Don’t ask why cause I don’t know. And it was made sweeter by the fact that the Penguins won so convincingly not matter what other Rangers fans tell you.

Now, if only I can witness a Lundqvist shutout at MSG. If Rexall Place is Noodles’ Mecca then MSG is it for me. I could just die from the excitement.

I always wondered how the Rangers could get better and this off season they have, in a way. Jaromir Jagr and his toothless gob are gone and so many players were signed to fill his void.

But one signing really got me excited. When I found this out, I died and had to be revived by seeing a picture of Scott Hartnell douching someone.

What a beautifully concerned human

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General Manager – Glen Sather

Coach – Tom Renney; such a fuddy-duddy

Team Captain –

Player Everyone Should Love – Henrik Lundqvist; it was hard to choose for Henrik because she said that it was a toss up between him and Wade…Henrik won because he’s Swedish

Player We Don’t Love – Scott Gomez; he skates sideways into the offensive zone, idiot

Who They Got – Nikolai Zherdev, Markus Naslund, Wade Redden, Dmitri Kalinin, Dan Fritsche, Patrick Rissmiller, Aaron Voros

Who They Lost – Jaromir Jagr, Martin Straka, Sean Avery, Marek Malik, Jason Strudwick, Brendan Shanahan, Fedor Tyutin, Christian Backman

Is Tyutin wearing Gomez's glove?

Located At – Madison Square Garden

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Hotness Level (on a scale from 1 to Gary) – 6

With the additions of Wade and Markus, the level rocketed through the rounded roof of the Garden. We thought Jaromir was hilarious sometimes but then again, he wasn’t that attractive despite what some girls think about how sexy his mullet was. So, a 6 it is.

One-A-Day: New Jersey Devils

New Jersey Devils


These ain’t your grandpop’s Devils anymore. They actually try to score goals now. Who woulda thought, eh?


Brent Sutter screams and yells his way through games.

He’s one of the main reasons that John Madden had a career high in goals last season or something like that. You know it’s bad when your team’s scoring leader is a checking line center and shutdown specialist.

We have a general dislike for the Devils. Whenever the Penguins have to play them, we kinda cringe. It’s not that we are afraid of the Penguins losing (cause that happened all the time B.S.C.) it’s just that we fall asleep during Devils games.

All the blame falls onto Marty Browhore’s shoulders. He is a whiner and a diver and a stuck up little princess.

Whew, glad that’s off our chests.

We loved when Sean Avery did his little circus act in Marty’s crease during the play offs. It’s like they’re in kindergarten and Avery knows just what makes Marty squirm so he does it all the time. And Marty isn’t mature enough to just ignore his antics so he whines about it.

That’s our interpretation of the relationship between Sean Avery and Martin ‘Fatso’ Brodeur.

We are sure they miss each other.

An exciting thing about the new season is that with the new schedule, the Penguins only have to play the Devils 3 times at home. That’s too bad cause we were looking forward to an extra game of nap-time.

One of the reasons that we sleep during games is their line-up. Sweet Lou Lamoriello must think that it’s the late nineties again. With the signings of Brian Rolston and Robert Holik, it’s like a time warp.

Petr Sykora will think it’s a nightmare when he goes back to New Jersey and sees Holik lining up at the face-off dot between Rolston and Elias.

We kid, we kid.

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General Manager – Lou Lamoriello

Coach – Brent Sutter

Team Captain – Jamie Langenbrunner

Player Everyone Should Love – Zach Parise; he’s just adorable

Player We Don’t Love – Martin Brodeur

Who They Got – Fedor Fedorov, Brian Rolston, Bobby Holik

Who They Lost – Sergei Brylin, Arron Asham, Vitaly Vishnevski

Located At – The Pebble a.k.a. Prudential Center

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Hotness Level (on a scale from 1 to Gary) – 1

We haven’t been very nice to many of the latest teams but we just can’t get it up for them. Especially a team that employs Holik. His eyebrows leave much to be desired.

One-A-Day: New York Islanders

New York Islanders


It was a sad day at TheHockeyJunkies lair when we heard that Ted Nolan was fired. It’s not because we like him, it’s because we can’t call him a diver every game.

But we are sure that we will hate the new coach just as much as we hated Nolan. It’s a fact, jack. As Penguins fans, we naturally hate every other team in whatever division Pittsburgh happens to be in.

We don’t even want to mail this in

The Islanders are only good for a few cute players and two points each time the Penguins play them. Now that Nolan is gone, we can only make fun of Snow and Witt and Wang and…Guess there are more people to make fun of there.

Just like Toronto, the Islanders are in competition for last place in the Conference. Maybe they really want John Tavares.

But if they were serious about getting Tavares, Snow would have hired John Tortorella to coach the team. We would have burned down Club Erotica in excitement if he was hired into the Atlantic Division.

In the 08 Draft, Snow drafted two younger brothers of NHL-ers. David Toews and Blake Kessel. What’s so funny is that Kessel is actually better looking than Philly. Snow also drafted Josh Bailey.

Noodles freaked because of his ears. She’s super-excited about seeing him play against the Penguins when he’s 27 cause that’s how slow the Islanders develop their youngsters.

Mike Comrie is an Islander. And by osmosis, Hilary Duff is also an Islander. Ew.

Comrie's new girlfriend

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General Manger – Garth Snow

Coach – Scott Gordon

Team Captain – Bill Guerin

Player Everyone Should Love – Rick DiPietro and Jeff Tambellini; a war broke out at TheHockeyJunkies lair over who would be the player we love so we decided to have another tie

Player We Don’t Love – Brendan Witt; douche!

Who They Got – Doug Weight, Mark Streit

Who They Lost – Miroslav Satan, Ruslan Fedotenko, Josef Vasicek, Rob Davison

Located At – Nassau Coliseum

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Hotness Level (on a scale from 1 to Gary) – negative 7

Ricky alone deserves a 5 just for his hotness factor but with Weight, Witt, Nielsen, Campoli, Hilbert and others on the team it brought the collective level down so far that we couldn’t even begin to calculate the numbers.

One-A-Day: Tampa Bay Lightning

Tampa Bay Lightning


What’s that Pierre McGuire? Pittsburgh is Tampa Bay North? Really? Did Shero sign every forward that became a UFA? Did he rip apart the defense and lie to their top defenseman? No. How about we call a spade a spade? Tampa will always be Tampa Bay South.

Pierre McGuire is a douche

We used to love Tampa, we rooted for Tampa to win the Stanley Cup in 2004 and we even felt sorry for them when they failed to win a single game in 07/08.

He's one of the reasons why we loved Tampa

Since Oren Koules and Len Barrie took over as owners, we have been planning the demise of the entire organization.

Koules just rubs us the wrong way. We feel violated when he looks at the cameras in that serial killer way. Henrik loooooves him and we don’t know why…he just freaks us out.

We’ve seen meth addicts with better hair than that

We also want the Lightning to crash and burn and everyone to lose a limb besides Shane O’Bitch and Paul Ranger. They’re like the only two players we have any good feelings for.

It seems inevitable that the Lightning will fail because of the drastic changes. The 07/08 Flyers were a fluke…it’ll never happen again. The only good thing about Tampa is that they now employ Gary fucking Roberts (he breaks our hearts a little more every day).

Their coach is Barry Melrose who is a joke. Literally. Jay Feaster freaked out and left, not wanting to be attached to that organizational flop. Vinny Lecavalier is the captain…again. And their only veteran defenseman is Filip Kuba.

Uh, yeah, about that…

Oops, they must have forgotten that defense wins championships not ‘The Big Three’. Or is it the ‘Big Duo’ now since Brad Richards left Vinny’s shadow?

We honestly miss John Tortorella. There was nothing better than watching a Lightning game and seeing him get so pissed off. He was ejected so many times for yelling at officials that even Mike Milbury said, “Bitch better simma down now.”

One of the best things about hockey is the unpredictability of the season. Who knows what will happen with this team when the season begins for them in Europe. Let’s just hope that Koules and Barrie don’t start a movie about the team cause that would be as boring as a Sunday.

There are more players on their roster than the Saw movie has sequels

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General Manager –

Coach – Barry Melrose

Team Captain – supposedly Vinny Lecavalier…again

Player Everyone Should Love – Paul Ranger because he’s adorable in that boy next door way

He always looks so emo...

Player We Don’t Love – Mark Recchi; he caused too many heart-breaking moments in our lives to be even considered a player we are ambivalent about…plus he was a FLYER

Who They Got – Everyone and their grandma…check it out on TSN

Who They Lost – entire defense corps plus Andre Roy

Located At – St. Pete Times Forum

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Hotness Level (on a scale from 1 to Gary) – 4

Vinny is like the hottest hockey player to ever play the game…so many girls love him but he is the only one. And the collective hotness went down a few notches when Brad Richards left. All the Lightning got left is a bunch of over-paid rag-tag players who are hoping to hit it big in Tampa. Oh, and Paul Ranger.

Oops, looks like we forgot to mention their number one overall pick...Vinny-2

Whatev