pens/islanders reaction. aka. national thuggery league

i haven't blogged in quite awhile. but what i saw last night could not be contained to a facebook status update or any number of twitter posts

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if you are a new york islanders fan right now, i feel sorry for you. i feel sorry that the team you support turned last night's game into at best thuggery, and at worst, an embarrassment.

am i saying this just because it was against the penguins? no. i am saying this because. i'm saying this because what i saw last night has no place in the nhl. or any other hockey league. i may come off as a biased penguins fan, but don't tell me that the penguins are just as much to blame. it can be nothing but perfectly obvious to the neutral fan that the islanders attacked the penguins physically and the pens had no choice but to respond to the physical violence.

the thing is, it could have all been avoided. if rick dipietro doesn't clothes line matt cooke last week with less than a minute to go in a game that they had already lost, then NONE of this would have happened tonight. and i wouldn't be calling the islanders once proud franchise, an embarrassment to the league.
let's take a look at some of the facts. matt martin attempted to sucker punch max talbot in retaliation for a hit earlier this year on blake comeau. if it weren't for the fact that talbot saw him at the last minute, it could have turned into a todd bertuzzi/steve moore kind of moment. max escaped, eric tangradi wasn't as fortunate.

tangradi, whom it is well documented that i really don't rate as an nhl'er, was headhunted by islander enforcer trevor gillies. tangradi immidiately went to the ice, obviously injured, but that wasn't enough for gillies who still attempted to start a fight with him. gillies was ejected, but still stood at the door to the ice near where the doctors were taking care of an ailing tangradi. he stood there and yelled and taunted the fallen penguin. oh, and by the way. tangradi now has concussion-like symptoms.

then there is michael haley. during one of the many third period meles he fought max talbot (i guess the attempted sucker punch to the back of max's head by his teammate wasn't enough) he was then left alone to go down and throw down with brent johnson. during that fight is the only time when i will criticize the penguins for their actions. eric godard jumped off of the bench to come to johnson's aid. i umderstand why he did it, but he knows that he's going to get suspended, and with so many player out of the penguins line up, the team really can't afford that.

the final penalty numbers, combined, for both teams, was somewhere in the mid 300's. that's the number that everyone will remember. which is sad. what they should remember is the fact that the islanders won 9-3. that number doesn't matter because the islanders rendered it useless with their actions during the rest of the game.

april 8th in new york should be interesting. and the league needs to make sure that they have their best officials working that game, not a rookie, and a veteran that needs to retire. they are just as culpable as the islanders for what happened in that game last night.

avatar, great conversation, and geek cred

so i went to see avatar today, and i must say that it was as amazing and stunning as i had heard. i'm pretty sure i'll be seeing it again.

why haven't i seen it before now you may ask? well because i didn't know anyone that wanted to see and i've kind of had it with being lame and going to movies by myself. that's where twitter comes into play.

i've met some really great people on twitter but none that i have actually met in the physical world. while i was watching the incredibles with my brother and nephew last night i was tweeting, mostly about random things. i happen to see one of my numerous friends that i met through the #pens hashtag tweet that she wanted to see avatar again. i replied that i wanted to see it for the first time. so after a little back and forth we decided that we would go see it together today. i love meeting awesome people online who in turn end up being equally awesome in real life. it kind of reaffirms my belief that there more good people than bad out there.

so prior to the movie we had some time to talk. just about general things like favorite movies, music, the pens, football (of the european variety).

seriously? i met someone that likes hockey AND soccer. score! :)

some highlights from the conversation

music -  we both agree that anything tom morello touches is golden and that my musical tastes lie mainly in bands that originated out of the 70's progessive rock scene and that the combination of dave grohl, john paul jones, and josh homme as them crooked vultures is, well, epic.

sports - she is a penguins fan which is awesome in itself. but she is also a footy fan that supports chelsea which is fine because it isn't manchester united, and she has talked to ruud van nistelrooy. seriously, i can't make that up! just as a side note, i support celtic.

movies - it mainly centered around what i haven't seen. here is the short list, all of the harry potter movies and all of the lord of the rings movies. it was suggested that my geek cred is taking a hit because of this and that i can't fall back on the star wars movies to restore said geek cred. :)

so i think my goal in 2010 is to catch up on what i've missed and i think i need to turn to netflix for that. my reasoning for not seeing those, and other, movies is that they were so pervasive in the media that i tended to avoid them all together. i did the same thing when learning new songs on guitar. i avoided cliched songs like stairway to heaven and smoke on the water.

i think enough time has passed that i need to start catching up.