It begins with the Maple Leafs blowing out the Jets 6-0 in the third, expensive acquisition Steve Mason didn't make it a minute into the third period. I know the Leafs are probably going to win their division but god damn, Winnipeg.

Pens opening up at home against the Blues, which is nice because we get them on the road in the second of a back-to-back and that usually means a win.

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Yay hockey!

Crosby already a bitch last night. Hawks win tonight.

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

One of my favorite days of the year! Just love that I can lay on the couch and have some sports I want to watch. Gimme some box scores to follow for my fantasy teams and now I have something to look at every morning.

St Louis vs Pittsburgh was entertaining.

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Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be.

Trying to decide between the cave or sports bar tonight. Very excited about the Hawks being back, and the baseball playoffs have been fun so far. I don't figure the Hawks to do much as I think their D and depth are going to be recurring issues. But who knows?

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Agreed on counts! October is a great month for sports.

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Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be.

Some of Vegas will now get to watch the GK games on cable, lucky them!

The anthem protest has reached hockey.

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Name names!!! The real rapist kaner?

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That's my purse! I don't know you!

J.T. Brown on Tampa Bay.

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Now did he do it during the Canadian anthem as well?

I don't think he is going to get much support from his peers. He also opted for the Black Power thing over sitting. Big Buff wouldnt' do that shit.

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That's my purse! I don't know you!

Joel Ward said he was going to until the whole thing lost its meaning.

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Scott Darling is running an .896 with the analytic genius Hurricanes. Apparently for the ten seconds per game that they're not flinging the puck into the rough area code of the net, he's letting in goals.

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Matt Duchene traded to Ottawa

http://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/2130 ... 3-way-deal

The Ottawa Senators have acquired center Matt Duchene from the Colorado Avalanche as part of a three-way deal that also involved the Nashville Predators.

Center Kyle Turris is going from Ottawa to Nashville in the deal and agreed to a six-year, $36 million contract extension with the Predators.

Colorado gets a haul of players and draft picks: rookie defenseman Samuel Girard, forward prospect Vladislav Kamenev and a second-round pick from Nashville, and center Shane Bowers (a 2017 first-round pick), goalie Andrew Hammond and first- and third-round picks from Ottawa.

Duchene, 27, the third overall pick of the 2009 draft, was removed from Sunday's game against the Islanders when word of a deal came down.

Duchene, who has been on the trade market for a while, has four goals and six assists in 11 games this season.


Matt Duchene has spent his entire career with the Avalanche after being drafted third overall in 2009. Cal Sport Media/AP Images
He has spent all eight-plus seasons of his career with the Avalanche, for whom he had his best season in 2013-14, with 23 goals and 47 assists in 71 games. He had a career-best 30 goals the following season but dipped to 18-23-41 last season.

He is in the fourth year of a five-year, $30 million contract. Last season, Duchene had a minus-34 plus-minus rating, tied with teammate Tyson Barrie for worst in the NHL.

Turris is also 27 and a former third overall draft pick (2007 by Phoenix). He has three goals and six assists in 11 games this season, and three times he has topped 20 goals, including a career-best 27 last season.

The Senators acquired him from the Coyotes in December 2011 for David Rundblad and a second-round pick. Turris was in the final season of a five-year, $17.5 million deal.

The Avalanche won't have to wait long to see Duchene again, as they are headed to Sweden to play back-to-back games against Ottawa beginning Friday.

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Sherman remarked, "Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?" Grant looked up. "Yes," he replied, followed by a puff. "Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow, though."

Just our fucking luck, Nashville comes out further ahead than the two principal teams in the trade: Turris is about as good as Duchene and they get him for 6+ years compared to Ottawa and Duchene's 1+.

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Yeah I thought so too. Turris is a good player and Nashville gave up no significant players off its NHL roster.

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Sherman remarked, "Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?" Grant looked up. "Yes," he replied, followed by a puff. "Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow, though."

I've always liked Turris more than most. Some people -- maybe even Barry Rozner among them -- had him going ahead of Kane in the '07 draft for a while. He failed to thrive in Phoenix because all talented forwards did under Dave Tippett, then he got a bad rap for holding out in such a bad situation (the player Phoenix eventually traded him for? David Rundblad), and finally he landed in Ottawa, which even as a Canadian market is a black hole of attention, so no one cared that he put up a lot of points on usually decent teams. Meanwhile, Nashville has turned Seth Jones, Martin Erat, and some draft picks into Ryan Johansen, Filip Forsberg, and Kyle Turris. Not good, not good at all.

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Agreed. Nashville gave up two, B-level prospects and a 2nd round pick for a proven #2 center. Then he locks him up for 6 more years at a reasonable contract. Poile is a master.

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Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be.

Eh, I dunno, Poile was a dunce until he wasn't. Until Montreal decided to purge P.K. Subban for leaving dirty underwear on the floor or something retarded, all he could do was get bounced in the second round if he made the playoffs at all. He just never got fired because Nashville ownership was always too busy scrambling to pay the bills to fire anyone.

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Nick Boynton, who got fired from the Coyotes' radio booth for being a drunken idiot, failed up to the Jets' television booth. Does this mean Jen Jen has to live in the Peg?

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I don't think he was a dunce when he fleeced Washington of Forsberg for Martin Erat.

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Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be.

Scott Darling gave up eight in what for reasons I cannot understand was a day game in Toronto. Considering the Hurricanes are near the top of the league in puck-chucking and everyone on the internet honks off to their blue line, something really bad must be going on with him for him to be as bad as he's been this year. He's at .896 and it's almost Christmas, that's get-the-fuck-out-of-the-league bad.

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I have to say he's either drinking or exposed as the lucky backup guy.

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

I have to lean toward the former: by rights, the possession metrics of the rest of the team should be ballasting him to more than eight wins in 23 starts, a la the 2010 Harlem Globetrotter Blackhawks making Antti Niemi look like a #1 goaltender. But somewhere in here, the math isn't adding up. Maybe the Canes allow as many shot attempts as they take, in which case maybe Jaccob Slavin isn't that fucking good after all, NERDS. Maybe they don't allow a lot of scoring chances, but the ones they do give up are right down Main Street and there's nothing any goalie can do about them. Or maybe he's lost a great deal of his support system and just can't deal with it. He'd be the first player in NHL history to fold under the pressure of living in Raleigh.

I mean, .896, .900 is the Mengoalza Line.

EDIT: there's more, https://twitter.com/MikeKellyNHL/status ... 9738431490

First of all, obligatory lol at "inner slot," but from the sound of it, he's sinking this team. They're gonna have to go back to Cam Ward (who's not much better at .906).

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Idk but hopefully he can turn it around.

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If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

I hope he turns it around somewhere else, I wish that entire organization ill for how they shit on New England and ran to the New South.

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i always hoped for the best for Darling, and thought he had a nice story, but I KNEW he wasn't a starting goaltender. He is just not very good. I LOL'ed at those who had said that the Hawks should have tried best they could to get around Crow's NMC and dump him and make Darling the starter. Darling got his shot at a decent contract; he won't get another one.

Also funny how these days no one is bitching about Crow being "overpaid"

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Not a mult.

https://capfriendly.com/teams/coyotes

Not a lot of movable parts on this 17-under-.500 team, are there? There's Luke Schenn, who is probably about as valuable as Cody Franson these days, or you could try to sell the farm for Ekman-Larsson, who's up at the end of next year while this Coyotes rebuild still has more years to go. Or get Hjalmarsson back, CBA permitting, and keep him in bubble wrap until the playoffs.

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So, is Bolland effectively retired? How nice of the NH...er, I mean the Yotes to pay him 5.5 mil to not have to do anything.

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Not a mult.

Yeah, he had a career-ending injury years ago. Technically you're not allowed to trade injured players, but the NHL makes exceptions to let the Coyotes assume dead cap space. They did the same for Chris Pronger.

I think Bolland insinuated over the summer that he's moving back to Chicago for some sort of Blackhawks sinecure once his contract is up.

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