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He still leads the league with 14 goals in 14 games and also has nine assists.

I’m sure the Caps, and their fans, are trying not to panic too much but they lost to the New Jersey Devils this past weekend and are now 1-4-0 without Ovie (since the 2005-2006 season).

It was bound to happen, though.  Almost every player has suffered some sort of injury in their career and this could be the first major setback that the Russian star has experienced.

Hopefully, it’s nothing serious and he’ll be back on the ice in no time but I don’t actually think his absence is a bad thing either.  Sometimes it’s good for a team to be without their “superstar” since they really can rely too heavily on a single guy.  Looking at their stats without him, I can’t help but think they need to develop the rest of the team a little more so maybe they will do that as Ovie recuperates.

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A melee had broken out between the teams and it was just one of many scrums that happened as a result but you, obviously, cannot hit someone while you’re on the bench.   O’Brien will miss Thursday’s game at Minnesota but will be eligible to return on Friday at Dallas.

Here’s a video of the chaos:

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image: TSN

While his game has not quite been on fire, he is off to a fairly decent start having scored five goals and posting four assists in the 13 games he’s played.  Last year, he notched up 56 points.

I think that Huselius is a really great player so I’m sure they will miss him.  While he was on the Calgary Flames roster, he did well at first but then he seemed to fall apart so I was glad when he got traded to Columbus since he seems to fit in better there.  He’s got a lot of finesse even though he’s a little softer with the puck than I normally like.

The Blue Jackets have called up Alexandre Picard to fill in for Juice in the meantime.

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Unfortunately, things have been chaotic and disorganized so some people have had to wait as much as 7 hours while others have even been turned away.  Needless to say, Alberta has some pretty frustrated residents and some have freaked out over reports that the Calgary Flames and their families were vaccinated against the virus in a private clinic.

I personally agree with the decision to vaccinate them for a few reasons but the most important is that they do fall within the higher risk age group, they travel and they have small children who could catch something from them and then give it to their classmates here in Calgary.  I know it seems ridiculous to some people but so does the fact that local healthcare workers, like nurses, actually turned down the shot.

With half of the Edmonton Oilers out with the virus last week, I think this makes sense.  What do you think?

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image: TSN

The hit took place during the first period after the Coyotes were left shorthanded for having too many men on the ice.  Wisniewski crossed the Ducks blueline and delivered a hard blow to Doan’s head.

There wasn’t a penalty assessed at the time for the hit but as soon as play stopped, Coyotes d-man, Keith Yandle, decided to send Wisniewski a message.  As a result, he was given a 10-minute game misconduct and two minutes in the box for instigating.

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General manager Paul Holmgren announced: ”Simon is going to have surgery tomorrow (Tuesday) to reinforce the rectus abdominis on both sides, and at the same time he’s going to look and see, laparoscopically, through his belly button, at the small hernias that we saw, and he’ll repair those as well.  We’re probably looking at six-to-eight weeks before [Gagne is] ready.”

Gagne took some time to think about having the surgery (I’m sure the fact that he had a similar surgery during the 2006-2007 season didn’t help) but told the following to a Flyers spokesman: ”Ater meeting with three doctors and a different opinion on a lot of things, we went right to the bottom [of it] to make sure we were making the right decision for myself, for the team and for the future, to go and do the surgery.  So basically now we are going to go ahead and do the surgery and after that get on a program after the surgery to make sure those types of injuries don’t happen to me anymore.”

I hope the procedure works this time.

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image: Zuma Press

After falling to the ice, the Russian player stood up and appeared to be in pain.  A team spokesman said that Ovechkin had suffered some sort of upper body injury and is currently being listed as day-to-day.

I know there are other players for the Caps to rely on but no one wants to lose a player like Ovechkin, who went into Sunday’s game with a league-leading 14 goals and 23 points.

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Rangers forward, Andy Bathgate, was pretty irritable with Habs netminder, Jacques Plante, who, he says, rubbed it in when the Rangers were beaten at home.  He also was a bit upset about an altercation with the goalie that almost left Bathgate in the hospital.

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“The puck was dumped in and it wasn’t a hard shot,” Batgate recalled.  “I thought I could beat him to the puck but all this was happening in split seconds. And Jacques came out the right side and he saw that I was coming, I was right on him, and he turned around and saw me and he gave me a poke-check and I went head first into the boards. I wasn’t prepared for that and my head was right straight-on, and I got it turned enough that I cut my ear and I cut my face a little bit. What he did to me was not called for. I thought: “How do you show him, ‘Hey, big boy, you got to even things up here. You want to play that game?  I had better straighten it out.’”

“I came down the left wing, and Jacques used to sort of sit with his ass in the net and his head sticking out, ready to go across,” Bathgate continued. “I just gave him a fairly good wrist shot. I was trying to hit him somewhere where he would remember me and, boom, I nailed him. It wasn’t a hard shot. If I had really wanted to shoot it hard, I could have broken his jaw, but he bled good.”

Plante suffered a broken nose, needed stitches and was pretty banged up but he didn’t want to miss the rest of the game.  He had been experimenting with a homemade mask and asked if he could wear it onto the ice.  The coach (Toe Blake) was pissed and didn’t want him to wear it but he had no choice since there wasn’t a backup.  He made Plante promise to get rid of the mask when his face healed up.

“He had to go to his own dressing room and then all of a sudden he came out with this mask on,” recalled Bathgate. “And we all looked at each other and said, ‘What is this?’”

Unbelievably, the Canadiens supported their newly masked goaltender and ended up winning the game 3-1.  I’m guessing the positive experience was enough that the Habs goalie continued wearing it and his peers decided to copy.

It’s great to look at how such an important part of the game was introduced.  I can’t imagine hockey without the goalie mask and what would the world be like without masked (fictional) serial killer, Jason Voorhees?

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He’s being listed as being day-to-day but I’m sure the Flyers are a little anxious considering the fact that he missed a whopping 53 games last season due to groin and abdominal injuries.  Hopefully, this will heal quickly but he really should have sat out as soon as he started feeling the twinges.  I know you’ve got to be tough as a player but after missing so many games last season, you’d figure he’d want to err on the side of caution when it comes to groin pains.

The Philadelphia Flyers are also without Simon Gagne.  GM Paul Holmgren said: “it’s a tough break for Danny.  He was playing well. We thought we’d give him one day off and it would get better, and it’s kind of gone from there.”

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Washington Capitals head coach, Bruce Boudreau, has revealed in a new book called Gabby: Confessions of a Hockey Lifer, that Avery made some derogatory comments about his weight during the opening round of last season’s Stanley Cup Playoffs. 

"He told me I was the biggest, fattest bleeping pig he had ever seen," wrote Boudreau. "He told me I was fatter than bleeping Ken Hitchcock. He told me I was going to die because I was such a fat bleep."

Really?  The worst part is that the two of them know each other pretty well since Boudreau coached Avery when he was with the Manchester Monarchs of the AHL in 2003. 

I guess it really shouldn’t be surprising and I can appreciate a little trash talk but when you start telling people that they are going to die because they are overweight, you’ve crossed the line.  I really can’t stand Avery.

image: TSN

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