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It certainly looks like all of you enjoyed our little experiment with the automatic language translator last week! For those of you who can't get enough, it's still in last week's column. Simply select the link at the bottom of this column and go back to Week 1's News & Notes… Amongst all the wonderful turns of phrases and let's just say "less colorful" translations sent to me last week (thank you Kevin, how did you know I was looking for the German translation of "Bite me?"), here's a timely translation "en francais" from Foil Up Walt: "Le jeu retarde en raison du streaker blessé sur la glace." Or simply put, "Game delayed due to injured streaker on the ice". Yes, it's true. Sad. But true. Last Thursday night at the Bruins/Flames game in Calgary, a fan somehow managed to disrobe down to just a pair of red socks, climb over the glass by the penalty box and jumped down onto the ice. Then, while attempting to redefine the phrase "streaking up ice", this guy slips, falls down, hits his head on the ice and knocks himself unconscious, laying there in all his glory until carried off the rink in a stretcher! And if this isn't a reason for having that safety netting up rink wide, I don't know what is! By the way, before leaving the ref did manage to whistle the poor guy, "two minutes for shrinkage"… Well it's late October and we've got a holiday coming up. So in true News & Notes tradition, here's our first holiday Top 10 of the season…
Moving on it's looks like we've got some goalies in the news this week as the San Jose Sharks have signed holdout Evgeny Nabokov to a two year contract. Now that Nabokov's back in the fold I guess the only question is who's going to stay as his backup, Mikka Kiprusoff or this Jason Vorhees guy? You know I really like the simple "Jacques Plante throwback" style to Jason's mask, and all the scouting reports have nothing but praise for the speed of his knife hand… In Colorado, Patrick Roy played in his 971st game, moving past Terry Sawchuk and into first place all time in games played by a goalie. Next up for Roy, Cal Ripken! Only another 1,400 or so games left… What is happening in between the pipes for the St. Louis Blues? First Brent Johnson gets hurt in pre-season, forcing Fred Brathwaite into a starting role. Then Freddy goes down and St. Louis has to call up Reinhard Divis (anyone got the German-to-English handy on this one?), who's actually the first Austrian goaltender to start an NHL game. G'Day mate! Oh wait, that was Austrian, not Australian, wasn't it? Well, wouldn't you know it, after Reinhard (no relation to Judge Reinhold I believe) gets his first win, he gets hurt (can you say jinx in any language?) and St. Louis is singin' the Blues once again as they turn to a guy named Curtis Sanford (insert Sanford and Son theme song here, do do do-do-do…), 4th on their depth chart when the season started just two weeks ago. Planning for the inevitable and looking a little deeper on the Blues net-minding depth chart we see Jim Craig at number 5, some French guy "nom"'ed Jean-Pierre-Francois-Marc and something that ends in "ette" is number 6, and finally down at number 7, should desperation strike, we've got the ghost of Pelle Lindbergh… Do my eyes deceive me or is Tampa Bay the only undefeated team in the NHL? After a fast 4 - 0 - 1 - 0 start (that's straight or boxed for you Pick 4 players), the Lightning find themselves atop the Southeast Division and the rest of the NHL for that matter! What's going on? Maybe we could get a report from Florida Joe Mastrangelo if I promise to stop referring to his Speedo fetish? Can they really be that excited about the possible return of Lou Piniella to Tampa? Is Busch Gardens involved in this somehow? Has another dimension opened up by the roller coasters and it's spitting out dominant hockey players from a parallel universe where the Lightning are good, the Red Wings suck and Vincent Lecavalier is like +22? Or perhaps it's just the fact that all the young guys like Martin St. Louis are finally paying dividends? By the way, that's not St. Louis as in Blues (the guys with all the hurt goalies), that's pronounced "San Louie" with a much better French accent than that translator program will give you. Hey Ron, you want your old job back? Congratulations to The Phantoms, our new leader, who make the big +23 move up to first place this week replacing the Koreans. Gee, that didn't take long, did it? Guess Ron and J.R. didn't run into any traffic on the way up to first place like they did on the way to the draft! See, good things come to those who wait. Or maybe they just had EZ-Pass… And finally, I do realize that I've managed to get both the football and the hockey stats up on Wednesday night for the first two weeks of the hockey season. However, do not get used to this! This will not be a regular occurrence. I still reserve the right to push the hockey stats off to Thursday nights during football season should I actually have something better to do on Wednesday night after I finish the football stats. Of course, the reality of it is, as long as I'm awake, what could there possibly be better to do than the hockey stats? Well there's always NHL Center Ice on DirectTV or Cinemax. Never mind, don't answer that! And don't forget, all moves are due in on Wednesday nights regardless of when I do the stats so if and when I do opt out, I'll be sure to send out an e-mail on Wednesday night with all the weekly transactions. Thank you, good night, drive home safely and don't forget to tip your linesmen… 'til next week…
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