Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Morning Skate: No, Not Joey MacDonald

By Artistry

It's another big week in GTOG Nation, and that's not even counting the revelation that the girl with the vampire fangs is apparently the least crazy person on "The Bachelor." Let's get started.

- No Jimmy Howard tonight for the Red Wings when they make their first appearance at Consol Energy Center. No Pavel Datsyuk, no Dan Cleary, no Tomas Holmstrom, no Brad Stuart, no Chris Osgood, and no Mike Modano either. Yet somehow, despite its multitude of injuries, Detroit is again near the top of the NHL's overall standings with two points more than the Pens. It's not clear why the Wings are able to hoard seemingly all of the highly skilled, defensively sound, if slightly under-sized European guys, but they've just plugged a few of the young ones into their lineup and keep cruising right along. We will learn their names and hate them by about 7:18 p.m. Tuesday night.

Nothing Personal, But We Hate You.
- The Pens should have no trouble with the Wings' third-string goalie. No way some kid named Joey MacDonald comes to Pittsburgh and shuts down...wait....oh, it's that Joey MacDonald?  Forget I said anything.

- There is a hot new religion in Detroit where true believers drop whatever they're doing, kneel on a carpet, and pray to Nicklas Lidstrom. There may be some davening involved - we're still researching this. No less an authority than the great Paul Coffey compares the Lidstrom deity to Patriots' quarterback Tom Brady. It's unclear whether Coffey is referring to Brady's touchdown to interception ration in his last handful of playoff games, but I'm sure not.

- Fail by Puck Daddy in assessing Deryk Engelland's crushing hit against Marc Savard on Saturday. Said the Yahoo blog: "Some Bruins fans disagreed, but this was a good clean hit. You can tell because no one on the Bruins attempted to murder him over it."



It apparently never occurred to Puck Daddy that no one on the Bruins attempted to murder Deryk Engelland because he's Deryk freaking Engelland.

- It's a good sign for the Steelers that it's Tuesday and the Jets are still talking about the Patriots. They may not even be aware that they're playing in Pittsburgh this weekend. You won't find GTOG looking past New York and talking about how bad of a matchup it would be for the Steelers to have to face Aaron Rodgers and his 5 wide receiver set in the Super Bowl. That will not happen here.

We're planning to get an AFC Championship preview podcast up sometime this week, and there is plenty more on the GTOG agenda. Your Bachelor recap is coming later today. We'll shoot for a quick postgame podcast after Pens-Wings tonight, which we hope to have posted in the morning. Somewhere in the midst of all this, we'll work at our actual jobs, and I will change Little Artistry's diaper. Until then, GTOG.

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