AAAAAAAAAND EXHALE. The seeming juggernaut of the Vancouver Canucks, who steamrolled their way to a President's Trophy before overcoming every challenge in the playoffs, was crushed under the righteous fury of the Boston Bruins. The Beantowners rallied after the vicious and filthy hit perpetrated on Nathan Horton to outscore the Canucks 21-4 on their way to winning four of the last five games and ending their 39 year old Stanley Cup drought. Over seven games the mentally strong Tim Thomas was miles better than Roberto "the choker" Luongo, the Bruins' shooters took better shots, and the team in gold and yellow wanted the Cup more. Or at least, that's what you might read. If someone were to dig deeper, I think you'd see among other things that Vancouver's shooting percentages (especially on the powerplay) came back to earth while the Bruins' picked the right time to take off. It will definitely be an interesting series to try to delve into the underlying stats although seven games is a pretty small sample.

Anyway, the great thing is that picture right there. Tomas Kaberle, after many years of loyal service to the Toronto Maple Leafs, manfully accepted a trade to Boston for the good of the Maple Leafs. The end result: the team picked up a number of useful assets and Kaberle finally won the ultimate prize. It is definitely bittersweet to see Kabby win it with another club but this is exactly what those of us that wanted him moved hoped for and thank god it happened because good lord could you imagine dealing with Canucks fans if they had won? They almost burned their city down when they lost! More on that after the jump but for now, more Kabby:

Sigh...

One of his former teammates was also really happy for the guy:

Good luck to kaba tonight! Hoping he gets that cup. #ItsAVestNotAWestKabb

- Tyler Bozak 

As if that wasn't enough, some clown tried to rebut the thought by saying it didn't look like Kaberle wanted it (ludicrous):

Hes not? Hes leading their d men in points and is a plus 8 in the playoffs with only 16 mins a game! Hes playing great!

 So tonight was a night to celebrate for Canada, Boston, and Kaberle fans. As for Canucks fans...well, things didn't go too well for them last night. 

Continue reading this post »

Our long national nightmare is finally over. One Canadian team fell in every round to vastly superior opposition and now all that is left is to watch Toronto take ownership of the longest Cup drought in the NHL. Of course, we can ignore the fact that the Los Angeles Kings and St. Louis Blues both joined the NHL in the 1967-68 season and have never won a Cup. Any way you slice it, 43 years is a long time...but so is 17 so in that vein let's take a second to remember the Montreal Canadiens' season.

Continue reading this post »

This is a tale of a team whose reach exceeded their grasp. It is the story of a man named LOLuongo and his band of misfits. It is the saga of a group of fanatics with broken ankles. It is an epic of overconfidence, failure, and excuse-making. You'll laugh, you'll cry...with tears, and you'll revel in some excellent schadenfreude. Chemmy and I had to eulogise the Senators - leaving the Habs to a dream team of bloggers that are waiting to try to come as close as possible to our previous gems - but we might get the Canucks next year. If we do, we'll consider this a training run.

The story of the Canucks begins 365 days ago at the United Center in Chicago on May 11, 2009:

52 weeks later, taking a cue from the confident and roaring Team Canada crowds, Vancouver fans chanted "We Want Chicago!". The team captain has been itching for the matchup since the Olympics. A scant six games later and it's all over but for the crying:

Gotta wonder if May 11th will henceforth be known as #Canucks Day in the city of Chicago.

- Twitwyre

Continue reading this post »

Editor's Note: Writing Negative Nancy Notebooks isn't as much fun when the Maple Leafs are having a terrible season, beset on all sides by underachievement, and don't have a first round draft pick. However, if we can't find some humour in life we'll go insane. So Chemmy came up with this idea and it just feels right to debut it against the Flyers. Hope you all enjoy it. 

Fights. Fights. Fights. It took a 4-0 lead Toronto some goonery by two worthless hockey players late in the game, but we finally got the truculence we were hyped into believing would happen tonight. The game was over, but Jay Rosehill and Colton Orr got their pay back for Dan Carcillo's throat slash last week by jumping Ole-Kristian Tollefsen from behind and giving a cheap elbow to Mike Richards.

- Leafs Goon It Up Late, Beat Flyers 4-0

 
The words: Live by the sword, die by the sword come to mind.
There would have been fights but the Flyers were checking their skate laces.

Continue reading this post »