Weekend Links

This might be the hardest week of the season for the Bruins -- a 1pm matinee tomorrow against Philly, hosting their conference-leading counterpart San Jose on Tuesday, then off to New Jersey for the beginning of a 5-game road swing. I've stopped trying to predict how this team will respond... I'm just gonna kick up my feet and watch some great hockey.

Your weekend poutpourri:

Today's saddest story: Manny Legace was waived by the Blues. This guy is like a Western Conference answer to Tim Thomas. The league needs more old-school goalies.

Behind The Net has the top 25 fights of the year, as voted by hockeyfights.com users. Thornton/Cote is #2!

Pensblog is always a great source of chatter, but a thread about Malkin and bribery is just a goldmine. Definitely follow the Puck Daddy link.

Leafs fans love ragging on village idiot Damien Cox, but this is taking it to an entirely new level of throughness. Gotta hand it to Cox, he's professional enough not to respond with an anonymous, obscenity-laden rant.

If you think Cox-bashing is getting vicious, check out Melrose Rocks' demolition of Eklund.

If you like hockey, chances are you also like drinking. Here's both.

Hockey officiating is the best in pro sports? Discuss amongst yourselves.

Blueland Chronicle has discovered one of the Predators' awesome television ads, and rightfully identifies an example of how to market the NHL in a non-traditional market.

On Frozen Blog is one of the best-written blogs out there.

ESPN asked: who's the biggest whiner in the league? Guess who won?

Kings hire Terry Murray

Well, I wanted to open with a nice link to the LA Times' front-page coverage of Terry Murray's new gig with the Kings. So I went to latimes.com and scanned the front page... nothing. Hm. Started at the top, scrolled slowly down looking at each section... nothing. Went to the "Find" option on my menu bar, typed in "Kings"... "Text Not Found" was the reply. Wow.

So I clicked on the Sports section. Did a quick scan... nothing but some meaningless Dodgers gibberish. Okey dokey. Scrolled slowly down the page... and there it was!!! Buried beneath categories such as Golf, Olympic Volleyball, Women's Soccer, Mixed Martial Arts, South American Soccer, and a couple notches above Boxing, was a small headline. Check it out... one short quote, and they even bothered to include a little picture.

Needless to say, Murray is going to have his hands full trying to get Hollywood excited about hockey again. He's not exactly going into the most functional organization in the league, and frankly it's hard to imagine he'll have this team in playoff contention anytime soon.

The Kings have great organizational depth due to years of bottom-feeding, but they're struggling to make good things happen on the ice. Despite blue-chip youngsters like Anze Kopitar and Patrick O'Sullivan, they're still pretty weak down the middle. Unfortunately, it seems that the Kings are stronger at producing average 3rd-line prospects than bonafide All-Star futures.

Murray's resume' is respectable but nothing to get excited about: other than a couple of decent seasons replacing his brother Bryan in both Washington and Florida, he's most widely remembered for being the architect of the Flyers' Legion of Doom line... and being fired for correctly suggesting that they were suffering from a "choking situation" in the '97 Finals.

A cynic would see this as another lateral step for the Kings, who forever seem to tread water in an increasingly difficult Pacific Divison. I would like to hope that Murray, who has always seemed like a decent if somewhat uninspiring coach, will be able to resurrect his career by bringing together the Kings' prospects and wringing something out of them in the next 2 or 3 years. In a sense, LA is a dream job for an off-the-radar coach because it carries so little expectation of success.

The bottom line: at least Marc Crawford is mercifully out of the league for the time being.

Isles ensure another 10th-place finish

In a move sure to delight their competition in the back-middle of the Eastern Conference, the Islanders have parted ways with head coach Ted Nolan. Garth "Milbury" Snow cited "philosophical differences" as an excuse to give Nolan the axe.

These "philosophical differences" must have been something along the lines of "wanting to win" vs. "not wanting to win". Snow's primary role in the Islanders organization is to keep Charles Wang and his checkbook nice and happy... and since Wang doesn't seem to know squat about hockey I suppose it was pretty shrewd of Snow to just fling another coach under the bus. Count 'em up -- the Islanders are averaging about 1 coach per season so far this decade. Nice.

Word on the street (or expressway or whatever they have in Long Island) is that Snow didn't like Nolan's handling of the Islanders' young prospects. Yes, they have prospects. Who knew? Apparently Snow wanted young stars like Kyle Okposo to get more ice time... perhaps so they could squeeze out an extra 5th-round draft pick when traded. Of course, this directly contradicts Snow's insistence that the Islanders aren't performing well enough right now because they should have made... hee hee... made the pla -- BWA HA HA HA HAHAHA!!! Sorry... hee hee... almost got through that one without cracking up...

Ahem... bottom line here is that it's another season, another pathetic failure by the Islanders. The third-best team in the greater New York area continues to ensure its permanent seat on the Contraction Possibilities List by quickly disposing of anything that might signal an ascent into contention. The best thing that could happen to the Isles, who are truthfully NOT even close to being a playoff-caliber squad, would be for them to simply ditch their collection of castaway vets and tank the next 5 seasons in a row. Attendance would stay flat and they might pick up the next Ovechkin who could bring about some real buzz.

Even as a Bruins fan, I have to wipe a tear at what has happened to the once-mighty Islanders. There but for the grace of God...