One Toronto Maple Leafs fan would like to tell you how he really feels

After the jump is a video of full-time Leafs fan and part-time crazy guy Jeff Morris (Sens_Suck on Twitter) letting the world know that Toronto will be out of the playoffs for the sixth straight season.

This is quite unbelievable, actually. Video description: 'NOOOOOO...... THE STANLEY CUP WAS SUPPOSED TO BE OURS THIS YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!'.

Sportsnet's Dan Murphy and his relationship with the Vancouver Canucks

This past Sunday at Rogers Arena, the Vancouver Canucks held their annual Superskills competition, an in-rink event that benefits the Canucks For Kids Fund and allows for fans who can't normally afford tickets to see their heroes up close.

It was a Canuck event, hosted by the Canucks, attended by Canuck fans only, with proceeds going to a Canucks charity and it was streamed online on the Canucks official website. But none of this stopped Dan Murphy, a reporter with Sportsnet Pacific, from hosting the event with in-rink announcer duties.

What does "grit" mean in hockey?

Or... Don't trade for Chris Neil

Grit, moxie, truculence, character, "The Will of the Warrior", these are all words and terms that are thrown around at this time of year when the NHL trading deadline picks up steam. Otherwise unassuming players like David Clarkson, Marty Reasoner or, duh, Chris Neil get thrown around in potential trades on message boards, blog posts and radio stations.

Rangers and Capitals fans chant 'U-S-A! U-S-A!' at NHL game

Many American hockey fans recognize the developing hockey rivalry between Canada and the United States. What American hockey fans in Manhattan and the District of Columbia may not realize, however, is where the Vancouver Canucks' best player this season comes from.

On two consecutive nights on a five-game road trip, the Canucks were serenaded with the obnoxious "U-S-A! U-S-A!" chant that was popularized during the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid, for reasons that are probably completely clear to the bozos in the stands and nobody else.

Two thoughts involving Leafs and Canucks

It's already Tuesday and I only just watched the crazy end to the Montreal/Toronto CFL game this week, so I may as well just do what I do best and draw unsuspecting Toronto Maple Leafs and Vancouver Canucks fans to this blog by having them type their favourite teams into Google and having this post pop up.

Canucks cash in on ridiculous 40th anniversary festivities

Ever wonder why nobody has written a book called 'The Senators before Daniel Alfredsson: A Retrospective' or commissioned a painting entitled 'Accomplishments of the post-expansion era Leafs' is because those are fucking stupid ideas that swell those teams' fanbases with disgust, scorn and regret.

So what's different between that and this drawn out 40th Anniversary celebration the Vancouver Canucks have pulled out this year?

Side note: Canucks ownership, to their credit, have milked the 'vintage' program that the National Hockey League rolled out a few years ago. The Canucks were able to sell a buttload of blue and green merchandise before emblazoning a differet logo on it a few years down the road and selling a buttload more.

Now, this 40th Anniversary Celebration has everything. A book commissioned by the Canucks celebrating their history. Jerseys without nameplates. Honouring former pluggers who scored 62 goals with the team and never having played a playoff game with them.

Sure, it may be fun to look at the past, but when three quarters of your all-time team are in the starting lineup in late October, you should probably lay off on the pomp and ceremony until you win something.

As a Canucks fan can best tell you, here is a brief history of the Vancouver Canucks, sans colourful pictures or waxing poetic about Jack McIlhargey:

1970: The Canucks enter the NHL as part of the Eastern Division and fail to take advantage of any 'Eastern Bias' and go 24-46-8.

1982: Roger Neilsen surrenders in a playoff game against Chicago. This somehow starts the third most popular playoff tradition in Vancouver: Waving white towels at home games. The other most popular playoff traditions are bitching about how we started the towel thing, and bitching about Roberto Luongo on sportstalk radio.

1985: The Canucks allow 401 goals, a league high.

1988: Trevor Linden.

1993: Pavel Bure.

1994: Kirk McLean.

1999: Brian Burke wheels and deals to land two high draft picks, giving the Canucks the Sedin twins, who will eventually become the best players in franchise history and the most reviled by fans.

2004: Hockey punch player.

2010: After years of suffering, a Canuck finally wins the Hart Trophy as the player who has been judged most valuable to his team. Tangible value in the playoffs: absolutely none.

Other sports books that have been commissioned by Canucks Sports & Entertainment include 'Counting to 13' by Jason Armstead and 'How to make friends and influence people' by Hedo Turkgolu.

Rick Rypien has at least one Toronto Star writer on his side

In the defense of John Shorthouse and John Garrett, Canucks play-by-play guys, anybody who didn't have an eagle eye on Rick Rypien and the Wild fans in Section 116 at the XCel Energy Centre last night could have reasonably thought that the fan started something with Rick Rypien.



After it became apparent he wasn't, many intelligent, reasonable people, including (but not limited to) Barry Patchesky of Deadspin, Yankee Canuck of Nucks Misconduct, Nick Costonika of Yahoo! Sports, Greg Wyshynski of Puck Daddy, Jim Neveau of The Hockey Writers, and Jason Brough of the Kurtenblog pretty much said that Rypien was in the wrong.

Rick Rypien straight up assaulted a fan for heckling and mock-clapping and has since been suspended indefinitely, awaiting NHL disciplinarian Colin Campbell to administer his customary random punishment.

But one Toronto scribe, fresh off his public indictment of James Wisniewski, one who hates sports and entertainment so much that it's a wonder why he became a sportswriter, has jumped to the defense of Rick Rypien.

Preach, Damien:

"I find it fascinating that many who were willing to exonerate the Wiz feel Rypien should get hammered. Interesting standards."

"But if u let a guy off so easily for what Wiz did, how is grabbing a guy's shirt so bad, exactly?"

"All these tough guys who demand fighting in the game now suggest shirt-grabbing is assault."

"A minority of fans are jerks and pretend tough guys who love to abuse players from a distance. I don't feel any need to protect them."

"It's just this perception that all fans are innocents and deserve protection doesn't quite square with reality."

"It's kind of like Twitter. really. People can be so brave, so tough, so threatening from a distance under the veil of anonymity." [ed. note: I think he's referring to the fan being anonymous in this instance]

"So the Philly dude who fell into the box with Domi, he deserved to be protected? Domi shouldn't have touched him?"

"Fan safety? Really? You honestly believe that fan was in danger of anything?"

"All these folks so irate about Rypien must still be upset about Sundin getting only 1 game in '04 for throwing stick into stands."

I guess this means that if you go up to Damien Cox in public and grab his shirt and shake him viciously, he won't mind.

Although the one fan, who escaped unscatched, isn't making it any easier to like him as he is apparently ready to press charges the bottom line is that athletes shouldn't do that, in any sport. An arena shouldn't have to put guardrails everywhere players are within striking distance. Every now and then you get some douchebags like the fan in Detroit who ran onto the court to punch Ron Artest, but this instance wasn't that. Very likely the guy had a few beers, knows that it's dumb to pick a fight with Rick Rypien and mocked him a little because the score was 5-1 and Rypien looked like a goof going after Brad Staubitz.

Damien doesn't absolve Rypien of blame, but he does seem to give a heck of a lot to the fan. In Damien's world, the fans don't show up to sports games. They are too loud and noisy and you can't hear player chatter.

The Good Old Hockey Game - A look at the NHL season

The NHL season starts tomorrow, and every blog likes to put together a gimmicky look at the season. There's no reason The 'Eh' Factor can't get involved in this. Here are some lulz and predictions to get you ready for the season.

Toronto media continues to pile on Leafs prospect, and other hockey stories

Nazem Kadri, to nobody's surprise, was sent down to the Toronto Marlies yesterday, and Leafs nation's Barilkosphere outlets responded quite rationally. I still have yet to read a post from a reputable Leafs source which has declared Kadri a "bust" or other fancy terms Canucks had reserved for Cody Hodgson after his dissapointing preseason last year.

So, what say you, Toronto Sun?

News and notes this Tuesday

-There are two big hockey stories to look at today. The fallout has evened out from yesterday's shocking, absolutely shocking revelation that Roberto Luongo would step down as Captain of the Vancouver Canucks. Iain MacIntyre of the Vancouver Sun does a nice job of arguing that Henrik Sedin should replace him. Over at The Hockey Writers, I argue the same point with the grace and maturity of the comments of the MacIntyre column.

-Then there is Sheldon Souray. His orange highness Steve Tambellini told the media that Sheldon Souray would not come to training camp. Souray's only fault, it seemed, was criticizing team management. And going minus-19 in just 37 games played.

-Speaking of Edmonton baggage, Eric Tillman has officially been named General Manager of the Eskimos. The TSN story does not skimp out on the details in the fourth paragraph of that story. Tillman is generally credited with building the current version of the Roughriders and winning that team's first Grey Cup since 1989, restoring the glory that team never had. He scouted and signed Darian Durant, Weston Dressler and Rob Bagg.

Even though he tried to hump the babysitter, Tillman and the Eskimos have drawn pretty well zero criticism through this union of geeky-faced football experts and football teams with names coming from derogatory Inuit slang.

-BC signed Ricky Foley last night. Then they didn't finalize it, but then they did today. BC has won two straight. Saskatchewan have lost 2 of 3 and Rider fans are scared. Will there be a home playoff game in pouring, pouring, despicable rain in November at Empire Stadium? Oh God I hope so.

*UPDATE* It appears that Ricky Foley has actually signed with Toronto, the rat bastard, or as Cam Cole put it on Twitter, owner David Braley "successfully outbidding himself for services of prized pass rusher."

-Defensive Player of the Week:



-Some MLS team somewhere in Canada fired their coach/manager. Never trust a guy with one first name.

-From the "Darryl Sutter is still insane" files, James Mirtle reports that Calgary tried to sign Vesa Toskala this summer. No word on whether Toskala turned the contract down because he could not in good conscience work for somebody dumb enough to sign him.

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I'll return to a full-day of posting on Friday, where I will get some CFL previews running.

How the NHL network TV schedule affects Canadian teams

The National Hockey League released it's 2010/2011 network television schedule for both the Canadian and American markets on Wednesday. CBC, TSN and TSN2 will carry national games in Canada, along with the early game we'll see on NBC after New Year's.

National TV broadcasts get us into a nice routine. Saturday nights are for curling up on the couch and flipping on CBC, particularly after playing out on the pond, or spending the day sleeping off a hangover and playing video games. The weekday TSN games are great for when you come in after work or school, too bent out of shape to complain about Pierre McGuire.

TSN are advertising 124 games on TSN and TSN2 this season, although the TSN2 games tend to be picked up from Versus. Some highlights from the TSN2 schedule include:

Monday October 18th - Colorado @ NY Rangers
Monday November 29th - Dallas @ Carolina
Monday December 27th - Minnesota @ Columbus
Monday January 17th - Los Angeles @ Dallas
Monday February 14th - Washington @ Phoenix
Tuesday March 15th - Buffalo @ Carolina

Sure, maybe some of those games, along with others on the 48-game TSN2 schedule, won't be total stinkers, but the TSN2 games are either Versus pickups or games where an extra camera crew may happen to be leftover in the region. Subtract those and the six preseason games plus four games from Europe that are on during times nobody will be able to watch, and we're looking at a 66-game schedule. That's nothing to sneeze at, and the North American season starts off nicely with a double-header on October 13th, with Toronto in Pittsburgh and Vancouver in Anaheim.

All in all on TSN we're looking at a 66-game schedule, with eight double headers, so 58 days during the year where there will be a nationally-televised game featuring a Canadian. That is more than enough to get your truculence fix from the Maple Leafs or Flames.

CBC, as usual, offers up the usual Saturday doubleheader, plus a doubleheader on Thursday, October 7th with Montreal in Toronto and Calgary in Edmonton with some specially scattered games throughout the season.

The national broadcaster will also have tripleheaders on December 4th, New Year's Day (accounting for the Winter Classic, which falls on a Saturday this year), February 5th, Hockey Day In Canada on February 12th, March 12th, and on April 9th, the last Saturday of the regular season.

Some notes:

-All three Western Canadian teams will be broadcasted on either TSN or CBC a total of 24 times: 14 times on CBC and 10 times on TSN. The Toronto Maple Leafs see their 24th nationally televised game on January 25th. The Montreal Canadiens will see their 24th nationally televised game on January 18th. The Ottawa Senators will see their 24th nationally televised game in franchise history sometime next season.

-The Edmonton Oilers boast the number one draft pick who will likely play on the team, but they have no nationally televised games in the United States.

-The Vancouver Canucks will not see a Saturday night game against a Western Canadian foe until, get this, January 22nd against the Calgary Flames. The Oilers and the Canucks will only see each other once on CBC.

-As usual, every Montreal Canadiens game will be televised in Canada on specialty channel RDS, which can be bought from all of the major carriers in smooth standard definition.