I decided to sleep on this one.

Still can’t pay attention to the team, lest they wind up losing–which makes it a good thing that none of you know where I live so I won’t get some deranged Habs fan coming to my house or place of ork to blast Game 4 at me. Ha ha.

As for the officiating…..it sucks. No, HabsFan, there is NO FREAKING CONSPIRACY to make the Habs lose–so get over yourself please. The officiating is what it is, and it is gard-arful. It always has been, it probably always will be until somebody with actual brains (and some vision wouldn’t be bad either) gets into the head ref’s chair at League HQ, so stop frickin’ whining.

Anyway. Erin Nicks asked me, in a comment on my previous post, for my take on Saku Koivu’s eye injury–from a Hurricanes fan’s perspective.

I’ve suffered traumatic eye injury before–not quite as scary as Koivu’s injury was, but still scary enough (especially since I was 11 at the time. When you’re 11 lots of things like this are world-shatteringly scary). Very very few Canes fans are being assy about this on the boards, and that’s a good thing–especially when the few asshats (like the mouthbreathing idiot on letsgocanes.com that said (and I quote) “I sure hope Koivu is alright….but cannot play for a few weeks”) get piled on by the rest of us that know all too well about scary-ass injuries.

(Fuckin’ Orpik.)

(Shut up, Michael.)

I do have to laugh, though, at the Habs fans (and Pat Hickey) that are making Justin Williams out to be some kind of crazed serial axe murderer because of a freakish accident. I mean, seriously, all y’all in Habs Nation need to get a damn grip. It wasn’t like Willy thought “Oh gee, Koivu’s bent over–I’ll just go ahead and try to harvest his eye!” That’s just stupid talk–but then, these are the same people that are screaming and crying that there’s some kind of conspiracy in the League office to keep the Cup away from all the Canadian teams, so there you go.

Hopefully Saku will be as lucky as I was, the damage won’t be that severe, and he can come back in this series. I also very sincerely hope that he makes a speedy and (most importantly) complete recovery.

Go Canes.

All last night at work, I stewed about the game. I also cried out of anger and frustration. I was so angry I damn near cross-checked a cranky receipt printer, that’s how angry I was.

I was okay by the time I got off work–and then I got home to read comments like these on various of the message boards:

just had to drop in here when i heard you guys thought you would get a 4 game sweep lol.”not”2 bad about cole he really hurt us last time.get your clubs ready boys your season is over.

It’s over. Deal with it. The Habs coach is Bob Gainey, not Michel, Michael, whatever the hell that idiot calls himself now, Therrien, and Huet will not meltdown the way Theodore did. The Canes may win a game im Montreal but they won’t overcome a 3-1 deficit as they do not konw how to play in their own end. That much is clear.

You guys had the Miracle in Molson (we call it the Molson Meltdown) but we can now call this the Rollover in Raleigh.

I’VE GOT YOUR ROLLOVER RIGHT HERE, YOU BASTARDS!

I’m so angry right now–just seething at the overweening arrogance of some of these asshats. I WILL NEVER BOW DOWN, I WILL NEVER ROLL OVER, AND I WILL NEVER. FUCKING. SURRENDER. Arlo Guthrie said it best: “Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill, KILL, KILL.” And no, I don’t think that Jim Rutherford will come over, sign me to a contract, send me to Montreal, and say “You’re our girl.” BUT HE SHOULD, DAMMIT. He should, because even though I can’t skate worth half a damn and my husband (bless his heart) thinks that I’ll break my ankles if I even look crosseyed at a pair of skates, I will get my big ass out there on that ice and show those arrogant motherfuckers and the team they cheer for some good old-fashioned SOUTHERN HOSTILITY.

AND YOU! HURRICANES! Don’t think for a red-hot minute that I’m not angry at you lot. Do I need to get out a bunch of eight by ten color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining how to play some damn DEFENSE?! What happened to the defense that actually blocked some shots and even generated a little offense every now and then? What happened to just getting down to business and not trying to be “cute”? Did we forget about that sometime around….oh, I don’t know, FEBRUARY?!

I WANT SOME RIGHTEOUS WRATH, DAMN YOU! I want that puck piledriven so far down Huet’s throat that he’ll be farting rubber for the next TEN YEARS! I want Mike Ribiero and his diving-ass taunting carcass gutted from crotch to sternum and strung up from the rafters of the Bell Centre! I want to see guys stood up at the blue line, I want to see Richard Zednik checked clear into RAGNAROK, and I want Alexei Kovalev and all the rest of those arrogant “ooooh, we’re SO scared of the Hurricanes–not!” sons of whores to know pain. I want them to know fear. AND THEN I WANT THEM TO DIE, DAMMIT! I want them AND their fans to SHUT. THE HELL. UP! I want them to pay for every last playoff series that they’ve ever beaten us in. I want them to pay for every last playoff series that they ever might beat us in! I WANT VENGEANCE.

VICTORY OR DEATH!

I don’t care about pretty. I don’t care about things like justice, or “moral” victories, or anything less than wins on a playoff scoresheet.

SCREW JUSTICE! I WANT A CUP!
That’s been my motto all season, and it’s my motto now, and it will always be my motto for this team.

(There, Tom. There’s your rant. You happy now?)

Dear Montreal Canadiens,

On behalf of the rest of the Caniac Nation, I apologize for the extreme crappiness of the cheerleader that sings our national anthem like she’s some kind of pop star and completely butchers “O Canada” because–again–she thinks she’s some kind of pop star or something. I and quite a few other fans have complained about her over the course of the season, but we’ve been told that we’re pretty much stuck with her (personally? I think she’s somebody’s girlfriend).

To sum up: We know our anthem singer sucks. We’re sorry she butchered your national anthem–would you please quit taking your ire out on our team? Thanks.

Sincerely,

The Acid Queen

Dear Hurricanes fans;

The boys got wtfpwnt in their first game of the regular season too, and damn near everybody and his uncle round these parts were ready to get the gas cans and go out to immolate themselves in front of the RBC Center–but look how things turned out.

Take heart, friends and neighbours–it’s one game in a seven game series. Yes, the ‘Canes played like crap and got their heads handed to them on a platter. Fine. Take the lesson from it, and move on to Monday.

There’s still a lot of hockey to be played.

Love,
AQ

p.s. If anyone has decided they want to abandon the team based on a bad game, please contact me at acidqueen (at) streetneeds.com and I’ll be happy to take your ticket off your hands.

So it finally happened–the Leafs fired Pat Quinn. It’s not really a surprise, to me. I mean, the guy pretty much had to go. The question is “who’s going with him?”

My pick is that Ferguson will get the axe eventually. I mean, it’s pretty much in the cards–Craig Patrick got the boot in Pittsburgh, so I have a hunch that the Leafs will hire him. As for coaching? Well, Rick Ley (best known as the coach who bashed Ron Francis on his way out of Hartford) got fired as well–so I strongly suspect that Chairman Mo will find himself placed in power by MLSE’s Central Committee.

Let the games begin.

(extra AQ-points to anyone who gets the reference in the subject line without having to look it up)

Andrew Peters tees up

What is there to say? Not a thing.

In a move that not only surprised no one but also left people asking “what took them so long”, the Los Angeles Kings have finally told Sean Avery to take a hike. I guess they were embarrassed by the little drekhead getting verbally eviscerated by a rival team’s broadcaster.

There’s irony in that.

My favorite defensively-challenged defenseman has won the AHL’s Eddie Shore Award. There’s irony in this, too. At least I think so.

In other news:

Some segments of the Caniac Nation (est. 1997) are a little up in arms over a letter that’s accompanied everyone’s playoff strips. The letter from North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper reminds fans of North Carolina law regarding scalping of tickets, that fans had trouble getting tickets in later rounds four years ago because of professional scalpers errr ticket brokers scarfing up all the tickets, and of course the usual “Go Canes” rah-rah stuff.

I can see both sides of the story. I can see why the Hurricanes asked the AG to pen that letter, and I can understand why the folks that are complaining feel like they’re being treated like common criminals–but people need to chill the hell out and look at the larger picture. Four years ago, there was a bit of a scandal involving scalping agencies in Charlotte, several Hurricanes ticket agents, a group of unscrupulous (in my opinion) fans that wanted to make a buck or five, and a whole mess of tickets*. It really pissed off a lot of fans, and the Hurricanes want to avoid something like that this time.

Personally? I’d love it if they grabbed a few scalpers and tossed them in the clink for 30 days or so as an example to others (especially the ones that think that they can get away with wandering the parking lots asking people if they have tickets to sell, even after the RBC securebots make them go back across Hurricane Alley where they’re supposed to go)–but then I also support the orbital bombardment of the Detroit Metro Area under the guise of “urban renewal”, so feel free to take that for what it’s worth.**

Hurricanes take on the Lightning tomorrow night at the RBC–and I’ll be up in 332 again to watch the carnage live and in person.

Go Canes.

*: I was told once that the team’s then-President Jim Cain (now US ambassador to Denmark) was in on the deal too–but considering that the person who told me that has also accused me of personally profiting from the high price of gas even though I only make single digits per hour, I think it’s pretty safe to toss that bit of “information” in the trash where it belongs.

**: Note to people from Detroit: I’m kidding. Not that it’ll stop some of the more intellectually-challenged members of the city’s population from claiming that I’m somehow “jealous” of the Red Wings and cracking the same tired “Mayberry” jokes while telling me to “get new material”.

An article in TSN this morning talks about the possibility of the Pittsburgh Penguins moving to Hartford, CT.

Personally? I hope that doesn’t happen. I hope the Pens manage to stay in Pittsburgh despite the worst efforts of PA Governor Rendell, who is sounding more and more to me like CT Governor John Rowland during the waning days of the Whalers’ tenure in Hartford. Should I just write a letter to the Federal Bureau of Prisons and ask them to reserve Rendell’s federal inmate number now?

On the other hand, if it does happen it’ll be strangely karmic in a way–Pittsburgh stole Hartford’s best player back in 1991 (with the help of then-GM Eddie Johnson, who immediately jumped ship to the Pens as soon as the Whalers’ season was over–gee, collusion much?), so Hartford’s taking their team. That would just blow my mind.

This whole scenario is whack on so many levels–from Ed Rendell’s attempts to scuttle the slots bid that the Pens are contractually tied to (Isle of Capri) in favor of a deal that he (Rendell) has personal ties to, to the prospective buyer’s open pondering of moving the team to Hartford, to the whole feeling of “deja vu” that I’m getting for some odd reason.

What’s next–Rendell’s going to effectively say “fuck the Pens” and mortgage the entire state treasury in a futile attempt to bribe the New England Patriots to move to Harrisburg? Crocodile tears at a farewell press conference? Four years of inter-fanbase holy wars?

Wow. Just….wow. If I’m the Lemieux group, I’m planning to wage a big PR war to show how the plan that I favor is better than Gov. Rendell’s “Plan B”, and doing my damndest to come off looking like one of the “good guys” in case circumstances force the team to move. But that could just be me.

I was ready to do up a nice big April Fool’s joke and turn the Virtual ‘Cue Shack into a Red Wings slobberblog for a day, complete with lots of fangirling about how much I adore the team, the town, and (most of all) the hundreds of fans that grace the RBC Center with their wonderfully friendly presence every time the Wings come to R’lyeh.

And then my sigmoid colon leaped up to viciously throttle the shit out of my cerebellum in a desperate attempt to save mankind, and that (thankfully) ended that idea.

You have no idea how painful it was for me to even think of writing the last part of that first paragraph, by the way. My hands attempted to fly to my throat of their own accord and choke the life out of me for merely considering changing my blog to that load of complete and total horse-dookies over the other idea I had, which was to turn my site into an NC-17 festival of clever semi-pr0nographic photochops featuring me in compromising positions with a certain tattooed and chin-pubed birthday boy who beats down all and sundry in the name of the Calgary Flames. Complete with background and cutesy netspeak and all the other assorted fangirlish trappings.

Which would have been a very nice (if delusional) April Fool’s joke (and birthday wish to my favorite April Fool*)–but this lottery stuff that I had to deal with at work the last two days has got me so beat down that I couldn’t do more than a picture-post the other night when the ‘Canes clinched the division while I was down at Stop-n-Rob showing my twitchy Nepali co-worker how to validate winning tickets and give people their money so they could buy more cheap beer and even cheaper blunts (and, of course, more lottery tickets).

Which is sad, when you think about it–but in a way, it’s kind of its own April Fool’s joke (and far more clever than Golbez’s cheese-ass attempt to fool his readers into thinking that he’d turned to the Dark Swedish side.

*:I’m 100% positive that Darren McCarty doesn’t read STB&B–but what the hell. It’s the thought that counts.