I listened to the game last night while engaging in some apartment-cleaning and cat wrangling, and everything sounded fine until Marian Hossa tied the game.

The aliens took their cue from that, and replaced the Hurricanes with the Pod People. When the score went up 3-1 in a matter of about a minute or so, I just kinda sighed and went back to Mr. Muscle-ing the oven. Oh well, right?

I’ve got some more thoughts on the “OMF TRAID TEH ENTIAR TEAM!!!1″ foolishness that’s flooding the message boards, but I’ll hold off on them until later today.

Go Canes.

…I’m scheduling my teammates to come clean my house, cook my dinner, wash my car, walk my dog, and whatever else I can think of for them to do.

After the way they played in front of him tonight?  Yeah. The whole game was long stretches of can’t-do-shit-right punctuated by brief flashes of competence, for the Hurricanes. Yeah, my boy played decently and showed off his ‘leet Jedi skillz. But I went to barrack for the crest on the front, not the name on the back y’know?

Anyway. 40 and 440 were miles-long parking lots for most of the early-evening, so the RBC didn’t start to fill up until about ten minutes or so into the first period. I was actually pretty happy to be there, even though I had a feeling the night was going to kinda suck. Rapped with J.P. Giglio from the N&O outside for a couple minutes while I was waiting for Nate to get there with my ticket–always good to see J.P. at a game. It felt like old times. I waited and waited and waited for my friend Debbie from Tampa to show (she was coming to the game with her brother, who lives in Charlotte), but struck out. I didn’t see her at all (and really, how hard is it to miss a tall blonde wearing a white Messier jersey at the RBC Center?)–which was a serious bummer, because I was wanting to give her an update on a mutual friend of ours whose hubby got hit head-on by an idiot (not drunk, just an idiot teenager showing off for his buddies) last night.

(He’s in stable condition–lots of facial lacerations, bumps/bruises, some short-term memory issues, and a few broken bones (and a possible lawsuit because the airbag on his brand-new Lexus failed to deploy), but otherwise he’s OK)

The game itself started off okay, but it got really dull really quick after Cam made this amazing flurry of saves when his defense hung him out to dry for the first time. Not many good hits, a lackluster fight between Mike Commodore and Ryan Hollweg livened things up for about five minutes (the fight was a draw), and a quick trade of goals toward the end marked the first period. From then on, it was pretty much all Rangers all the time. There were a whole pack of Rangers fans sitting behind me in 332–it was rather amusing to hear them fall silent when they’d try to start a LET’S GO RANGERS chant only to have me fire back with JAGR JE HOLKA. I think somebody told them what it meant sometime around the middle of the second, though, because the falling-silent thing kinda stopped about then.

The crowd itself was pretty slack in terms of enthusiasm (except for 328 of course)–but I can’t say I blame them because the team played complete and total ass. Despite the loss, I was very happy to be at the game. I got a promotion at work (I am now the manager who rules the night), which means that the chance of me going to very many more games is pretty well hosed. So I treasure every game that I do get to come to, because I don’t know when I’ll get to hit the RBC again.

And I got a really sick thrill out of seeing Shanahan get pasted in the kisser.

I have Tuesday off, so hopefully I’ll get to go to that game. We’ll see.  Have a good night.

Babs’ suspension lifted.

And the boy will report to Albany, like he was asked to do a week ago and like he should have done to start with. This is, of course, a showcase for a trade–but I can’t imagine what we’ll trade him for, given how his little stunt has hurt his standing in the eyes of not only this team, but other teams as well.

“Yeah, I have a contract–but I’ll honour it only when it suits ME.”

Sure, I’d trade for him if I were a GM! So what if he’s some unvarnished kid who got his name on the Cup only cos his team’s GM begged the right folks? He’s gotta be worth somebody (or something) good, right?

Err….yeah.

I don’t think we’ll be seeing him in the Sightless Eye again.

‘Canes reacquire Joe, Lord of Evil, My Man Ryan Bayda recalled from Albany.

WELL. This is certainly interesting, I’d say. The reactions from the Nation are mixed–some love it, some hate it (and vehemently so–one douche on thescoreboards.com was all about repeating his disapproval IN REALLY LARGE BOLDFACE LETTERS WITH LOTS OF SMILIES IN CASE ANYONE MISSED IT THE FIRST TIME), and some (like me) are wondering if there’s another shoe that’s about to drop.

I’ll be honest; I can go either way with Joe, Lord of Evil. Kinda like he can go either way when he steps on the ice.

Anyway. My gut feeling is that, like in 03-04, Joe’s going to be put on a wing in the hopes that he can do something there. Not that my gut feeling is being driven by a hurtin’ on Cory and Erik or anything.

Just sayin’.