Sweet Tea, Barbecue, and Bodychecks

OK, so let’s get right to the point:

Mo Must Go, Again.

I’ve been saying it ever since he came back like a bad rash, I’ll keep saying it until he’s gone again. I say it every time I see a promising callup like Zach Boychuk or Zac Dalpe be relegated to the fourth line for five minutes a night rather than getting a proper shot, while somebody like Chad LaRose is in the Top 6. I love LaRose, I do–but he’s not Top 6 material.

(In fairness, as of this writing Rosie is no longer in the Top 6.)

I say it every time I see Musical Lines being played in the middle of a game. I say it every time I see evidence that the team is essentially being left to their own devices during a game. I say it despite being called a “bad fan” or a “fake fan” by the motards that flock to the Hurricanes’ facebook page. I say it every time I hear excuses after a loss, every time I see the defensive shell (which SUCKS), and every time I see players floating lazily around the ice and playing not to lose while Old One-Eye (and I am NOT talking about Odin, thank you) just stands there cracking his Big Red.

Is Dave Lewis allowed to do anything? Dudeman has way more coaching chops than Mo does, and it seems all he’s allowed to do is just stand there and watch. And the Warchief? Where is he when he’s not standing behind the bench looking stoic? Is he only allowed to coach faceoffs at practice? I find it absolutely incredible that they brought Mo back to save money, gave him two assistants to ostensibly prop him up….and the team is still functioning the way it did before the Interregnum.

The more things change, the more they stay the frelling same. Welcome to the Carolina Hurricanes, the best self-coached team in the NHL.

MO MUST GO, AGAIN.

OK, time to take a short break from hockey for a moment and talk about my second-favourite thing: cooking.

(Hey, the blog’s name does reference sweet tea and barbecue after all)

I got a wild hair yesterday when Genghis and I went to the store–it’s fall, the weather is getting colder (even here in NC), and it’s time to migrate from the light salads of summer to something more fortifying. So I grabbed a few ingredients, and got up way early this morning to put them all together–and this is what I got:

Winternights Stew

1 5# pork loin, trimmed and cubed
6-7 ribs celery, sliced
1 yellow onion, diced
6-7 carrots, sliced (you can also use 6oz. baby carrots)
5 medium redskin potatoes, cut into chunks
1 24oz bottle Guinness Extra Stout
2tsp each salt and pepper
3tbsp each ground mustard and ground ginger
4tbsp Montreal Steak Seasoning
1/4c dark brown sugar

(Top Tip: stick the loin in the freezer for a couple hours before cubing it–it’ll make it easier to cut)

Add the cubed pork to a slow-cooker, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Pour the beer over the pork, and braise on low for 4 hours. After 4 hours, add the aromatics, the potatoes, and the remaining spices, then cook for another 3 hours before cranking the slow-cooker to high for 6 hours. Serve with your favourite ale and a nice hunk of crusty bread, and enjoy–preferably with friends.

I was going to take advantage of today to advocate for the ouster of Chairman Mo (again), and then I got sidetracked by, well, this.

As you can see from this picture here (thank you Deadspin), the fans at the TD Gahden threw garbage on the ice when the Bruins were losing to the Hurricanes again. I’m sure that anybody wearing Hurricanes or Whalers gear in the crowd probably got stuff tossed at them too (including fisticuffs), but of course that is just an educated guess on my part. The Bruins themselves also started gooning it up, but that’s nothing new so eh.

What gets me is that a liquor bottle got chucked on the ice with the rest of the crap. Not only that, but it looks like a Thunderbird bottle. T-bird? Really? And how the hell did that bottle get into the Gahden to begin with? Isn’t there supposed to be security that keeps that kind of shit from getting in? Did that drunken idiot even think about what could have happened and what risk would have been caused if that bottle had shattered when it hit the ice?

No, wait. Of course he didn’t think about it. He was drunk. And stupid.

So what’s the point of my rantlet? DON’T THROW SHIT ON THE ICE, YOU SHITHEADS. Fans that throw stuff on the ice are stupid, and they’re putting their own team at risk with their shenanigans–not just risk of getting hurt, but (as we saw the other night) risk of getting dinged for a penalty. I don’t want to hear any blithering about “tradition”, or that I’m somehow not a “real” fan–Eff that. Throwing crap onto the ice is complete and total douchebaggery, it’s an embarrassment, and it’s Just Plain Uncool.

I’m still pondering that Mo-post, but I think it’ll be better to wait until halfway through the season.

I’ve sat here for the last hour or so, trying to figure out how to start this post.

Y’see, the whole summer I’ve nursed a sympathetic anger toward a lot of people–fans mostly, but also a city and an organization.

Yeah, I’m mad that the Thrashers left Atlanta. I’m even more angry that the fans are being blamed for it by morons, and that the former owners of the Thrashers are a bunch of tools that couldn’t even get the fuck out of their own collective way.

See, I’m going to dish out some education to you twatwaffles that have been sackdancing on the heads of the fans in Atlanta: the team didn’t leave because the fans stopped going. The fans only did the same thing that fans on Long Island and in Boston, Vancouver, Chicago, Edmonton, Calgary, Detroit, and a bunch of other “real hockey towns” have done in the past:

They refused to support ownership that didn’t have the slightest interest in winning anything. Real funny how that happens–ownership makes clear they don’t want to win, fans say “F U” and stop giving them money. Hmmm, gee, I dunno. Apparently it’s only acceptable to you arsebiscuits if fans of a Northern team vote with their feet and wallets. If we do it here in the Dirty South, then we’re just a bunch of dumb hicks who don’t deserve a team.

Let me tell you what happened, why the NHL busted their asses to not move Phoenix and to not move Pittsburgh:

Their owners give a damn. Atlanta Spirit couldn’t say the same thing. They’re a bunch of incompetent fools (and I’ll gladly say that to their faces) who not only couldn’t be arsed to try putting together a competitive team, but they also deliberately torpedoed attempts by Tom Glavine to get an ownership group together to buy the Thrashers by saying “If you want the Thrashers, you have to buy the Hawks from us too”–knowing full well that nobody at all would agree to invest if they had to accept a two-fer.

Then along comes True North, and Atlanta Spirit says “SURE, WE’LL SELL YOU JUSTTHE THRASHERS!” And in so doing, they give the middle finger to the fans in Atlanta. And idiots in Winnipeg and elsewhere do their little sackdances and agitate for all southern teams to be contracted, because…well, because they’re idiots.

Fuck y’all haters, and fuck all y’all’s double standards. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, and I’ll keep saying it.

I will never call the Thrashers what the rest of the League is calling them. They are, and will always be called in this space, the Atlanta Thrashers. I hope they win even less than they won in Atlanta. I hope the fans leave the MTS Centre miserable every night because the other 29 teams in the NHL have come into their house and run the score up on their team. And I hope that the Hurricanes, the Lightning, the Predators, the Panthers (of ALL teams!) and the Capitals win about 5 Cups each before the Thrashers make the playoffs again, just as an extra little “F U” to the Moron Brigade. And I hope they all beat the Sabres to do it, too–just because it will amuse me to hear the more unhinged Sabres fans crying “DEY TOOK OUR CURRRRRPS!!“.

In conclusion, I’d just like to say:

Fuck the ‘Peg. I’ve been there, it’s got nothing but Ukes and a Mint.

OK, so I started the evening off with a trip to my local ABC store to get a fifth of my favourite schnapps. I figured I would have some fun and play a Tripp Tracy drinking game.

A Robert Burns quote about the best-laid plans of mice and men comes to mind right now, but I’ll get to that further down.

My setup:

Yes, I channeled my inner redneck by drinking from a Mason jar. What can I say? The little kitty in the picture is Sun Tzu Liao–he just got done inspecting everything to make sure it was OK, because that’s what he does.

So I’m here getting started watching the game, when my large orange cat Terrence decided to come over and ask me to give him some love:

Yes Terrence, you’re a handsome cat–but Mommy wants to watch the Hurricanes game.

That game. Man. I took my first drink when Tripp called us “Toronto South”. Which is fair, but still damn wrong. Finished off the mini, and cracked the seal on the big bottle. I commenced to drinkin’ and spamming facebook with crazy updates. Steve Downie got up to his usual bitch-ass punk cheapshotting, but sadly the linesmen saved him from the furious fists of Jay Harrison. And, of course, no call. The refs are clownshoes. Tripp said that the game had reached a “pivotal point”, and I took yet another drink.

Bob Harwood had a chat with Great Leader–and I had this horrible sense of impending doom. Every time Pete Karmanos opens his yap to a mediot, bad things happen. He’s like a magnet for trouble. I mean, I’m just pointing this out here.

Then that little bastard Marty St. Louis scored in the second, just after Bob Harwood spoke to Pete Karmanos–breaking the defensive shell that the Hurricanes collapsed into just after Skinner scored. I just knew at that point that the game was about to go (in the words of Denis Leary) “STRAIGHT to fuckin’ hell!”

Facebook update: STOP SCOTING ON US, UOU LILLTE VONTZ!

And it was time to pour some more schnapps, because clearly I wasn’t misspelling things enough:

So I drank more. And the Lightning scored more. I do not think there was a correlation in either direction–it just kinda worked out that way. Somewhere along the line, the Tripp drinking game got lost in the shuffle of suck that was the Hurricanes after the score got to 3-1. I didn’t get piss-drunk, though–I got a little sleepy, and decided it was a good idea to just stop and go to bed as soon as the game was over. Really people, who’s going to think poorly of somebody who wants to keep at least some of her wits about her?

My penultimate facebook update of the night was: Yzerman just called. He told #jimrutherford “now you see that evil will always triumph, because good is dumb!” And of course, I followed it up with Mo must go, again!.

For serious–I really don’t think the problem is the players here. It’s Mo Hockey. It’s the defensive shell, which STILL sucks. It’s the 3-2 forecheck and the Musical Lines and the excusemaking, which we’ve had to put up with for years. You’d think that it would have become that much more apparent to everyone when Toronto went through the same thing with Chairman Mo behind the bench. But nooooo, Great Leader would rather keep nickel-and-diming everything while the fans get ready for yet another season of Mo-diocrity.

Mo Must Go, Again–and I’ll have another game night post after tonight’s game agin the Capitals.

So a while back, I chummed the waters on Kukla’s Korner by quipping that new NHL Disciplinarian Brendan Shanahan would let the Red Wings off easy, because he used to play for them and won Cups with them. Predictably, I got a few of the Juggalos up in a tizzy.

Ha ha, very funny, I trolled the Juggalos (which, let’s be honest, isn’t much of an accomplishment given that they’re collectively pretty dim bulbs, and therefore ridiculously easy to troll). But let’s be real here. Let’s set aside the team bias and get serious about something:

Brendan Shanahan’s apparently decided that he’s going to try to be what Clownshoe Colin wasn’t: somebody who actually lays down the freakin’ law. Somebody who LARTs the lusers, as it were. And he’s going to show what the player did to deserve the LARTing with

Oh wait, not science. Video. He’s going to do it with video. Like this one here.

People’s Exhibit A, your honour: Serial recidivist Jody Shelley gets the rest of preseason and five regular-season games for intent to injure. Shanahan explains why, and clearly states that Shelley’s record as a career recidivist factored into the decision.

General consensus is that Shanahan is doing a good job–and I’ll agree that he’s trying. But in my opinion dudeman doesn’t go far enough, especially if he’s trying to send a message to players that engage in cheap shots and try to dish out season-ending (if not career-ending, in the case of Marc Savard) injuries.

He’s got to exercise the Nuclear Option.

Preseason is nothing when it comes to a suspension–I’d have given Shelley the first 15 games of the regular season at least. Why? He’s a career recidivist. Matt Cooke even so much as farts in another player’s direction, BAM! Go play in the KHL son, cos you are done in the NHL. Todd Bertuzzi tries anything (again)? SEEYA! My Golden Bitch? He needs to sit his ass down for a nice chunk of the season the next time he throws an elbow at somebody’s head or tries to take out somebody’s knees. Ovechkin? Same thing. Yes he’s skilled, yes he’s got personality in spades–hell, I LIKE him even though he drives me stark raving mad six times a season–but if you throw cheap shots, Ovie, it’s time for you to go hang out with GMGM in the press box for a while. Hell, any Hurricane that gives out a cheap shot and gets a suspension needs to get a serious suspension just like anyone else. I mean, I’m just sayin’.

The NHLPA wants to grievance it? Let them file a grievance. Seriously, let them cry! There has to be a very clear and very decisive message sent that deliberately injuring another player is UNACCEPTABLE–and giving out heavy suspension action (with accompanying financial hit to the player) is the only way that it’s going to happen.

Discuss.

Oh, I can just see how much fun this will be. Earlier today, I got into it with some noob on Facebook who seems to feel Sean Avery (who is on waivers) is an enforcer and that the Hurricanes need him. When I pointed out his noobery, he got all upset (predictably), and told me to STFU because he’s “always been a canes fan” and “played hockey all my life”.

Yeah. Right. He needs to go hang out with the Juggalos of the NHL, they’re about his speed.

ANYWAY.

As much as I admire his bollocks in being up-front about supporting equality, Sean Avery is NOT, repeat NOT an enforcer in any way, shape, form, or fashion.

He turtles when challenged by somebody who gets tired of the little fuckhead running his yap or taking cheapshots. He has to wait until another player is restrained by the linesmen and unable to respond in order to get a punch in. His idea of “enforcing” is to be a one-man Morris dancing side in front of Marty Brodeur during a playoff game.

Anyone who thinks that’s “enforcing” is a moron or a noob or both.

Bob Probert (rest his soul) was an enforcer. The late Messrs. Rypien, Boogaard, and Belak were enforcers. Joe Kocur and Darren McCarty were enforcers. STUUUUUU Grimson, Esq. is an enforcer (and I’d be happy to have him represent me in court, too. Very smart fellow). Clark fucking Gillies was an enforcer. Dave bloody Semenko was an enforcer. Riley Cote, Dan Carcillo, Inglourious Backes, Eric Godard, and Zack Stortini are all enforcers.

Sean Avery, bless his little turtling heart, is not an enforcer any more than I am the King of Siam. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

I’ll open the floor up to the five people that are reading this blog at any one time: Please, explain to me if you can how Sean Avery is an enforcer. (comment moderation should be turned off now, btw–I’m trusting all y’all to play somewhat nice, here)