Superman wears Chad LaRose pajamas

Canes win! Rosey with the 1st shorty for Carolina since 2002! What else need be said?

Rod, please don't make this list

Halfway through the season and ready to watch the All-Star game this weekend I felt it was a good time to bring up our Captain's plus/minus record. Do you think he will break out the 2nd half and redeem himself? Or do you think he will toil at the bottom and add his name to this ugly record? If he does he will join a former Cane rental player (keep reading)

Brindy is currently last in the league with -29. There are only 3 others in the -20 range so he does have some company. I believe he can and will move up the list and not end at the bottom. Especially if his ice time keeps lowering it might not get worse!!

As of 1/24 ==>

Any guess what the worst plus/minus in history was? I took a quick check on the net to see.
http://www.lcshockey.com/feb06/072206.asp

LOWEST SINGLE-SEASON PLUS-MINUS

Year Player, Team                    +/-
1. 1975 Bill Mikkelson, Washington      -82
2. 1975 Greg Joly, Washington           -68
3. 1975 Mike Marson, Washington         -65
4. 1974 Reggie Leach, California        -61
1976 Larry Johnston, Kansas City     -61
1981 Dave Babych, Winnipeg           -61
7. 1984 Pat Boutette, Pittsburgh        -58
8. 1975 Dennis Patterson, Kansas City   -57
1978 Brad Maxwell, Minnesota         -57
1981 Norm Dupont, Winnipeg           -57
1983 Doug Sulliman, Hartford         -57

YEAR-BY-YEAR LOWEST PLUS-MINUS

Year Player, Team                       +/-
1968 Elmer Vasko, Minnesota             -36
1969 J.P. Parise, Minnesota             -44
1970 Bill McCreary, St. Louis           -44     
1971 Doug Roberts, California           -56
1972 Gil Perreault, Buffalo             -40
Real Lemieux, Los Angeles          -40
1973 Bill Mikkelson, NY Islanders       -54
1974 Reggie Leach, California           -61
1975 Bill Mikkelson, Washington         -82
1976 Larry Johnston, Kansas City        -61
1977 Al Cameron, Detroit                -43
1978 Brad Maxwell, Minnesota            -57
1979 Rick Green, Washington             -45
1980 Steve Sullivan, Winnipeg           -45
1981 Dave Babych, Winnipeg              -61
1982 Dwight Foster, Colorado            -53
1983 Doug Sulliman, Hartford            -57
1984 Pat Boutette, Pittsburgh           -58
1985 Doug Shedden, Pittsburgh           -51
1986 Randy Ladoucer, Detroit            -54
1987 Grant Ledyard, Los Angeles         -40
1988 Brian MacLellan, Minnesota         -44
1989 Tom Fergus, Toronto                -38
1990 Bryan Fogarty, Quebec              -47
1991 Vincent Damphousse, Toronto        -31
1992 Paul Fenton, San Jose              -39
1993 Neil Wilkinson, San Jose           -50
Rob Zettler, San Jose              -50
Doug Zmolek, San Jose              -50
1994 Gord Dineen, Ottawa                -52
1995 Chris Dahlquist, Ottawa            -30
1996 Craig Janney, San Jose             -35
1997 Alexandre Daigle, Ottawa           -33
1998 Paul Ysebaert, Tampa Bay           -43
1999 Darcy Tucker, Tampa Bay            -34
2000 Yannick Tremblay, Atlanta          -42
2001 Patrice Brisebois, Montreal        -31
2002 Tyler Wright, Columbus             -40
2003 Wayne Primeau, Pittsburgh          -30
2004 Rico Fata, Pittsburgh              -46
2006 Mark Recchi, Carolina              -36 

Lets hope Rod doesn't add his name here.

Cory Stillman is a lover, not a fighter

At least that's what I always thought. We know he's not a driver. Considering that we didn't see him drop the gloves once in his Hurricane tenure - I was certainly caught off guard when seeing this the other day:

The most recent fight before this week?: during the 2004 playoffs as a Bolt, according to his fight card at hockeyfights.com. Of course, had he ever dropped the gloves as a Cane - he would have injured something to take him out of the line-up for at least 3 months.

In all seriousness, I couldn't be happier for Cory and his extremely nice family and wish them all the best. Lets just hope he's careful driving around in Florida with those blue-hairs all over the roads.

Up is down - left is right

"Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!" - the Hurricanes won a hockey game! New president! Raleigh is effin snowed in! People spontaneously combusting! Hide your families! Chad LaRose is all that is man! Cam Ward is Conn Smythe!

Thank You Sir, May I Have Another

Nice to see a complete effort last night in Toronto as Cam shutout the Leafs on 35 shots and the Canes end a 5 game losing streak. See the game video highlights on NHL.com here:



With goals from Corvo and LaRose and Cam "standing on his head", hopefully the team will have some of that missing MOJO I talked about yesterday going to Pittsburgh tonight.

Where Is the Luck?

Big Glove Tap to Dave for allowing me to contribute to this most Holy Grail - Carolina On Ice Blog. I will try to uphold the standards he and EOH have set so far. Although, he may live to regret the decision later!

Anyway, greetings to all COI readers. While I am a big hockey and Canes' fan, I am also an avid golfer, hence the handle I choose. I anxiously await your feedback and comments.

So, for my first post. Where is the Luck? Is is just me or does it seem that every other team we play gets all the breaks? I will digress and claim that the goal Willie scored a couple of games ago was pretty damn lucky as it tipped off his stick and bounced around 2 or 3 defensemen prior to finding the goal. But all in all, we usually get the short end. Or, is it a plain lack of skill? I doubt that though.

By this I mean:

1. Lucky goals -the ones we all look at on the replay and say "how the hell did he do that?
2. Break Aways - the other guys almost certainly score on an odd man rush, when have we?
3. Open Nets - how many clear open shots have we missed?
4. What else? I won't touch penalties. Everyone gets and/or misses their fair share
   

My intent here was not to cry, whine, moan, what have you, but I swear the hockey gods need to lighten up just a bit. It is obvious that we need some outside help to stop this losing slide! How about some MOJO for Mo and the Boys. Don't you agree they deserve it?
Cheers!

Complete paragraphs are way over rated

Ugh. Back to the Holy Shit Buffalo's Cold Arena tonight for the Hurricanes tonight. Attempting to snap the skid - this easily still looks like a team that could lose a few more before they right the ship.

Some random thoughts for you on a frozen tundra of a Saturday:

Paul Maurice's performance as coach so far hasn't blown away anyone. In a way, deep down I'm sort of glad he's not killing-it-good as I eagerly await the eventual hiring of Ronnie Francis as the new head coach next summer (ready or not).

Tim Gleason is never one to stop short of providing some good press. He's dropped some jewels this year including the now infamous "That's what happens when you suck" and accurately summed up the Toronto effort as "piss-poor".

I like coffee. A lot.

D-Lee is an underground Sabres homer, apparently. How sweet of him. (I kid, of course - David is my hero.)

Like the Canes, the Sabres have been riding the "meh"-boat this season. They certainly have the talent and have shown the potential to dominate games but have lacked the consistency on a game-to-game basis. Sounds familiar right? There are several worthy Sabres blogs out there, but my choice is the vintage BfloBlog.

Lindy Ruff is a great coach, but I still think he's an ass.

Staal did his Hay-zeus Christo impression during his goal celebration Thursday night. I likes.

I heart the NHL Network. What the hell would we do without it? Further more, why isn't Carrie Milbank working for Versus full time yet? Of course she's a stone cold stunner of a beauty - but she's entertaining, accurate, enlightening and knows her hock-ah-jah-wee-ah pretty well.

Speaking of Versus - I still don't understand why they can only show two games a week. Monday & Tuesday nights are apparently the only nights that important games are played in the US of A. Johnny Forslund has been a stud on his VS appearances though. I always dig reading what Steve Lepore has to say about the pucky media. Check him out.

You will freeze your nips off outside today. The Leafs came and brought their weather with them as they came and shat on the South (they beat the Thrash Friday night). Stay inside by the fire all day. Watch TV. Cuddle up with your doggy or kitty.

If you're a drinker - try this recipe for BunWarmers and you'll thank me later.

Go Canes.

and a special shout-out to Coach Kay Yow, who is an inspiration to us all. Hang in there, Coach.

Dissapointment

Leafs 6 - Canes 4. EPIC FAIL.

Peter Karmanos: 2009 Classless Asshat Award Winner

You know, suffering through a losing streak is hard on anybody's fandom. Watching your star players stand around on the ice while the other team blows you out of the building makes you want to scream. But just when you thought it couldn't get any worse in Raleigh, our absentee owner suddenly decided to turn into a Grade-A Classless Asshat for no apparent reason.

In case you somehow missed it, Peter Karmanos was the keynote speaker at the Greater Raleigh Sports Council's quarterly meeting today. Apparently, he decided that it would be a good idea to come out and throw Peter Laviolette under the bus in front of god and everybody. And for no apparent reason. WTF?

You can find the whole article here:

http://blogs.newsobserver.com/canes/karmanos-laviolette-had-to-go

I won't parse it all out, but I do want to point out a couple of things. First of all, there was this lovely quote:

"I didn't like our coach," Karmanos said. "His public persona and his
private persona were two different things."

Well, when you consider that Laviolette always seemed to be a really nice guy in public, the only way to interpret that quote is that PK is calling Laviolette an asshole. Worse, PK then insinuates that Laviolette was the reason that Eric Belanger sucked while he was here. (Funny, I always thought it was his lackluster effort and lack of production, but what do I know...). He then makes the following idiotic quote about Belanger (among others):

"He's now a key part of the Minnesota team," Karmanos said. "And that happened
with quite a few players and you just can't afford to lose those kind of
assets."

Seriously? Isn't it JR's job (with PK's blessing) to determine which assets we keep or lose? And who exactly traded Belanger? That's right. JR traded him. And for what? Big Slow Vagisil - ... I mean Big Joe Vasicek. Let's face facts. It was evident from day one that Belanger didn't want to be here. Or at least he sure played like he didn't. And if Belanger is so damn good, then why isn't PK blasting JR for not getting more than Big Slow Washed-up-Czech for him in that trade?

And what other assets did Laviolette lose? Craig Adams? Kevyn Adams? Anson Carter? Jeff Hamilton? Dan LaCouture? John Grahame? That Melichar guy? I guess JR's trading of Andrew Ladd, Erik Cole, Cory Stillman and Mike Commodore doesn't count as losing assets. Or maybe JR's errors are overlooked because of his past acquisitions of such sterling talent like Jan Hlavac and Jamie Storr. . .

I just don't get it. Asshole or not, Peter Laviolette brought the Stanley Cup to Carolina. You'd think that a Cup win would be worth some serious respect from the man that profited most from it. Or at least you'd think it would be worth enough to keep PK's classless piehole shut. For an organization that prides itself in being "like a family", you'd think they wouldn't be trashing the guy who actually made this team (and market) relevant for the first time in years. Though, I guess this organization is analogous to a family; but in the "let's pull the plug on Grandma so we don't have to spend our inheritance to pay for her hospice care" kinda way.

On a final note, I'm not a former Harvard teammate of Jason Karmanos, so nobody told me why PK felt the need slam Lavi. I can only give you my opinion as to why I think he decided Laviolette needed to be trashed today. My impression is that this reeks of desperation. Basically, this team has underachieved for 2 and a half years. When that happens, you can either blame the players or blame the coach. Since blaming the players means blaming your GM and yourself (as the people who ultimately make the sign/trade decisions), it is much easier to blame the coach. So they fired Lavi as the scapegoat for the players not producing. And rather than hiring a new coach, they brought back Paul Maurice to save some serious coin. As a result, the Canes are still sucking on a nightly basis. We are still hovering just below mediocrity (sorta like Toronto the last 2 years - go figure . . .). The coaching change has been a net wash at best. We're really doing no better (win/loss) than we were under Laviolette. So PK's either got to blame himself and JR for the non-productive talent, or for their bargain-bin coaching hire: Paul Maurice. You can bet that neither of those are going to happen. So to deflect the blame from their failings, he throws Lavi under the bus.

Feel free to disagree with my rationale for this boondoggle if you want. But in my opinion, trashing Laviolette for no reason was uncalled for, and just plain classless. I lost a lot of respect for PK and this organization today.

As the old saying goes, Mr. Karmanos: "It takes one to know one."

Asshole indeed.

In case you didn't know it, I'm easily entertained

Just in time for the Toronto/Canes game Thursday night...

Head on over to Barry Melrose Rocks to find out what the hell this is about!

Canes @ Senators - Will Uh Oh Corvo strike again?

Tuesday night has the Canes finishing up a brief, three game road trip in Ottawa before a home game against the Leafs on Thursday. Not to pile on, but in case you didn't already know - Ottawa isn't very good this year.

Okay, they're terrible.

After a dominant run through the 06-07 playoffs that ended with a defeat to Anaheim, they mother-trucked their way through the first half of the season compiling a franchise best winning streak at the start last year. Then, they started to slide. They made the playoffs last season (largely in part because the Hurricanes shit the bed didn't) but were easily swept by the Penguins.

This season, the slide continues as they currently sit 29th out of 30 NHL teams just above the Drive-For-John-Tavares NY Islanders. Fans are calling for GM Bryan Murray's head. They're calling for Coach Craig Hartsburg head. Amidst all this clamo(u)r - the Senators bloggers have been keeping us all entertained.

Where the Hurricanes have been using the team slogan of "Our Team. Our Tradition.", if you visit the Ottawa Senators front page, you see "A Force United". With the disappointing play over the past year - the Sens Army has formed an underground rebellion of sorts titled "A Farce United".Above is friend to COI, Senators Lost Cojones, seen shortly after drowning his sorrows in his bitchin man room. SLC runs the hysterical blog, Five For Smiting. SLC was kind enough to give us a bit of a scouting report on his favorite team of underachievers:

"we're a mess. We can't score, can't stop getting scored upon, the goalies can't be trusted (Young Master Elliot aside), the coaching staff have no clue how to fix it, the GM just sits there and scowls, the playoffs are nothing but a pipe dream, and the howling mobs are so discouraged, we've put away the torches and pitchforks and pulled out the "Welcome John Tavares!" banners. I think that just about covers it. Good luck on Tuesday. Please be gentle."

Thanks for stopping by SLC, and may Joe Corvo & Patrick Eaves haunt your soul both score hat tricks give you a big high-five!

Ottawa has all the talent needed to win on any given night but hasn't. Carolina could easily be walking into a trap here. We'll see what happens I suppose!

Go Canes!

Rough day for NC Sports

Yesterday, the Hurricanes got plastered by the Bruins 5-1. Yes, plastered. Ho hum.

To make matters worse, NC State got beat down by an undefeated Clemson team 63-51 and the Carolina Panthers absolutely showed their ass in a playoff defeat to (of all teams) the Arizona Cardinals.

Umm, go Chargers?

Strange Team Promotions - Part IV

Just when you thought it couldn't get any weirder in Caneland, Wuf forwards me this link:

http://hurricanes.nhl.com/team/app/?service=page&page=NewsPage&articleid=402940

Apparently, the Hurricanes are now designing sandwiches for Harris Teeter. I shit you not. The first edition is apparently the "Walker 24". Honest to god, they are promoting a sandwich 'designed' by Scott Walker. The press report is silent as to the actual ingredients that make up the "Walker 24", but an inside source has informed me that the main ingredient is Genoa Salami. According the the tightly guarded Scott Walker recipe (which we here at C.O.I. have obtained), the secret to making the "Walker 24" is that you beat the holy hell out of the Salami, and slam it to the ground. You must then wait 5 minutes before you can put it on the bread.

Now you 3 faithful readers know how we roll (no pun intended) here at C.O.I. This story got me and the Wuf thinking. We just knew there had to be other entrants into the sandwich making promo. Specifically, there had to be some rejected sandwich ideas. So I did some digging. And lo and behold, through some super-secret inside informants, I managed to get the scoop. I can't reveal my anonymous sources, but it turns out, there were a couple of not-so-great sandwich submissions from the lockerroom. So here, in another C.O.I. exclusive, we would like to share a couple of the more interesting rejected sandwich ideas.

The first rejected sandwich idea was 'the Wizard' by Ray Whitney. Apparently, it consisted of a little mayo, a little mustard, a little lettuce and a lot of ham served on short bread.

The next was a creation submitted by Jim Rutherford. It was called the "Craig Adams". According to the taste testers, it was not a great hoagie, just a mediocre grinder. What made this sandwich notable was that Harris Teeter wasn't going to charge anything for it. They were just going to give it away for "future considerations".

An anonymous submission was also recieved and rejected. It was called the "Johnny Grahame". Apparently, the recipe was a bottle of Tequila sandwiched between two Hooters girls. Sure, that submission may not be in line with Harris Teeter's target marketing image, but I've got to admit, I'd stand in line for that one every day at lunch.

There was also a submission by Cam Ward, called the "Glove Side High". It was rejected because the only ingredient was Swiss Cheese.

Then, there was the "Frank Kaberle". It was a toasted sub. It apparently had a lot of potential, but they eventually scrapped it because no matter how much they tried to get it right, it just kept getting burnt.

And finally, there was quite a buzz surrounding Rod Brind'amour's entry. It was called "The Ex Wife". But it didn't get very far. Not only was it bitter, but you had to pay for the sandwich while someone else got to eat it.

So there you have it: the rejected Hurricane Sandwiches of 08/09. During our research, we also found out that this promotion also takes place elsewhere in the NHL, and we managed to get a list of rejected sandwich ideas from other teams around the league. But that is a post for another day.

Thank God that Tuomo Ruutu isn't bat-sh*t crazy like his brother

Case in point - Jerko Ruutu's shenanigans last night in Buffalo:

Listen, it's great to be aggressive. It's a good thing to be a little crazy and unpredictable. And while Tuomo Ruutu may get called with a questionable hit or check from time to time, you (hopefully) won't ever see him resort to this kind of BS.

Speaking of Ruuty, I'm loving his game-winning goal highlight from the Devils game last night:

Tuomo has had some big time, clutch goals this year. The MTL OT winner comes to mind. As does the game at St. Louis. Last night just added to the Ruutu lovefest in Raleigh.

Anyone remember this quote from then coach Denis Savard as Ruutu left Chicago for Carolina?:
"watching him play for a couple years, a lot of times he had complete possession of the puck and just fell down."

Unfortunately, Savard was spot-on with that assessment. You've got to love him if you're a Caniac, but damn if he isn't the clumsiest skater I've seen. My zinger whenever he gets the puck is "Arrrrrrrre You Ready To Stummmmmmmble?!?!?!?" Not exactly as sure-footed as a mountain goat.

Good times.

I'm Still Alive

So Mrs. Wuffy and I bought a house at the end of November and spent the majority of December refusing to do anything but drink getting settled in. Any free time I got outside of the usual hey-day and my vegetable impersonations went towards either painting, raking, cleaning or some other "honeydew" chore.

So alas, we are now Cary-ites and happy homeowners. But COI is not so happy. I'm more than displeased with the fact that there's been nothing but crickets around here. East jumped in when he could (and delivered some dime-pieces, thanks again East) - but I slacked on my blogging big time. For that my friends, I am sorry.

The other day I got an e-mail from Kevin of Barry Melrose Rocks /AOL Fanhouse fame. Seems he's got a super secret internship that requires him to step away from the blogging scene for a bit. He asked me to join in the fun over at BMR to cover his stead while he's away. Naturally, how could I say no? One of my favorite bloggers asks me to hold the reins - you're damned right I'll do it! That's almost like the beer samplers at Miller Brewing calling and asking to come and work for them.
"You mean I get to sample beer for a living? and you're gonna pay me? Like US Dollars?"

With that said - I'm not dropping COI off at the dump. Not by a long shot. But I am entertaining offers if anyone thinks they'd like to give this blogging gig a try. CarolinaOnIce@gmail.com if you're interested, lonely and need to chat, or should you have any questions.

See you around. Go Canes!