One tradition, one Asshat, one glog

Here it is, a Tuesday night, and I am just starting a blog, much later than is probably smart for a guy that has to be at work at 5am, but tradition and hockey requires that I am up at this time. Tradition because apparently we are getting our first snow of the year tonight, and while I am sure the weatherman is overblowing it for the purpose of scaring people into watching his accuweather/storm team/hell hath no fury forecast , tradition dictates that I have a hot chocolate on the first snowfall of the season and take a few moments to remember Hope and think pleasant thoughts. I doubt she does the same thing, but if a tradition is to die, I'd rather it not die on my watch. It can fade into obscurity after I am gone, but not before. Luckily I have plenty of hot chocolate in my cupboard, and as a bonus, I still have marshmallow creme from when I was making fluffernutter sandwiches, which means a dollup of the whippedity goodness on top of said chocolately beverage. And for a brief moment, all is indeed right with the world. A simple closing of the eyes and it is very easy to get lost in good memories.

I may have a hockey game to keep me company during my trip down memory lane, the Penguins are out on the west coast playing the San Jose Sharks. I don't have cable, so I can't watch the game on TV, but it is supposed to be broadcast on Yahoo, so I am hoping I can watch via the computer. I tuned in early and they are carrying the Fox Sports Pittsburgh feed, which may end up getting locally blacked out. I have my fingers crossed. So far they are letting me watch the pregame show, but that doesn't mean anything. I have seen a couple of Pens games on Yahoo this year, but both times the feed they were carrying was the out of town feed, including my last venture into glogging, where they carried the NY feed of the game.

If they let me watch the game, then this will be a lengthy blog, if not it will be much shorter. So far though, the feed is working.

A brief recap from my fantasy teams last week, the hockey team went 4-4-2 against the second place team, so I remain in third place for the time being. the football team won again, so for the season I am now 5-3, though I really lucked out, because I had a most crappy Sunday, getting only two TDs, one from Anthony Fasano and one from Steve Slaton. I was bailed out on Monday night, getting two TD passes from Peyton Manning and another TD run from Chris Johnson, though again LenDale White poached two short TD runs from Johnson. I am learning to really hate that guy. Still it was enough to garner a win this past week, and at the end of the year, it isn't a matter of how many pretty wins you have, just as long as they are wins.

So far Yahoo the feed is working and I am a happy kind of guy. Of course that means I will be up till like 1:30am if I make it through the entire game, but then again, I would probably be up anyway, but listening to the radio instead, as I am quite sure there would be nothing on TV.

I have a few guys on my fantasy roster that are in tonight's game. Unfortunately they are all RWs, and we can only play two on any given day and I have three in this contest alone, carrying Devin Setoguchi and Johnathon Cheechoo from San Jose and Miroslav Satan from the Penguins. I am not even sure which two I started.

Eric Goddard has already got into a fight, one minute into the game, with Jody Shelley of the Sharks and both men will serve 5 minute penaties for fighting.

Less than a minute later and Miroslav Satan gets a 2 minute penalty for tripping the San Jose goaltender Evgeni Nabokov and San Jose gets the first power play of tonight's contest.

A good job on the penalty kill by the Penguins, they don't even give up a shot despite being a a man down and we go back to 5 on 5 skating.

Yumm, the hot chocolate was delish, especially that glob of marshmallowy creme at the end. Life is indeed good.

Some decent skating and passing by both teams since the penalty kill, lots of end to end action with few stoppages of play. Hockey is probably at its TV best when it is a flowing game, rather than crowded with whistes and stoppages of play. It is already hard enough to follow on TV for the uningrained, it is worse when they are stopping every couple of minutes.

Rob Blake takes a 2 minute penalty, tripping and the Penguins will get their first power play of the night, and the Penguins throw out Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin out on the same power play unit. And it doesn't matter as the Penguins give up a short handed goal, Milan Michalek assisting and doing all of the hard work on a goal that gets credited to Joe Pavelski, his 4th on the young season. That is one thing I have noticed about San Jose, they have a lot of goal scoring talent that goes unrecognized. Pavelski, Thorton, Cheechoo, Setoguchi, Blake, Roenick, Marleau....they have plenty of offensive talent, maybe the second most in the West behind Detroit.

3:50 left in the first period, San Jose leads 1-0 and while the action has been free flowing, the shots have not, as San Jose has 5 to this point, the Penguins just two. I would have expected San Jose to have more to be honest, they are averaging over 35 shots a game and the Penguins give up 33 per game, yet they have been held in check at least in the first period.

Jordan Stahl and Matt Cooke both have scoring opportunities fo the Penguins here in the closing minutes of the first period, but neither can convert and the first period comes to a close with the Sharks leading the Penguins 1-0.

Well, my worries about the feed not holding up were unfounded, Yahoo didn't blackout the game in the local market. A kudos to the Yahoo people, then again the person in charge of making sure I can't see the game may have been one of the thousand or so they laid off. In which case, yay for job cuts.

Well, since we are at the first intermission, time for the Asshat of the Week. And this week's trophy goes to Ashley Todd, a John McCain campaign staffer here in Pittsburgh, who faked an attack on herself, and then blamed in on an Obama supporter, complete with giving herself a black eye and carving a backwards "B" on her cheek. I am sure there are some out there that would say that she is mentally unbalanced and get all pyschobabbly wondering what would cause someone to do something like this. Allow me to be blunt, she would do it because she is a political zealot and a lying bitch to boot. And to think I didn't even need a psychiatrist's couch for that. Anyway Miss Todd, you can carve an Asshat right next to that B on your face, you deserve it.

See, and to think on TV they just interviewed a player during intermission, I think mine was better.

I am getting up the gumption for another Ask Matt Anything, but since I only want to do it once a month, I am trying to hold off for at least a few days. But rest assured, one will be coming in the relatively near future, so get to thinking up new and exciting questions and I will work some more on my dry cool wit in response to said questions.

I can also say, before the second period gets underway, that another 23 cents get added to the change meter, the new total is $39.23.

Okay, second period is just about underway, which is good, I was running out of things to say on this end of things. At least things of merit. Check that, little I say here has any merit, so I will just say little that would be worth the space it occupies and leave it at that.

The Penguins get two early shots to start the second period, including a blast from Pascal Dupuis, but Nabakov shows why he is one of the best goaltenders in the league, making a glove save on the heavy blast.

Evgeni Malkin gets called for hooking, the Penguins will play a man down for two minutes, which will put an end to the early pressure they were generating in the second period.

The Penguins kill off the second power play by the Sharks in this contest, their penalty killing has been pretty impressive in limiting San Jose's chances, if only their power play had been that effective.

San Jose has managed to get as many shots here in 5 minutes of the second period as they had in all of the first, actually moreso, as they had 6 in the first and they already have 10 in the second. Pittsburgh meanwhile is keeping the same pace, getting only one shot here in the second period after getting three in the first. No wonder Nabakov was able to lead the NHL in games (76) and wins (44) last season while in goal for San Jose, at this rate it would take about three games for him to see a real game's worth of work.

Upcoming is power play #3 for San Jose, Pascal Dupuis will serve a two minute tripping minor.

During the break we had a commercial for Circuit City, how they will match the lowest prices, blah, blah blah. What they won't tell you is that if you are an employee there and you get good at your job, they will fire you and ask you to come back at a lower wage. But that piece of knowledge wouldn't drive in a whole lot of business. They needn't worry, they won't be getting my business anyway, I would rather pay a little more and shop someplace else, where they don't treat their employees like shit.

The Penguins get their third penalty kill of the game and subsequently manage a little offense of their own, clanging two shots off of the crossbar behind Nabakov, though technically those won't count as shots, it only counts as a shot if the goaltender actually makes a save.

Dany Sabourin, getting the start in goal tonight for Pittsburgh instead of Marc Andre Fleury, makes a diving save on a shot by Dan Boyle on a no look pass from Setoguchi to keep the game at 1-0. This is only Sabourin's second start of the year, in his last start he made 37 saves in win against Boston.

A rare stoppage of play with about 5:30 left in the second period, the Sharks still lead, both in shots (20-7) and on the scoreboard (1-0).

I think I have the last radio show finally edited and ready for posting for the Lynn Cullen Show. It was a project for a number of reasons. Of course my work schedule had a lot to do with it. What didn't help was that, while I normally would record the show while we were doing it, a power outage at the station killed the computer that was recording the audio, resulting in the computer I was using shutting down. I always ran a backup here at home, Replay Radio, on my computer that would record the webstream feed, but that feed is not nearlty as good as taping the program feed from the studio itself. Plus the brief power outage (we were never off air due to the building's generator) created a gap in the web stream fed as well. Add to that the fact that the webstream was upwards of 20 seconds or more behind the realtime feed and my home feed was just something I would rely on in emergencies only. Well, I guess the emergency feed is better than nothing. Still, I had to transfer the audio from my computer to the one at work, and a one hour mp3 file is not something that can be sent as an email attachment. Instead I had to transfer them to a flash drive, then take the drive to work and reupload them, then find time in my production schedule, which is actually more packed now than it used to be, and edit down the files and post them on my Imeem page.

While I am babbling away, Dany Sabourin is being, well, Dany Sabourin, stopping a few more good scoring chances by the Sharks and keeping the Penguins within a goal as the second period comes to a close. The Penguins get outshot that period 19-5 and should be thankful that the game remains only 1-0.

Okay, I think I fixed some of my typos during that intermission, just 20 minutes of hockey left. Of course it is now 12:15am, which means I am back at work in 4 hrs and 45 minutes. Again I wonder if this was the most intelligent thing I have ever done. Probably not.

The third period is officially underway. A couple of minutes in and both teams are just plodding along, no real scoring opportunities for either team. At that type of pace, one would have to think the team with the lead would have the advantage. That would be the Sharks, as 4 and a half minutes in they have kept the Penguins from tying the score, because they haven't given up a single shot yet here in the third.

The period is now almost 8 minutes old, and still the Penguins don't have a shot here in the third. The defense for both teams has been good, San Jose has only managed a couple of shots, but eventually Pittsburgh is going to have to start taking some chances if they want to have any chance of tying this score up.

San Jose puts some pressure on the Penguins defense, and Sidney Crosby ends up taking a penalty for hooking and it is power play #4 for San Jose, Pittsburgh has still only had one power play, the same one that saw San Jose score short handed.

Patrick Marleau shoots on the power play and hits the cross bar and the Ozclown hockey nation is denied a power play goal.

Pittsburgh continues to do an admirable job killing off penalties, as they kill of their 4th and end up drawing a penalty themselves, so they will get their second power play opportunity of the game, thanks to a hooking call on Ryan Clowe.

Well, that was short lived, as Ruslan Fedotenko takes a two minute penalty for interference and we are playing 4-4 hockey a minute or so, then San Jose will have an abbreviated power play for about one minute.

Remember when I listed some of the guys from San Jose that have offensive talent earlier in this post? Maybe we better add Mike Grier, as he just scored during the 4 on 4, notching his first of the season and San Jose leads 2-0 with 7 minutes remaining. It is not looking good for Pittsburgh, they trail in shots 32-9, their two power plays have resulted in a short handed goal and taking a penalty.

Pittsburgh changes their first line, moving Fedotenko into Dupuis's spot with Malkin and Crosby and the gambit pays off as Fedotenko scores and it is 2-1 San Jose. Of course there is less than 5 minutes remaining, so time is definitely a factor here.

2 and a half remaining and in about a minute or so Pittsburgh will probably end up pulling their goaltender for the extra attacker. That is a shame, because recently the Penguins best player on the ice has been their goaltender.

Matt Cooke gets called for high sticking and San Jose gets power play #6, but worse it is with less than 2 minutes in the game, meaning even if Pittsburgh pulls the goaltender, it would only to be to skate 5 on 5.

Sabourin is pulled but Pittsburgh can't score the equalizer and will take a loss, 2-1. That is usually going to happen when you only register 11 shots in a game. Oh well, I should go do the copy paste thing. See you in school tomorrow everyone.