Players Not Named McCabe Can't Do Much Worse Than That

Danno covered last night's game fairly well, but I have a couple of comments of my own:

Watching the Leafs' poor powerplay face the Carolina's league-worst penalty kill was painful. It was one big, floppy cock. Impotent versus impotent. The math team versus the chess team in a cage match. The original cast of The View in a hot body contest. You get the point. Technically, the Leafs did get a powerplay goal last night, but it was hardly thanks to their PP efficiency. Tomas Kaberle brought the puck up the ice, dumped it in, chased it down, and scored, all with very little help. It wasn't a powerplay so much as a Kaberle play.

Lost in the dramatic fashion with which the game was lost was that the Leafs failed to hold another third period lead. They'll set some record for late-game futility if they keep it up.

Hal Gill and Pavel Kubina really stepped up in Bryan McCabe's absense. If I didn't know better, I'd have assumed I was watching two of the top defensemen in the league last night. Very well done. 'Tis too bad the game winning goal went off Kubina's stick in OT. A great (and short) article on McCabe came from Ken Campbell at The Hockey News yesterday, basically killing any momentum the Bryan-McCabe-has-played-very-well-lately bandwagon had.

The Leafs dominated the Hurricanes for the majority of the game. Then, Poni's ridiculous 'McCabe' gave away all momentum to the home team. They responded. Their fans responded. The Leafs lost.

Alexei Fucking Ponikarovsky
What is all this talk of goat horns? Both Mike Zeisberger at The Sun and Mark Zwolinski at The Star included some reference to goat horns when describing last night's game, in fairly obvious references to a scapegoat. Here's the thing: a scapegoat is someone punished for wrongs done by others. Not someone that single-handedly fucks everything up.

Alex Ponikarovsky isn't the scapegoat for the loss last night. He was the catalyst for the loss. Calling him a scapegoat means insinuating that he is taking the blame for a collective poor effort. That's a ridiculous way to describe the game. Poni was the only reason they lost. Not only did he Patrik Stefan the puck, he took a brutal, offensive zone penalty in overtime. Paul Maurice put Poni back on the ice in overtime, after his third period mistake - ostensibly to let him make up for his previous gaffe - and he took the opportunity and shit on it. Not even a regular shit, either; the kind of shit one would take after spending fours hours at a $1.99 expired seafood buffet.

Damien Cox constantly berates Poni for taking too many offensive zone penalties, and if he weren't on vacation (at a bath house somewhere, no doubt), I'm sure he'd point it out. In his lieu, I'll do it. Poni, you tripped Tim Gleason. Tim Fucking Gleason. The guy with 0 goals so far this year. The guy that never plays the powerplay. In short, you tripped the player least likely to have an offensive impact. Nicely fucking done. See you Thursday night in Tampa Bay. If you don't score a hat trick, I'm going to set your house on fire.