Takes and trash talk from both ALL sides of the NHL's most obscure PATHETIC* rivalry

* Thanks, Kevin Lowe!

Monday, November 06, 2006

Ducks Game Day: Battle of the Birds

Pittsburgh Penguins (7-4-0, 8th in East) at Anaheim Ducks (10-0-4, 1st in West)

Ladies, make sure you leave a can of pepper spray in the shower, ‘cause Sidney Crosby’s comin’ to town, and he has lost all sense of personal space. He and the rest of Pittsburgh’s baby geniuses and their 4-1 road record are comin’ to Honda Center to try to take two points from stingy Anaheim.

Key stat: This will be Anaheim’s 11th game out of 15 playing against an opponent who missed last year’s playoffs. Thus far the Ducks are 8-0-2 in this scenario, outscoring opponents 32-20.

Crazily enough, this is Pittsburgh’s first [edit: second] game against Anaheim since December 15, 2002, in a game that featured four current Ducks and zero current Penguins. J.S. Giguere stopped 19 shots and Andy McDonald had two goals in a 5-0 win. Stan Chistov played for Anaheim and Ian Moran played for Pittsburgh (though neither of them has suited up for Anaheim yet this year).

As such, Anaheim and Pittsburgh don’t have too much history to draw on, except on the matter of the 2005 draft, where down to the wire Pittsburgh won the Crosby-lottery-ball pick ahead of Anaheim. At any rate, the team’s leading scorers and probably its featured matchup:

Sidney Crosby (18 pts. in 11 games) and Evgeni Malkin (11 pts. in 7 games).
Chris Pronger (13 pts. in 14 games) and Scott Niedermayer (12 pts. in 14 games).

Prediction: 4-2 Anaheim. Penner, Perry, Pronger, and Pahlsson put pucks past the Pittsburgh Penguins’ poor phenom.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

AHAHAHAHAH what alliteration! I just ahd to applaud. "Penner, Perry, Pronger, and Pahlsson put pucks past the Pittsburgh Penguins’ poor phenom." The only "p" that doesn't match in sound is in phenom... but no matter, it was funny away. I think this game will be heavy on the offense. I call 6-5 Anaheim.

Anonymous said...

Aww, finny beat me. I was just going to ask if your predictions were really predictions, or just something to show off your mad alliteration skills. Nice pic of Cobblepot, by the way. I miss that show.

Earl Sleek said...

I was just going to ask if your predictions were really predictions, or just something to show off your mad alliteration skills.

Well, I have no history of actually predicting future events with any real accuracy, so I suppose they can be filed under "hopes and dreams".

Generally, I put very little thought into who scores, except generally Pahlsson will always be in there. Alliteration just lent itself to this one in particular.

Anonymous said...

Tonight's game should be amazing. I can't wait. I'm a huge Ducks fan, but I feel the Penguins might be the team to make the Ducks loose in regulation. Let's hope not. My Ducks winning prediction is 5-4. (Hopefully!)

VeryProudofYa said...

I was frowning at selanne all night. With his shot off the post, his wiff on the one timer, getting his stick smacked away on a breakaway, and finally missed on a breakaway.

But finally, oh finally, he put one in.

A couple side notes, both Chistov and Moran got in on the action. Mayhap you gave them a positive jinx.

And after playing California's two good teams, the mighty malkin leaves with but a single assist to his credit. Good show, water animals.

Anonymous said...

Pepperspray in the shower! Earl between your cartoons and one-liners, you always make me giggle!

VeryProudofYa said...

"malkin is better than your whole team dumbass."


..yeah, because it was said otherwise.

I was merely pointing out that Malkin was wasn't quite as prolific against teams that weren't as soft as the rest of the pens schedule thus far.