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

* Thanks, Kevin Lowe!

Monday, September 24, 2007

BoNY made me do it: Season Previews


Now that the Kings have introduced Bailey the hard-luck lion ("Seriously, I have to root for the Kings?!"), I thought I'd make a little all-nature BoC logo based on the teams' mascots. It got me thinking about what it would be like if there really were a three-way fight to the death among these three animals in nature. Sure, a lot of people would take the shark or the lion over the duck, but really, a lot would depend on location: the duck would outlast the lion in open waters and it would outlast the shark on dry land. And if you dropped them out of a plane, I like the duck's chances.

Regardless of what you think of the Kings' new mascot, you still gotta like the choice of a lion better than this option.

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Anyway, Rudy and I both got enlisted by Steve from Battle of New York to do another set of season previews for SportsFan Magazine, this time in the form of answering questions. It's actually been about a month since those answers were submitted, but fortunately nobody's made any preview-altering decisions about retirement since then. So here's Sleek answering 15 questions about the Ducks, and Rudy answering the same set for the Kings.

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There's not too much to report on the last few days of the Ducks' preseason--I'm not a guy who takes too much hope or dismay out of preseason results. Still, two things worth noting:

1. In the last preseason game against the half-roster Canucks, Coach Carlyle made an interesting lineup change: playing Getzlaf and Perry on separate lines. It's an intriguing possibility that I hadn't really considered until now, and at first blush I gotta say it probably makes sense. Perry played on a top line with McDonald and Kunitz, while Getzlaf killed on a line with Bertuzzi and Bobby Ryan.

2. Swiss goaltender Jonas Hiller "the Killer" played well enough through camp to earn a seat on a plane to London, but it's unclear whether he will get any playing time in the games against the Kings. If he doesn't, that will mean that the Ducks will have managed a pretty neat trick: going to play two NHL games in Europe and not playing any European players.

Well, the next game counts! Go Ducks.

6 comments:

The Puck Stops Here said...

When you talk about no Europeans playing in the games in Europe for the Ducks doesn't that assume Giguere plays both games - which is unlikely given his recovery from his hernia operation? Thus Ilya Bryzgalov (Russia is Europe - he's not from Asia is he?) or Jonas Hiller will play and quite possible both. Are they not both Europeans?

Earl Sleek said...

Giguere won't be playing either game, but I wasn't counting Russians (Bryzgalov or Kondratiev) as Europeans. I'm probably wrong technically, but I think the overall point still is worth mentioning.

A game in London, England, starring a team that will play zero Finns, zero Swedes, zero Czechs, zero Slovaks, and zero Germans. I can't think of another NHL team where this would be true.

Anonymous said...

rudy your wrong...you were funny once again (although you should have ripped cloutier more)...sleek held back...yo sleek...give us the the proposed line-up for game one...along with defensemen

Earl Sleek said...

sleek held back...yo sleek...give us the the proposed line-up for game one...along with defensemen

Well, it was a month ago when retirement was up in the air, so I don't know what kind of lineup I would have proposed. Even still, I'm not sure what Anaheim's blueline pairs will be, but here's a guess at the G1 lineup:

Kunitz - McDonald - Perry
Bertuzzi - Getzlaf - Ryan
Moen - Marchant - Niedermayer
May - Mowers - Parros

Pronger - Kondratiev
Beauchemin - Hnidy
O'Donnell - Huskins

Bryzgalov
Hiller

I could go a lot of ways when it comes to blueline pairs, though. I put Drats with Pronger mostly so he could be babysat.

Anonymous said...

i think caryle will do what he always does...stack the top 4 then use the bottom too only 5 minutes a game...so somthing like this

pronger-odonnell
Beauchemin-dipeinta
Kondratiev-Huskins

the forwards are what i thought too...

Earl Sleek said...

Like I said, I'm open to blueline interpretation, but in no way would I say that putting Dipenta in the top two pairings constitutes "stacking the top 4". :)

Other than that description, though, your six-man guess is as good as mine.