First thing you have to know right off the bat is that I have slept maybe 2 hours in the last 3 or so days. So perhaps tonight you can give old Norte a little leeway on the syntax and grammar of my post (even more than usual.) The past few days have been a roller coaster of emotion that have included both the most wonderful memories of my life and some that were so terrible that at one point I fainted into some shrubbery.
Due to these some of these very circumstances I wasn't able to watch the first game of the season tonight, which is a shame because I love watching the first game of the season. Even though anyone who knows me knows that I feel pre-season games are akin to brushing your teeth with your finger.
This year I wanted to break with tradition, my hockey tradition, and rebuild too. So what I really wanted to do, this year, was base my opinion, the entire judgment of the season, on tonight's game. If only to say once that Finger looked like a monster out there or that Luke Schenn was a minute eater and a warhorse. Or that the powerplay has a new quarterback in Van Ryn and his Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) endorsed wrists.
That Colaiacovo didn't get you-know-what out there and that tonight when Hollweg got into his first Toronto Maple Leaf fight: when Andrew Peter's told him he was going to bust him up..., that Hollweg told him to ...go for it.
And Robbie Earl, the Leafs winner for most Caribbean sounding name award three years running (nowhere near the record set by 1970's Leaf tough guy Livingston Barrington) proving why the team chose him over anyone else in the 6th round.
Not to mention Boyd Devereaux, Matt Stajan, Jiri Tlusty, Ian White, Mark Bell or Ben Ondrus.
And Nikolai Kulemin looking mean in the corners, in the area I am officially calling Kulemin's Korner, begins to make everyone wonder how to spell Kulemin.
And Dominic Moore, the pre-season's leading scorer, scoring in the third to establish a three goal margin. It was the best two goals that Dominic Moore has scored on Jhonas Enroth to establish a three goal margin in a third period all year, and that's something.
Coach Ron Wilson's new program of defensive and disciplined hockey already establishing itself early with the meager 4 goals and a very stingy 29 shots the team allowed.
And kudos to the guys for 300 shots allowed, as initiation, in the 2nd on Pogge...can I hear a huzzah?
Ultimately the whole point of this would be that the referees were #36 Dean Morton and #33 Kevin Pollack and the linesman were #50 Scott Cherrey and #71 Brad Kovachik.
