Hockeybird.com: Q: What's worse than a tease?

Q: What's worse than a tease?

Sunday - October 20, 2002

A: Expecting nothing, and getting it.

Welcome back Wolf*Pack fans. Yes, it’s a whole new team, with new coaching staff, and new mandate from the Rangers, but they still are the same. Same crap, different year.

After 4 games, the Pack is 2 and 2. Nice of them to lose the two games in CT, including our home opener. They lost Friday night in Bridgeport – coach McGill’s comments in the papers the next day basically read ‘We suck. Our special teams suck. Our forwards suck too. Even our defense sucks!’ Then, to make sure they had made the point, they came out and did the exact same thing on home ice on Saturday night. The only saving grace was that Derek Armstrong got called up by LA the night before, meaning that we didn’t have to have our former MVP contribute to the embarrassment.

I’m still hoarse from screaming at our team, and recovering from the attempt to forget the game afterwards, so this will be short. I give you my thoughts on the Pack, one game in….

Pyrotechnics must do wonders for the ice, don’t you think? The players skated out one at a time, through the columns of flame. Injured players stepped out onto the bench from the runway, and were spotlighted there. Creepy new feature is that the jumbotron shows not their still shot from the program, but a short video of them posing – it looks like a photo until you realize they are breathing, giggling, bobbing their head to music you can’t hear. McGill sat there perfectly still for a few seconds, then ‘looked’ at where his name appeared on the screen. Freaked me out.

Billy Tibbets got booed, as did GM Al Coates for signing him. And yes, it seems he is signed, as he was introduced as a member of the team. I thought I saw in the paper a few weeks back that he had been given his medical clearance, so perhaps he is being held back from playing in hopes that the fans will forget how angry they were about his try out with the team. Not likely, given the reported number of people who called the head office demanding their money back if he skates in the blue, red and silver.

Johan Holmqvist is still out, will be for a couple more weeks with a hairline fracture in his glove hand. Last year it was concussions that did in the organization’s goalies, this year we are moving on to limbs. Other injuries at the moment include the shoulders of Matt Kinch and Fedor Tjutin, Garth Murray’s groin/abdomen, and Tibbets’s… leg. I suggest a CAT scan for Al Coates and also for Nick Fotiu, who apparently didn’t take his failure to rein in the wild one in Pittsburgh to heart and begged for another chance to tame him here in Hartford. I understand that Nick is a god in Hartford and the organization, but this is NOT a good way to build his legacy.

Scott Meyer had a great game, somewhat surprising, because he looked very shaky in warm-ups. He played the entire zone, since none of the five (more on that later) defensemen would chase the puck for him. In the process, he got run a number of times (including more than once in his own crease) and not a single time did a teammate stick up for him. We’re used to seeing our captain get manhandled every game without protection, but our goalie? Unacceptable. When Scotty punched a guy in the face with his glove for getting too close, the player whined to the ref about it – who just laughed at him and skated away.

The coach went with 12 forwards and 5 defensemen. We had other, healthy dmen in the house, who didn’t play. Any one have ANY justification for this? Particularly since of that group, Mike Mottau is one, so actually we had 13 forwards and 4 defensemen.

To be fair, Mike has apparently had his leash shortened. Instead of ending up behind the other team’s net, he now turns around at the face off dot in the other end and heads back to the red line. Perhaps McGill or Fotiu installed an ‘invisible fence’ there? That would mean that Mottau would now have to wear an ankle bracelet for that to be effective. Hey – he and Tibbets would match!

Mottau did score one of the two goals. Rico Fata scored the other, as part of the ongoing ‘Rico Fata Show’. Don’t worry, it’s not coming to MSG any time soon, you should have plenty of time to catch it in Hartford.

Tomas Kloucek continues to deliver powerful, crushing hits. To deal with his feelings about being sent down, he took out his anger on the former NHL players that fill the Manchester (LA affiliate) roster. At least one player left the ice for repairs, bleeding copiously from a damaged nose. Interestingly, he didn’t take a single penalty on a hit, all were squeaky clean. However, he DID have a number of other penalties. Tomas is not as strong with the puck as he was in the past, looking more tentative than before. The reunion of Kloucek and Mottau from their glory days on the Calder Cup team of 2000 could be a good thing for both. Big, punishing stay at home dman backing up the puck-carrying offensive dman - too bad that doesn’t seem to be part of the ‘Ranger system’ that we must follow.

Garrett Burnett IS Christian Gosselin all over again, just more popular with the puck bunnies. He had us in hysterics during warm-ups as he flexed, did pushups on the ice, and stretched right in front of us, then lost his 3rd fight in two nights. The Gosselin nickname ‘Everlast’ (as in the punching bag) has already been pinned on him. My prediction is that he will be gone by Christmas, possibly sooner after newly acquired Gordie Dwyer went out and showed him how it is done last night.

The high scoring line of Layne Ulmer, Nils Ekman and David Inman was broken up, and since then the latter two haven’t been that noticeable, and Ulmer has been outright horrible. *sigh*. Back to Charlotte for Layne.

Benoit Dusablon continues to go about playing quiet, solid hockey.

Joel Bouchard generally plays a smart game, although dropping inexplicably to the ice during the kill (while everyone was standing still – including the shooter) was odd. No hugging observed this time, but then again we didn’t score much either.

Patrick Aufiero chases the puck all over the defensive zone. Looks like the lab puppy I took for a walk today from the shelter. Back and forth, up and down… doesn’t he get TIRED? Too bad he never comes up with the puck this way.

Bobby Andrews and John Tripp are both trying to make themselves noticed by hitting people. It’s not working.

Dean Arsene hits people. When Rico got himself into trouble by bumping the other team’s goalie (they protect theirs, you know), Dean came flying in from the other end of the ice and jumped the guy who had reacted to Rico first. I saw that Tomas had his guy in a headlock, just waiting for things to settle down. That’s a nasty pairing, isn’t it?

There is a prize for anyone who catches the Pack successfully completing more than 2 passes in a row.

We didn’t used to play a perimeter power play on EVERY single one, but now we do. We wasted an entire 7 minute power play last night, and if we came away with more than 2 shots, I’ll be shocked. The team got booed off the ice at the end of power play, the end of the period, and the end of the game.