Helene St. James and George Sipple have a little blurb in today’s Wings notebook about the octopus twirling ban (otherwise known as the “Poile Rule“):
The Wings have been told rules are loosening up regarding twirling the octopus, so maybe, just maybe, Al Sobotka will get to make his moves again this round. The NHL threatened him with a $10,000 fine if he did so because debris comes off the slimy creatures and embeds itself in the ice.
If that’s true, I’m thrilled, but still mystified as to the reasoning behind the rule in the first place. The League has itself a bit of a situation here: Keep the rule in effect and look stupid. Or, relax the rule and look stupid for not standing behind whatever reasoning they had for instituting it.
Kukla’s Korner has the transcript of the Johan Franzen, Nick Lidstrom, and Chris Osgood conference call here. I like Osgood’s comments about the six-day layoff, but the highlight of the the call comes from Johan Franzen:
Yeah, records, I don’t want to talk about the records. I just want to win eight more games this season.
Kukla’s also has the transcript from the Ken Holland and Mike Babcock call. The highlight of this one is Babcock’s commentary on Nik Kronwall, which included this gem:
But the dimension that makes him different than Rafi and Nick is he’s out there hunting you down. He’s looking for you. He’s going to get somebody in this series, I guarantee it.
Bruce MacLeod has a look at Marty Turco’s puck handling ability here.
It’s certainly going to be a challenge for the Wings and one players like Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg are no doubt looking forward to facing. Marty will have to be careful where he puts the puck when those two are on the ice.
Ansar Khan reports that Ken Holland has not heard anything new on Fabian Brunnstrom, though a report out of Toronto indicated he’s going to make a decision tomorrow.
Also, the Maple Leafs, who just fired their head coach, have a press conference scheduled for 3:00 PM ET today. James Mirtle suggests that it’s possible they could be making an announcement that they have signed the Swede.
Greg Wyshynski asked me to do a eulogy for the Avs over at the Yahoo! NHL Experts Blog. And here it is.
The San Jose Sharks defeated the Dallas Stars 3-2 in overtime last night to stay alive in their series. They play again on Sunday, so we’ll have to wait at least until then to know who the Wings will play in the Conference Finals.
Also, the Wings are hoping the third round will start on Thursday so they can rest and recover from various aches and pains. Just so long as they pick up where they left off.
James Mirtle is taking a cautious approach to all the Fabian Brunnstrom hype.
It was worse than we knew.
Bruce MacLeod has a brief post detailing his impressions of Fabian Brunnstrom, who he just met. It sounds like he may not be as full of himself as his demand to be made a top six forward suggests.
