In Your Face!

I know Sean Avery would love to contribute 4 points every night, but what better game to actually deliver? It's like Avery gave every detractor of his Dallas debacle a big ole cockslap across the face. Modano, Morrow, Turco, even Gary Bettman. I'm not sure our commissioner even looks at NHL.com on a regular basis, but if he takes a peek today he'll see his nemesis #16 in red,white and blue heading up the 3 stars of the night. Sweet. And Sean did it in style basically constructing every goal whether off his blade or not. Plus he was all up in Dallas' faces AND took a ten minute misconduct. I'm thankful not only for the two points but for finally seeing that post-game interview I've been waiting all season for (Thanks Stan!). I wish MSG had covered a bit of the Stars post-game comments because they once again proved to have a real red state mentality that forces me to look down on them like the elitist liberal I am. Even coach Marc Crawford who had nothing to do with Dallas last year was alarmingly closed-minded saying, “He had no impact on our guys’ lack of execution. That would be giving him far too much credit. Give him credit on fashion.” Thank Marc, I will. Avery looks pretty damn fine, especially with his little hair growing in, but where were his glasses? Now while I'd love to see that consistency that Avery was talking about come to fruition right away, I'd really dig a repeat of this game against his other favorite goalie Martan on Tuesday.

It's been a great couple of Hockey days back to back. I'm still basking in the glow of Team USA's gold medal in the Barely Legal Championships. I'm crazy for this team and maybe you are too, so here's clip of their final rally chant.

I think that's #9 Philip McRae current London Knight and future St. Louis Blue leading the charge, or maybe that's Kristo. No denying that's Kreider in the foreground lending his sizable support. Kreider's given a verbal commitment to BC next year, but I'm looking forward to 2011 when hopefully both he and Stepan will be celebrating at the Garden on a regular basis.

Things must be going too well in hockey reality so the struggle I've become accustomed to has visited my sleep state. I had my very first Call Up dream two nights ago. Despite my protests that I can barely skate the Rangers "needed me" and I foolishly complied. Here's where the dream takes a bad turn. Now I'm not only panicked to take the ice when I'm unable to stop on skates without falling down Prucha style, but I don't even get access to the locker room. Somehow my subconscious thought it was a great idea to stage this dream-turned-nightmare in some rigged up janitor's closet where I'm given an extremely oversized Poncho with a Rangers' logo on it because the Jersey I sported to game has Henrik's name on the back. Didn't even conjur a single player striding by in a towel to sweeten my anxiety. What kind of fucked up message is my brain sending me? I much prefer the waking dream I had New Year's Eve in which my boys were forced to make out with each other because they were still stuck in the Raleigh locker room come midnight. Maybe I'll score in my next dream.