Canucks and Beyond

From Randy Sportak at the Calgary Sun:

The tag—‘Jovo Jr.’—came at Kevin Bieksa out of the blue.
Humbled him, too.
But the Vancouver Canucks second-year defenceman is deserving of the accolades starting to come his way. He’s become the team’s breakout player and is earning heady praise, including comparisons to the now-departed Ed Jovanovski.
“It’s a compliment for me, right?” said Bieksa, who faced the Calgary Flames last night at the ‘Dome. “Jovo has accomplished a lot in his career, the points he’s put up, gold medals, et cetera, but I don’t think you can compare me to him yet.”

Really? Jovo Jr? I hadn’t heard that one yet.

This week’s hockey talk and links to the fan writers of the game.

Apparently there’s a retirement party happening in the Central Division tonight, and it may even require a “to do” list if you’re a Wings’ fan. There was also another—rather less discussed—ceremony this past week for a player milestone that deserves its own share of attention. A class guy, is Rod Brind’Amour.

This week’s quotes from the world of hockey. Instead of the usual random selection of quotes from different players, I took a bit of a short-cut today—giving WAY too many column inches to Chris Chelios—but sometimes you gotta give Wings’ fans the love.

“I think you look tougher, more grizzled, without teeth. My kids tell me the same thing. If they’re not behaving around the house, I’ll take the teeth out and keep `em in line.”

Minnesota Wild’s Wes Walz doesn’t wear a mouth guard, but finds it helps his parenting skills.

By Alanah

We all depend on the mainstream hockey media to provide their usually-excellent insider coverage, but there are at least three big things I love about hockey blogs and bloggers:

(1) they do it all for the love of the game,
(2) they get to voice some insanely-entertaining opinions that the mainstream media can only dream of writing, and
(3) they cover every aspect of the NHL and don’t just get stuck on the ‘talking points’.

I hope you enjoy this week’s selections—some analyses, some rants and some laughs.

The WJC start December 26 in Sweden. TSN will be broadcasting all the Canadian games (plus three Team USA games) via broadband, although there is some uncertainty whether or not non-Canadians will be able to access them live online. (Canadian IPs only? Let us know, TSN.) The games are being broadcast live, then available on demand till January 8th.

Broadband schedule can be found here.
Schedule for all tournament games is here.
Official World Junior Championships 2007 website.

Updated Jan. 3/07:
More on watching the WJC here.

Updated Jan. 5/07:
More on the WJC - Medal Games

Philadelphia figures that the shame of being a Flyers’ fan isn’t quite enough. To truly suffer, they’re asking a little bit more of their overburdened fanbase:

By Alanah D McGinley

Welcome to the first edition of Hockey Speak: Quotes & Quips, a somewhat-random collection of 10 oddball, profound or otherwise interesting quotes from the world of hockey. This feature will appear every Thursday and hopefully provide y’all with a bit of entertainment.

Note: Feel free to submit quotes you think would be interesting additions each week. I’m liable to miss a lot of good stuff without a bit of help…

“If he saw a house that cost $400,000, he figured he needed to pay $400,000 on the spot. It’s been tough trying to explain that he doesn’t need that much money right away.”

Nashville Predators Darcy Hordichuk teaches rookie teammate Alexander Radulov that living life buried under the norms of Western-style mortgage debt is good. The Tennessean’s John Glennon commented, “It seems Radulov believed asking prices were more like price tags.” (Ummm, how is $400,000 not a price tag? Maybe Radulov should give up hockey and become a North American financial counselor to the rest of us.)