With the Canes game against the Sabres postponed due to the blizzard conditions in Buffalo, a decent number of Canes fans took to Twitter around game time anyway. With the hash tags of #polarvortexproblems and #Canes flying around, an entire hockey game was created out of thin air. The results were probably better than anything that could have happened in a real game. I am posting 2 accounts of what we will call game “#43 ½: The #polarvortexproblems game.… For this version I will post a text version that uses quite a bit of the material from the Twitter posts, so there is a version that lives even if the Twitter links die. Separately, I am posting a version that is just actual Twitter posts. You can find that HERE. I am the creator of only a tiny portion of the content and more so the secretary/taker of minutes for what went on.
Hopefully I caught a few of the highlights and the general theme. Feel free to ping me here, on email or on Twitter for things I missed and need to add.
So the game telecast started just as it always did. A quick pan around the stands showed a decent crowd despite the weather and bunches of people with messy hair from arriving with winter hats on, but again suggesting that it is possibly just a plastic piece that he puts on for games, John Forslund’s hair was absolutely perfect. In the pregame Tripp elaborated on the proximity of the arena to the hotel and what this could mean for Alexander Semin’s game especially in light of his stunning Olympic snub earlier in the day. The significance of these comments was only known later when Semin played his 1st shift 10 minutes into the 1st period and it was then learned that he was blown into a snow drift walking to the arena and only the rescue effort of buddy Anton Khudobin, a snow plow driver and Pete Friesen and company stuffing him in a glove dryer that made him available that quickly. He made his way to the bench midway through the 1st period still with ice stuck to his face muttering something about the darn KHL players.
The festivities started with Canes GM Jim Rutherford meeting Sabres officials at center ice to thank them for their contributions to the Canes early season success due in large part to former Sabres Nathan Gerbe and Andrej Sekera. At 1 point during the ceremony, it looked like Rutherford was checking each of the Sabres’ representatives’ phones to make sure his phone number was near the top of the list in their queue for future calls for more trades.
The Canes lineup featured Ron Murphy and Jason Peters. Khudobin apparently was not available to start for reasons detailed below. I am not sure how Jason Peters leapt his …brother? in the goalie depth chart. And as best I can tell maybe Ron Murphy and Ryan Murphy were a pairing? Or something like that.
But that is where the camaraderie ended. A few games back, a couple other Twitter regulars and I debated the fear we had when the newly minted Liles/Murphy combination was on the ice with the 1st line that also saw Skinner out there in the defensive zone. We were of course concerned about possible defensive coverage issues. But when this trio found itself on the ice together for the opening faceoff, there were different issues. Trying to set the tone early in a Phil Kessel assault kind of way, after receiving the Canes opening lineup sheet Buffalo decided to go with some combination of John Scott, Steve Ott and newly arrived Zenon Konopka. The small crowd was stunned enough to see Skinner trading punches with Scott, Liles going with Ott and Murphy toe-to-toe with Zenon Konopka. Things really took a faux game turn when Elias Lindholm came out of the stands and over the boards to finish off all 3 Sabres in true “The Outsiders… form. It all ends with Ponyboy, Dally, Darry and Soda exiting through the tunnel mostly unscathed with their hair looking as good as ever and seemingly pleased by the cheering of teenage girls in the arena and on Twitter back in Raleigh. Since Elias Lindholm did not attend practice and was supposed to be rejoining the Canes when they returned to Raleigh, it is not yet clear whether he will miss more games because of playing hooky with the team or from the NHL for coming over the boards in a game he was not even playing in to be the 3rd man in on 3 fights.
While the game started in pure Buffalo fashion, hockey did ensue. After serving a couple misconducts, Jeff Skinner returned to the game and ultimately scored not 1 but 2 hat tricks. Alexander Semin was seen sorting through the assortment to collect a couple good winter hats for his walk back to the hotel after the game. It is real hard to count goals on Twitter when anyone with an account and the ability to type #polarvortexproblems can declare 1 just because they want to, but best estimate is that former Sabres Sekera and Gerbe each notched between 2 and 5 goals each in their homecoming.
The 1st intermission featured a video of Sekera’s summer interview about “everything being better than Buffalo… which he referred to the weather. People in the seats were nodding. Then the video screen showed highlights of the Canes/Sabres 2006 Eastern Conference Finals series. I have no idea how he got there, but Kevyn Adams was right there on the empty Canes bench tapping his stick on the boards.
The 2nd period started to look a bit more like a regular hockey game. Nathan Gerbe ran John Scott in the neutral zone and left him doubled over the boards and seemingly knocked out. Another fracas nearly broke out, but the Canes thought better of it. Remember that “The Outsiders… gang was still back in the locker room serving out their couple 10-minute misconducts while playing Xbox and drinking Monster energy drinks to get revved up for the 2nd half of the game. The game was halted briefly while various combinations of players, officials and a Zamboni tried to move Scott from the position. Eventually it was determined that he had already played his 3-4 minutes of ice time, been in a fight and had another mini-altercation and was therefore done for the night anyway. Buffalo agreed that they would just boost each other over him onto the ice for line changes on that 2/3 section of the bench as long as the Canes would promise not to take advantage with odd man rushes. Hockey (sort of) resumed and went on for quite a while with John Scott doubled over the Sabres bench boards.
Just when things seemed to be calming down a bit, the Sabres had to go and play 1 of those Olympian tribute videos during a TV timeout. This did not go down with Alexander Semin whose face had finally thawed out from the walk to the arena. 3 minutes and a few punches later, Justin Faulk awkwardly pulled Canes teammate Alexander Semin off his Team USA teammate and goalie.
And despite the challenging weather and the bizarre hockey game in front of them, the Canes broadcasting crew stayed right on track. The highlight was when Malhotra went in for a defensive zone draw and turned to start talking to goalie Anton Khudobin (who entered for Jason Peters to start the 2nd period). In the nearly empty arena because of the weather, Khudobin impolitely told Malhotra in Russian clearly audible to Tripp that he was sick of being told to be ready when Malhotra was taking a defensive zone draw on his backhand. Thrown off by the reversal of roles here, Tripp, on the fly, managed to throw out a food reference IN Russian, mention that Arturs Irbe used to love that dish and then sum it all up by saying that he as a former goalie could understand why.
And John Forslund did not gasp, did not respond, and did not even pause. He just trudged forward with his play by play.
To be honest, I thought Tripp seemed off his game a bit after the “Malhotra goalie warning… mishap and struggled through the rest of the 2nd period. He was quiet and only able to get out partial sentences.
And still John Forslund pushed forward with the play by play. Best guess is that despite the verbal lapse, Tripp was still able to rub John’s back to keep him going.
But early in the 3rd period Tripp caught a break when an early icing violation fed him the opportunity to get back in the game, almost like a 5-on-3 power play when you are down by 2 goals. Tripp spent easily the next 10 minutes debating whether the coach should or should not use his time out for the icing even as 5 goals were scored, 2 fights happened and various other hockey happened.
By the midway point of the 3rd period, the Canes with something like 15 goals all scored by Skinner (despite only playing about 10 minutes because of his misconduct penalties and Xbox time welcoming back buddy Elias Lindholm), Sekera and Gerbe had taken control of the game. Without much action in net, by the midway point of the 3rd period Anton Khudobin was racing a remote-controlled Lego car around and around his net. One by one the players seemed to take notice until pretty soon everyone was gathered in the Canes defensive zone watching Khudobin driving the car. In the middle of it all, Alexander Semin and Eric Staal huddled to chat before Eric finally emerged to ask Khudobin if it was possible to build 1 of those in about 2 ½ weeks. This after absolutely no reaction to the initial Khudobin interview comments about the Lego car he built with too much time on his hands during a layoff – go figure.
And somehow, John Forslund just continued to do play by play at the highest level. A figure 8 around 2 players garnered a “none better.… Doing a wheelie up off the ice into John Scott’s backside garnered a “Hey hey whadya say!… And so on.
When it was all said and done, the Canes had a lopsided win. The 3 stars (I think) were Skinner, Gerbe and Sekera though I have no idea how the Twitter media overlooked Elias Lindholm’s heroics. Mike Maniscalco claimed to have too much of a stomach ache to do the Aftermath after Tripp's Russian language food reference though many suspected that not even he could muster the courage to face his loyal callers after this one. John Scott spent the night on the bench. The Canes headed back to the hotel happy. With Elias Lindholm back in town, Skinner, Murphy and he made a pinky promise to do an all-night sleepover and hope for a snow day and no practice tomorrow. The rest of the Canes made it back to the hotel safely but had to go back out to find Alexander Semin. John Forslund stayed back saying his hair could only do so much in 1 night and needed to be ready for Thursday, and Tripp had Rosetta Stone Russian work to do.
And the Twitter Caniacs made the best of a bad situation with no hockey and found a new way to get through an NHL postponement. Here is hoping that the Canes continue their winning ways on Thursday and that we do not need to manufacture an entire playoff run like this.
For anyone who does not watch the Canes regularly and does not get parts of this, much of it is inside joke type of stuff from Canes broadcasts and the broadcasters. If anyone cares to catch up, just holler in the comments.
Thanks to everyone on Twitter for the fun tonight and the free material for my blog.
Twitter=@CarolinaMatt63
Go Canes! Matt on Google+