Meditations on a Loss

This is great. It's only a game into the regular season and we already get to second guess Paul Maurice. Raycroft over Toskala? Yeah? For real? Oh this is just the start. Toskala will start game two, and Ottawa will win, because they're Ottawa, and everyone will be all, Toskala over Raycroft? Yeah? For real? This is going to be a fun season, I can tell.

The Leafs were competitive, especially during the second, but Ottawa ramped it up in the third and Heatley, who I really thought was heading to free agency next season, rewarded the team that had rewarded him so handsomely with a pair of goals. He's averaging almost a goal per game when he faces Toronto. Raycroft was ok, and I don't want to blame the loss on him. How about a powerplay that couldn't score? And how about Wade Redden, who looked like he had a personal vendetta against Toronto's fourth line. I like this side of Redden. Kudos to the Leafs for getting Ottawa to sink to that level. Or it might just be Mighty Duck syndrome. Everybody wants the fighting majors these days.

Andy the Woz was solid, having to go one on one with Heatley a couple times. Antropov is gonna have one of those good seasons. I'll keep saying it. I made fun of Matt Stajan yesterday, and then he scored. Hey Matt, your face is stupid.

Oh and in "hey he's just noticing this now?" news, Pierre Maguire is not very good at his job. There is no law of commentating that states that the quality of commentating increases proportional to the number of decibels you can hit. In fact it's probably the reverse. Gord Miller is also pretty blah. And poor Dave Randorf, I associate his voice with B-grade world championships and Spengler Cups. I can't take the guy seriously. While I'm criticizing TSN, Kanye is not the right musical artist to be sponsoring four middle aged white guys talking about hockey. It only leads to Bob MacKenzie namedropping Fiddy, and this is not something anyone needs to hear, ever.

Jason