ShortHanded

I love the coaches, but my other problem would be that they refused to change the lines earlier to tinker for more goals / chemistry from the forwards. As I've said (and others have said) in other threads, even when we were winning, we weren't getting enough goals and some of the lines were doing HORRIBLY (2nd line obviously). I think that it would have been good to switch them up earlier, instead of waiting until we were mired in a slump, and see if we could have found suitable combinations with better chemistry before.

Except the first line ISN'T producing or really playing well right now. And I'd have to say that I think it's time to break up the third if it means improvements for the rest of the team too...

So they're expecting Bonk to be able to play then?

SWEET... Congrats to our Golden Boys, and to Price specifically!

Integration is SOOOO Much cooler than assimilation. Then everybody takes the good from everybody, and it's not just like "you non-americans, become americans" or "you non-canadians, become canadians", know what I mean? I know what you mean about losing the language. I'm really trying to improve my arabic, because if I don't use it, I'm sure it'll be gone and I won't be able to teach it to my kids... So I use it when I can, and I think the more languages, and the more diverse experiences you have, it's better for you, and it's not like you're just doing everyone aroudn you a favour by being "tolerant" of them, you're doing yourself a favour too, by accepting to learn from multiple sources, and realizing that wisdom comes from everywhere. otherwise, you stay so self-centred, and you become almost insulated in your thinking, and you miss all the amazing innovations out there that you refused to look at just because they weren't like you. It becomes your loss more than anyone elses.

Whew, relief. I'm the kind of person who could easily have a heart-attack during these kinds of games... VERY STRESSED OUT.

Don't, any assumptions of superiority will curse us!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! Price HAS to be amazing now! Why do we have to make it so HARD :?-

Let's just hang on for the 8 minutes that are left. PLEASE... we are so close now.

Wow, that is quite the story about your grandparents. My goodness, I can only imagine what they went through. I've heard about the "Nazi" attitude before and it's incredibly unfair. It's like calling Iraqis terrorists when a) they had NOTHING to do with 9-11 in the first place and bush's screwed up logic that sent him there to protect the states from another 9-11, and B) they are most likely the people who've suffered the most from terrorism and the horrors of a brutal regime. I've heard before that a lot of people with the last name "Miller" were originally Germans called "Muller / Mueller" and changed it to sound more "English" so they wouldn't get in trouble. there's also a small town in Ontario Canada called Kitchener, but before the World Wars, it was called "New Berlin" and had a huge german population. Of course they changed the name to avoid persecution / prejudism. And then there's the story about the Japanese Canadians, who were interned during hte second world war for being suspected spies... disgusting, absolutely disgusting. ... and we teach these things at school and talk about how bad they are, but then we continue to apply racial profiling today, as if it's somehow different than it was in the 40's... Do you know Maher Arar? The canadian syrian who was taken from an airport in NY on a transit and sent to Syria for a Year and tortured into falsely confessing he was a terrorist? That guy used to pray at the same mosque as I did. His wife is a friend of mine. His kids are adorable, and he's SO NORMAL! But if you're 'different', or if you have a beard, or your name is Mohamed or Ali or Omar you're basically an automatic threat to the West and their way of life in some people's minds... My dad is a frequent flyer, and he's very "arab looking" and has a nice little beard, and after 9-11, he was the "random" security check on every leg he flew on for at least 6 or 7 months, and that's like 60 or 70 legs becuase my dad flies so often... He was always very cooperative, and he took it with a smile, but don't tell me that's random... My dad is the most gentle man I know too. He's like a big teddy bear; and he treats my mother and my sisters and I like royalty, and in fact so do all my sister's husbands, and they're all "stereotypical Arab men" if you just look at them and make assumptions. My sister was working at a coffee shop while she was a student, and one woman who came in regularly once asked her "You always seem so happy and you're smiling, and I can't understand it, because doesn't your father treat you badly, and doesn't he force you to wear that on your head, and hit you?" and my sister explained to her that no one beat her, or forced her to wear anything... it was amazing... but the woman was seriously just repeating what she's been fed agian and again on the news. I'm not denying that there are abusive Muslim men, but please, there are abusive non-muslim men too. It's not something you can correlate at all. When Timothy McVeigh bombed the Federal building in Oklahoma, they didn't go on and on about his religion. In fact, they didn't even mention what religion he was, and so I have no idea". but if a Muslim does something wrong right now, it's not because he as a person is wrong, it's because Islam is evil. That's the way it's treated in the media most of hte time, and it's hurtful. that's why I'm so happy this show is happening; i think it's one more way to show most people that Muslims are jsut normal people when it comes down to it.

SWEET! TSN's down again for me, so I'm really gonna need your updates now...

Exactly. I mean, I was born here and I lived in Canada just about my whole life, and my parents CHOSE to come here, to live here, and they love it. It's there home just as much as it is someone's whose great-great-great-grandparents came 200 years ago or whenever. I go to visit Egypt (where my extended family is) and I don't feel like taht's home, so when people tell me "go back to your home" (which unfortunately, I've actually had people say to me, not often, but it's happened) I think "where are you sending me exactly? This IS my home. This is my country, these are my people. I pay taxes and watch hockey and vote, adn read the globe and mail. I listen to Steward Maclean on Vynl cafe for God's sake. My English is better than my Arabic"... the long and short of it is, I BELONG here, and just because my skin shade is not very light and I call God "Allah" that makes me non-Canadian? Please... this country (this continent, actually) belonged to the Natives (who I think are treated atrociously, by the way) and EVERYONE else who came here, whether last week or 500 years ago, is an immigrant. And that's what makes it different and special, you know? I took a course in my last year of university about Italian heritage in North America, and when they first came, they were also treated with suspicion and prejudice. As were the irish before them, and the germans before them, and the blacks after them, and the japanese, and the chinese, and the russians / eastern europeans during the cold war, and now it's the middle-easterners / arabs turn... so it happens EVERY time a new group begins to settle in large numbers, which is positive to look at because then I think we'll get over this eventually for the Muslims/Arabs, but sad at the same time because you would think that after that many waves of immigrants, we'd get over it and realize that they're OK... I'm happy to say that many of my close friends are from all colours and origins and backgrounds. It's really what's inside that counts. And there's good and bad in every group... Anyway, that's enough of a rant...

yeah... I Definitely wasn't expecting this. We haven't scored a lot all tournament. I thought that if we won, it would be much tighter. Having said that, knock on wood, there's still 40 minutes to go... I want a shutout for Price and tournament MVP and OBVIOUSLY a gold medal. I'll wait for your updates

You beat me to it! Twice!

Just saw that 30 seconds ago on the TSN updater. YEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

That is indeed hilarious... I couldn't be "sick" today bc I was actually sick for real on Wednesday and now I have work to catch up on... I'll survive not watching the game as long as I can follow online... and as long as they WIN!

Thanks. The tsn thing wasn't working for me before but now it is... the hockeycanada site also won't open for me, probably crashign cuz there's a million ppl trying to do the same thing i am..

Gaaah I'm at work. Does anyone know where I can keep track of the score online? Like a box score thing???

Jean, je ne suis pas d'accord avec vous. Rivet a de leadership, oui, mais il n'est pas potable en defense jusqu'a la semaine passee. Il est tres tres mauvais maintenant, plus mauvais de niniimaa.

Full agreement there... There was an article before Christmas that the Ottawa Citizen, a major paper here, wrote, about how the religious text with the most references to the virgin mary is the Quran. I knew that already, as a muslim, but I think it came to a shock to a lot of readers...

I won't be.

I'm cool with not panicking, I'm just not cool with not trying to fix it. You leave it alone if it's not broken; right now it's broken. maybe not a huge break, but still, broken. Let's not let our awesome record up to this point go to waste and still be struggling in April to make the play-offs because of a slump we could have tried to do something about. Let's try to get home ice in the playoffs this year. Set our bar a little higher... Let's just switch things up a little. It certainly can't hurt, know what I mean?

Wow, Pierre, that's fantastic... I agree all around. I think it's about time more minorities are included in the mainstream media, and I think slowly but surely, it's happening... But it takes a while for "the masses" (if you will) to accept it. It's almost like "until everyone and their uncle has met a muslim / black / hungarian / arab / insert group here and realized that they weren't all mobsters / terrorists / drunks / womanizers etc it doesn't change. Especially with the constant fear-mongering that happens on a lot of mainstream tv stations and radios (Rush Limbaugh, Fox television, etc...) Take the case of Keith Ellison. Have you heard about this guy? He's the newly-elected congressman from Minnesota and he's the first Muslim congressman in US history. So he decides he wants to do his swearing in on a Quran instead of a bible, because he's Muslim right, so it sort of naturally follows, and these ppl all get COMPLETELY up in arms about "How can he do this" and "The Quran is completely opposed to all US values" and "then he's swearing an oath to protect the terrorists, not the american ppl" and "if we don't tighten up immigration laws, there'll be more of them coming." and I'm like - Oh, really, that's interesting, because you know that Muslims died on 9-11 too, and there's nothing to say you can't be Muslim and Western and do you really think all these ppl came to West (Canada, US, European countries) if they hate it so much? The funniest thing is the argument that tighter immigration laws will stop it, because Ellison is a born African-American who was Catholic and decided to become Muslim in college... I always laugh too when ppl look at me in complete disbelief when I get into a heated conversation about Hockey and know the names of all the players and their stats and what-not, and they're shocked because here's this little arab looking muslim girl wearing a headscarf who they probably weren't expecting to speak proper english and now she's talking about how it was the unfair call on Koivu that turned the game around in favour of the Caps, or Don Cherry's an idiot for hounding on Sydney Crosby... Yeah, that always gives me a good laugh, but really, I see no conflict whatsoever with being a hockey fan and a muslim and a canadian and all that wrapped into one. Why should there be?

Changes - just about ANY changes - would be welcome. We're slumping, and even when we were winning, many of our wins were WAY too close for comfort and resulted mostly from atypically high contributions from D plus superb goaltending. It's not reasonable to expect either of these things to continue and let the forwards coast. We need to find a way to increase offense. To me, taht's our most pressing concern by a long shot. I love the third line, and have always argued to keep it intact utnil now, but I think considering the way the team is playing as a whole, I'd be willing to break them up and mix up the lines to try to come up with something new and successful. The third line has been an exceptional shut-down line, but all three players on it are capable of playing in a more offensive capacity, and some of the players on the other lines are capable of playing in a more defensive capacity, so would it be such a bad idea to shift someone (any of Bonk, Perogie, or Johnny) up to another line, depending on what works in terms of combinations, and move someone like Higgins to the third? Play Ryder on the fourth for a bit to wake him up? That kind of thing? I lean toward moving Bonk or Perogie up and keeping Johnny on the third, as I think he can continue to help that line and he's the least offensively gifted of the three... What do you all think?

That's exactly how I feel... and what I was trying to say in my last post. You just said it much better than I did...