Slow News Wednesday - Things I like about hockey

Not a lot going on today.  Over at Bruins blog, they've got a story about fighting, including this among many good quotes (It's tempting to quote the whole darn thing, but you should just read his thoughts about Steve Ott and other things over there) from Shawn Thornton:

Shawn Thornton said his hands already hurt from the damage he's taken over a career of fighting. He cites ice and Advil as his go-to remedies. "I'm sure there'll be something," Thornton said of long-term repercussions. "But hopefully my family will be set and I'll be set. It's like anything. My old man's worked in a steel factory for 31 years. I'm sure he's going to have long-term damage from that. You do what you've got to do to set yourself up in the best position."

Hockey is such a blue-collar sport sometimes.  Some blog or other said during the sean avery scandal-rama that "at it's heart, hockey is still a sport played by canadian farmboys."  I know it's wicked sappy, but I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff.

Speaking of sappiness and fighting, how about that Lucic/Valabik fight?  I'm sure I've talked about it at length, but they were saying on NESN for the away game that Valabik idolizes Chara (they're both HUGE slovakian defensemen) and that he and chara talked about being big slovakian defensemen.  Chara was very encouraging and all that.  Skip to the next day, and Valabik is trying to take out Kessel's kidney with his stick.  The penalty gets called, but Chara comes in ANYWAYS and takes 17 minutes of penalties, just to say "no, you don't mess with kessel, not on my watch."  And that's why Chara's the captain.

I always liked the slovakian national team because of Gaborik, now I just want to see a Chara/Valabik defensive pairing.  When Boris is the short guy, that's ridiculous.  Get on that, Slovakia.  

Also, I was looking at goals the bruins scored recently, and this one is great:

Savard has the empty net and uses his pin-point accuracy to give it to Kessel.

This is the kind of stuff that keeps me going during 4-day game breaks.  I hope the Bruins have had some good time to rest their weary bones, and that they don't come out totally flat.  Some observations/links:

• No Habs No: The Habs lost to the Hurricanes last night.  Joe Corvo earns the letter.
  
• Stanley Cup of Chowder: Some Corsi numbers for you.
• Michael DiLorenzo: A picture of the NHL War Room.
• Bruins Blog: Sturm could play tomorrow.
• NHL.tv:  Webcam from Wrigley Field showing the construction.  It updates a little bit at a time, uploading old video.  It's not actually live.

GO BRUINS!