HOOF ARTED

tempus fugit
OR
nil carborundum illegitimo

Well, apparently from my poison pen to Greg Sherman's desk. Mere hours after my most recent public meltdown in the face of an Avalanche team that oscillates between "baffling" and "completely fucking inscrutable", Avs GM Sherman banished injury-plagued scapegoat goaltender Craig Anderson to Ottawa, which has been the Graveyard of Goaltending Careers for some years now. "Ottawa Senators goaltending failure" returns 241,000 results on Google.

(Avalanche GM to fans: "The music's over, faggots. Shut the fuck up, turn off the lights, and feel free to lie down and die.")

I'm on record as hoping like a motherfucker that St. Mayor Craig Anderson posts half a dozen shutouts over the remainder of the season, getting himself well and truly paid. The Avs weren't going to do it, and they'll save themselves 350,000 over the rest of this wasted season because of the move. As late as Thursday night, he was still going on record saying all the right things. He wasn't using injuries as an excuse, he was happy to play hockey for a living, he was determined to "make the most" out of his next opportunity.

Personally, I'm sad he didn't say what I think he thought, which would have gone something like

Joe Sacco is a terrible handler of goalies. Yanking me out constantly helped even less than trotting me out there before I was ready.

This organization is on its third goaltending coach in three seasons. It used to be Jeff Hackett full-time. Then there was Jocelyn Thibault part-time.

All he did was help get career years out of me and out of Petr Budaj. so of course they booted him and replaced him with Kirk McLean, who spends all his time in Vancouver, managing his restaurant. He's only with the team a few days a month. And he had never coached except for a little while in intellectual hotbed and notorious source of high-quality goalies Kamloops.

And oh--by the way: there's not one NHL-caliber goalie in the pipeline. Not. One.

That's what I wish Anderson had said.

Of course, that's not what he said. Near as I can tell, he didn't say anything at all. (Brian Elliott, the guy who he was traded for, was said to have refused to speak to the media. So, uhm...welcome to the Avalanche, Mr. Elliott! Hope you don't feel like playing behind professional-quality defenses or working on your game with a full-time goalie coach!)

As far as the media responses go, Dater nails this one. Not surprising, since it's a negative move, and nobody understands the negative like Adrian Dater. (That's not a dig: I think Dater's the best beat guy in the NHL.)

Goalie Guild Ryan, on the other hand, follows up a too-long/stupid-to-even-link-to babblefest about RISING TO THE OCCASION and WORK ETHIC and STAYING POSITIVE with this idiotic horseshit where he repeatedly calls Anderson (6-2, 180) "bigger" than Brian Elliott (6-2, 198). Seriously, why do I even bother following links to this stuff anymore? The guy is a "pro goalie scout" the same way Paris Hilton is a "professional actress": just because somebody stupider than you pays you to do something doesn't mean you're any goddamned good at it. If I want to read stupid heavy-metal routines half-assedly applied to hockey, I know where to look for that.

And I would be remiss if I didn't tip my hat to Mile High Hockey, which echoes my Andy/David Aebischer-are-parallels thoughts and rightly concludes

I think it's an "okay" deal. Anderson was going to be moved and the market for goalies is never incredibly strong, especially goalies who are struggling. It's possible Elliott exceeds expectations, but this is more likely a case of GM Greg Sherman getting the best possible return for a player that was going to be moved regardless.

As a side note, it'd take a better blogger than me to figure out why multiple sources list Anderson's record this year as "13-5-3"; ten losses shy of the actual mark. Good cut/paste work, fellas! And superb proofreading and factchecking!

So what are we to make of this new guy, Brian Elliott? Is he fish, fowl, good red herring? Be he cat or kitten, sheepdog or cowlick?

he was derided too easily and too often in Ottawa after being forced to make significant alterations to his style coming out of college, where he spent a lot of time making half-butterfly saves and playing off angle along the goal line. Those were the calling cards of unorthodox long-time Wisconsin goaltending coach Bill Howard. Elliott began the transformation to a more efficient butterfly style and proper angle and recovery tactics under Mike Valley, who is now the goaltending coach for the Dallas Stars, during summer training sessions with Elite Goalies Schools.

The Senators lack of goaltending depth, however, left him trying to make those adjustments against the world’s best shooters.

That was from InGoal Magazine. So, wonderful. A team too cheap to pay a full-time goalie coach trades for a guy in the midst of changing his style. Also that team has a terrible, terrible corps of defensemen.

(What could go wrong?)

Welp, apparently I really am now calling the shots for the Avs, because the Avs now have two goalies who will, as I advocated, "let in 1 out of every 10 shots consistently". So, Greg Sherman, since I am Pulling Your Strings, please do not dump J-M Liles or Milan Hejduk. Also: Sir Lord Baltimore is fucking great, yeah?

--Collision, off to get very, very drunk indeed

Brian Elliott image from nhlsnipers.com.
Bush-Cheney logo from this country is a pile of idiot assholes.
You want the truth from lolcats.