In other games... not with Mattias Ohlund

Brent Sopel scored the two goals for the Kings in a 4-1 victory over the New York Rangers. Danny boy was not in net.

Calgary lost 2-4 to Ovechkin and Company. Ex-Canuck Donald Brashear got an assist.

Peter Forsberg is back, scoring and getting a win for the Flyers against Chicago 3-0. Esche recorded a shutout.

Superskills 2006

nazzy ohlund hank kids
Originally uploaded by TamaraF.

Swedish players and their offspring. Aww! This is a better shot than anything I could've done. Must be one with awesome optical zoom and mega pixelage.

Mattias Ohlund Article from 1997

Wow. Here's an article from waaay back when from The North Shore News before Ohlund got signed in Vancouver.

Also some snippets from their other articles:

Then there's the other end of the experience scale, the much-touted Mattias Ohlund. He had his 21st birthday just yesterday. Among his gifts, $10 million over the next five years. When Toronto comes to GM Place Oct. 9, he should look up Bill Watters, genuflect and kiss his hand. Two questions, Dave [Babych]: Can the kid play in the NHL? And will his two million a year for the next five years be resented by the rank and file?

"From the little I've seen, there's no reason he can't. He's big and strong and he certainly can skate ... The only question -- can he handle the rough stuff and do it on the smaller ice?

"As for the money, no, there'll be no resentment. Everyone knows the circumstances. By staying another year in Sweden, he gambled and won. What if he'd suffered a bad injury over there? He'd have been a financial loser."

and,

At 5:45 p.m. I just made it to the main stage for another last song, this time by the band Closure. Choosing a crowd pleaser like Blur's Song 2 was a good call, inviting Mattias Ohlund and a couple other Canuckleheads on stage to sing wasn't (stick to the sticks, guys), and made it less cool than it could have been. (at Molson Canadian Snow Jam, False Creek)

Ovechkin came and left.. but with only 1 point

We won. Must've been a pretty exciting game. For your $100 plus ticket, you got to see the new Jumbotron, Alex Ovechkin lose his balance while trying to steal the puck from Mattias Ohlund and take out Luongo AND a shootout winner by Morrison trickle through the legs of Olie Kolzig.

"Ovechkin" reminds me of that nasal spray commercial for Otrivin back in the 90s.

Here a photo of Mattias Ohlund putting. just because.

Alex Burrows PPV segment

Here's a youtube ppv segment on Alex Burrows Hmm.. it's hard to understand him. Pretty obvious that French is his first language.

Aside: The only player who's escaped Alain V's criticism that I've noticed has been Mitchell. AV was quoted on saying the Sedins "didn't have their legs" for a past game. =S

Another Aside: Mattias Ohlund seems to get along better with Luongo than he did with Auldy. Auldy always seemed annoyed with Ohlund for screening him or something.. but maybe that was just my imagination. Anyhow, Mattias had 2 assists last night.

Shutout! Canucks v. Blackhawks 5-0

Wow! We actually shut out a team? That hasn't happened for over two years.

Chicago was hurting from its losses to injuries. Jarkko Ruutu's bro Tuomo had sprained his knee in the pre-season so we couldn't see him or the family resemblance..

From Rotowire.com:

Ovechkin got a scare in the final seconds of Wednesday's 5-3 win at Colorado when he was hit on the right leg by a slap shot off the stick of Capitals defenseman Shaone Morrisonn, the Washington Post reports. Ovechkin went down hard and limped to the locker room, but later said he was "okay."

Hopefully we'll see him play in the home game on Friday.

1-2 Loss to Dallas

Down again in the third period but this time, the Canucks couldn't come back.

Mattias Ohlund was Mike Heika's (a reporter writing for the Dallas Morning News) second star of the game. 1st was Marty Turko (of course) and 3rd was Mike Modano.

From what I saw, I wasn't that impressed with Ohlund tonight but maybe Mr. Heika had the advantage of being there to watch the game without the focused view that we tv viewers are limited to. I know that when I'm at the game, I can tell which players anticipate plays, have good positioning and though aren't flashy, get the job done so others can bask in the spotlight. Since the camera just focuses on the puck, all the rest of it gets missed.

Good for Cooke to block those shots and Greene for playing despite his puck in the face injury. =( Hopefully Mitchell gets better soon.

Flyers' GM and coach gone

You knew something was coming.. GM Bob Clarke resigned and coach Ken Hitchcock was fired : today's article.

The Flyers are at the bottom of the league with 3 points in 8 eight games (1-6-1).

Calgary's not doing that much better: 5 in 7. They're at the bottom of the Northwest division while Minnesota's at the top. Wow. Who would've had this predicted, eh?

Mattias Ohlund and dog video

Here's a youtube post of the PPV segment on Trevor Linden, Mattias Ohlund, and Henrik and Daniel Sedin.

Won again in OT tonight. 4-3 against the Preds. Bad news: Mitchell left the game and Green got a puck in the face..

Canucks Beat Blues

The Canucks beat the Blues 3-2 in an exciting OT tonight. Unfortunately, I missed this game and the two prior too.. (This missing hockey is really starting to put me in a foul mood.)

I also heard that there was a dirty hit on Ohlund by Ryan Johnson. Ohlund got schmucked face first into the end boards. Grr..I've got my eye on you! :| Ohlund threw his gloves off and seemed ready to start something but Ryan went to the refs so it ended to be just Ryan going to the penalty box. Anyway, his hit put the Blues down 2 men.

It should've been like this:
Anyway, Salo put the OT goal in with 0.8 seconds to spare saving the Canucks from going to shoot out. Needless to say, he made 1st star!

Linden was played tonight but didn't get very many minutes.

In ex-Canuck news, Todd Bertuzzi was scratched for back spasms but the Panthers won against the Flyers with Eddie Belfour in net. What is with the Flyers this year, eh? Poor Peter Forsberg and his sprained wrist. I hope he gets better soon.

Fright Night at the PNE

From the Canucks website:

"Ohlund's seemingly better from the blue line than he is from the ring-toss counter.
One young Canuck fan laughed out loud when asked what his favorite part of the day was.

"Watching Mattias try and get the ring on the bottle" he said with a grin."

Linden a healthy scratch

Caught the last 4 minutes of the game tonight (midterm) and AV scratched Trevor. Awww. Danny Sabourin played in net tonight against the Oilers. We won 2-1 last night and tonight it was Edmonton's turn 2-1.

I'm so tired.

Early Canuck years

Ishockey NHL
Originally uploaded by Hakan Dahlstrom.

The photos that I've found of Mattias Ohlund during his early years as an NHL player haven't been of great quality. That's why I've been reluctant to post many pre-2001 photos. While browsing Flickr, however, I found a poster who had EXCELLENT quality pics of NHL players in 1997(ish). It's worth a click to see his candids. For example, here's Mattias Ohlund (of course), Peter Forsberg as an Av, Donald Brashear in a fight with the ref and Wayne Gretzky!

If you wait, things will come...

So NHL.com changed the link for the "NHL Machine" so my dead link was really a dead link after all. The good news is that the player highlights ARE still being showed. The link has been renewed on the page. Mattias Ohlund's goal last night.

Oh, and here's a quote from Dave Gross' Blog (not from last night):

Anyone else watch the Roberto Luongo show last night? If the Canucks don’t get some blueline help, already-skinny Roberto’s going to turn into Olive Oyl. This guy has to be Cptn. Savior every night. Take Mattias Ohlund off the Vancouver defence and this is one bad bunch.

Where'd NHL video go?

So since Mattias Ohlund scored tonight in our 4-6 loss to the Sharks, I followed the "Recent Goal Highlights" link on the Mattias Ohlund Appreciation Page to view the goal. Anyway, don't do that because NHL has stopped providing video for all the player goals now. It ended up to be a dead link. They only have highlights of each game for the night. Maybe it was taking up too much bandwidth. I will leave my dead link up for the time being because they may just be having a hard time getting into the swing of things.

Update on Canuck Injuries

From Grant Kerr's Globe and Mail article:

The Canucks begin their home schedule tomorrow against the San Jose Sharks with two defencemen, Sami Salo and Lukas Krajicek, on the limp. Salo has been ruled out with a recurring groin strain, while Krajicek is expected to play. He had an X-ray on his foot after blocking a shot Tuesday during a 2-1 shootout loss against the Minnesota Wild.

What about Kesler?? :| Guess he's ok..

Salo & Kesler injured

Nooooooooo!!!!

Both went out in the MinnesOta game. MinnesOta won in shootout 2-1. I heard it over the radio. Oh well, I woulda been bored I'm sure if I'd watched it anyway.

Aside: Here's a Trevor pic!

Canucks lost in Colorado 2-3

Strange to have Linden and Henrik Sedin in the box.

As to the big supposed rivalry between Luongo and Theodore.. I guess Jose won this round but Luongo did have to face 35 shots as opposed to Theodore's 4. Ouch. 3/35 to 2/4. Although, it does raise the next question.. Now that Vancouver's a defensive minded team, why WERE there so many shots on goal?

Oh OH OH!! So that Svatos goal that might have been kicked in? Hahaha, turns out it did go off his skate after all.

Colorado forward Marek Svatos, with 5:44 remaining, says he didn't use his stick at all. Instead, Svatos used his skate. The referees looked at a replay of the goal and ruled he didn't attempt to kick it in. On replay, it looked as if he did knock it in with his stick, but Svatos confessed.

"It went off my feet," Svatos said. "It was a lucky goal."

FTP down - Updating on hold

So I finally figured out that my uploading problem for the Mattias Ohlund Appreciation Page wasn't on my end but rather my provider's. Annoying, but what can you do but wait? Anyhow, I've done a bit of manual uploading - index, Ohlund Gallery, a couple pages of pictures but man, is it ever slow. Not only do you have to upload each file separately, but if you alter a preloaded file, you have to delete it before uploading the new one.

Suffice it to say, updates will be less frequent until ftp gets fixed.

So this is what an anteater looks like

Anteater
Originally uploaded by Hakan Dahlstrom.

A random but cool shot. You always see cartoon depictions but I've never seen a pic of a real anteater before.

My New Fav Pic of Mattias Ohlund

Mattias was 26:49 on the ice in last night's game. Still putting up the big ice time under Alain Vignault.

Canucks won another one. I was getting frustrated watching the game last night though. Unlike the Detroit game, I was bored stiff until the last few minutes of Sedin magic.

I was happy Ohlund didn't spend time in the box, except for that delay of game. I'll bet he was, like, "D'oh!"(PG version) haha!

Here's my new favourite pic of Mattias. It just looks so elegant, eh? Who woulda thunk there'd be any finess in hockey, eh?

Trevor Linden is the favourite Canuck bar none

An Ipsos Reid Poll of 459 adult British Columbia residents says we love our Trevor!

8. Who's your favourite Canucks player?
Trevor Linden 44%
Markus Naslund 20%
Mattias Ohlund 8%
Matt Cooke 6%
Brendan Morrison 4%

"The support I have received from the fans here has always been humbling," Linden said after the team practised Tuesday at the Burnaby 8 Rinks complex. "I've always felt pretty fortunate to be a player in Vancouver."

Watched hockey and was happy

Haha! I didn't realize that I missed hockey so much. It was bizarre, sitting in front of the tv, doing a case brief and watching Turko being bombarded by shots from the Avs. Hockey's just a game. I'm not forced to watch it by a significant other; I don't have money riding on it like others; and yet, I've become very attached and miss it much when deprived.

Elliott Papp article on Ohlund - a snippet:

"It's going to take some time to get used to everything, but I think there is a lot of excitement this year that we haven't had in the last few years," Ohlund said. "For myself, I am trying not to look back. I am just excited about the new season. Hopefully, we'll all be on the same track here."

Presumably he meant the track to victory and not the one leading to the airport.

Haw haw haw.

You don't want to be hit by Mattias Ohlund

Hahaha.. even with padding, I'm sure there are fully grown men who don't want to be flattened by 220lbs of Ohlund. The Canucks website put up The Best Hits of 05/06 and Mattias has three of those.

On a sidenote, Tony Gallagher's article in the Province intones that though Ohlund can hit, no one is going to be the enforcer. The quote:

Mattias Ohlund can be a tremendous force when he steps up and makes his trademark open-ice hits. It gives Vancouver's defence a physical presence and prevents teams waltzing out of their own zone unconcerned when the big Swede is on the ice. But when he made a big hit on Ales Hemsky -- just the guy you'd like to slow down -- he had to fend off a thicket of revenge seekers. Nobody is saying they should keep a Wade Brookbank around, but somebody has to at least look interested in team toughness, even if it isn't their stock in trade.

I'm not sure if I'd agree with that. There are some fighters on our team: Bieksa, Rypien, Cooke, Burrows. Hmm.. perhaps they may fight but they're not too formidable? Can the Vancouver Canucks can be kicked around? I guess other teams know that Mattias isn't the type to fight and big Bert and Cloutier are gone now so the team must seem like easy prey.