Trade deadline came and went

Weell, Todd Bertuzzi's going to Detroit and my what a ho hum media statement his was. I guess he really has no ties to Florida so he couldn't care less. Unlike Ryan Smyth who was traded to the NY Islanders and made everyone choke up about it during his tearful goodbye. Sigh. That's why you have no trade clauses! To avoid stuff like this, which is predictable in this industry.. :(

Sopel's happy to be reunited with Ohlie

From Jason Botchford's article in the Province today,

Sopel had a reunion of sorts on the ice as he was paired with his former defensive partner Ohlund. The two have kept in regular contact since Sopel left for L.A.

"It was a lot of fun [to be back with him]," Sopel said. "I spent many years with him and it was like riding a bike. He's always kept in the loop of what was going on [with the team]. When I came down the rink and I saw I was playing with him again, it was a good feeling."

Even after the loss, Sopel's excitement about being a Canuck was palpable.

"It wasn't the result we wanted, but it feels good to be back," Sopel said. "We have a great team. Coming from the spot I was in L.A. to contending like we are is a great feeling."

Aww shucks. *toothy grin*

Generation X v. Generation Y

A little aside but relevant I think..

Here are a couple of good articles:
1.The Challenges of Managing Gen Y
2.Generation X and The Millennials: What You Need to Know About Mentoring the New Generations
3. Generation X: Stepping Up to the Leadership Plate

I think I'm always a little on the cynical side after taking Organisational Behaviour. Always am trying to figure how the corporation is trying to 'handle' us.

Trade Deadline Nears

One day left til trade deadline and just when everyone thought Nonis wasn't going to participate, boom! Brent Sopel and Brian Smolinski will hopefully be here for tomorrow's game against the Blues. Both are very happy to come to Vancouver. I'm happy that Nonis didn't break up the core group. As a result of the acquisitions, however, Marc Chouinard is placed on waivers and Kesler's on the long term injury reserve.

A Get Well card for Mattias Ohlund

Mattias... hope you feel better soon.

Dallas takes advantage of Canucks' flu

*GASP* We lost.

Vancouver lost 1-2 to Dallas in OT. Alain Vigneault, Josh Green and Mattias Ohlund are bugged out 'with flu like symptoms'. Mattias played the first period, then left the ice. Taylor Pyatt left the game in the second period as well. It was 1-0 Canucks until the Stars scored on their two man advantage with 29 seconds left in the third. Ouch.

A Mattias Ohlund odd shot

Many of the photos in my collection aren't very good quality.. but are still good for a laugh. Not exactly sure how this particular moment came to be..

A Catch up posting..

Sorry for the delay in updates.. So swamped at work and catching up on the school assignments and reading. Sure, I’ve procrastinated but I can still whine, no? Canucks win over LA 3-2.

Some King checked Mattias Ohlund and together they broke glass. Boo.. apparantly he took a beating last night. But he’s a guy and guys poo poo their injuries so I’m sure he’s fine. =D Trevor Linden scored last night.. and what a beautie! Morrison is the new iron man now with having played 491 straight games. He joked, "I never go into corners. It's easy to stay healthy that way."

So Vancouver, believe it or not, is still first in the division and caught up to San Jose and Dallas. The lack of puck luck from the beginning of the season has turned its tide and the team is now enjoying the wonderous puck luck from the puck lords!

Heh heh. In other news, Buffalo and Ottawa had an... interesting night last night. I like it when the goalies fight. Brings back memories of Dan Cloutier.. the good ones. Emery had a big smile on his face too. Gotta love that.

A couple more youtube vids

NHL Road Trip commercial I love it when Sidney Crosby says, "Ovechkin!!"

Roberto Luongo on meeting his wife This must've been a St. Valentine's Day special.

Back to hockey... Morrison is NHL 1st Star

So Colorado put more shots on net than us but Luongo kept us in there. We won it 5-4.. Not a good game but we won. Brendan Morrison scored the game winner making him nhl.com's 1st star of the night!

Tonight marked Trevor Linden's 1300th NHL game. (wow..) Awww.. we love you Trevor

Mainly Mattias Ohlund.. still up

After much ado about the dreaded switchover, I switched over to the google based Blogger platform. Pros did outweigh the Cons and after creating a new Google ID (gmail is now available to the public by the way), I felt a little better. Now looking for a way to mask my IP..

In summary, I looked at 4 platforms:

1. Blogger: unlimited posts, 300mb picture limit, JPG, GIF, PNG, TIF or BMP format accepted, Flickr friendly, many themes, can edit CSS, tied in with Google (good for search engine ranking, bad for privacy)

2. LiveJournal: open source, many themes, can edit CSS/html, 1 gb picture scrapbook, annoying userpic posted with each posting, Flickr friendly, 2 forced ad bars (top or side bar option), don't know about search engine ranking..

3. MSN LiveSpaces: 100 themes, photo album capability: 500 photos per month, multiple and build your own gadgets available, can create your own lists, Youtube & Windows Media Player embeddable, tied in with hotmail/msn, may show better on msn search?

4. WordPress: open source, 50mb limited storage, limited themes, least flexible design(not able to edit html), does have site and feed stats, Flickr friendly, moderation forced comments.

I did take a look at Myspace but the blog is ugly and I don't really see the point of it.. You post comments on other people's myspace. ok. so what? Is that considered fun? kinda like Friendster. Who the fuck cares?

.. The new Blog?

The new Mainly Mattias Ohlund Blog?

Not sure if I completely like it yet. Unfortunately it doesn't allow you to customize your style sheet like Blogger does. I may just suck it up and switch but... I'm not quite there yet. Anyway, again, if you guys like your blog platform, please let me know.. Do you like blogger M? How's livespaces for you A?

Looking for a New Blog Platform...

Ha! Blogger wouldn't let me post until I switched to the new version but I found a backdoor baby!! I REALLY don't want to upgrade to the new Google Blogger. I have issues against giving Google permission to keep even more tabs on me than they already are. That doesn't mean that I'm going to stop blogging about Mattias Ohlund though..

The current mission is to look for a nice, ad-free, non-invasive, quick-loading, flexible blog platform to continue with the Mattias Ohlund blogging. True, a lot of time and effort was spent into getting the blog ranked high on the search engines but since the Mattias Ohlund Appreciation Page is high up there too, I think I've achieved my goal.

More on the Sedins..

On Canucks.com:

"The Sedin Twins took some playful kidding from other players and coaches because their nhl.com commercial finally made its worldwide debut on canucks.com. As Daniel was breezing through the neutral zone coach Alain Vigneault joked, “Come on you dancing machine!”"

Haahaa! Yeah, I didn't imagine the guys would let them get away scot free after making a commercial like that..

Oh, and an old Vancouver Courier article by Bob Mackin about Mattias Ohlund being amongst those who have taken on one of Dr. Saul Miller's sports art pieces.

Sedin Commercial

Just because they're so cute when they try to act..

EDIT: Oh, and doesn't the guy with the boombox look like Willie Mitchell?! haha

Eek.. scared of the new Blogger

Blogger is making me switch over to the google based blogger and I don't wanna! Sigh, here's a picture of Mattias Ohlund just because..

Oh, and the little Canucks.com interview that was just posted..

There’s enough talk about the tight Northwest division and power-plays so we decided to take the players away from the rink to find out a little more beyond the game. Go Offside with Mattias Ohlund.

What was your worst subject in school?

Math – I don’t really like numbers.

What is your favourite city to visit?

New York. The people, the atmostphere, and just walking around downtown Manhattan, you can’t beat it.

Where is your favourite place to eat in Vancouver?

Miko Sushi

What is your Starbucks drink?

Just a regular Grande dark coffee.

What breakfast cereal do you eat?

Bran Flakes.

If you had a racehorse what would you name it?

Hmm… I have no idea but the Twins have a horse named Roland so I might steal that and name it after theirs.

What is the worst lockerroom smell?

Most of the equipment is pretty bad obviously but it’s something you get used to so it’s not so bad anymore. (Henrik walks by). But probably Henrik’s equipment is the worst. (both laugh).

Who on the team would you choose to be your partner on the Amazing Race?

I’m going to have to say my roommate Trevor, just so he won’t get upset.

Bugs me when mom…

Calls me for the fourth time in the same day.

What is the ringtone on your cellphone?

Just the regular, normal ring. It hasn’t changed since I bought it.

If you had a superpower, what would it be?

I would probably want super strength. One of the first things I’d do if I had super strength would be to clean my garage. I could throw away a bunch of stuff in my garage that’s too heavy to do by myself. I’ve got a lot of garbage that I’d need some help to carry.

What is your oldest piece of equipment?

My elbow pads. They’re probably three or four years. I’ve gotten some good wear out of these for sure.

What is the first thing you do when you wake up?

I have to put my contacts in. My eyes are too bad but I still need them to be comfortable.

What do you get teased about by your teammates?

Sometimes in the morning when I sleep in maybe it takes about half an hour to get going in the morning skate and the passes are a little bit off. They’ll sometimes get me about that.

Superbowl lucky

Haha! I thought it was hilarious that this would be newsworthy but Mattias Ohlund won the Canucks pool on the Superbowl. Elliot Pap article.

The Canucks had a little Super Bowl gathering Sunday night in Calgary and, along with the food, came the customary pool.

It was $25 per player and the winner was ... a Swede.

"Coming from Europe, my history with football is huge," joked winner Mattias Ohlund, who is now several hundred bucks to the good. "Obviously, it was mostly lucky. I put my money in, took four numbers and then, with about one minute to go, somebody told me that I was winning. That was about it."

As for tonight's game, another slow skating, ugly game overall (except for the Sedins). It was just luck that the refs and Oilers themselves were working for the Canucks. There were some questionable calls that rolled in our favour and some Oilers who weren't too smart to stay out of the box..

A fellow Ohlund fan

pride and joy
Originally uploaded by sspyndel.

I was contemplating getting this jersey too. =) Apparently Mattias Ohlund never really was too concerned about his jersey number. He was 16 in Sweden and was given the number 2 by.. Bernstein(?) (not sure on that actually) when he came over here.

The Changing World of Search

I surf the internet waay too much when I should be doing homework. Google is permeating everything. Every webpage I see on the bottom left hand corner is something about Google analytics.. The new Blogger blogs now require Google sign in.. When I took my SEO course, the teacher told us all to beware Google Picasa, which pretty much allows everything on your computer to be noted by Google.. I wonder if data being gathered is shafted off to the US government a la the Patriot Act. Well, I guess if you don't have any skeletons in your closet or couldn't care less about your privacy, that it's not a problem.

Other search engines don't seem to be as effective as Google, however. Yahoo and MSN search quality has quite noticeably declined. Search results are either old or no longer working. If anyone knows of a better search engine, please let me know. I've tried a lot but nothing so far is as good as the big G. Anyway, here's a pic I haven't seen before: Ohlund celebrating with Bertuzzi.

A 5 shutout night tonight..

So! 5 shutouts in the world of NHL hockey tonight. Yeah, that's more interesting than the icky game play that went on in Calgary.. Ugh, Calgary skated circles around the Canucks tonight. It was pretty crappy to watch. Were we really that slow or were they just that fast? Mitchell and Ohlund were good. We took a lot of penalties which came back to bite us in the end. Luongo took another puck to the neck which broke one of the straps to his helmet.

How does Mattias Ohlund feel? We don't know.

"Obviously, everybody likes to play a lot, but I think for me when like the last few games you play up to 30 minutes, it's tough to be as involved in the offence as you'd like to be," Ohlund said. "With Willie back everybody gets their minutes cut back a little bit and usually he's the one who plays against the top lines, so it takes a lot of pressure off you. Usually, when you play against the top line it's tough to be a big part of the offence."

Sooo.. does that mean he's sad to not play the minutes or happy that he gets to be more offensive?

God, I love Friday

Fridays.. a time to finally crash and get some sleep. Not right this instant.. but soon.. I count the hours.. Anyhoo, before I leave the house, did you hear about Tyler Bouck going to Emergency and having to stay in the hospital because of a serious virus? For those of you who missed it, here's the article on Tyler Bouck getting a nasty virus through his hockey glove and a cut on his finger.. Hmm, better be careful, you hockey/ringette players.

Mitchell's back!

So Willie Mitchell's back in the lineup and helped the Canucks take a win from the Edmonton Oilers. It was interesting to see players really beaking off at each other, giving hard hits and watching Oilers go to the dressing room injured. I didn't realize there was such a rivalry.. Mattias Ohlund got his 10th goal. Henrik, Naslund, Chouinard and Bulis scored as well. Did anyone other than Matt Cooke celebrate Bulis' goal with him? I don't think the players like him very much.

GOOD UNDER PRESSURE
Entering his ninth NHL season, Mattias Ohlund is among the league elite both past and present when it comes to scoring overtime goals. With five career overtime goals the Canucks defenceman is tied for third all-time in overtime goals scored by defencemen. Ohlund trails only Scott Niedermayer and Brian Leetch among active and retired defencemen (through Jan. 30/07).

Scott Niedermayer 8
Brian Leetch 7
Mattias Ohlund 5
Ray Bourque 5
Phil Housley 5
Jaroslav Spacek 5
Tomas Kaberle 5