I love hockey, but I’m from the American south, so I’ll occasionally try to say “Kyosti Karjalainen” or whatever and have it come out sounding like a garbage truck. It happens.

Here’s Jimmy Fallon handing out NHL award superlatives on ‘Late Night With Jimmy Fallon’ and garbage trucking everybody. Some of the awards are funny — Raffi Torres winning “Most Likely To Remove His Eye And Show It To You” was particularly wonderful — but yeah, I think the joy of the segment is assuming Jimmy said “no, I’ll be fine” to the NBC hockey rep with phonetic flash cards and muddling his way through the names on the fly. I’m surprised Chris Neil didn’t end up as “Crass Nail.”

The clip is after the jump. Warning: yes, he does snicker at several of his own jokes, so be okay with that going in.

Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t remember the last time we checked in with Phoenix Coyotes enforcer Paul Bissonnette, but usually if someone mentions his name it’s either accompanied by dude/bro story for the ages or very attractive females. Alas, comrades, this is not one of those days. No, this time Bissonnette is only being mentioned because he posted a copy of a Twitter direct message conversation he had the other day with Pittsburgh Penguins center Evgeni Malkin.

Granted, their conversation could have used a little more excitement, but Malkin’s “russia best” had Danger Guerrero and me chucking with delight yesterday as we rode horses on the beach. Their conversation gets even better, though, since I obtained a copy of the rest of their chat. Amazingly, it turns out that, much like me, they have very limited knowledge of Russia based on vague pop culture references.

Read the rest of this entry »

While the Red Wings seem to be scoring with ease against the Pittsburgh Penguins in this year’s Stanley Cup Final, the games themselves aren’t scoring many viewers. From the AP:

The NBC telecast [for Game 1 of the Final] drew a 2.6 rating and a 5 share. That’s compared with a four-game NBC average of a 3.2 rating and a 6 share one year ago.

Detroit has won convincingly in the two back-to-back games in Detroit, and suddenly the Pens are facing elimination at home unless they can win Game 3 in the Igloo on Tuesday. If a team falls in the playoffs and nobody’s around to watch it, does Sidney Crosby’s crying still make a sound? While you ponder that (or not), here’s the big fight (via Hockeyfights) that should have earned Pittsburgh’s Evgeni Malkin a one-game suspension, as it happened in the last five minutes of play. At least when the NHL throws its rules out the window, it does so from the league’s front office, and not from the referee’s wallet at a Vegas sportsbook.

Read the rest of this entry »