Your morning shot of hockey to go with your coffee.

GOOOOOOOD MORNING THUNDERBLOG! I don’t want to say Good Monday or something dumb like that because Mondays suck.

THIS WEEKEND’S PICKS:

Quick Hits my weekend picks. Here they are from Friday in case you missed them. Asterisk indicates who I picked

Penguins* hold off Devils 3-2. – The Pens were up 3-0 after one period. It seemed that this game was all but over. The Devils made it exciting, but Marc Andre Fleury made 37 Saves.

Canucks blast Bruins* 6-2. Remember how I said the Bruins will beat Torts like last year? Well Torts wanted no part of that. The Canucks were up 1-0 and the Bruins scored to tie it up. Torts calls a timeout and rips into his boys and they go on to score five more. I was going to try to find a clip of the rant, but Torts told the media that what he said is “none of your business.” Vancouver has now won SEVEN in a row.

Blackhawks* down Kings 3-1. – The Blackhawks won at home, what else is new? Jonathan Toews assisting? Patrick Sharp sharpshooting on the Power Play? Anntti Rannta standing on his head in net? No, that all sounds about right. Even against a great team like the Kings.

2-1 last night! 24-21 on the season now. Slowly but surely, I’m making things happen.

One last game, yesterday was awful for Philadelphia sports. First the Eagles, and then:

Flyers blow three-goal lead, fall to Caps in a shootout 5-4. – Ovi sniped twice in this one. He scored the first and fourth goals for Washington. The Flyers were out-shot, out-hit, and turned the puck over way more than Washington. Can’t win that way. The sad thing is that they were finishing their opportunities and just let the Capitals get back into the game. They scored two goals in 74 seconds to go up 4-1 in the third period. Remember what happened when the Blackhawks did that to the Flyers last week? They keeled over and started playing chippy (*cough* Scott Hartnell *cough*). What did the Caps do? They didn’t give up and they won. These two teams will finish the home-and-home tomorrow night.

Highlight of the Weekend:

Ovi’s game-tier is pretty fantastic but I can’t possibly watch that again let alone make it the highlight of the weekend. Now I do hate shootouts with a burning passion, but this goal is one of the brighter points of those. Even if it was in the seventh round of the shootout.

GAMES  TONIGHT:

Just four games on the docket tonight: Maple Leafs @ Penguins at 7, Jets @ Blue Jackets at 7, Blues @ Senators at 7:30, and Stars @ Avalanche at 9. I’m going Pens at home, this will be the most entertaining game. It’s on the NHL Network so if you have it, you probably do and just haven’t looked, go watch this before Monday Night Football starts. JSB and I were talking this weekend about how the NHL is one of the better Sports Channels around, especially considering the lack of hockey on the Worldwide Leader: ESPN. See the NHL Network has the Presidential Seal of Approval, what else do you need? Jets over Blue Jackets. Gotta favor West over East and CBJ’s unexplainably good play since Bob went down has to run out at some point. Blues over Sens. Waaaay too much offense coming from St. Louis for the Senators to handle. Stars over Avs. The Stars are actually one of the better teams in terms of offense, their defense isn’t so great this season, but has been better as of late. They’re also very good on the road.