Larry Brown Sports

Boston Bruins fans went to sleep on Wednesday night feeling the sting of a 6-5 shootout loss to the Montreal Canadiens. It doesn’t get much worse than blowing a 5-3, third-period lead against your most bitter rival, but there was a tremendous silver lining even after the most painful loss of the season. It appeared certain the Bruins had landed Calgary Flames star Jarome Iginla.

When Boston fans wake up, they’ll be in an even worse mood than they were when they hit the sheets. Despite various reports that Iginla to Boston was a done deal, the 15-year veteran has been traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins. How could this have happened? Iginla picked it himself.

“He agreed to waive and come to Pittsburgh,” Penguins GM Ray Shero told the team’s official website. “The trade conference call was done with the league. Everything was final. That was it. I talked to him a while ago after it. He said he was excited to come to Pittsburgh. He said he would help anyway he could, didn’t care about role or who he was playing with. He wants to help the team win and be a part of it.”

In fact, TSN’s Bob McKenzie has reported that the Flames preferred Boston’s offer of a first-round pick and two prospects, but Iginla would not waive his no-trade clause to be sent to the Bruins. Considering he had been a healthy scratch for the first time in his career and two of the Bruins’ top prospects were scratched from their AHL affiliate’s game, it seemed certain Iginla was Boston-bound.

Perhaps he watched the Bruins’ meltdown and changed his mind at the last second. Boston was unable to score on six attempts in the shootout, and goalie Tuukka Rask threw a classic spaz and broke his stick after letting in the deciding goal. Pittsburgh is already one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference and recently got even better by trading for former Dallas Stars forward Brenden Morrow. Iginla makes them the clear-cut favorite in the East.

We here at LBS don’t really get the hype surrounding the Harlem Shake video phenomenon. I understand that social media trends have a mind of their own, but most of the Harlem Shake videos people are coming up with just aren’t that funny. However, there are always going to be exceptions.

Like this Philadelphia Flyers-Pittsburgh Penguins Harlem Shake video, for example. The folks at HockeyVideoHD decided to turn a dust-up that took place on Wednesday night during the Flyers’ win over the Penguins into a Harlem Shake mash-up. It may have originally been Paul Bissonette of the Minnesota Wild’s idea, but the execution was pretty flawless.

Don’t get me wrong, I still hate these things and am not going to be the least bit upset when the trend dies out. But as Deadspin’s Barry Petchesky put it, this is the first Harlem Shake video that doesn’t suck. I guess that counts for something.

After losing to their state rival earlier in the playoffs this season, Penguins fans have been on edge. Most of them are furious with the team for allowing the Flyers to walk all over them, but one fan has an entirely separate bone to pick with Pittsburgh. As The Consumerist pointed out, Penguins fan Fred Weiss has filed a class action complaint against the team for sending him too many text messages.

The lawsuit alleges that the team violated the Telephone Consumer Protection by sending Weiss more text messages than were agreed upon when he signed up to receive text alerts from the team. The plantiff says the agreement called for no more than three texts per week providing breaking news, information about trades, and special offers from the team. Weiss says in the first week he received at least five. In the second — brace yourselves — the team sent four.

“By exceeding the authorized limits on weekly text message calls made to Plaintiff…” the complaint reads. “Defendant has caused Plaintiff and the other members of the Class actual harm, not only because they were subjected to the aggravation that necessarily accompanies the invasion of privacy caused by unsolicited text message calls, but also because consumers frequently have to pay their cell phone service providers for the receipt of such wireless calls.”

The plaintiff is seeking for a court injunction that would limit the amount of texts the team is allowed to send as well as an undisclosed amount in damages. Some fans like to take out their frustrations by burning jerseys. Others file a suit against their team for blowing up their cell phone.

H/T The Pensblog
Photo credit: Charles LeClaire-US PRESSWIRE

On Friday morning, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review featured a story that indicates a locker room rift is developing within the Penguins organization.  In short, the article cautioned that the Penguins were growing tired of the amount of time it is taking Sidney Crosby to rehab from concussion-like symptoms.  The author, Dejan Kovacevic, claimed that three sources say a group of players recently held a meeting to discuss naming a new temporary captain.  One other source disputed the story.  After seeing what went on at Penguins practice in Friday, one would assume the latter source knows what he or she is talking about.

The photo above was featured on the Pittsburgh Penguins website.  As you can see, the players wasted no time taking the opportunity to mock the story by all rocking the captain’s “C” on their sweaters.

Read The Rest of the Story…

Jaromir Jagr has returned to the NHL after playing three years in Russia’s KHL. There was speculation swirling for weeks regarding the team for whom he’d choose to play, and the Penguins, Red Wings, Canadiens and Rangers were all prominently mentioned.

In the end, Jagr chose to sign with the Flyers on a one-year $3.3 million deal — a move that shocked most folks.

Jagr’s deal with Philly was announced a few hours after the Penguins reportedly pulled their $2 million offer because they did not want to enter a bidding war. Jagr picked Philly, leaving the fans in Pittsburgh stunned.

I ask you the question: was it wrong of Jagr to pick one of Pittsburgh’s biggest rivals as his new team?

Jagr played 11 of his 17 NHL seasons with the Penguins. That’s the team that drafted him and paired him with Mario Lemieux when he was wee little mullet wearing lad from Czechoslovakia. That’s the same team that helped develop him into a star player in the league. And Jagr is the same guy who told The Hockey News in 2009 “I would play for the minimum salary. I would play for $350,000 just for [Mario Lemieux] because I owe him my hockey life.”

Something must have changed since then because Jagr left for more money elsewhere. I don’t know what happened and I never like to say that someone made the wrong move without knowing what we on behind the scenes, but it’s awfully strange that Jagr’s viewpoint changed so much in only two years. I’m inclined to say that signing with the Penguins was the wrong move, but we don’t know the whole story. What do you say?

Whenever the playoffs come around in any sport, we always here about the “home advantage.” Well, in these 2010 NHL Playoffs, we are seeing exactly the opposite. Every team in the playoffs, aside from the Sharks, has faced difficulty winning at home. For some reason the Sharks have been amazing no matter where they are.

Let’s start with the Chicago Blackhawks and the Vancouver Canucks. Game One of their Western Conference semifinals series resulted in an embarrassing home loss for the Blackhawks as the Canucks came into the United Center and just took over. The Blackhawks fell 5-1 that night, but came back for three straight dominate performances, two of which were on the road in Vancouver (where the Hawks seemed to enjoy taunting the fans).  Sunday night, the Canucks came into Chicago facing elimination, and they walked away with 4-1 road victory over the Blackhawks. Game Six will take place Tuesday night in Vancouver. So, why are these two teams so much better when they don’t have their home crowd behind them? There might not be an answer, but these teams are hardly an isolated case.

The Pittsburgh Penguins and Montreal Canadiens have shown a similar pattern of losing at home in their Eastern Conference semifinals series. The Penguins dominated in their first home game of this series, but then fell to the Canadiens in the second home game. The Canadiens fell to the Penguins when they returned to Montreal, but won their second home game too. They have forced Game Six in Montreal Monday night.

I think the home struggles of these teams has a lot to do with the goals of the road teams. It seems that all of these road teams are feeding off the energy of quieting the crowd and embarrassing the home town team in front of them. Hey, the fans love taunting the visiting teams — just check out the green men in Vancouver, who have been taunting all season.  My guess is that the players love taunting on the road as much as the fans do, only they do it by winning. That’s somewhat strange because in my opinion, there’s nothing better than a win in front of your home town fans.

Sources:
Five Things We Learned From Sunday [ESPN]

Many players and coaches have been known to do crazy things at team parades. You’ve had Mark Madsen break out in a horrendous dance, same thing with Pat Riley. Shaq’s rapped as has Juan Pierre. Chase Utley’s dropped an F-bomb in front of a packed Citizens Bank Park. I guess guys are riding so high that they feel invincible and will just do or say anything — almost like they’re drunk. Well Penguins coach Dan Byslma had one such moment on Monday in Pittsburgh at the team’s parade. Move ahead to the 2:45 mark to hear Bylsma take a shot at Hockeytown USA aka Detroit:

In case you can’t watch, Bylsma said: “We’re like, ‘we’re gonna win this one, we’re gonna win this one.’ And that’s what you fans did for us and done for us all along, it’s unbelievable. Bring this trophy back to Pittsburgh — city of champions — much better than Hockeytown.” Now it’s not as if Bylsma had a playing career with the Blackhawks or something like that where he should just automatically hate Detroit or the Red Wings. Seems like he was just playing along with the fans. I dunno, but I’m guessing Wings fans and Detroit will remember that one, especially if there’s another Stanley Cup rematch.