All stars

I'm not actually going to talk that much about the all star selections - Dave was really miffed that Iginla got as few votes as he did, but hey, whatever.

Congrats to our boys for making it to the hyped up shinny game of little importance.

What I want to know is, can Dion race luggage trolleys with the kids like last year? Can he?

No? Oh well.

I've been digging around and tripped on this dandy of an interview from Andrew Ference. There's Africa again, he talks about his scrap with Crosby, the fantabulous Cup run of '04, and makes this observation, which jibes well with all the Give-Iggy-the-Hart rumblings:

Jarome in my books is a better hockey player than Crosby because he does those things. He will fight, he will lay his body on the line and take the hit and not complain if someone hits him and stuff like that. The superstars of the league should have to do that because they're hockey players, they're not ice-skating princesses.

(Not that here, we don't love Sidney Crosby. Just there won't be a lot of love forthcoming while he isn't on any of our fantasy teams, and if we've said it once, we've said it a dozen times: He ain't no Marcus Nilson.)

Which brings us to tonight. Oooooo. Phoenix. While they're not quite as irritating as they were back when they were the Jets, this year's edition of the Coyotes is nothing to sneeze at. They're a pretty respectable 11th place, not even last in their division, and with scoring threats like the dangerous Derek Morris, and the superb Steve Reinprecht...

What?

Oh. Um. Well. Where was I?

There will be no cakewalk tonight. I still expect our boys to come out ahead. Somewhat. Expect Lombardi to go minus (again), and Phaneuf as well. Warrener will improve from the outing in LA (he'd better!). And the winning goal will come from the Iggy/Huselius/lucky bystander line.

3-2.