The Fifth Liners

The season is over, the playoffs are over, the draft is over, it's a sad day when there's no more Hockey. Life goes on, jobs, kids, and long suffering spouses all take center stage again. Alex is still rocking around Toronto and has, for inexplicable reasons, embraced baseball. We still have two months to wait until the return of the football season. The hockey season is even further away, over three months. Damn, July 1st brought not only Canada Day for our friends up north, but also Free Agency Day; the NHL equivalent of Black Friday. It's usually a belter. It's the day when GMs tasked with rebuilding their teams are able to snap up all of the superstars whose contracts came to an end at midday. Here's some of the most notable moves: Ryan Miller - Vancouver Canucks I'd imagine it's tough being a Canucks fan, the pressure to bag that elusive first Stanley Cup has seen lots of changes in BC recently. Starting at the back is never a bad idea and b...

The Anaheim Ducks are enjoying a great start to their 20th anniversary year and last night they extended their winning streak to seven game after a 6-3 win over the Dallas Stars at the Honda Center! Fan favourite Teemu Selanne coolly slotted the Ducks in front on a powerplay after only 2.38 of the 1st period, but then the Stars rallied with Ryan Garbutt getting them started when he hammered his shot past Jonas Hiller to make the scores 1-1 and then Brenden Dillon's shot from the point swerved into the net to push Dallas ahead after 14.38 played and finally Shawn Horcoff capped an impressive fight back for the Stars when he redirected a shot to put Dallas 3-1 up! But Anaheim had no intention of letting their fans down and Corey Perry pushed them back into contention only 54 seconds into the second period and then made the scores 3-3 with a tip in from a long range shot off Cam Fowler after 11.48. Emerson Etem then bundled in a short handed goal to finally give the home side t...

Alex's question this week is " Anaheim are always a threat but have fallen short in recent years. What do they have to do in order to bring another cup home?" Since bringing home their first and only cup at the end of the 06/07 season, Ducks fans have been eager to lift the cup again, especially with close neighbours the LA Kings winning it so recently. A lot of the cup winning team have moved on, Chris Kunitz found further success with the Penguins, Rob and Scott Niedermayer have both retired from playing and Chris Pronger is currently signed to the Flyers. Although to be fair, he spent most of that winning postseason suspended for repeatedly elbowing people. The one thing that the Ducks don't have is consistency. Although the team has made appearances in five of the last seven postseasons, their performances have been variable at best. Offensively the team has been good. Scoring goals has never been an issue and Viktor Fasth and Jonas Hiller ...