First Star, Worst Star: February 1, 2015

SUPER BOWL WEEKEND!! I hope everyone bought enough tonnage of beer and chips and pizza and wings. It’s the one day a year where it’s acceptable to eat your weight in deep fried foods and pass out on the toilet by 8PM. But in the mean time, let’s check out who was the best, and the best of the worst in the NHL this week!

You know, it’s been a while since I can remember seeing a Tuuka Rask highlight that didn’t include him losing his mind and hurling projectiles on the ice/at the boards/from the bench/etc, so this one is pretty special! 

I’m usually hesitant to proclaim anything “Thing Of The Year” when there’s still so much of the season left, but man this one is going to be hard to top. Dougie Hamilton and Zdeno Chara decide to take a page out of the “Edmonton Oilers Book Of Defence” and stand hip to hip on one side of the net, while Grabner is WIDE open on the other. This should cut the Bruins lead to one, but Rask perfectly executes the “sprawling desperation save that looks like you totally knew what you were doing the whole time” maneuver to make one of the best saves you’ll ever see. If this was in international competition it would be commemorated on some kind of postage, but since this was just a game in the middle of the season we’re all going to forget about it until next December when TSN and Sportsnet start playing “Best Of The Year” highlight packages ad nauseum over the Christmas holidays. SAVE OF THE YEAR!! 

Let’s keep the all-goalie theme going, this time from the complete opposite end of the spectrum. OH TORONTO! What are we ever gonna do with you! You fire your coach midseason because the team is under-performing once again, and you somehow get even worse! The Leafs are 3-16-1 in their last 20 games, and under new head coach Peter Horachek they’ve managed to win one game. ONE GAME. The only team that has less wins in January were the Buffalo Sabres, with ZERO. And you know what Toronto, it’s things like this that aren’t helping your cause (but brining much joy to the rest of us):

I’ve watched this goal probably 50 times now and I still have no idea what happened. I mean, I know OEL uncorked a half-speed change up at his own blue line, but how did it go in the net? Is there some kind of conspiracy at foot here? WAS THE PUCK GUIDED INTO THE NET BY SOME UNSEEN FORCES HELLBENT ON TRYING TO RUIN THE LEAFS? AND JUST HOW INVOLVED IS GARY BETTMAN AND THE NHL IN ALL OF THIS?

Eh, sorry, I spent the last couple of days listening to Pete Carroll interviews. 

Congratulations Toronto, just when you think your season can’t get any more embarrassing you somehow always find a way to make things even worse! On the plus side this is probably taking a little bit of the sting out of that whole “game 7 collapse” thing, right? *dodges rotten fruit hurled by Leafs Nation readers*