STROKE THE ROOSTER..

Joe Thornton.

Name mean anything to you?

Probably not to most of my European readers. But the twitter-sphere and lots of US TV channels have been set alive by a comment he made recently. Here's the story.

Joe Thornton is the 34 year old Captain of the San Jose Sharks ice hockey team in .. well San Jose strangely enough.

His team mate and new player in the NHL Tomas Hertl scored his first NHL hat trick when playing against the New York Rangers last week. Only it wasn't a hat trick, he went on to put the puck in the net a fourth time - a rarity in hockey at the best of times but for a rookie player, quite the talking point.

Fast forward to a press conference in Vancouver on the following Thursday night.


Thornton butted into the chat at this point by saying that if he had scored four goals, “I’d have my cock out if I scored four goals. I’d have my cock out, stroking it.”
There was no way a room full of reporters was not going to make sure that comment went as far and wide as it could. And it did.
The sports news, twitter and every other social media platform ignited with re-reporting re-tweeting and embellishing the original story. Page after page of dedicated stories popped up on the comments made rather than the amazing performance of Hertl (like this one - lol).

There are even plenty of image meme's popping up and being sent around with a young Joe Thornton holding a rooster, etc. Here's another to keep it going! 

You know I couldn't resist it with the recent chicken themes I've had on my blog.

It's still doing the rounds - if you're on twitter check #joethornton

Youtube is now filling up with parody songs too...



More hockey news in a few days...
  

BEARS BEAT RANGERS..

Game 1 of the NHL Stanley Cup second round started Thursday evening for New York Rangers with a visit to the TD Garden Arena, Boston. An ice hockey venue I have yet to visit - next on my list in actual fact.

I'll keep this one short. ish.

Most of the shots on Lundqvist in the first period hit dead centre of his shirt logo. You are not going to score against "possibly the best netminder in the NHL" doing that.

Just over 12 minutes in though, a scrabble in front of net ended up with the puck in the back of it and Boston taking a lead. Scorer: Zdeno Chara, a Slovak national standing and one of the tallest players in the league at a huge 6 foot 9 inches! Huge! See below:

Last 20 seconds saw Sagan almost even up with a shot on the net that went wide. You couldn't cut it finer. 1.3 seconds to go in second period and NYR evened up. 1-1 as McDonagh fired in a medium strength snapshot from midway to the blue line.

Then, just 14 seconds into the third period the Rangers scored again. Derek Stepan this time (who is currently 2nd in both the regular season and the playoffs for the amount of game winning goals achieved.. strange stat, but clearly a key player for the team). Two goals with 16 seconds of playing time. 2-1 Rangers.

Didn't last long though, newcomer defenseman number 47 Torey Krug got his first NHL goal just before the three minute mark of the period. 2-2. This was his first ever playoff game having only played one game for the Bruins in the regular NHL season following signing from non-league team Indiana Ice. Keep your eyes on him next season - wikipedia page here.

The pressure was kept on by the Bruins for the next few minutes before play settled down into an end to end pattern for the rest of the period. 

Powerplay Boston and a dangerous try 22 seconds to go in the third. Then they hit the goalpost as the clock ticked to 0.0 seconds. New York Rangers thrown a lifeline at the very sound of the horn...

Overtime. Powerplay and, to be honest, Boston looked dangerous throughout.

4:20 left in OT and Boston took game one 3-2 with Marchand's first goal in the playoffs.

Shots on goal: Boston 48, New York 35.

One up for the bear. Let's hope the park Rangers get him at Madison Square Garden on Sunday afternoon (3PM ET).

The other game last night was San Jose Sharks v LA Kings. End score: 4-3 to LA. A very very close game with LA only just evening up to 3-3 with 1:43 left in the third period and then, amazingly, 4-3 with 1:21 left. You can tell these two teams are going to come to major blows very soon.

And in other news, non hockey readers of this blog will be happy to know that I am going to post a non-hockey post later today. Mind you, if you think trains, trams and subways are boring....

ROUND 1 OVER..

So, Islanders out - see my last blog - but some surprises at the end of the first round of the Stanley Cup this year.

Mini-me supports New York Rangers (think he does it to wind me up as a New York Islanders fan!) and so we've been head to head in round 1 NYI playing Pittsburgh Penguins and NYR playing Washington Capitals. Both tough match ups.

The Rangers managed to hang on in there to game 7 of their first round and the last game of round 1 for them was undoubtedly their best yet. A real treat for anyone watching (except Caps fans of course) which ended in a 5-0 shut out by the Rangers and their progression to round 2 winning 4 games against 3. Lundqvist again proving himself to be, "probably the best netminder in the League."

Round 2 has started - some amazing match-ups top come.

New York will play the Boston Bruins, close rivals and both teams quite hard hitting. It will be a great round to watch from game 1 on.

Detroit Redwings will play Chicago Blackhawks, again close rivals and another source of family rivalries in this house as Mrs P has adopted Detroit as her favourite team. Largely due to the presence of one Henrik Zetterberg it must be said. She knows nothing about hockey! lol

Detroit v Chicago is the first of these Original 6 games facing off tonight in Chicago at 8:00PM ET (1:00AM here in the UK).

All four of those are 'Original 6' teams, a term used to recognise the group of six teams that composed the NHL for 25 seasons up to 1967 when the League was expanded.

The remaining match-ups feature non Original 6 teams and are Pittsburgh Pengiuns v Ottawa Senators (Pittsburgh are up one game already), LA Kings v San Jose Sharks (LA up one game with a 2-0 win on Tuesday night).

My money is on Pittsburgh v LA in the final but anything can happen in the Stanley Cup...