Ok, let’s lighten things up a bit.  Rough weekend for everyone.  Here’s a fluff piece.

Some people take the scenic route to our little spot in the world wide web.  And the blog software is able to track what people type in their web searches that ultimately bring them here.  Here are some of the searches from this past week.

Mountain Fury Admirals (awesome)
Jamie Lundmark Wife Erica (we get these searches every week)
Governor Scott Walker Combover (????)
Effective Penalty Killer (Anyone come to mind?)
Compare nets and skeletons. how are they alike? how do they diffre? (????)
Chet Pickard Problem (We’ll have a story about Chet later this week!)

Please welcome Matt Halischuk back to Milwaukee.  Word is that he will be playing this afternoon against Rockford.

Benn Olson has been returned to the Cyclones, and Dylan Hunter is back with the Admirals.

In other news…..(hat-tip to our friends at Cycwords for breaking the story)  There are some mixed signals about a trade that Nashville may or may not have made last week.

Casey Pierro-Zabotel, a forward, has been added to the roster of the Cyclones.

Shawn Rine, who covers the Wheeling Nailers in the ECHL, wrote this story about the move, saying that the Penguins retain his rights.

But he also tweets this message:

@WheelHouse87 Shawn RIne

So we’ll see if we can figure out what really happened.

As for the player… He played with Jon Blum on the Vancouver Giants junior team, leading the team in scoring in 08-09 to the tune of 36 goals and 79 assists.  He was a 3rd round pick by the Penguins, but had not put up similar numbers since turning pro.  There have apparently be some questions about his work ethic, which may or may not still be out there.  (If we wants a chance to play in Milwaukee, those questions better be gone.)

Here’s a scouting report from hockeysfuture.com.  Frankly, I don’t care for most of their scouting reports, but for now, it’s a start.

He’s a big body with very good scoring abilities.  Pierro-Zabotel is a pure finisher who rarely fails to convert on a chance within 10 feet.  In some ways he compares to Tomas Holmstrom in the sense that he’s willing to take some punishment in front of the net and he is very much an opportunist.  He won’t create many chances himself, but he will take advantage of them when they come along.

His acceleration definitely needs improvement, although his all-around mobility is good enough to get by on with what he does on the ice.  Defensively he’s weak, but that aspect of his game can be rounded out in the future.

So we’ll do some digging to see if he’s actually Predators property… If he is, maybe he’ll be worth a flier at some point?

And a programming note….we’ll have a story on Chet Pickard early this week.  Remember him?

UPDATE:  Confirmed through the Admirals office, Pittsburgh retains the rights to Casey Pierro-Zabotel.  So his chances of playing in Milwaukee are a hair above nil at this point.

Suspensions and fines are in for the Pens/Isles game.

– 10 games for Goddard, for leaving the bench.
– Trevor Gillies got 9 games for the hit to the head, and subsequent punches, and probably his taunting from the tunnel too.
– Matt Martin got 4 games for starting stuff with Max Talbot.
– Islanders organizaiton fined $100k.

Glad to see the NHL didn’t waive any of Goddard’s automatic suspension like they have for his teammates in the past (cough Cup finals cough).  But in a lot of those cases, the coach also gets a suspension.

The Coach(es) of the team(s) whose player(s) (including goalkeepers) left the players’ bench(es) or penalty bench(es)during an altercation shall be suspended, pending a review by the Commissioner. The Coach(es) also will be fined a maximum of ten thousand dollars ($10,000).

The reasoning behind the $100k fine for the Islanders organizaiton was, per Colin Campbell, “The Islanders also must bear some responsibility for their failure to control their players.”

And Dan Bylsma doesn’t, apparently.

I think what Gillies got was about right.  Martin picked the fight with Talbot from behind him.  It wasn’t much of a punch though — nothing close to Todd Bertuzzi.  I suppose they’re suspending the principle behind it and what it sparked, and that’s fine.   But how does this play in open ice gets the same suspension as Matt Cooke earlier in the week?

I’m absolutely AMAZED the Michael Haley gets out of this with nothing.  Apparently, picking fights with goalies is okay after you finish a fight with another player.

Trying to be objective.  Just my thoughts.

Feel free to share yours.  And where do you stand on letting the players police themselves for previous cheap hits?

Here’s some more content for today.

Todd at Milwaukeehockey.com published a post the other day about shootouts — more so, the personnel used in shootouts.  And he brings up some interesting statistics, and some interest points.  Definitely check out the story.

The one variable that I’d like to point out is that the NHL uses the best-of-3-round system, and the AHL uses best-of-5.  So there are more chances that Lane would use a defenseman simply because there are more shootout attempts each night.  Trotz has the leisure of only needing to select three, and maybe has some more matchup information that leads to his decisions.

Wednesday against Peoria, the Admirals sent out 1) Santorelli, 2) Klasen, 3) Mueller, 4) Josi, 5) Geoffrion, 6) Blum.

Santo and Klasen I think have been 1 and 2 all season (provided they’ve both been in uniform in the game).  So based on this current roster, who would you line up as your 3 through 7 shooters, and do you take position into account?

Islanders 9
Penguins 3
346 penalty minutes.

I really can’t look at this objectively….anytime the Penguins get the snot beat out of them, I can’t help but enjoy that…but I’ll try.  One could make the argument that they were victims here, and one could make the argument that this was the players policing themselves after the last game the two teams played.  And one could make the argument that the Admirals could use a Michael Haley about now.

How would things have been different if “Cookie” had been in uniform?

Our friends at Ontheforecheck.com have the video of all the fights.

What’s your take on the circus from yesterday?

I realize that February 9 is a little bit late to still be talking about the AHL All Star festivities, but unlike some of you here at the Roundtable, my schedule did not permit me to watch the game live.  Through the wonder of DVR I managed to record the game and finally found some free time this week to partake in watching it.

Ryan had a brief recap on what took place in an earlier post, but I wanted to add to that.

Milwaukee goaltender Mark Dekanich played the third period for the Western Conference and was spectacular.  Seriously, he was awesome!  Two of the saves he made in the third period bordered on ridiculous, they were that good.  Even though commentators Mike “Doc” Emrick and Craig Laughlin seemed to know little of the background of Dekanich, they were amazed by those two stops.

Linus Klasen showed some flashes playing on a line with Sergei Shirokov of the Manitoba Moose, but tried to dazzle too much and most of his plays ended up fizzling out.  Still Klasen generated a ton of positive headlines for the AHL and the Milwaukee Admirals with his shootout goal the night before in the skills competition.

All in all, it was a really fun game to watch.  There is an impressive amount of skill level throughout the AHL, as all of you Bradley Center Admirals fanatics are well aware of, and it was a delight to watch it on display in Hershey.  Say what you will about the compete level of All-Star games, but I always find the contests mesmerizing to watch.

Who?

Benn Olson.  You know?  Benn Olson.  From the Cyclones.

Dylan Hunter was returned to Cincy yesterday, and Olson was called up.

In 38 games with the Cyclones, here are his vital stats.  Let me know what sticks out to you.

1 goal.  2 assists.  141 penalty minutes.

I have been told that we should expect him to suit up tonight.  And why not?  We’re playing against a team that gooned it up a bit the last time we played them.  For a team that many of you have said lacks the enforcer kind of presence, maybe this is a good start.

Looks like he’ll be wearing #42.

(Photo credit:  Scott Paulus)

Everything is coming up Blake these days.

Despite just 4 games in the since January 23rd, Blake Geoffrion has made the most of those games to the tune of five goals and eight assists.  His goal total for the season doubled in those four games.  And he now has two AHL Player Of The Week awards to put on the shelf next to his Hobey Baker Award.  And that’s great.

So now what?

Here are the questions I want to put up for discussion:

– How much of Blake’s success do you attribute to his surrounding cast of players?  That top line with Linus Klasen and Ryan Thang has been providing great production all around lately.  Do you think Blake gets all the hardware if he’s playing with Kelsey Wilson and Andreas Thuresson?

– Is it realistic to expect similar production going forward?  Even if it’s not on the clip that he was on over the last four games….for argument sake, is it realistic to expect over a point-per-game production going forward?

– Do you think Blake Geoffrion’s name should even be muttered in the Preds’ front office when the discussion turns to call-up?

– Any other thoughts on Blake that you’d like to share?

Rent-a-vet season has begun!

The Rampage are first out of the gate, signing former Admiral Randy Robitaille to a PTO contract.

What’s he been doing lately?  According to hockeydb, he had spent the last two seasons playing in the Swiss-A league, after 531 career NHL contests with Boston, Nashville, LA, Pittsburgh, NY Islanders, Minnesota, Philly and Ottawa.

You may or may not remember him playing in Milwaukee in their last year in the IHL.  His 33 points 19 games really were the spark that team needed to make something of that season.

So should the Admirals look for a similar player for the playoff push?  Or do you think this team can do it with the talent currently on the roster?

Should we get Smoke back on the phone?