Trending Topics: Sometimes hate is a good thing in hockey

Trending Topics is a new column that looks at the week in hockey according to Twitter. If you're only going to comment to say how stupid Twitter is, why not just go have a good cry for the slow, sad death of your dear internet instead?

You need one of two things to make a regular season matchup really great.

The first are playoff implications, and for obvious reasons. Who wasn't glued to Wednesday's wild finish in Dallas, where Teemu Selanne(notes) and the Anaheim Ducks plucked two seemingly impossible points from a team with whom they're scrambling madly for a Western Conference playoff spot?

The second is bloodlust.

For all the blustery pronouncements that violence is bad for the sport and everyone's gonna stop watching boo hoo hoo, let's not all act like we won't tune in to see the Penguins and Islanders in their first game since the whole big dustup in a few weeks.

Likewise, you watched last night's Bruins/Canadiens tilt for sure.

And why? Because more often than not, genuine hatred between two clubs makes a sporting event, whether it's on the first day of the season or the last, enthralling appointment television.

(Coming Up: The "What Recchi Thinks" meme and your pearls of BizNasty.)

In Spain, they even have a term for it. It's commonly used to describe enmity between two football teams, their fans and their cities that is itself a near-living thing. There's a wonderful book about it by a journalist named Phil Ball — born in Vancouver, incidentally — called "Morbo."

That, the Spanish say, is the word. It's not just hatred for the sake of generating dollars and headlines, though it does that too. It's the feeling of rage that builds behind the eyes of any fan who sees their rival's logo, and that arises naturally when two combatants that just plain don't like each other clash time and again, never really gaining or losing any ground to the other in an appreciable sense.

But the greatest kind of morbo, the kind that steals away the attention of two entire cities for a whole night, is when the feeling extends beyond the stands and into the dressing rooms.

Teams that don't like each other tend to put on entertaining hockey games, whether the NHL's head of officiating is in the building or not. Not every game has to degenerate into a pastiche of dropped sticks and gloves, and no one has to be carted off on a stretcher. They can just plain not like each other, and that makes the games all the more gripping.

Especially right now, the Boston Bruins and Montreal Canadiens have what you'd call mucho morbo. This was legitimately the third "Most Important Game of the Season" between the two teams. That was helped in no small way by the comments of both Mark Recchi(notes) and Milan Lucic(notes) the day before that game — clearly designed to take some of the heat off Zdeno Chara(notes) — and the hysteria that ensued. Everyone in the hockey world got sucked into it.

Was it right for Recchi to say that? Wasn't he just saying what everyone else thought at the time? Did he get baited into it? That was all discussed ad nauseum until it came time for the game to actually start.

In fact, it got so bad, so quickly, that the Bruins canceled their morning skate ahead of the game and didn't make any players available to the legions of Quebec-based reporters sent down from their home province, slavering for even the slightest quote that could be spun expertly into anti-Montreal or, better yet, pro-hockey violence rhetoric.

Not that the Boston media didn't do its part to build the controversy. After all, it was the media's leading questions that allegedly goaded Recchi and Lucic to the "taking in a movie three days after his concussion" talking point like they were well-coached PR flaks, and its columns that defended Chara's hit as part being nothing out of the ordinary or untoward, wondering too-casually-to-be-casual what all the fuss was even about.

As a result, the city was abuzz all day with Habs/Bruins chatter, most of it angry. People grilled me about it at the office, and they talked about it loudly in the streets.

The way it should be.

And sure, last night's resulting game didn't live up to the antagonism on which the hype built. They don't always do; how could they possibly? Last night's game could have been a beautiful, hard-nosed battle between two teams trying to show the other that they weren't going to deal with each other's crap. Or it could have been dulled by players afraid of incurring the wrath of the league's top disciplinarians ahead of the postseason.

Instead, it was a game the Bruins controlled from the outset and just continually widened with convincing possession and sure special teams.

In any event, we'd still have been hoping that, come the postseason, it would yield at least four more rematches of this wonderful rivalry, that is only rooted deeper with every passing contest.

That's morbo, and hockey, at its very best.

#RecchiThinks

So yes, Recchi stirred up some controversy with what has commonly become known as armchair neurology. Loudly wondering about the severity of another person's concussion on one instance of him going to the movies, and using that as an indicator of just how bad the symptoms could have been, brought his judgment into question for many.

So what else does Recchi think?

@TheRick625: Liz Taylor is a faker.

@Pat_Egan: the Japanese should have put on some swimmies and called it a day.

@jdickie: a buck for a candy bar is ridiculous! When he was a kid, they were only a nickel!

@MissingMalone: there is crying in baseball.

@DontTradeVinny: Clint Malarchuk just cut himself shaving.

@rshappy91: you can wear socks with sandals

@srichardson1980: you should turn down your hip hop music and pull your pants up.

Pearls of Biz-dom

We all know that there isn't a better Twitter account out there than that of Paul Bissonnette(notes). So why not find his best bit of advice on love, life and lappers from the last week?

BizNasty on getting quality minutes:

"Career high in ice time tonight. 19 minutes. #ThanksToWarmUps"

If you've got something for Trending Topics, holla at Lambert on Twitter or via e-mail. He'll even credit you so you get a thousand followers in one day and you'll become the most popular person on the Internet! You can also visit his blog if you're so inclined.

Related: Milan Lucic, Teemu Selanne, Paul Bissonnette, Mark Recchi, Zdeno Chara, Anaheim Ducks, Boston Bruins, Montreal Canadiens

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NCAA Hockey: Union’s power failure; Michigan’s disputed goal

In which we recap the day's events in the NCAA tournament, via Puck Daddy columnist Ryan Lambert.

Ah, the inherent unfairness of a single-elimination tournament.

It's not really the world's hugest upset when a nine-seed drops an eight-seed from the NCAA tournament; but the way in which the Bulldogs of Minnesota-Duluth ousted the Union Dutchmen is quite remarkable.

At the end of the day, you can pin the 2-0 loss on any number of things, but the most notable is that Union's power play was, for the first time all year, completely and utterly unsuccessful.

The Dutchmen entered the day with by far the best power play percentage in the nation at 31 percent. That's 31. Thirty. One. Twenty percent is a good power play. Twenty-five is untouchable. And 31 is breathtaking. No one, to put it simply, scores on 31 percent of their power play opportunities over the course of an entire season.

And yet here was Union, scoring 51 times on 164 power plays, and that led many to believe that, whatever UMD did, it should not, under any circumstances, start taking boneheaded penalties. So what did Scott Sandelin's team do? It went to the penalty box three times in the first 9:07 of the game, which would seem to be an astonishingly bad strategy.

And yet, Union seemed completely unable to accomplish anything on the man advantage that had plagued opponents all year. In the end, it went 0-for-9 on the power play. It was just the ninth time all season that Union failed to register a power play goal, and certainly no one gave them more opportunity than the Bulldogs.

Offensive zone draws? They didn't win many on the power play. Not any that amounted to something worth noting anyway. Any shots they put together were from quite a distance, and never bothered Kenny Reiter, whose season-long stats are respectable but not impressive, and who comfortably made 32 saves to pick up his third shutout of the year.

An actual excerpt from my notes in the first period:

"At some point, Union has to admit that its power play just isn't working instead of forcing the puck low and losing it immediately."

In fact, most of Union's power-play time was spent digging the puck out from under its own faceoff circles, where UMD frequently dumped it after gaining it with alarming ease. In short, it seemed as though the Dutchmen had little to no desire to fight for the puck at all. "Oh it's along the boards?" the forwards seemed to say. "Let 'em have it then."

What's surprisingly about all this is that Duluth's first power play chance yielded an alarmingly easy goal, as left wing Kyle Schmidt put his stick on the ice and lazily deflected a soft shot from Mike Montgomery past Union's Keith Kincaid (he of the 1.98 GAA coming in). That was a convincing enough lead for the Bulldogs and Justin Fontaine's doubling of it early in the third period — also on the power play, incidentally — always seemed like it would be plenty.

In the end, both teams seemed eager to parade their way to the penalty box, but the team with the lethal regular-season power play was the one that ended up going home.

What that tells us about the relative strength of ECAC scheduling versus that of the WCHA is not for me to say, but let's just keep in mind that a season slate that includes juggernauts such as Niagara, UConn, American International and Army isn't exactly the kind of thing that fills out a team's strength of schedule to its absolute maximum.

In fact, that's the kind of thing that usually gets you into the tournament but bounced immediately, ridiculous power play or not. But such is the nature of any single-elimination tournament. If the bread and butter on which your entire season's work is constructed eludes you for even an hour, you can go ahead and start scheduling tee times.

The golf courses in Duluth, if they're open, will have to wait at least one more day.
Three stars

1. Jaden Schwartz, Colorado College

Boston College opened the scoring just 19 seconds into this first-round game, but Schwartz, a first-round pick of the St. Louis Blues, picked up a point on the next three goals of the game, all in the span of less than 3:30, to put the game firmly out of reach. By the end of the first period, CC was up 4-1. Through two, it was 7-2 to the Tigers, and Schwartz had added another goal, which stood up as the game-winner. No one expected BC, which had won two of the last three titles, to go down in an 8-4 flameout, but Schwartz, along with linemate and older brother Rylan (who also had four points), was merciless.

2. Kevin Lynch, Michigan

Nebraska-Omaha went up two goals in the first period, but Lynch (a Columbus Blue Jackets draftee) put the Wolverines on his back midway through the second and gutted out a controversial win. He scored not only the game-tying goal at 8:36 of the middle period, but added the overtime game-winner that took a full 10 minutes of review and, frankly, is still inconclusive. I can't find video of it at the moment, but there was not one angle that showed the puck definitively crossing the line. A lot of suppositions can be made, and it was probably the right call in the end, but we'll never know for sure.

From the Boston Globe, how Nebraska-Omaha saw it:

Nebraska-Omaha coach Dean Blais said it was one of the toughest losses of his career.  "The referee said it was in and we have to accept that,'' he said.

Faulkner wasn't sure what happened.  "I swiped at the puck with my right leg,'' he said. "I'm not 100 percent sure if it went it. It's a bitter pill to swallow.''

Here's Michigan in the postgame comments:

3. Chad Ziegler, Yale

The No. 1 seed in the tournament shouldn't have to go to overtime against the No. 16 team, but that's what Yale was compelled to do against an impressive bend-but-don't-break performance from a resilient Air Force. Ziegler scored just 3:16 into overtime to ice the game, but did little to assuage concerns that the Bulldogs would run into serious problems against Duluth.

Ryan Lambert covers the NCAA hockey tournament for Puck Daddy. You can e-mail him here if you want, but you should definitely follow him on Twitter.

Related: Columbus Blue Jackets, St. Louis Blues

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The 8 questions about tonight's Hockey Night In Canada games

CBC's Hockey Night in Canada, brought to you by Yahoo! Sports Canada, will stream three interesting games for your Saturday night hockey pleasure: The Toronto Maple Leafs at the Philadelphia Flyers (7 p.m. ET); the Montreal Canadiens at the Ottawa Senators (7 p.m. ET); and the San Jose Sharks at the Edmonton Oilers (10 p.m. ET).

(Ed. Note: HNIC streams available to Canadian readers only; but everyone can check out Hockey Night on Y! Sports for the New York Rangers at the Boston Bruins at 7 p.m. and the Los Angeles Kings at the Colorado Avalanche at 9 p.m.)

Here are eight questions we have entering the HNIC games tonight:

1. Can the Leafs' top line play uglier?

Coach Ron Wilson is playing early psychological games with his top line, having benched both Phil Kessel(notes) and Tyler Bozak(notes) in recent games for motivation. Those two, and Kris Versteeg(notes), need to take the "dirtier route" according to Wilson, via James Mirtle:

"We need that line to compete a little bit harder on nights when it's going to be difficult," Wilson said. "Because they are going to be closely monitored by the other team.

"Get to the front of the net, get your nose dirty, score an ugly goal. We have to figure out how to do that."

The offense carried the Leafs to an undefeated start, averaging four goals per game; they've score one in each of their last two, both losses.

2. Will Kerry Fraser say something outrageous?

The well-coiffed former NHL referee is promoting a book and will be on HNIC after an Elliotte Friedman report on concussions. Fraser has been critical of the League lately for its policies on hits to the head; how pointed will his comments be on HNIC?

3. Will Mike Richards(notes) begin showing up for the Flyers?

Chuck Gormley of the Courier-Post writes that the Flyers are off to a rough start (2-3-1), and that Richards' lack of production is one factor: "The Flyers are still looking for captain Mike Richards to score his first goal of the season. Richards had six goals through six games last season en route to a career-high of 31 but has none on 15 shots this season and is a minus-3."

4. Are the San Jose Sharks reuniting their mega-line?

David Pollack of Working The Corners reports that Todd McLellan has reunited Joe Thornton(notes), Patrick Marleau(notes) and Dany Heatley(notes) on one line after having them split up to start the season. McLellan said it's how they "potentially" could look against the Oilers. The trio is a combined minus-13, but have 5 goals.

5. Can Shawn Horcoff(notes) continue the stats smackdown?

Yes, Edmonton is such a hockey town that their players get name-checked at WWE events. As for Horcoff, the Oilers forward has three goals and an assist so far this season, but David Staples said his production goes beyond that:

So far, even though Horcoff plays a far more difficult defensive position than anyone on the ice save for the regular defencemen, his scoring chances true plus/minus is tied with Ales Hemsky(notes) at a team-best plus-16.

Horcoff has helped to create 19 scoring chances at even-strength and has been a culprit on just three against, the same numbers as Hemsky, but Hemsky plays a less difficult defensive position, making it less likely he will pick up minus marks.

In both cases: Happy and healthy starts for two key Oilers.

6. Can Lars Eller(notes) get rolling for the Habs as a center?

Interesting lineup move for Jacques Martin for the Canadiens: Shifting struggling rookie Lars Eller to center on a fourth line with Travis Moen(notes) and Mathieu Darche(notes). From Pat Hickey of Habs Inside/Out:

Eller said yesterday that he feels more involved when he's at centre and Martin is hoping the move will produce some offence. Eller, who was acquired from St. Louis in the trade which sent Jaroslav Halak(notes) to St. Louis, is still looking for his first point as a Canadien.

Like we said ... interesting. In the sense that Martin moved Eller to center on a line that wouldn't appear to kick-start anyone's offense. Why not put him at the pivot with a couple of offensive aces and see what comes of it?

7. Will Mike Fisher(notes) step up in Spezza's absence?

Jason Spezza(notes) is expected to be out tonight with groin issues, and Mike Fisher will skate in between Daniel Alfredsson(notes) and Milan Michalek(notes). Mr. Underwood picked up a helper on Alfredsson's empty-netter last night; can he make the most of this chance?

8. Finally, where will the Rick Rypien(notes) conversation lead?

Ron MacLean writes that the Hot Stove discussion on Rick Rypien's 6-game suspension for contact with a fan could include "on-ice behaviour, class inequality, natural impulse, historical change, psychological need, even the media." Sounds ... involved.

(Ed Note: Canadian readers can watch these games live via Hockey Night in Canada Presented by Y! Sports Canada tonight)

Related: Lars Eller, Phil Kessel, Kris Versteeg, Rick Rypien, Jaroslav Halak, Mike Richards, Jason Spezza, Travis Moen, Ales Hemsky, Milan Michalek, Mathieu Darche, Dany Heatley, Shawn Horcoff, Daniel Alfredsson, Mike Fisher, Tyler Bozak, Patrick Marleau, Joe Thornton, Boston Bruins, Colorado Avalanche, Edmonton Oilers, Los Angeles Kings, Montreal Canadiens, New York Rangers, Ottawa Senators, Philadelphia Flyers, San Jose Sharks, Toronto Maple Leafs

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