Chris Neil is out, which is unfortunate, as you would probably be guaranteed a fight between Mair and Neil, but it will have to wait.  Gaustad had a ‘hard practice’ and should be back soon, but not tonight (as per WGR550 on the drive in this morning).  Jason Spezza is out at least a month with a knee injury, taking one of the Sens main weapons out.  That adds to the loss of Pascal Leclaire, who got tagged in the face by a stray puck while on the bench a few weeks ago and is still out with a broken cheekbone.

It’s a 7:30pm start time tonight, so a good chance I get to watch at least part of the game.  Not getting any easier coming up, either, as Buffalo plays four games in six nights starting this weekend, including tilts against Pittsburgh and Washington.  Getting harder to doubt this team or expect a loss, though.

It’s one of those days a sports fan loves, when you can watch two of your teams on the same day.  Too bad they overlap, but at least I won’t have to flip back and forth to whatever episode of House or CSI is on during the hockey game commercials.  The Buffalo Sabres face the Montreal Canadiens at 7pm at their HSBC Arena home, and the Bills take on the Jets in their home away from home, the Rogers Center in Toronto at 8pm.

On the Sabres front, Rivet is improving but last I heard will still sit out tonight.  Goose is still ‘weeks’ away.  Kaleta should be back in (booyah!) so I imagine Paetsch will head back to te press box.  The Habs come in having been shut out by the combo of Jonas Gustavsson and Joey MacDonald (the Monster left the game with a racing heartbeat).

The Bills are yet again in that twilight zone between horrible (read:  high draft pick) and sort of OK (picking 12-14 again).  Still, the team is interesting, even a little fun to watch under Perry Fewell, and you can’t blame him for wanting to win in his audition for this or possible future head coaching gigs.  Should be a fun night.

One more thing that made me happy:  the Patriots got smacked by the Saints 38-17.  Drew Brees tossed 5 TD passes (Tom Brady had 0, with 2 INTs).  It remains to be seen if the Patriots can reload in the offseason, but I can’t help but cackle at them being just another ordinary team.

Alexander Ovechkin went knee-on-knee on the Hurricane’s Tim Gleason, leaving Ovechkin limping off the ice and ejected for the second time in three games.  It’s amazing how all of these ‘accidents’ keep happening around him.  It’s his ‘wide stance’ or the ‘edge’ he plays with or maybe, just maybe, OV is dangerous and needs to learn about the consequences of his actions.

Is Party Now?

H/T to Puck Daddy for the still.

In the craziest moment of the night, Keith Ballard (Florida Panthers) got schooled by Ilya Kovalchuk (Thrashers), and slammed his stick on the goal post in frustration…except Tomas Vokoun’s helmet was in the way:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Maxim Afinogenov shot the game-winning goal in off Ballard’s stick, just to add insult to injury.

“There’s not a guy who feels worse than he does,” said fellow defenseman Bryan Allen. “He means well, he was doing the right thing. He was showing he cares. It was an unfortunate accident, and I feel bad for him. I know he feels 100 times worse than anyone else.”

Except maybe Vokoun.  Just guessing, though.  Wow.

For the Sabres, we may see both Stafford and Lydman back in, though it sounds like Grier will miss the next few games.  This week’s 3-in4 is very winnable again, I’d expect 5 out of 6 points at least.  We’ll see if Lalime gets mixed in somewhere though.

edit:  Bit of a surprise, according to Mike Harrington on his Twitter, Lydman stays out as a healthy scratch in favor of Sekera.

But hey, there’s one team that is playing hard and winning here, and that’s the Buffalo Sabres.  They followed Wednesday’s 3-1 win against the Oilers with a 2-1 shootout win agains the Flames, with Ryan Miller outdueling Miikka Kiprusoff and Pommer netting the SO winner.  This was followed the next night by a win in Philadelphia, 3-2 with Vanek, Tyler Ennis (first career NHL goal filling in for Angry Eyebrows) and Gaustad scoring.  They are finishing games, and have been able to get their callups and previously scratched players to step in without missing a beat as needed.  The Northeast Division is for the taking this year as no other team has stood out.  The Sabres just have to not play themselves out of it.

Yes, those are the Jills there from the looks of it.  Also nice to see the crews working at the other houses.  This article has the story behind the build if you are interested in spoiling your viewing.  Also sports-related, some of the Sabres alumni were out helping, including Rob Ray and Larry Playfair.

There is still room for optimism, though.  They have gone 9-4-1 without massive contributions from the top two lines – a little extra scoring punch from Vanek, Roy and Pominville could help the team win some of these games where they give up 3+ goals.  The flu has to be playing a part in some of this too – there has been several players shut down for periods of time with it, and that usually means a few others may have had it/do have it.

None of this would excuse another extended ‘funk’ where the team falls all over themselves for more than half of every game, and digs a hole they can’t climb out of.  The standings are already tight enough, Buffalo can ill-afford to let points slip away against beatable teams the way they did last year.

1. Locale – Lets you change your phone’s behavior based on numerous factors, including location, time, and more.  I love it, I can turn off my ringer automatically when I get to work or turn it on automatically when I get home (more important, as I use my phone for an alarm clock).
2. ShopSavvy/CompareAnywhere – I use ShopSavvy myself, but there are several barcode scanning apps out there, for when you want to be sure that the DVD or book or cereal box you are holding isn’t cheaper down the street (or at Amazon).  Handy.
3. TwiDroid – Just a slick-looking Twitter client.  Buttons to do replies/retweets if you are not a fan of the long press.
4. Toddler Lock – Not for everyone, but gives a screen where kids can draw and tap and make noise while not shifting around all of your icons.

Now, for fun stuff.  Games are spares for the Android platform, compared to the iPhone anyway, if only for the fact that you can’t yet store apps on the SD card without hacking.  You can play Doom, which is cool if hard to control.  There are plenty of time-wasters, like Bejeweled (and many clones), WordUp! (sort of like Boggle), and so on.  For paid games, there’s a SimCity game available at HandMark, though I’d like to be able to try it first.  Looks really cool though.  One other thing – there’s a WordPress app (WPtoGo or some such), that is neat, even if you aren’t using it for creating new posts, it’s nice for quick spelling fixes or approving comments.  Any other app questions, hit me up in the comments.