Canucks hope to cool off Blackhawks

Hockey Betting Lines

12/20/2008 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Excitement is starting to mount in Vancouver. The Canucks will play their first game tonight since the signing of Mats Sundin, as they host the Chicago Blackhawks at GM Place.

After deciding not to sign with a team this past offseason and also pondering possible retirement, Sundin elected to rejoin the league by signing with the Canucks on Thursday. Though not expected to join the club until December 27, the 37-year-old former first-overall pick should provide a nice little boost to a Vancouver team that is currently one point behind Calgary for first place in the Northwest Division.

Sundin played the last 13 of his 17 NHL seasons with the Toronto Maple Leafs and has 555 goals and 766 assists in 1,305 games. He became a free agent this past offseason after declining to waive his no-trade clause during the 2007-08 season, when Toronto went 36-35-11 and missed the playoffs. The Swede posted 32 goals and 46 assists for the Maple Leafs last season.

Meanwhile, Vancouver enters this game coming off an emotionally-charged 4-2 victory over Edmonton on Wednesday. Daniel Sedin scored twice and picked up an assist in leading the Canucks on the night they raised former captain Trevor Linden's No. 16 into the rafters, just the second number retired in club history.

Jannik Hansen registered a goal and an assist for the Canucks, who have won three of their last four games. Curtis Sanford made 22 saves to collect the win.

Vancouver, 9-3-1 as the host this year, has now won the first two games of its current four-game homestand that ends on Monday versus Anaheim. However, the Canucks may have to continue that residency without a pair of defenseman in Sami Salo and Shane O'Brien. Salo left Thursday's game with an upper-body injury and is expected to miss four weeks, while O'Brien exited due to a leg issue and is questionable for tonight.

The Canucks will be facing one of the hottest teams in the NHL right now in the Blackhawks, who have won six straight games after last night's 3-2 overtime victory against Calgary.

Duncan Keith netted the winning goal just 23 seconds into OT, while Dave Bolland and Patrick Kane each scored once for the Blackhawks, who won six straight for the first time since December 26, 2001-January 6, 2002.

The club hasn't won seven in a row in nearly 28 years, last doing so from January 4-21, 1981.

Nikolai Khabibulin stopped 32 shots and Brian Campbell recorded a pair of assists in helping the Blackhawks improve to 7-0-1 in December. That run has helped Chicago move to within five points of first-place Detroit in the Central Division.

Chicago ends a three-game tour of western Canada tonight, having opened the swing with a 9-2 victory in Edmonton. The Blackhawks are 7-5-3 on the road, but has lost two straight and 10 of their last 11 in Vancouver.

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FOOTBALL TRASH TALK

NFL Football Trash Talk

Trash talk has a place in every competitive endeavor (except baseball; those stirrup-wearers are too busy chewing on their sunflower seeds and their supplements to worry about what their opponents are doing).

Fantasy sports is no exception. Any intelligent discussion of the subject would probably start with a thesis statement or a definition of terms. Thankfully, this wont be an intelligent discussion.

Let me just say that I am happy to take a place in this space alongside my talented colleagues, even our commissioner. (You should see how she bleats like a demented paper boy about league fees on our fantasy site).

Trash talking, I would argue, is primarily about amusing your friends, their sheeplike demeanors and sloping foreheads notwithstanding. The best place I have found for football trash talking is at www.SportsAlarm.com.

Beyond the entertainment factor, though, I would recognize that the sophomoric ritual has one advantage, when properly applied. It magnifies your fantasy triumphs and mitigates your fantasy failures by transforming the eventual point total into an afterthought. Winning makes it seem like your opponent really is a truss-owning, lapel-pin-wearing nitwit. And in defeat, trash talk can be the air bag to break the fall from your hyperbolic heights. The plug-necked yahoos on your team, you can say, will be sacking groceries by the end of the season.

The best trash talk, in my view, is layered and nuanced. And it doesnt focus only on your opponents team. It picks apart your opponent. The idea is to create a shock-and-awe-scale blizzard of nonsense, and the goal is to make your opponent drop his hands from his keyboard in exasperation.

What team does your opponent root for? Accuse a Giants fan of having a Joe Namath pillowcase. Wheres your opponent from? Give a look of concern no matter his reply, then say, I'll try to type slower for you next time. Is your opponent into politics? Label everyone a tax-and-spend corporate shill.

Cap all that with a liberal application of irrelevance. For instance, dont just conclude by saying your opponent is a twerp who drafts like my grandmother. Say that your opponent is a sweater-wearing, eyebrow-plucking twerp who drafts his team about as well as Zsa Zsa Gabor gave acceptance speeches at the Oscars. By the time your foe makes sense of that, his starting running back will have had puppies.

But what about you? Hmm? Recall a memorable slam? Have a tried-and-true technique? Know someone who seems impervious to insult? Take a moment and tells us about it. Put together some (fit-for-publication) thoughts. You wont be too busy returning phone messages from your friends, Im sure, to reply.

In addition to the trash talking, the Sports Alarm has a huge gallery of high resolution pictures of beautiful women and models in bikinis. The most popular models are: Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Underwood, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Paris Hilton.