Philthy-delphia Story:

It's good for the fans to have teams or players to hate. Having the Detroit Red-rags and the Philthy Phlyers in the same week may be too much of a good thing. But as much as you love to hate the team from the Violent Crime Capitol of the country, nothing can beat a good old-fashioned home-state feud. Tonight Marc Andre Fleury and the Pens bring the hate to the Igloo for the second time this season. It's the time for signs in the stands that the TV cameras have to avoid, and beered-up Yinzers shouting at Flyers in the penalty box. Ahhh the good times.

PP.com is saying that Scuderi will be a game-time decision, but Biz-nasty has been taking his FPL position in practice. Bissonette, you may or may not remember has some experience at the blue line and seems to be ready to take up the Flower Protection League banner temporarily if needed: "I think it's all a part of keeping me here," Bissonette said, " Wednsday and Thursday I played on D to give Scuderi a rest. I like it, it keeps me diverse, and who knows? Maybe one day I'll go back to D. It's just nice to keep up."

Evgeni Malkin leads the league in points as of yesterday(24), with El Sid in a tie for fourth with 19. They're both heavy on assists rather than goals, but it's a case of finding four quarters instead of a dollar bill, points is points. Both Geno and Sid would naturally like to score more goals, and I'm sure not too many Pensaddicts would disagree, but HCMT is confident they'll come around due to the work they've both been putting into the games.

The lines for tonight's Cross-State Rivalry (how many times do you think we'll hear that tonight?)

Caution: Venting Spleen Ahead!

Stagerat's note: As much as I rag on Bob Errey and Paul Steigerwald I have to give them props. It's much nicer to watch a game with the two of them announcing than the crew of Bandwagon Phallic Worshippers they have over at VS. They consistently pick a 'hero team' and then kneel down to nuzzle that team's collective generative member for the entire game. I've watched other games on VS and they do it consistently, it's sad that for out of market people in this country that consists of about 85% of their available hockey. It'd make me pony up the extortion fee for Center Ice, it really would.

Forwards:

Talbot-Crosby-Satan, Fedotenko-Malkin-Sykora, Kennedy-Staal-Cooke,Dupuis- Zigomanis-Godard

Defense:

Orpik-Letang, Scuderi(?)-Gill, Sydor-Goligoski

Goalie:

Marc Andre Fleury, The Tower of Flower Power.

C is for Cookie, that's good enough for me!!

Our own Cookie Monster scored his first of the season tonight!