Former Hartford Whalers defenseman Joel Quenneville is back behind a NHL bench again when earlier today he was installed as the head coach of the Chicago Blackhawks replacing Denis Savard, a former Chicago great, who was fired just four games into the season.
Savard knew he was on the hot seat this year but he was let go after the team’s first win of the season (1-2-1) a 4-1 win over Phoenix Wednesday night.
Quenneville has plenty of head coaching experience having led the St.Louis Blues for 7 seasons (1996-2004) and the Colorado Avalance for 4 years (2005-2008). Quenneville played 7 seasons for the Hartford Whalers (1983-90), he also played for Toronto Maple Leafs, Colorado Rockies/New Jersey Devils and the Washington Capitals in his NHL career. He won a Stanley Cup as an assistant coach with the Colorado Avalance in 1996.
It’s pretty simple folks for the Boston Red Sox. Win or join the other teams not in the playoffs on the golf course or on vacation. As you might expect, the pressure is on the Red Sox tonight. A win in Game 5 can change all that and put the pressure back on the Rays.
Recent history tells us we can’t count the Red Sox out as they came back in the 2004 ALCS and the 2007 ALCS. Can it happen again this year? Sure it can. Will it happen? I don’t know but I’m sure hoping so as is the rest of Red Sox Nation. Anything is possible. And as our friend Texy at Center Field said, TBS won’t probably be as awesome as FOX back in 2007 in firing up the Red Sox Faithful.
In order for the Red Sox to force a Game 6 back at Tropicana Field, Daisuke Matsuzaka will need to pitch the game of his life and hopefully that means that the “Houdini magic” that he always seems to have and that entails he’s silencing the hot bats of the Rays and not working himself out of a jam. Dice-K earned the win in Game 1 of the ALCS as he threw 7 scoreless innings allowing 4 hits and 4 walks while striking out 9.
James Shields had originally been scheduled to start Game 5 tonight but Rays skipper Joe Maddon decided to flip-flop him with Scott Kazmir who struggled in Game 2 of the ALCS. Kazmir gave up 5 runs on 6 hits and 3 walks in 4 1/3 innings. The Rays eventually won that game 9-8 in 11 innings.
With the Detroit Lions placing quarterback Jon Kitna on injured reserve on Tuesday, former UConn Huskies quarterback Dan Orlovsky will get another chance to start for them on Sunday when they face the Houston Texans.
Orlovsky wasn’t bad in his first start last Sunday but then again he wasn’t great (12-of-21, 150 yds, 1 TD) especially given this bonehead play he committed.
Orlovsky had this to say about the play:
“The team had fun (at my expense), the coaches had fun, friends had fun, family had fun … America had fun,” said Orlovsky. “Drew (Stanton, now Orlovsky’s backup) came in this morning and said you’re now a household name on ESPN. But like I said after the game and on Monday, it’s not something that I’m enjoying being a part of, but I’m not beating myself up over it. I know how dumb it was, but I’m not dwelling on it.”
For Orlovsky, it’s another chance to lead the Lions to there first win of the 2008 campaign and a chance to maybe secure his future since he’s a free agent at the end of the season. No matter what though, he is prepared to start.
“Just because it’s my dream doesn’t make it wrong,” said Orlovsky Wednesday night. “I have a goal and there’s a lot of other people in our organization who have a goal to fix things and change (the culture). In a way it’s like when I was at UConn. Eventually, you get sick and tired of being embarrassed. Guys stand up for what they believe in, and what they believe in changing. When you get enough people who are sick and tired of something and dedicated to change, it can happen.
“It’s easy for me to say. It was hard to do that (at UConn). It was the hardest two years I’ve ever had to go through athletically. It took complete commitment from top to bottom. But I’ve been through that … I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen it go from a laughing stock to being close to the top. I’m not saying I’m going to be the individual that can make it happen myself, but I want to be a part of it. Eventually you get tired of being punched in the mouth and decide to punch back. There are a lot of guys around here who think that way.”
Having seen what Orlovsky did at UConn for four years, I have no doubt that he will help the Lions win a few games this season. It’s going to be hard but it’s a fight he’s willing to take on.
Orlovsky, now Lions’ starting quarterback, has history of turning teams around [New Haven Register]
With One Start Under his Belt, QB Dan Orlovsky is Looking Toward Houston [DetroitLions.com]
With the human error by me yesterday, I was unable to bring you some of the news surrounding the UConn Huskies yesterday so I will be making up for it here today. As per the norm, there will be no football news today since it will be included in tomorrow’s game preview.
The annual men’s basketball Husky Run was held yesterday and the top two finishers for the team were junior forward Gavin Edwards and sophomore walk-on Kyle Bailey who both finished with a time of 21:21. David Borges of the New Haven Register has the times for the whole team including the walk-ons.
The rest of the television schedule for the 2008-09 UConn Huskies men’s basketball team was announced yesterday and the team will play 13 games on My-TV9 here in Connecticut. They will also have one game on ESPN360.com as well as a game on the Fox College Sports channel and one on the Fox Sports National channel. I have included the TV listings and the updated game times on the UConn Huskies men’s basketball schedule page.
The entire men’s basketball team including Jim Calhoun are ready for the season to start.
Jerome Dyson is ready to the put last year in the past.
Jim Calhoun spoke briefly about the Nate Miles situation yesterday.
Mike Anthony of the Hartford Courant has a list of the recruits who will be at tomorrow night’s “First Night” festivities.
Hasheem Thabeet was seen sporting a new hairdo at yesterday’s Husky Run.
A.J. Price talked yesterday about how fast freshman point guard Kemba Walker is.
With no Nate Miles and Stanley Robinson at small forward, the Huskies will play a 3-guard set until mid-December when Ater Majok and Robinson are back with the team.
If Jim Calhoun decides to redshirt him, Jonathan Mandeldove has no problem with it.
The UConn men have expectations of reaching the Final Four.
David Gillett has some video of former Husky Ray Allen.
The UConn men’s soccer game against Notre Dame on October 25th is sold-out to the general public. A limited number of tickets remain for students.
Joe Perez of the Norwich Bulletin has the Sporting News preview up for the UConn Huskies women’s basketball team.
Although the USA Today/Coaches Poll and AP Poll aren’t out yet, the UConn Huskies women’s basketball team is ranked #1 in three preseason polls (polls are located after the jump).
Honestly there’s really not much to say here. It’s pretty simple. The Boston Red Sox need to win tonight against the Tampa Bay Rays in Game 5 of the ALCS or their season is over.
I know you’re sitting there saying well Ian your just stating the obvious or REAL insightful analysis Ian (/sarcasm) but honestly what else can I say that this point. Well I can think of one thing. I HAVE NOT GIVEN UP ON THEM. I fully expect the Red Sox to win tonight and then come back and take Game 6 and 7 at the Trop.
So rather than just bore with you how I think the Red Sox will win, let’s just take a look at the links from the local Boston and Tampa/St. Pete media.
It’s up to Daisuke Matsuzaka to get the Red Sox back on track tonight.
Jeff Jacobs of the Hartford Courant agrees with Joe Maddon moving Scott Kazmir to start tonight instead of James Shields.
Dan Roche of WBZ-TV understands the decision as well.
Tonight could mark the last time that we see Jason Varitek in a Red Sox uniform.
When we moved to our new host, we were looking to escape the problems that took the site offline. As you may have noticed, the site was down for a considerable amount of time yesterday. It’s not because I didn’t pay the bill, it’s not because of something the host did at all, it was simply my fault plain and simple. I installed a plugin to help with search engine optimization (SEO) that ended up hurting us on the backend because it caused the server to overload. Put that on top of another plugin that was causing the same issue and I don’t blame them for putting the site offline until the problems were fixed. Oddly enough while I was making the necessary changes to the site yesterday, I also realized that I hadn’t updated a backend file on the site to make it use PHP5. Since a good portion of the PHP code that is used is PHP5 and I was running PHP4 even though I had made the changes to the main domain (theo6111.com), it didn’t automatically take for this domain. So that problem has been corrected as well. My thanks to all the great sites that linked over to us yesterday and my apologies to them as well since they were sending their readers to a site that was down. Also my apologies go out to everyone who stops by the site to check us out.
Earlier this week our friend Dan over at Red Sox Monster told us about a lawsuit involving Bart Steele of Chelsea, MA in which he was suing Bon Jovi to the tune of $400 billion dollars for stealing his work.
The song in question is the one that TBS is overplaying titled “I Love This Town.” Steele says the song closely mirrors his 2004 song which was an ode to the Red Sox “(Man I Really) Love This Team.” Dan has the details about the songs and also has the background of it as well.
The reason I bring this up is that I was contacted earlier today by Steele himself and he wanted to convey the message that he is not actually directly suing Bon Jovi, the main defendant in the case is Turner Broadcasting Systems. Bon Jovi and the others named are merely co-defendants.
He has been speaking out about this at his blog over at Myspace.com and here is the latest blog post about what is really going on with this lawsuit after the jump.
