Condemned to watch the game against the Flyers on a succession of jumpy streams, they all look fine at first but degrade over time. Thank you, Gary Bettman.
–As an adjustment, I really don’t mind reuniting Nathan Beaulieu with Greg Pateryn, and giving Alexei Emelin a game or two with Shea Weber. It gives Nate a bit of time to settle down, get into a groove, he and Greg have a lot of experience playing together in Hamilton, in preseason. Long-term, we’re still planning to play him with Shea Weber though. That seems the optimal pairing in my eyes.
It leaves Andrei and Jeff Petry together, these two seem to have something going together, we don’t want to mess that up.
--Interesting first intermission on RDS. François Gagnon brings up an interesting stat, the host team have 4 wins and 20 losses in outdoor games, or something like that. He asks whether the whole production around the outdoor game distracts the home team. He says he would prefer if the league created more of a happening with the outdoor game(s), an event rather than a regular season game, maybe the All-Star Game at Lambeau Field, to try to 'grow the game'.
--Guy Carbonneau, upon prodding, recalls the time when the Canadiens, leaning on 'advanced stats', chose to go after a "Sabres defenceman" (Jaroslav Spacek?) instead of François Beauchemin, whose numbers probably didn't look so good. Guy's sour face, like he'd just bit into a lemon, says volumes about he feels about that approach.
--Arturri Lehkonen interviewed by Marc Denis. Still impressed by how well he speaks English. I'm guessing it's a popular second language taught in high school, if not mandatory, as it is in the Netherlands?
Also, probably they speak English in the Swedish League as the language of work? Like the LHJMQ, where there are a lot of side conversations en français, but when the coach addresses the team, it's in English.
Arturri's language skills are not going to be a problem, unlike guys like Alexei Emelin or Alex Semin, for who the language was definitely a barrier.
–Max looking like Erik Cole on that last rush. Leftie sweeps around the defenceman, coming in on the right wing, protects the puck, goes right to the goalie and the front of the net.
–And then Greg Pateryn pushes back against the dirty Flyers. Good on you Greg.
--Kirk Muller's new creation on the powerplay, with Alex Radulov on the point, bears fruit when Brendan Gallagher deflects his shot in.
2-1 Canadiens.
--Alex Radulov scores in the empty net to make it 3-1, on a flipped lob pass from Alexei Emelin, who gets rewarded for a good night on the top pairing. Good to see him celebrate with Radu.
--11 points out of 12, the Canadiens are the only team undefeated in regulation.
Hi Normand, love reading your blog. Finns (as their scandinavian neighbors) learn English at a really young age in school. Furthermore, movies and TV shows from the US and UK don't get dubbed (contrary to e.g. us here in Germany, where we have a whole industry committed to taking out the original voices and replacing them with voice actors from here), there's instead text at the bottom of the screen, making the viewer quite familiar with the tone and sound of English. this might explain why people from Scandinavia are rather apt at expressing themselves in the English language. Best from Berlin! Alex
ReplyDeleteThanks Alex, good to know. Au Québec, I grew up watching lots of American movies dubbed in French, there's now actually a law that mandates that studios, if they release a movie in English, must also release the dubbed version at the same time. There's exceptions made for smaller art house films, but Hollywood blockbusters must be shown in French version concurrently, so French-Canadians aren't forced to watch Star Wars in English.
ReplyDeleteNow that I've seen both, I do prefer subtitled versions when I watch a Spanish film, rather than a dubbed version. I know a little bit of Spanish, and I'll try to read and follow along and brush up the very little that I have.