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lingzi
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Oct 24 2012, 08:03 AM
Post #1
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Tweet VANCOUVER -- The Canucks didnt need to move mountains to win Wednesday. Andy Dalton Youth Jersey . All they needed to do was move one mountain of a man, Dustin Byfuglien -- and they couldnt do it. The Chicago Blackhawks 6-foot-4, 257-pound right wing made life miserable for Canucks goaltender Roberto Luongo, scoring three goals from inside of 13 feet to lift Chicago to a 5-2 win at GM Place and a 2-1 lead in their Western Conference Semifinal series. The 25-year-olds first career playoff hat track came one game after he played 14:41 as a defenseman. Coach Joel Quenneville moved him back to forward on the top line with Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews -- and Byfuglien came up with a game nearly as big as he is. None of the goals earned him much in the way of style points. Byfugliens first-period power-play goal was off a rebound after Luongo stopped a point blast by defenseman Duncan Keith. His second-period goal -- also a power-play goal -- came after Toews drove the net and forced Luongo down to the ice to make a save, leading to yet another rebound that Byfuglien banged home. His third goal late in the third period encapsulated everything hes about. Byfuglien drove the net, taking Canucks defender Alexander Edler with him, and had the puck deflect off his skate and past Luongo, who wound up in the back of the net with the puck thanks to the hard-charging Byfuglien. "Hes big Buff. Hes doing what hes got to do out there," said Toews, who assisted on all three of Byfugliens goals. "Hes crashing whether hes playing forward or on the blue line. Hes doing some good things out there. I think in the last couple games especially, on the power play, hes been a good presence in front of the net." Even when Byfuglien wasnt picking up the trash in front of the net, he was making life miserable for the Canucks. He was knocking down defensemen and mixing it up in the corners whenever he could. All three of Byfugliens goals came off rebounds, but Luongo didnt want to give credit to the Blackhawks for any of the pucks he left lying in prime scoring areas. “When there’s traffic, you know, and there are shots, sometimes it’s tough to control the rebounds," Luongo said. "Duncan Keith has a slapper from the top of the circle, I don’t know how you can control a rebound like that. It squirted out, I tried to cover it, and obviously there were some sticks there whacking at it. "That’s the way they play. The only way we can answer is the same thing on the other side.” "He played a real strong game and obviously he did a real good job in front of our net," Canucks coach Alain Vigneault said. "I think what were going to have to do is a better job, or try to a better job of protecting the front of our net." Can anyone on the Canucks handle Byfuglien when hes in front of Luongo? "No, not really," Byfuglien said. "Thats my job to get position and make them work around me." Toews concurred. "I could only say from battling against him in practice that sometimes you cant really move him," Toews said. "I think hes one of those guys when theres a puck race or a battle, their players definitely know that hes there and maybe give him a little more respect. Its good for whoever is out there playing with him." Not only did Byfuglien get the job on the scoreboard, he might have gotten to the Canucks psychologically too. If Canucks werent getting into scrums with Byfuglien after whistles, they were complaining to the officials about him. When one man can draw and divide the attention of so many players, it appears that the gigantic Byfuglien mightve found a way to crawl inside the heads of the Canucks. "I definitely think so," Byfuglien said. "They got to worry about me coming and worry about getting hit." Those are very big words from a very big man who delivered the biggest game of his career Wednesday night. Follow Dave Lozo on Twitter: @DLozoNHL Jermaine Gresham Womens Jersey . The Canadian mens relay team upset Germany to win its first luge World Cup title with an aggregate time of two minutes 8. A.J. Green Youth Jersey . The Canadian womens eight won Olympic silver in an exciting final race on Day 6 of the London 2012 Olympic Games. http://www.bengalsteamstore.com/geno-atkins-jerseys . The Tigers also recalled right-hander Luke Putkonen from Triple-A Toledo before opening a three-game series against the Chicago Cubs on Tuesday night. Andy Dalton Womens Jersey .8 million contract. The 32-year-old Ukrainian-born forward scored 14 goals and 19 assists in 82 games split between the New Jersey Devils and Carolina Hurricanes in 2011-12. A.J. Green Womens Jersey . Todd Shapiro, the attorney for 17-year-old Darius McClinton-Hunter, told reporters that a recording was made Wednesday of a conversation between the girl and a teenage friend of the Hunter family. On the call, she backs away from the story that led police in the Dallas suburb of Prosper to arrest McClinton-Hunter on Monday, the attorney said.EDMONTON -- If adversity makes you stronger, then IndyCars Swiss Miss should be able to deadlift a Dallara chassis. Simona De Silvestro and her HVM Racing team are in Edmonton this week hoping to put a slew of problems behind them that have left her buried deep in the driver standings. "Finishing races would be a pretty good first goal. Weve only finished three races this season," said the 23-year-old. "Weve had a really difficult season, but we just have to work through it and try to get the best we can every race weekend." De Silvestros No. 78 Dallara stalled out at the season opener in St. Petersburg, Fla., and its all gone downhill from there: collisions, mechanical problems, engine failures, fuel pump problems and gearbox breakdowns. She was also blackflagged early at the Indianapolis 500 because her Lotus engine was too slow. Lotus has indeed been the locus of HVMs despair. The engine-maker came late to the series in 2012, and its 2.2 litre turbocharged powerplant has been running about 2.5 per cent slower than the Chevy and Honda engines being used by the other teams. The four other teams using Lotus have switched to a rival. Lotus has been allowed to make modifications, and De Silvestro said the 2.5-per cent gap narrowed a bit in Toronto two weeks ago and may close a bit further for Sundays race on the 2.2-mile, 13-turn temporary street course at Edmontons City Centre Airport. "I think we got a little bit closer (to bridging the gap)," she said. "But I think were still outside of that." The woman from Thun, Switzerland -- dubbed the "Iron Maiden" or "Swiss Miss" -- sits a distant 24th in the point standings. She has completed just 598 laps in nine races while all the other full-time drivers in the series are over 1,000. Sebastien Bourdais, by comparison, has 626 laps and hes sharing a ride with Katherine Legge at Dragon Racing. When De Silvestros car holds up, there have been results: a 13th-place finissh at Belle Isle, Mich. Dre Kirkpatrick Jersey. and 14th at Iowa. The driving skill is there, as she showed last year in St. Petersburg while duelling with Tony Kanaan en route to a 4th place finish -- her best result in three years of driving in IndyCar. But it has been a tough three years. After a promising rookie season in 2010, she has since been burned, bruised, concussed and pinballed between walls at Milwaukee, and spun clockwise on her head down the track in a fiery wreck at Indianapolis. Her hands have been burned twice: in Texas in 2010 she was trapped in her blazing car for a minute while crews worked to unhitch a kinked water hose. A year later at the Indianapolis 500, her rides back end slipped out coming out of a turn in practice, went airborne, caught the catch fence, flipped over, skidded down the track and caught fire. Despite burning her hands again, she was OK. But three races later at Milwaukee, she sustained a concussion when her car lost control out of a turn, spun rear-end first into the outer wall then pinballed, back-end first again, into the concrete inner wall. There are still reminders. "You can see the burns a little bit on the hands, but its all good now," De Silvestro said. She added that the Indianapolis crash led her to question driving for a living, but it ultimately taught her a lot about who she is and what she wants to be. "When I went back in (the car), it just really showed me that thats what I wanted to do," she said. "I wanted to be a race car driver, and that makes me want to work even harder to be successful." That journey continues with Edmonton, focusing only on the car in front of her. "Usually you go into the race and you want to win it, where in our case its not really realistic, so you try to make a better result than you had before," De Silvestro said. "Our best finish is 13th so hopefully we can finish 12th or 11th. "That would be a really good goal for us." ' ' '
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