This is the Weekend Watch. It’s a guide of what to watch this weekend.
Anaheim at Winnipeg, 7pm ET
Selanne Bowl! (Not to be confused with salad bowl. Or, cereal bowl.) Yes, Teemu Selanne will return to the city in which he scored 76 goals as a rookie -- and needless to say, he’s excited about it.
“When the season became public, then we needed a schedule, I marked the date in my calendar — even [though] I didn’t know if I can play still this year,” Selanne said on a mid-week conference call. “So obviously, I knew it’s going to be very special to have a chance to come back there and play.”
To give you an idea of the hold Selanne has over the city of Winnipeg, watch this:
Should be fun.
Boston at Philadelphia, 1pm ET
This one’s admittedly lost some panache given Philly’s captain (Chris Pronger) and leading scorer (Claude Giroux) are out with concussions. But for the likes of Daniel Briere, Kimmo Timonen, Andrej Meszaros, Braydon Coburn, Scott Hartnell and James van Riemsdyk, it’s a chance to make amends for getting murdered by Boston in last year’s playoffs. Especially Briere, who went minus-6 with 1G-1A in the four-game sweep.
Vancouver at Toronto, 7pm ET
This one should hold special significance for the Leafs, because Vancouver has been kicking the snot out of them for a while now. The Canucks have won the last eight head-to-head matchups by a combined 34-16 score -- guess when the last time Toronto beat Vancouver was?
If you guessed November 2003, congrats. Gary Roberts and Mats Sundin scored for Toronto, Brendan Morrison countered for Vancouver. Tie Domi fought Bryan Allen (Bray May also fought some guy named Nathan Perrott), Marc Crawford was coaching the Canucks and Pat Quinn coached the Leafs. So yeah. Looooooong time ago.
Buffalo at Pittsburgh, 7pm ET
I had to including this one, just to highlight who won’t be playing: Sidney Crosby, Kris Letang, Zbynek Michalek, Ben Lovejoy, Richard Park, Ville Leino, Jochen Hecht, Nathan Gerbe, Tyler Myers, Brad Boyes and maybe Patrick Kaleta. Injuries be crazy, yo.
Washington at Colorado, 9pm ET
The Semyon Varlamov Showdown!
(Yeah yeah, it’s a reach.)
Enjoy the weekend, everybody.
