Friday, September 11, 2009

Stripperriffic Preview: Road Trip Edition - Paul Mara

Who the fuck are these new guys? How the fuck are we supposed to know? They're new to us too. So we've taken the lazy-ass blogger way out, and turned to the best bloggers out there (or those that answered our emails) to help us out. We hunted down bloggers from the player's team last year, and told them they could write whatever they wanted, to help us get to know the new guy better. Then we let GoldenGirl11 loose with the Photoshop and a new web series was born.

Today we are pleased to welcome Scotty Hockey. Scotty kicks ass, telling it like it is about the Rangers, a true fan but without the dickish attitude of our old nemesis. And you gotta respect any blog with a South Park character in their header. Enjoy what he has to say about Mara, because what he says about Gomez ain't pretty. Take it away, Scotty...

In the lumberjack-looking Paul Mara, Montreal is getting themselves a soldier. Mara was misrepresented to us in New York upon his acquisition. The year out of the lockout, Mara scored 29 of his 47 points on the Phoenix power play. Being as the Rangers power play has been anemic, we thought we had ourselves a gunslinger from the point who would fill a top four blueline slot. We were wrong. Mara never earned Tom Renney's trust on the power play so he rarely got good minutes there (while the incompetent oaf Marek Malik saw shift after shift). Despite having a reduced role, Mara carved out a good spot for himself on Broadway. He nurtured a young Marc Staal, helping the blue chip blueliner acclimate to the professional world. He became the most physical crease clearer on the roster - a dubious accolade at best but he saw the need for it and did it well. Simply said, Mara became a foot soldier, and a damned good one at that. He stood up for teammates, he made the good first pass out of the zone and, in the 183 games that he played for us, I can only remember one game where his play hurt the team. His gaffes in a game against Pittsburgh allowed the Pens to score two goals in two minutes in the first period, and in response his rookie partner Mike Sauer was benched for the remainder of the night and sent back down to Hartford - through no fault of his own. Still, Mara quietly did his job and won us over, even if he didn't score any goals to win games.

9 comments:

Young HF29 said...

hey get your hand out of there lady!

Navin Vaswani (@eyebleaf) said...

Mara's shit.

GoldenGirl11, not so much. The legs!!1

Boob Gainey said...

Mara beat up Darcy Tucker.

Mara's not shit.

Anonymous said...

Scotty Hockey described Mara perfectly. He defended his teammates and left everything on the ice night in night out. Definately helped Stall & Girardi develop their games. The only negative is that he's slow.

And yes, he made a fool out of Darcy Tucker. Tucker got laughed off the ice after that incident.

Anyone who makes a fool out of tucker gets an A in my book.

L Dude said...

Mara = "The anti-Brisebois" - I remember one game where Breezer's play did NOT hurt the team.

Just by this simple math, our Defense is better. Maguire doesn't know of what he speaks.

+1 on the Tucker incident. I don't remember it, but I am envisioning it. Heh, it's funny.

Kate said...

McGuire is turning into a PJ Stock. I think these guys are so busy listening to themselves talk shite they're not actually watching hockey games anymore.

moeman said...

Mara risks getting an infection, twice.

mr. gillis said...

@LD: "Anit-brisebois" was exactly the same thing that I was thinking, but the idea came to me when I read about his good outlet passes.

PS. me and PJ are BFF's. Well... maybe not, but i have run into him a couple of in Hudson and talked about fuck all because it was the off-season

savardwalsh said...

you had me at "crease clearer".