Panthers try to keep rolling in visit to Avalanche

Hockey Betting Lines

03/11/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Florida Panthers will try to win four straight games for the first time this season when they visit the Colorado Avalanche tonight at the Pepsi Center.

The Panthers come into this game six points back of a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference but appear to be peaking at the right time. They are coming off of a victory over Minnesota on Tuesday in which they held the Wild to a Florida franchise record-low 11 shots while picking up their first victory versus the team since 2001.

It didn't look that way early, as the Wild scored a pair of first-period goals. However, Michael Frolik and Cory Stillman scored in the third period, with Frolik lighting the lamp for the fourth time in three games and Stillman forcing overtime with 9:20 left in the frame. Stillman then scored the lone tally of the shootout session in a 3-2 victory, the 500th in franchise history for Florida.

"It's though to come back, but they didn't get a lot of shots -- going into the third period we had only given up five shots," said Stillman. "We continued to put pucks on the net and knew good things were going to happen."

Tomas Vokoun needed to make just nine saves while stopping all four skaters in the shootout for the Panthers, who haven't won four straight since a seven- game run from March 2-16, 2008. Florida also halted a six-game skid on the road by winning the opener of a three-game trip, picking up its first victory as the guest since January 14.

While the Panthers are fighting to remain in the playoff race, the Avalanche are losing the chase for home ice in the first round. Colorado dropped a 6-4 test to Northwest Division-leading Vancouver on Tuesday -- blowing a pair of three-goal leads -- to fall five points back of the Canucks in the division. The Avs also trail Los Angeles by three points for fifth overall in the West.

"It was a bad game," said Paul Stastny, who matched his career high of 50 assists first set as a rookie in 2006-07 in the loss . "It was a good first period, but after that mental lapses hurt us."

Colorado, which has lost four of its last six, got a pair of goals from rookie Matt Duchene on Tuesday, and he leads all first-year skaters with 23 goals and 47 points.

Chris Stewart also extended his recent hot play with a goal, giving him eight goals and eight assists over his last nine games, while Peter Mueller scored to give him a pair of tallies and four helpers in four games since being acquired in a trade from Phoenix.

Craig Anderson racked up 26 saves in the losing effort, just Colorado's second in its last eight home games.

The Avalanche are hosting the Panthers for the first time since 2007, with the last three meetings between the teams all taking place in Florida. That includes a 6-5 shootout win by the Panthers at home on December 2, their second straight win in the series.

Stephen Weiss had a hat trick for Florida in that game and scored the lone goal in the shootout, while Scott Clemmensen made 29 saves. Stastny had a goal and three assists for the Avs, Duchene had a pair of goals and an assist and Stewart notched a goal and two helpers.

Anderson made 39 saves before exiting in overtime with a neck injury suffered when Florida's Keith Ballard crashed into him. Anderson, who spent the previous three seasons as a backup with the Panthers, missed the next four games but will make his 22nd straight start tonight.

Florida has lost three of its last four in Colorado, where it hasn't won since January 2, 2003.

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FOOTBALL TRASH TALK

NFL Football Trash Talk

Trash talk has a place in every competitive endeavor (except baseball; those stirrup-wearers are too busy chewing on their sunflower seeds and their supplements to worry about what their opponents are doing).

Fantasy sports is no exception. Any intelligent discussion of the subject would probably start with a thesis statement or a definition of terms. Thankfully, this wont be an intelligent discussion.

Let me just say that I am happy to take a place in this space alongside my talented colleagues, even our commissioner. (You should see how she bleats like a demented paper boy about league fees on our fantasy site).

Trash talking, I would argue, is primarily about amusing your friends, their sheeplike demeanors and sloping foreheads notwithstanding. The best place I have found for football trash talking is at www.SportsAlarm.com.

Beyond the entertainment factor, though, I would recognize that the sophomoric ritual has one advantage, when properly applied. It magnifies your fantasy triumphs and mitigates your fantasy failures by transforming the eventual point total into an afterthought. Winning makes it seem like your opponent really is a truss-owning, lapel-pin-wearing nitwit. And in defeat, trash talk can be the air bag to break the fall from your hyperbolic heights. The plug-necked yahoos on your team, you can say, will be sacking groceries by the end of the season.

The best trash talk, in my view, is layered and nuanced. And it doesnt focus only on your opponents team. It picks apart your opponent. The idea is to create a shock-and-awe-scale blizzard of nonsense, and the goal is to make your opponent drop his hands from his keyboard in exasperation.

What team does your opponent root for? Accuse a Giants fan of having a Joe Namath pillowcase. Wheres your opponent from? Give a look of concern no matter his reply, then say, I'll try to type slower for you next time. Is your opponent into politics? Label everyone a tax-and-spend corporate shill.

Cap all that with a liberal application of irrelevance. For instance, dont just conclude by saying your opponent is a twerp who drafts like my grandmother. Say that your opponent is a sweater-wearing, eyebrow-plucking twerp who drafts his team about as well as Zsa Zsa Gabor gave acceptance speeches at the Oscars. By the time your foe makes sense of that, his starting running back will have had puppies.

But what about you? Hmm? Recall a memorable slam? Have a tried-and-true technique? Know someone who seems impervious to insult? Take a moment and tells us about it. Put together some (fit-for-publication) thoughts. You wont be too busy returning phone messages from your friends, Im sure, to reply.

In addition to the trash talking, the Sports Alarm has a huge gallery of high resolution pictures of beautiful women and models in bikinis. The most popular models are: Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Underwood, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Paris Hilton.