Maple Leafs aim to stay hot versus Thrashers

Hockey Betting Lines

12/22/2008 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Toronto Maple Leafs will aim for their fifth win in six games when they head south to face the Atlanta Thrashers at Philips Arena.

The Maple Leafs picked up an impressive two points Saturday in Pittsburgh, as they pounded the Penguins, 7-3.

Nik Antropov had a goal and two assists to lead Toronto to the easy win at Mellon Arena. The Leafs led 3-1 after the first period and held a 5-1 advantage after 40 minutes of play.

Pavel Kubina and Alex Ponikarovsky each had a goal and an assist for the Maple Leafs.

Vesa Toskala made 20 saves in the win and improved to 13-9-5 this season.

The Finnish backstop has an excellent career mark against the Thrashers, going 5-0-1 with a 1.81 goals against average and ,926 save percentage in six games.

Toronto is capping a three-game road trip tonight and is 7-8-2 as the visiting team this season. The Leafs have lost three of their last five games away from the Air Canada Centre.

The Thrashers have won two of their last three games, but are just 3-7-2 in their last 12 games overall.

Atlanta earned a victory its last time out, defeating the visiting Tampa Bay Lightning by a 4-3 score on Saturday.

Kari Lehtonen was the star for the Thrashers as he made his first appearance in almost two months and stopped 36 shots. Lehtonen had been battling a back injury and hadn't played a game since October 30.

Joseph Crabb, Todd White, Eric Perrin and Slava Kozlov each had a goal for the Thrashers.

White has recorded a point in five straight games and has three goals and four helpers during the stretch.

The Thrashers, who have lost seven of their last eight home tests, are wrapping a three-game homestand tonight. Atlanta is just 6-8-2 as the host this year.

Atlanta has won five of the last eight meetings with the Maple Leafs, including a 6-3 victory in Toronto on November 25. However, Toronto has won two straight and seven of its last nine in Atlanta.

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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.