The Fickle Finger of Fate finally smiles on the Thrashers and (kind of) Blues.

Ok, so the Blues' playoff hopes and dreams didn't exactly shoot up last night with Paul Kariya's game winning 400th goal, but every team we needed to lose lost. This leaves the Blues just five games back, which sounds easy peasy until you realize that the other teams in front of you aren't just going to part like the Red Sea and let you climb up the standings. The Blues seem a little overly positive about their chances at another run, and I'm going with Gallagher on this one - if they pull another miracle run out of their butts, then they'll think they can slack off the first part of every season. That bubble needs to be burst. Of course, at the same time, I want them in the playoffs. Ahh, contradictions.

The Blues' win helped the Thrashers jump the Rangers in the standings last night to 9th place, after the Thrash defeated the Sens 6-3. They're now only 3 back of the Bruins, who aren't exactly tearing it up, and tomorrow get to face a Philly team who apparently now is just setting up one of those goalie practice cut-outs in net. So, we face their backup on Saturday, and then their backup's backup on Sunday. Saturday I betcha Moose is going to be in, so we're solid. If Pavs manages to not allow his usual 4 goals Sunday, we could have lept over Boston in time for our game against them Tuesday. Oooh.

Speaking of last night, I will cease whining about Armstrong (for now). His 2 goals and an assist kind of shut me up. What I will continue to raise hell about (Ben does so much more calmly than I over on the Blueland Blog) is Ruutu's punch to the mask of Hedberg that was blatant goaltender interference, and that pissed Moose off so badly that he misplayed the following goal. During the Nashville game, Thorburn's goal got called off for interference that no one could even tell happened, but when you have a known dirty player with a history of transgressions against the Thrashers actually hit a goalie in the face, and nothing gets called, that's absurd. Hedberg had to be restrained after the play, and honestly the fans in Philips were so upset that it would have been helpful to restrain us, too. Moose apologized after the game for his behavior, but I really don't think that he had any reason to do so. Just because you're under 40 lbs of protective gear doesn't give someone the right to try to run you.

The officials in the league have been a total joke this season when it comes to goal/no goal calls. Actually, they're a joke anyway, so why not really ratchet it up a notch or two when a game is on the line?