Lunacy!

That was my initial reaction to reading this story. Are you kidding me? Another team in Toronto? At least they didn't suggest Montreal, that would have been true sacrilege. Okay, lets calm down a bit and  think about this rationally. How could this possibly work? The article suggests an expansion team but that seems a little outlandish considering the NHL cant even support the 30 teams it has currently. Another possibility briefly mentioned in the article is the idea of moving a current team. This clearly makes more sense but would still require quite a bit of restructuring in terms of divisions. Listen, having more teams in Canada is the best thing the league could possibly do but this is not the way to go about it. If anything the league needs to contract. Six teams need to go, one from each division to bring the league to a manageable 24 teams. There will be more sell outs and, to be honest, its time to abandon the southern hockey experiment, its just not working. With all that being said, heres my breakdown of having a team in Toronto:

Positives:

• Another Canadian team
• It would make for some great rivalries
• With the current wait list for Leafs season tickets being longer than the planet will last with global warming, it would give hockey fans in the area a chance to see a game for a change
• It could possibly get a team out of the hockey graveyard known as the south
• The Toronto media might back off of the Leafs a little with another team to pick on in the area
• If a Southeast team (*cough Panthers *cough) moved to Toronto it could pave the way for Phoenix to move back to Winnipeg
• Toronto is hockey crazy
• This would stop all the crazy talk about having teams in Kansas City and Las Vegas
• If the league restructures we could go back to the old conference and division names

Negatives:

• There will be two crappy teams in Toronto for the foreseeable future
• It could mean expansion
• The NHL would be messing with some serious history
• Hamilton deserves a team way before Toronto deserves another
• So does Quebec
• It would decrease the market for other teams such as the Sabres, Habs and, obviously, the Leafs
• The league would have to completely restructure
• The talent pool would be even more diluted
• They could never live up to the expectations and would always be overshadowed by the Leafs
• Have you ever seen an Islanders game? No one goes! It would be similar in Toronto except the fans might know something about hockey. If you missed the connection, New York has two teams, one of which is an Original 6
• What happens if the new team wins a Cup before the Leafs? Toronto would burn, thats what
• The Leafs sucking is no reason to panic
• The league will go through another lockout before this ever happens anyways

All jokes (hopefully) aside there is no way this should happen. As intriguing as it sounds there is no reason to expand. If the league just moves a team it would make more sense and almost seems like a good idea but there is still fundamentally wrong with an NHL franchise in Toronto that isn't the Leafs. Until next time, keep your head up.

Epic Commercials

Last night I was watching Monday Night Football in between plays of the Penguins shootout win over the Bruins and I happened to catch this commercial. I like it a lot, so much so that I was ready to declare it one of the best sports related commercials I've ever seen.

But then I saw this one, and it clearly takes the cake.

This one deserves an honorable mention however.

Thats it. My pick for tonight's game is Sabres 4 Boston 2 with goals from Vanek, Paille, Spacek and MacArthur.

Weekly Catch-Up 10/20

Wow. Quite frankly I'm surprised Blogger has not deleted my account considering its been so long in between posts. Sorry about that, I've had a ton of school work to do, my obligatory 30 hours a week at the rink with the ladies and my sister visited last week. Enough excuses. I cant even contemplate the amount of interesting stuff I missed in my absence but I'm going to try to catch everyone up with what happened last week and in the first few games of NHL regular season action.

1. The NHL season officially opened in Europe somewhere. No one noticed. The only bonus to this is that it gives my conspiracy theory more credibility.
2. The Sabres are awesome.
3. Thomas Vanek is a beast.
4. Tampa Bay stinks. No Joke. Even having 23 NHL-calibre forwards cant save this team from losing a ton of one goal games.
5. Rangers 19 year old prospect Alexei Cherapanov died on the ice in a KHL game and was unable to be revived due in large part to terrible medical response including not having an ambulance at the game and a defibrillator with dead batteries. It was a terrible day for hockey fans of any nation and does not bode well for public opinion of the KHL. Good luck trying to find players who want to play where they wont receive adequate medical care.
6. The Blackhawks fired head coach Denis Savard after a 1-2-1 start. That was mighty quick and relatively surprising. so surprising in fact that Pat Kane was teary-eyed at the press conference. His replacement is Joel Quenneville formerly with the Avalanche and Blues.
7. Red Wings great Steve Yzerman was appointed the Executive Director of Team Canada for the 2010 olympics in Vancouver. No surprise here.
8. Fabian Brunnstrom, a Dallas Stars rookie scored a hat trick in his NHL debut becoming just the third player in NHL history to accomplish the feat.
   
9. Fighting is Back! I'm told that fighting was the focus of a good Sports Illustrated piece that I have yet to read but plan on doing so at a cost to my wardrobe. No explanation needed, Indy. There have been 58 fights through 77 games according to HockeyFights.com and you are starting to see some bigger names like Jarome Iginla throwing hands. In my opinion this is great for the league. It garners exposure on TV outlets and will ultimately attract more fans.
10. Andrei Kostitsyn will miss a bit of time after taking a nasty hit against the Coyotes. The video will be in the video section.
11. The Flyers sent classless goon Steve Downie to their AHL farm-team. All of the NHL including league disciplinarian Colin Campbell breather a collective sigh of relief. I believe I have expressed my thoughts on Downie before.
12. Sidney Crosby scored his 100th NHL goal and recorded his 200th NHL assist on Hockey Night in Canada against the Leafs in a 4 point effort. I swear, the Kid loves to show off on CBC because he knows all of Canada is watching.
13. J.S. Giguere has been terrible for the Ducks so far, as has Peter Budaj for the Avs.
14. The Flyers stink right now and I couldn't be more happy about it.
15. Marian Gaborik will not be with the Wild by the end of the season, I guarantee it. If Leafs GM Cliff Fletcher pulls his head out of the toilet he might realize that Gaborik is just the kind of player his franchise needs... a good one.
16. Marian Hossa recorded his 300th Career NHL goal and first with the Red Wings against the Rangers.
17. Steven Stamkos has seen his ice time reduced to around 9 minutes a game and has been with different linemates almost every game. In unrelated news Barry Melrose is a fool.
18. Marty Turco has not been very good thus far this season. All you suckers who picked him first in your fantasy teams are screwed.

Pictures of the Week

Wikipedia vandalism will never get old.

In a word: Sacrilege. I will never listen to Def Leppard again. Oh wait, I never did in the first place and you shouldn't either... seriously. 

Barack Obama is fighting Sarah Palin on all fronts. First she claims to be a hockey mom, Obama responds by putting up ads in NHL09. I love it.

If I don't end up owning this shirt, both my mother and my father will disown me.

Videos of the Week

Your obligatory Coaches Corner of the Week.

Heres the Kostitsyn Hit.

Great scrap between Georges Laraque and Shawn Thornton.

Good old fashioned line brawl between the Sabres and Islanders.

Matt bradley gets all scrambled eggs courtesy of Paul Bissonnette.

A sad reminder that things in other countries are not always as rosy as they are here in the U.S. and Canada. This is the kind of medical care a top athlete receives and ultimately led to his death. RIP Alexei Cherapanov. This video may be disturbing to some viewers.

Marty Havlat scores a sick goal against the Coyotes. Poor phoenix always seems to have the most amazing goals cored against them. Dont believe me? Ask Alex Ovechkin.

Finally, rookie T.J. Oshie scores a dirty shootout goal against the Blackhawks in his NHL debut.

Thats it for this week. I'm thinking I will be doing this kind of weekly catch-up thing with pictures and videos every week on Mondays but I refuse to do it without a catchy title and a cool picture to accompany it. Any ideas? I might even consider buying the person with the best title suggestion a Mighty Taco... maybe. Until next time, don't stand in front of the net with no pads while people are ripping slapshots from the point without looking.

Why Hockey is Better Than Baseball

Major League Baseball playoffs are about to start and, thus, a conflict of interest for yours truly. I love baseball but, to be honest, its tough to be a total fan over the course of a 162 game season. Baseball, like every other sport, gets a lot more interesting during the playoffs and viewership picks up but the problem lies in the fact that the MLB postseason starts right when the NHL regular season starts. I always struggle with what to watch on any given night but recently the question was answered for me in the form of a picture. What do the Stanley Cup Champions do when they win? Thats correct people, drink from the Cup. I don't think this is what Lord Stanley had in mind...

The worst part is that the Tampa Bay Rays didn't even win the World Series. This is just for winning the pennant. Mark my words, this disgrace will cost them.

Need a Break From the Work I Ignored All Weekend

So I figured I would talk hockey for a bit. As we speak we are less than a week away from the official, albeit hokey, start of the NHL season in Prague. The Sabres played another preseason game tonight against the Wild and lost 2-1 in a shootout. Last night the boys beat the Leafs 3-2 in OT. I neither watched nor listened to either of these games so unfortunately I cannot comment on them other than its a bummer we lost tonight on a bad bounce with 3 minutes left. Here are the headlines:

• The Ducks traded 19 season veteran defenseman Mathieu Schneider to Atlanta in exchange for 3 no namers in a move to clear cap space. Schneider had already passed through waivers but Anaheim was having a hard time moving him because of his large salary. Atlanta gets the better deal here but, believe me, this guy is not going to make the Thrashers magically start winning games.
  
• A day after trading Schneider the Ducks signed veteran winger Teemu Selanne. Selanne was very patient in waiting for the Ducks and displayed his loyalty to the franchise. The terms of the deal are two years at $2.625 million per. Thats dirt cheap for a player of his calibre in today's NHL.
• On a sad note, Paul Newman, the main character in the greatest sports movie of all time died of cancer over the weekend. Newman will be forever immortalized by puckheads for his role as Reg Dunlop in Slapshot.
• Note in the picture above that the Sabres logo at center ice is the vintage logo. Sick!

You Know Its Hockey Season When...

I get very little accomplished between the hours of 7:00 and 10:00. I resisted the temptation to stop working and go watch the Sabres/Habs game all the way through the first period but eventually broke down and made my way to my fraternity house to watch the game on the NHL Network. The Sabres lost 3-2 but here are my thoughts based on the two periods of play I watched, in no particular order. Please take these all with a grain of salt because it is still the preseason and lineups are changing everyday:

• The Power Play needs some work. Its given up 3 short-handed goals in 2 games and has one lucky goal for. It may just be a matter of finding the right guys to man the points but its a point of some concern for me.
• Derek Roy looks good. He is playing confidently and the puck seems to follow him. He looked solid on the half-wall and is in control when leading the rush. I saw very few errant passes from him and his shot selection was good. He scored one of the goals on a rush by just out-muscling the goalie after faking the pass. Roy just might live up to his contract this year.
• Nathan Paetsch looked pretty bad. I was a big Paetsch supporter last year but he did not impress me tonight. He's a guy whose on the bubble for the 7th D-man and right now he is being outplayed by his counterparts from Portland. Nathan pinched at bad times and was just generally out of position more often than I would have liked to have seen (that is, never, especially from a guy with a significant amount of NHL experience).
• Tim Connolly was wearing the "C" tonight for white and looked comfortable with it. He did his best with the power play and will be a huge asset once again this year on the PK. Tim looks to be in good shape and moving well, lets just hope he can stay healthy.
• Jason Pominville looked average to me tonight. Nothing dazzling, nothing special. He was manning the point for one of the short handed goals but the play was not on his side and Paetsch pinched inadvisably. Pominville did not have a single shortie scored on him last season when he was working the point on the PP so I'm not too worried about him. He was also lacking his favorite center, Jochen Hecht.
• Gragnani is not ready for the NHL yet.
• Lalime looked ok. He was the victim of a bad bounce in the first and was hung out to dry for the other two short handed goals he gave up. Positionally he looked pretty good with the exception of a few plays. He will be a much more reliable backup than Thibault was last season.
• Maxim Afinogenov looks like the 2006-07 Maxim Afinogenov. He has ditched that extra move that always seemed to cause him to give up the puck. He was quick as ever and looked decent on the backcheck as well as distributing the puck well and realizing when it was time to pass. Funny how things fall into place in a contract year, huh?
• Mike Weber looked very solid on the blue line. Very few mistakes out of the kid, don't be surprised to see him playing in Buffalo in October.
• Kennedy looked good as well, he might be a mid-season call up.
• Lydman and Tallinder looked their usual selves
• Stafford looked decent as did Clarke MacArthur.
• Finally, on to Nate Gerbe. Gerbe already possesses NHL speed, which was on display tonight. He also looked stronger than I expected and his timing looked good too. He plays a bigger game in the corners than most people would guess as well. He scored the other goal for the Sabres on a slapper from the circle tops that went top cheddar on the far side, a beautiful goal. For equipment junkies like me, it looks like Gerbe is planning on making the bigs with his custom colored Sabres sticks. To be honest, I would love to see him jump straight to the pros but I don't see it happening. That doesn't mean we wont see him later in the year though.

Thats it except for the fact that Stamkos scored another dirty goal, this one in regulation against the Rangers. It was a wrist shot from the low left circle that caught the far upper corner. I have no doubt that he will play on one of the top two lines for the Lightning this season.

Until next time, keep those sticks on the ice.

Third Best Day of the Year...

Yes folks thats correct, its not the start of the playoffs or the regular season but the first time the Sabres take the ice for the year. I was having a pretty crappy day but when I got home it all got better because the boys in blue and gold had already taken the ice. We are currently down 3-1. I would love to be watching the game online for free through Leafs TV but since I have a Vermont IP address I cannot access it. Lame. Add that one to the long list of reasons I hate Toronto. In fact, its only saving grace is the fact that my sister lives there. Better make that a 4-1 deficit halfway through the second with the only Sabres goal coming from Marek Zagrapan 45 seconds into the game on a PP. Peters has already been tossed for unsportsmanlike conduct and both him and Kaleta have been involved in scuffles. What was I saying about crappy day? Hockey has that ability. Even the fact that Sarah Palin likes hockey can't sway me away from my beloved sport.

Steven Stamkos played in his first game at the NHL level winning his first draw (against Sidney Crosby) and scoring a filthy shootout goal for the win. Heres a video of highlights from the game.

For those of you who don't know, I'm a huge fan of San Jose's gritty third line center Torrey Mitchell. Not only did he go to UVM but he plays the game the way it was meant to be played ("with a lot of heart and a big back of knuckles" according to Mike Myers' character Donnie Shulzhoffer in Mystery, Alaska). Unfortunately, yesterday at practice his leg collided with the post while going to the net breaking his tibia and fibula. He is expected to be out 8 weeks (that means 12). Not only is this a huge blow to the Sharks who now will likely have to move Marleau to center but also to Mitchell's career. He played in all 82 games last season recording 10 goals and 20 points as well as a goal and 2 assists in the playoffs. Hopefully he can return with no side-effects. Luckily for Mitchell, it was not a tendon pull/tear, those can nag you for the rest of your career.

Finally, the Sabres extended GM Darcy Regier two more years. Regier has come under fire for letting Briere, Drury, McKee, Campbell and Grier leave in recent years but I still think he has done a decen job running the team, especially in some tough times. Then again, I look at that list of players, players I loved to watch and who were quality teammates, and wonder why it took him so long to realize how to sign players under the new CBA.

With that said, Go Sabres (and take the Bills with you). I stole that line from my father and I'm not ashamed to admit it because I am slowly turning into him.

Population of Pominville Jumps to 26.5 Million

Thats correct folks, my boy Jason Pominville is now locked up through 2013-14. This great news. Now I can continue to wear my sweater with pride. Hopefully with a long-term deal signed the Sabres will not hesitate to name him full time captain. The terms of the deal are 5 years at $5.3 million per. As excited as I am for this extension I cant help but think back two summers when a similar deal was offered to Chris Drury and somehow the Sabres brass managed to screw it up. I love Jason Pominville and he is my favorite player in the NHL today but I would take Chris Drury over him any day for that money. Now I feel bad for ending an exciting post on a somewhat depressing note so heres a picture to make up for it...

Minor Stuff

Well, I was looking at my calendar today and I noticed that Training Camp starts in 2 days! Awesome. My job with the Women's team here at UVM has started to heat up as well so I'm pretty thrilled to once again be immersed in hockey. Heres a few tidbits of news to tide you over until all the exciting stories start coming out of training camp:

• The Red Wings locked up Darren McCarty for another year. Great, as if the Red Wings didn't already have almost the exact same players as the Cup winning team, they keep some grit around as well.
• The Ducks placed Mathieu Schneider on waivers in an attempt to make cap space for the return of Teemu Selanne. Unfortunately for them Schneider cleared waivers and now must be sent down to the AHL and back up whereupon anyone can pick him up at half his salary (around $2.5 million). That certainly wouldn't be a terrible deal for a high scoring defenseman with a great plus/minus (+22 last season with 12 goals and 27 assists in 65 games).
• The Flyers named Mike Richards their captain for the upcoming season. No surprise here, he's been tabbed as the next captain since he was drafted and this was a good time to make it official. The Flyers now have a solid team as well as a clear cut leader/face of the team.
• Hurricanes forward Justin Williams underwent surgery today to repair his achilles tendon (injured in an off-ice workout). He will miss 4-6 months. This is a huge blow to the 'Canes. Williams is a point per game guy and was missed dearly by Carolina when he went down last season with a torn ACL. If he could stay healthy, he would be a great contributor to the 'Canes' roster.
• Puck Daddy has found some video evidence of the Slovakian beatdown of Bulgaria I posted on. Its a disgrace to even call this a hockey game.
• Mats Sundin is still a jerk
• Jason Pominville is still unsigned. Its going to suck playing against him when the Sabres fail to sign him and he bolts for Montreal.

Staal Signs Long-term Deal with Canes

Carolina Hurricanes forward Eric Staal just signed a 7 year deal reportedly worth $57.75 million at an average per season hit of $8.25 million. Call me crazy but that seems a bit excessive for a guy who has never scored more than 100 points in a season. His cap hit is higher than both Crosby and Malkin not to mention big-name centers like Chris Drury, Scott Gomez and Daniel Briere. If good (not great) players keep getting contracts that large, the NHL has another lockout in its sights.

Quick Note: The Montreal Canadiens have annonced that they are retireing Patrick Roy's number. Sweet. Roy is still a jerk though.