The Two-Line Pass

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So it would appear that Darryl Katz is hellbent on holding his city and its fanbase’s love of the team he owns ransom for tens of millions of dollars more than Edmonton is kicking in to fund the man’s grandiose visions for a downtown arena district and, more importantly, arena for his losing, horribly-run hockey team.

This report from October, before Katz went to the city council with the air of a man who was not begging for an additional 1ish percent of his total net worth, says that the city will kick in $125 million for the arena and district up-front, with its taxpayers and attendees to the new arena ponying up an extra $125 million in ticket fees, which will come in at between $6 and $7 per seat.

On average, that’s about 19.23 million seats’ worth of tax, or 1,039 home dates with the arena in its hockey layout (given a proposed capacity of 18,500). That’s 25.34 years of sold-out home games. Of course, that doesn’t take into account other events at the new arena, of which there are more than a few, so let’s call it, what, 20 years of sold-out engagements? Or even 18 if you figure the new arena will draw more top-quality acts, which it likely would. Sure.

All of this, by the way, goes without mentioning that the deal still hinges on another $100 million coming from… somewhere. Federal or provincial government, probably. But that’s a bridge to cross when we come to it.

Which may be never, because now Katz is going on visits to Seattle, ostensibly to scope out if that city’s new dual-use arena would be a suitable venue to which he could move his team when the lease at Rexall Place is up. He won’t, of course, everyone sees the visit, acknolwedged on the Oilers’ website, for what it is: a terribly-acted bit of posturing.

People have noted that without an NHL team, some cities, like Hartford, can quickly lose their civic identity, and that therefore it is vital for the City Council to just give Katz the extra $25 million he wants. But the thing is, there’s nothing that says the Oilers have to be the NHL team in Edmonton. Call Katz’s bluff. Let them go to Seattle, and become the fifth-most-popular team in the city, where sports culture is currently dominated by football of the American and global varieties. The Oilers could slide in just two spots behind whatever NBA team they get, and right behind the Mariners. But they’d still be ahead of the WNBA’s Seattle Storm, so that’s something, right?

Instead of now giving Katz $275 million on the backs of taxpayers, why not put it to a vote? If everyone says they want to keep the Oilers, then that’s fine. If they vote no, let ‘em walk, then swoop in and buy the Coyotes. That solves everyone’s problems.

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The Lead

Kinda funny, I guess, that Scott Walker was the guy to eliminate Boston.

I mean, you knew it wasn’t going to be Sergei Samsonov, who had gotten to the bottom of his “lucky goal” supply earlier in the game. You knew it wasn’t going to be Rod Brind’Amour, who was taken to the dressing room earlier in the overtime and never came back. You knew it wasn’t going to be Erik Cole, who hasn’t scored in about a trillion straight playoff games. You knew it wouldn’t be Eric Staal, who once again had as little effect on tonight’s proceedings as his little brother Marc.

And you knew it wasn’t going to be anyone on the Bruins, who despite scoring both their goals because they had big bodies like Byron Bitz and Milan Lucic going at the front of the crease, never really went to the front of the crease with any great regularity in the overtime period of what was a supremely entertaining game, even if it was a little sloppy because of the circumstances.

It was certainly the most evenly-played game of the series. Wild swings of momentum back and forth led many people to whom I talked to say something along the lines of “Well the Bruins/Hurricanes HAVE to score soon.” They didn’t. Almost all of the goals, save for the Byron Bitz tally that opened the scoring, came on the counterattack. And none was more counterattack-y than Walker’s, which came on a Ray Whitney shot off the transition designed to do exactly what it did: get a fat rebound into the slot that someone could take a whack at. Now, I don’t know why Thomas came out so far to challenge and tried to punch it away instead of backing off a little and smothering it, but I also don’t know why he was so eager to play the puck at every opportunity once overtime hit.

Sure, the Bruins kind of poured it all out in overtime. They had no interest in playing conservative hockey, as it really was not their wont all year. Why start now? But Thomas was uncharacteristically aggressive, I thought, even by his typically challenge-minded standard.

So the puck fell to the guy the Bruins probably least wanted to score an OT series-winner (with all the other Hurricanes in a dead heat for second-to-last). And he scored the knockout blow.

At least he kept his gloves on this time.

Read the rest of this entry »

So yesterday Ryan Hollweg was suspended another three games for boarding Alex Pietrangelo (this is in addition to the other games he was already suspsended for boarding someone else this year).

Thing is, Hollweg doesn’t feel like he’s in the wrong here. At all. Know whose fault it was? Pietrangelo, that’s who!

“I really don’t think the hit was worth a game misconduct to begin with, so for them to [add] any more games would have been a little bit over the line,” Hollweg said of his hit on Pietrangelo. “Now, they’re trying to make a point but like I said, the player was up on the power play the next shift. He wasn’t injured.

“It was a play where, if [Pietrangelo] continued to skate forward, it doesn’t even happen. So I think other players have to be accountable as well for putting themselves in vulnerable positions.”

That’s true, Ryan. If only Pietrangelo had been smart enough to not catch a stick in his back by a repeat offender and then be driven face-first into the glass. Pietrangelo’s only mistake was allowing himself to be on the ice while a TOTAL piece of garbage like Hollweg was also out there. If Hollweg had been, y’know, suspended for more than just the two games he had already faced, this never would’ve happened.

“With that kind of speed, with that momentum, it’s hard to change gears within a split second like that,” Hollweg said.

And that’s why Alex Pietrangelo had to have his head bounce off the glass like a ping pong ball. Makes total sense.

Earlier this morning I read an article about how Ryan Hollweg wanted to get back to his physical game in the Leafs’ Thanksgiving afternoon game with the Blues.

So I’m watching the Leafs/Blues game just now, and exactly four minutes of ice time after he returned from a two-game suspension for picking up three game misconduct penalties for boarding in his last 41 games, Hollweg got a five-minute major and a game misconduct for boarding.

He PASTED Alex Pietrangelo, St. Louis’ first-round pick in this past draft, well after the play. It was a revolting play from a revolting player. Incidentally, the boarding call that got him suspended last time also came against the Blues in an Oct. 1 exhibition game.

This will result in his third suspension since March 26 of last season, when he got three games for (you guessed it) boarding!

A couple things occur to me here.

1) Tom Renney is a saint for keeping this guy under control as long as he did. There is clearly something wrong with Ryan Hollweg if he’s offending this much. Like “Chris Simon” wrong. He has almost no control over his aggression, and he’s going to seriously hurt somebody one of these days.

2) The League has to do something more than a two- or three-game suspension here. Giving up two games and $5,000 in fines clearly means nothing to him, and the NHL has to take a much harder tack to send the message that this type of play is COMPLETELY unacceptable. Both of the first two suspensions of the NHL season will have been dealt to Hollweg, and both for the same offense. It’s ridiculous.

3) I retroactively support Chris Simon.

I usually go out of my way to avoid mentioning piece-of-garbage, no-info, no-contacts hack hockey rumormonger Eklund around here (he is the Voldemort of the Two-Line Pass), but this was just way too much.

Here’s something from HFBoards today that, as a hockey writer, made me want to punch You-Know-Who right in the you-know-what (penis).

Basically, YKW cited his L.A. “source” regarding the Matheiu Schneider trade rumors. The post from his awful website follows:

According to an LA source: “Anaheim’s Mathieu Schneider is the one the Kings are seriously considering. Other names under consideration would be San Jose’s Kyle McLaren, Florida’s Karlis Skrastins, Nashville’s Greg de Vries, St. Louis’ Jay McKee and Pittsburgh’s Darryl Sydor. There’s one more name out there that might surface as a real option in the next couple days, but as always these talks are pretty fluid.”

That source, by the way, was the blog of Los Angeles Daily News beat writer Dan Hammond, who does a hell of a job. Says Hammond:

Lombardi and Hextall made it clear at the GM breakfast that the Kings are still actively pursuing a veteran defenseman. From what I’m hearing, those talks could get particularly intense this week, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a deal get done.

The names? Anaheim’s Mathieu Schneider is one the Kings are seriously considering. Other names under consideration would be San Jose’s Kyle McLaren, Florida’s Karlis Skrastins, Nashville’s Greg de Vries, St. Louis’ Jay McKee and Pittsburgh’s Darryl Sydor. There’s one more name out there that might surface as a real option in the next couple days, but as always these talks are pretty fluid.

I mean, that takes balls to straight word-for-word copy and paste someone else’s work and pass it off as your own. I mean, it’s not even an OBSCURE blog. I read Hammond’s blog several times a week and I really don’t care very much about the Kings one way or another. It’s just a good blog and, obviously a great source of information.

But what YKW did next was really gutless. Instead of, say, apologizing and admitting total fault for committing one of the biggest journalistic crimes one can commit (granted, he is not a journalist, but rather some jerkoff from Philly), he does the following:

It has been pointed out to me that my source emailed me the LA Kings rumour from Rich Hammond’s article found here…
http://www.insidesocal.com/kings/2008/09/defense-options.html

I apologize for this not being corrected as a family emergency has had me out of touch since my update. I have also emailed Rich apologizing directly to him, as I had no idea that he had written the same thing. I have removed it and suggest that you read Rich’s Article here.

http://www.insidesocal.com/kings/2008/09/defense-options.html

I have never had this happen before and I will be sure to do my best to not allow such a thing to happen in the future.

So yeah, a “family emergency” is the reason it’s okay to plagiarize. I’ll be sure to let college students in on the big news.

Professor: “Bill, this paper you handed in…”
Bill: “Yeah?”
P: “It’s literally just a paperback copy of The Brothers Karamazov with Dostoevsky’s name crossed out and ‘Bill Stevens’ written on it.”
BS: “And?”
P: “That’s plagiarism.”
BS: “Well my dog was sick.”
P: “Why didn’t you say so? A+!”

As though it hadn’t been repeatedly proven enough that YKW is a total fraud. This is just sickening, even by his low standards.

Make sure to send him pictures of big black “NHL rumors” at eklund@hockeybuzz.com.

"And when Jeremy's not onscreen, everyone should be asking, 'WHERE'S JEREMY?'"

Jeremy Roenick has always felt that there’s one thing the hockey-loving public doesn’t get enough of: Jeremy Roenick.

As a result, he is more than happy to let everyone know he will be in the pilot of the new TNT show “Leverage,” which permiers this December.

Roenick already had done some on-camera work, listing previous appearances with “Hack” and “Ghost Whisperer,” and this week he will begin shooting a scene in “Leverage”, a new TNT production.

The show stars Oscar winner Timothy Hutton (pfft, for Ordinary People. Raging Bull got screwed.) as, and this is an actual plot to an actual television program on an actual network, “he leads a highly-skilled team of thieves, hackers and grifters who act as modern-day Robin Hoods.”

That doesn’t sound unwatchable at all. But what role will JR, an NHL thespian if there ever was one, have on the show?

“I’m pretty proud that’s the first scene of the series opener,” Roenick said. “I play a security guard who gets duped by a woman. I have five, six or seven lines.”

…

“The tricky part is finding the right roles and to look natural. You’ve got to get the mannerisms and facial expressions down. If you’re too stiff, you’re not believable. The best actors are the most believable. They completely change their personality. My role is smaller, but it’s still difficult.”

Truth be told, JR is really looking forward to an acting career once he’s done with hockey, because any time spent away from the precious, precious glow of the limelight makes his innards slowly rot.

“I’m good friends with producer-director Paul Bernard and he wants to turn me into an actor when I’m done with hockey,” Roenick said. “He and his brother Tom are big producers in Los Angeles.”

Wow, THE Paul Bernard! Best of luck, JR. And if you ever need acting advice, Teemu Selanne’s just a phone call away.

At this weekend’s American Century Championship golf tournament, it fell to Jeremy Roenick to rescue a hapless victim of circumstance.

Dallas Cowboys starting QB and Tony Romo (Mr. Jessica Simpson), of all people, fell into a pond after a particularly arduous swing of the iron. But the ageless J.R. was still spry enough to prevent further trouble.

“I was two feet from the water with a delicate stance, almost on my tip toes,” said Romo. “I had to hit the shot to the right, and I did, and as I followed through the ground gave way.

“I swung my arms three or four times trying to regain my balance, but it was too late. I fell on my backside and got wet up to my belly button. The pants drip-dried, but I did change my socks. I ended up making bogey for zero points after Jeremy fished me out.”

Roenick, ever self-aggrandizing, painted it as though he lifted a car off a newborn then flew him to the hospital in a private jet. Wait. He didn’t? Shocking.

Said Roenick: “I came running at him and I pulled him out. I think that was the difference between him getting all of his pants wet and his whole body wet. So it was kind of funny.”

Roenick finished the day in a tie for first with brother in loudmouthed jerkdom, Brett Hull. And for those of you that have ever watched a single Canucks game that featured Rippin’ Rick Rypien, you’ll be pleased to know that his infinitely more famous and talented cousin, former NFL QB Mark Rypien, also had a strong showing.