selkie

That's putting it very very politely.

Didn't he say something when he was picking up the award last year that he didn't expect to win it again this year? I remember thinking it was a sign that the more physical playoff Pasha was going to carry over into this season.

I can see it a little in the eyes.

Stu Grimson did morph nicely into The Grim Reaper.

He's probably okay with it, but talk about an announcer's nightmare when it comes to ways it could be easily accidentally mispronounced.

As much as I've come to flove Helm, I think Leino's got more offensive upside in the next 2-3 years. As for Calder criteria, NHL.com says: "To be eligible for the award, a player cannot have played more than 25 games in any single preceding season nor in six or more games in each of any two preceding seasons in any major professional league. The player must not be older than 26 years before September 15 of the season in which he is eligible." http://www.nhl.com/trophies/calder.html

I can't entirely hate Roy because I found his occasional utter and total meltdowns to be extremely entertaining. I remember watching the legendary game the Red Wings drove him to the Nordalanche and it was a thing of beauty. Granted I haven't watched a ton of Eastern Conference games on a regular basis, but you just don't seem to get that kind of awesome television from a Marty Brodeur.

I think the All Star Game flub is more likely to cost Pavel the Byng than anything he does on-ice.

If you can figure out a way to retrofit and expand Van Andel to NHL standards, the numbers could work pretty well for a team in west Michigan. Metro GR has 1.3 million people, and if you add in the Kalamazoo and Lansing metro areas, you get more than 2 million people within an hour's drive or so of the arena. Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo is also a top 40 Nielsen market- bigger than Las Vegas, Jacksonville FL, Oklahoma City, and Buffalo and one of only 4-5 markets in the top 40 (depending if you want to lump West Palm Beach into Ft. Lauderdale/Miami for the purpose of the exercise) that don't have some form of major pro team.

I suspect the seeds of Red Wings Nation were laid back in the 1970s when the Rust Belt crashed for the first time. Michigan's been losing a lot of high skills white collar types to other parts of the country ever since, and for those of us who grew up in the Stevie Y. era, the Wings will always be our team, wherever else we've ended up in our lives.

I think it's more relevant for the 3rd and 4th line types because it can show a pattern of a guy who's able to maximize offensive opportunities given limited time on the ice and an assumption that they're supposed to be primarily handling defensive duties. No big deal in most cases if it's a high ratio, but it can say nice things about someone like Hudler.

And twenty quid if it's the Holy Grail of Bush League special edition jerseys- the bright pink Macon Whoopee Camellia Festival jersey that allegedly caused a players' revolt and walk-out over the utter Barbie girliness that they were being asked to wear.

I'll add another recommendation for Rhodent's Bush League Hockey site. His take on the Danbury Trashers: http://www.bushleaguefactor.com/teams/dan.asp Some truly hideous bush league special nights jerseys here: http://beanballinc.blogspot.com/2006/12/he...f-darkness.html The Richmond Renegades 'Flower-Power' and Adirondack IceHawks Christmas jerseys are particularly impressive. You can also kind of see the original anthromorphic demonic cotton ball logo for the Lubbock Cotton Kings if you scroll down far enough.

The most entertaining thing about Lifetime since they cancelled Blood Ties is making up fake movie titles that are similar to Tori Spelling's opus 'Mother May I sleep With Danger?'

I think the most entertaining hockey interview these days would be Dats and Ovechkin after a couple of beers and conducted in Russian with a good quick translator at hand.

Finnish is definitely a weird one- not related linguistically Russian, Swedish, Norwegian, or Danish in any way shape or form, and it's classified in the same language family as Estonian, and I think Hugarian.

Though the season's only halfway over and you could still get some guy who scraps their way back into the league after getting hit by a snow plow truck. Seems like winning the Masterton in recent years tends to skew toward near-death experiences instead of overcoming what should have been career-ending injuries.

I remember him back then too. My first impression of him was that he was a scrawny guy by NHL standards, and he'd sometimes get hammered, but he had this uncanny knack for good stickhandling, evading a defenseman who was trying to line him up, and getting the puck safely passed elsewhere before he got hit. He was doing all these neat little things on the ice so very correctly, and seemed to be consistently learning how to play the NHL game better. Had no idea he'd turn out as well as he did, and I would have been happy if he'd ended up an adequate replacement for Slave Kozlov in the entertaining moves department. But he seemed to have a lot more upside than whoever it was that someone suggested we trade him to Calgary for.

I hope Brett Leonhardt got to keep his jersey. This kind of thing happens every so often in the minors, and it's funny how many Sunbelt towns manage to locate some local dentist or accountant who sat the bench for a second tier juniors team back in the day, and ended up down there in a quest for more white collar job opportunities and better weather. IIRC, the Pensacola Ice Pilots super-emergency back-up goalie was some sort of physical therapist or orthopedic surgeon.

There's just something inherently entertaining and amusing about those kinds of freak injuries that don't impact someone's long-term athletic career. (And I say this as a person who once found themself in a position of having to explain to their college coach that I managed to sprain my wrist while turning the key to start my car) Though this one isn't quite up there with the baseball player who ended up on the DL after he was attacked by an automatic tarp-spreading machine at the ballpark.

Too bad California's not seen as a battleground state. I'd love to see her drop the puck in San Jose.

I just hope she doesn't try to use her 7 year old daughter as a shield from the boo birds like she did in Philly.

The territory rights fee would make it really hard for the numbers to work in Toronto. At one time I can remember there being talk of Davidson moving the 'Ning to the Palace back when it looked like the NHL in Tampa was never going to be a success. But the fee that they would have had to pay to the Red Wings made it cost-prohibitive to do so, and that was a situation where someone else had already sunk the costs for a modern professional sports stadium. Territory rights + new arena + ten years of playing second banana in town ala the LA Clippers, and you need someone with deep enough pockets to probably lose $200 million in addition to the $150 million or so it would cost the team to start up. Hamilton, IIRC, can put a arena in just outside of Toronto's territory rights area and also would not have to deal with the Clipper effect in building a fan base.

Can't say I'm surprised at the first week sluggishness. We had a lot of players sitting out good chunks of training camp for minor injuries and assorted other aches and pains. (Which makes sense. You don't want a player to do something in a preseason game that causes them to miss 20+ when it counts) But that does put the team a little bit behind other teams that were able to go more full speed as they ramped up the season, and it's shown so far. It would be nice if they were playing better right now, but I wouldn't get concerned until about three weeks in when everyone should, in theory, be back in the groove.

I wish I had a copy of the logo breakdown for the Danbury Trashers that was on the Bush League Factor web site, but unfortunately, they take down the ones for inactive teams, and I can't find it in the Wayback Machine. It was absolutely hilarious, even though the poor reviewer sounded almost curled up in a fetal position under his desk by the end of it. That, and I'd love to reread the one for the Lubbock Cotton Kings, which was like a possessed-looking cotton ball holding a hockey stick. The NHL 3rd jerseys come nowhere close to the hideousness you get in the minors. I can remember hearing about how the Macon Whoopee once refused to go onto the ice again with the ones honoring some local camelia festival because they were baby pink.