Cern

I personally still have Howard on a very short leash. If he dosen't sharpen up in his next few starts, I say pick up the phone. The Islanders have an overabundance of goalies right now, and while most of them are meh, as a backup they'd probably be an upgrade over the kind of play I've seen with Howard in net so far.

I for one am quite enjoying Toronto's Quest For 0-81-1

The way the NHL is set up for TV in the states, you likely CAN'T see more games in the first place without spending a ridiculous amount of cash for specialty coverage. I don't care how much I love the sport if I'm going to be broke just for the godly privilege of being allowed to watch the team I support, particularly when up here there's TONS of hockey coverage freely avaliable on basic. If it was just about whoever was throwing the most money at the league the NHL would have probably given Basillie his team. Besides, the emphasis on physical arena attendance is overrated: you can only fit so many people into an arena, TV ratings are potentially limitless. If ensuring coverage on a network that people could actually HAVE ACCESS TO meant jacking up gate tickets a bit, so be it; most teams get great attendance night after night with inflated ticket prices as-is anyway, a few extra bucks isn't going to do much to change that.

Shame you're not in Canada, I've watched NY-SJ *and* Edmonton-Vancouver tonight. You can't trip without falling into a hockey broadcast up here even on basic cable.

That didn't exactly stop Pittsburgh from going deep. Then going deep again.

That's a strange way to spell 'Rangers'

Oz, I love you, but god damn I want to strangle you sometimes...

Baby steps

lol, I get this funny image of everyone being in the locker room and Maltby hears Babcock talking to Filpulla and Leino about them having to step up big in the absence of Hossa Franzen and co. and mistakenly thinks Babs is talking about him

Please, just play like this for the whole 60 minutes and we'll be golden!

...the hell? One, they're not looking to host *the next* Olympics; those are in Russia. Two, bidding for the games dosen't guarantee you'll host the Games, but without any modern facilities to present to the IOC a bid is going to be impossible. Three, it's the WINTER Olympics; you're pretty limited when it comes to appropriate spots for bids. By 2022/2026 the Games are likely to return back to North America, in which case why the hell CAN'T Quebec City make a bid?

And it's not even that good an argument. With the nature of the salary cap, even if they DID manage to produce a team that was good (which is unlikely to begin with that very lack of fan support and the finances it brings means the team is lucky to build a team that clears the cap floor), it's going to fluctuate from year to year. To say that fan following is going to be correlated to team success is essentially to admit that the team's financial books are going to be just as much of a rollercoaster ride - hardly sound material for a healthy franchise.

Very doubtful. I actually tried researching it for an assignment in my NW Coast Native Art class last year but didn't find a whole lot about where exactly the logo came from beyond Orca Bay.

Uh, they aren't. The mascots for one look like they came out of a children's anime and there's plenty of 'traditional' Canadian imagery in the new Canada hockey logos. It isn't nearly as prevalent as people are whining about; in fact these medals (and the bastardized imagery in the hockey jerseys) are the first examples of anything genuinely related to Pacific-Coast native art I've seen this entire pre-Olympic run.

Wow, NHL.com dosen't even give the attendance numbers for the game.

I really like them, though I can certainly see why people would hate them. The rippled shape is actually a pretty clever design IMO. One it evokes the surface of water or a mountain range, reflecting the Sea-To-Sky landscape of the Lower Mainland, two it's a simple way of removing the production-line feel of most medals by making each one an individual, unique object. Ultimately people are making a much bigger deal about it (as they do with medal designs in general) than they should. Medals are simply a physical indicator of a physical achievement, the medal should be secondary to accomplishing the act itself. Case in point, I couldn't tell you a single thing about what the Salt Lake City medals looked like, but Canada winning the gold in hockey is what's immortalized. I'm pretty sure the athletes couldn't give two s***s about what the medal looks like if they won one, why should any of us?

Actually, we need a defense that isn't playing atrociously. We can't expect to simply out-offense other teams anymore, that's been evident to everyone since the offseason. 2-3 goals a game should be the kind of output to expect from the Wings this season which is just about on the money so far, what needs to change is going from allowing 5-6 goals a night to 1-2.

Given that Oz is actually GOOD during the playoffs, pretty good.

OH IF ONLY WE HAD AN ENFORCER WE'D BE UP 30-0 BECAUSE OF MAGIC AND THE POWER OF OXY-CLEAN

JUST. WIN.

In the article Bettman himself actually mentions a team being for sale as a prospective criteria for Quebec. Not that expansion is not also an option (though going beyond 30 teams seems like a touch of a stretch right now), just seems interesting that he would specify relocation in this instance. Which is fair enough, but how many people are genuinely picking up those TV packages in those markets? If there was such a lucrative TV following in Phoenix, wouldn't it stand to reason that it would translate into game attendance and thus not reflect their dire financial issues? Moreover, if it was all about TV revenue, teams like the Oilers wouldn't exist - and the QC capital region has more people than Edmonton. The fact that even watching games in most US markets requires specialty cable packages only available through a small number of distributors diminishes the impact of TV revenues in the League. In Canada you can watch several games a week just on basic cable with Sportsnet focusing on regional team coverage, and there are far more people actually willing to watch. Lucrative TV revenues are essentially a given in Canada just through sheer ease of availability compared to most US coverage. I'm also not terribly knowledgeable about what the corporate scenario is like in Quebec, but the city hosts the largest, most famous winter festival in the world. There obviously has to be a great deal of corporate/local support around to keep an event like that not only alive but world-famous, and the Carnival's international draw could potentially be a considerable boost in drawing attention to the Nords.

The logo was an igloo shaped as a stylized n. And a hockey stick. Funny thing about their jerseys/logo, the Nordiques were all set to adopt new uniforms and team colours as a revitalization plan only to move to Colorado the year they were set to be put into use.

The thing is, he ultimately didn't. During the Coyotes saga he mentioned Winnipeg as being a viable potential relocation area, and the League testified in court that a Hamilton team would likely be hugely successful. It was Basillie's method they were ultimately fighting against, not the notion of having more Canadian teams.

Amazing that the Yankees aren't even on the list. I can definately attest to Canucks fans though. Whenever I've seen the Wings play there and lose they act like they just won the freaking Cup. Plus they've singlehandedly built Luongo up to be the most overrated goalie in the league

Huet is cracking!