Thursday, June 24, 2010

has it really been...

Wow. HJanuary 2009. I haven't kept up, now have I?

What did we miss? Luongo still sucks, Thornton is a he-bride. Vokoun still deserves better.

I don't know what else really caught my attention. Oh, we won the Cup. There's that. I cannot express in English how long ago that seems.

Philly got Pronger. That seems like it worked because they improbably reached the SCF. It isn't going to seem like it worked all that well as early as next year, and I can't wait.

The salary cap is now just shy of $60M. This is sickening. Also sickening is the new way to Ranger-it, trading for the 'rights' to a pending UFA. I hope Dan Hamhuis thanks Philly for their interest and quietly signs in Anaheim, because I wouldn't want to be treated like an RFA as a veteran player. I also don't think its healthy for one team (Philly) to obviously and consistently absorb the core of another team (Nashville) as though there's no AHL. It makes trhe NHL look Mickey Mouse.

The only other thing that I can think to touch on is that Marty Brodeur sucks now against everyone except the Penguins.

Oh, and Versus, or OLN, or whatever the hell it is and their Vegas awards shows. What was that? Who thought: "Ok, after the Selke is awarded, lets move into a Beatles homage with Cirque du Soleil". Everyone responsible for that should be 'reassigned within the organization'. The bad music, the inability to pronounce NHLer's names at events where they're nominated for prestigious awards, the E list celebs, many of whom are only known to those who watch programming on Versus.

If the NHL is serious about promoting the game, promote the game on a respectable network with respectable personalities. Using obscure, token celebs from Canada on the bull riding network is a further indication of the second-class status of the NHL brand. Pay ESPN2 to host the NHL. Pay them whatever they want or suffer the instant discredit of poor brand representation indefinitely, because the assholes playing poker on ESPN2 are bigger celebrities than at the NHL awards.

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