Regarding Bettman

I give GB a wide margin of error basically for checking into the Westin for 2 weeks and leveraging a deal between the City/State and Lemieux LLP. We're not going to have to watch what Quebec did (Team moves and immediately wins a Cup) because he mediated that deal on behalf of the NHL.

On the other hand, he refuses to stand up for the marginalization of our game by re-upping with Versus and letting the rules committee diminish aggression. People in taverns in non-hockey markets are either watching ESPN, which has roughly 2 minutes of NHL coverage an hour, or ESPN2, the network of billiards, darts, and poker tourneys.

I wish the short bastard would promote Hockey as Hockey. Yes, people may indeed fight one another. No, there aren't mixed messages. They are there so that nobody is boarded at 25MPH or elbowed in their orbital bone, hence, enforcers.

The guys who know those oft-mentioned unwritten rules, ones which I hope Gary Bettman isn't planning on someday jotting down for the purposes of printing them on a tee-shirt for $29.99.

Promote them. Those types of men are the ones at every Hospital visit, in the communities, and generally giving of themselves on behalf of the team and their sport.
The Parroses and the Laraques are the guys taking little kids' slappers off the junk at the Boys and Girls clubs whilst retaining a smile, after all.

I don't wanna see Marty Turco hit in the face with a pie. I want to see the average NHLer's athleticism and toughness put on equal terms with any other sport. At least equal terms.

I'm talking to you, Shaq, and your injured toe. You big bitch. You know what? Dmitry Yuskevich played in a Quarterfinal series with 9 broken toes for the Leafs, and the mainstream would maintain that he's a Soft Euro, nowhere near as tough as, say, Kyle Farnsworth.

It would be nice to see NHL Hockey in certain Canadian cities again, but Bettman can't expect investors to start popping up to build arenas and take a multi-million dollar risk. Save for Hamilton, ON, that's exactly what it would be.

Until then, get back on mainstream TV, and stop marginalizing junkie fans like me, Gary. I hate Joe Bennenatti. Hit him in the face with a pie. Do it, Gary! Stay out of your own way.

Footnote: I can't wait to smoke Toronto 5-1 on "Dougie Night". He was a punk in Toronto, and especially in Buffalo. I'd fight him right now, left handed, but his punk buddies like Vaclav Varada would charge me when I was trying to pick up my morning paper next week.

The long and winding road

We signed Fedotenko, for whom I can't wait to have higher stats in all categories than Ryan Malone in 08/09, and Miro Satan. He's 33, 6'3, has only missed 3 games in the past 3 seasons. $3.5M. Because of all the 3's, I'm going to have to predict him putting up 33 goals in the regular season.

Will they be the top line? Who knows. Dupuis is back as well, but I think he'll be a depth guy/PK specialist. Apparently we're trying to import one Janne Pesonen, 26, who looks real sick online. He's been throttling the Finnish top division at 5'11, 180. Instantly the pundits say "his size awf fuh fuh fuh fuh"; watch this video of him pull a Drury under-the-poke-check move, get held but elbow the D-man, freeze the goalie, and proceed to pick the far corner on the backhand. There's a few vids of him dangling defenders, scoring on penalty shots, etc. The video is much better when you imagine the defenseman be Derian Hatcher.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaVNLqhiPa8&feature=related

Then there's Staal. What will we do with him? I guess last season he was supposed to be the #3 wing, not the #3 centre. Depending on who else we sign, its looking like Talbot is our 3rd line C, which is awsome. Whats with all the 3's? Anyway, I really don't know what is going on with Staalsy. Is he an even strength/PP wing and PK centre? I guess. Therrien will likely do something shocking like make Ryan Whitney the #2 LW for the first 5 games to try and get Sydor moved. In an unfortunately related note, Tampa seems interested in a Sydor/Scuderi/pick? in exchange for former Therrien saddle-bronc Michel Oulette.

If we for some reason bring Oulette back, that means he's going to be a top-six wing. No joke. All those times Mark Madden went on those rants about Therrien refusing to use better players in all situations were completely justified.

So what would I do? We've got ~$3.8M in cap space, and its looking like Sydor's 2.5 will be gone soon. I play Staal at 2nd-line LW, and I create a third line based around our PK unit of Talbot-Dupuis. Will Pesonen make the jump? It could make for a very fast two-way 3rd line. Will we come to terms with a guy like Matt Cooke? Unknown.

The first thing I would do with the cap room we d o have is sign Yannick Perreault. He scored 21 goals for a garbage Phoenix team for 38 pts in 66 games, could be had for $1.250M, and is the mac on face-offs. Sure, he can't skate. He's 5'11, plays as ruggedly as you would expect a Smurf. We need a face-off specialist, and our young guys need to learn the art from a guy who went 64.3% last season. Sick.

Something I saw Toronto do a lot last year, which was the only decent strategy they used, was have Sundin win all their PK draws and then change. I wouldn't have a problem with playing him ~6 minutes to take face-offs, especially since the new "face-off is automatically in your zone if you take a penalty" rule is going to create a lot of chances. He would be a specialist forward with a clear role, much like Eric Godard is a specialist forward with a clear role. In addition, that gives us the optional C after we load 2-3 onto our PP unit.

I would really like to sign Matt Cooke. If our third-line was Dupuis-Talbot-Cooke, we have a lot of speed, grit, and agitation. Part of covering top lines is skating with them, then again Therrien has shown no interest in paying attention to the tactics of the opponent. Anyway, Cooke is an outstanding PK forward as well. He's ultimately going to cash in with one of the NHL's ugly sisters, like St. Louis or Atlanta, so I'm not going to get my hopes up.

In any event, I love that we're not committed to quite a bit of salary after this season. Gaborik will be out there next summer, and from all indications, he'll be on our trade radar all season. What if that doesn't work out? When we're set to open our new building, point-per-game (466gp, 466 pts) and perrenial 50-goal threat Ilya Kovalchuk will be a UFA, probably of the defunct Las vegas Thrashers.. although his career -73 shocks and awes.

July 2... what the hell?

So, the enigma of the Hossa signing is a shock to the Penguin Fans' system. We offered similar money, more years, Sid, a new building on the horizon, and an inside track to the HHoF. My only thought is that he wanted to sign in a city who's up against the cap (Boston) and this is a year he'll soon forget.

While we waited for Marian to finish taking his piss, Rolston signed in NJ and is already bored with the smell of Axe Body Spray™. It was too many years for it to have made sense here, but perhaps a 3yr wouldn't have been awful.

Ryder signed in Boston, where he will still suffer the merciless boo-ing of Montreal fans at every home game.

Naslund is still out there, but apparently is attached at the hip to one Pavol Demitra. I really don't know what to say except that we had better just wait this off-season out and get our guys inked before we go off signing pairs of BFFs and delving into perplexing situations with Jags or Huselius.

Meanwhile, rumors persist that Beauchamin in Anaheim is on the block, as will be one Marian Gaborik. Based on the market value of Jokinen, Gaborik could cost a couple NHL-ready prospects and/or a 1st round pick. As far as I'm concerned, we have so many high picks to sign even after the Malkin deal was announced, we can afford to deal them until perhaps the 2009-10 season. We're going to continue to pick in the last 3, and eventually you have to sign them. I think its a good thing that we forgo an entire season of potential RFA's and have that much more room for Fleury and Staal. If we can swing a deal and then actually keep the guy, that cap room will exist.

Lastly, among all the things we can list as assets that make Pittsburgh an attractive UFA destination; is it counter-balanced by the presence of black-Russian-drinking, fruitless-to-try-and-comprehend, loves-him-some-Dany-Sabourin (our new, then old, now new Backup) Michel (Mike?) Therrien? I know that Malone, Roberts, Orpik had issues. Guess what? Orpik remains unaccounted for, but it seems as though they didn't want any part of Mike (Michel?). Its as confusing as what the guy wants to be called.