Musing About Yesterday's NHL News Items

So yesterday I was busy at work, I mean very busy and focused. To the extent that the things I do to make a living were what I thought about exclusively between about 6AM and really this morning at about 11:30AM. In other words I've been "out of the loop" re: my hobbies and personal life items, including following what's been going on in the NHL. No big deal, it is after all "the off season," in fact as far as the calender and NHL hockey goes, this is really the "off-off season.' I mean the big news should have been the NHL schedules for the regular season were released. In most months of June that's it after the Stanley Cup Parade - you've got the awards show, and the release of next season's schedules, and usually nothing but rumours. Yesterday, apparently that wasn't the case we've got some real news items:

1) Nathan Horton to the Bruins for Dennis Wideman;

2) Nabakov given, as my late father would say, "his walking papers" by the Sharks;

3) Tomas Plekanec signs a 6 year, $30M extension with the Canadiens;

4) Former Capital "Bad Boy" Dino Ciccarelli elected to the HHOF;

5) The Pens sign Matt Cooke to a three year, no word on terms or if he gets extra bonus money for cheap shots;

6) It's not a big money deal, but the Canadiens also agreed to a one year contract with Mathieu Darche who opted to forgo Free Agency this year;

7) Scott Niedermayer announced his retirement; no word if Methuselah who it seems like broke into the league at about the same time as Niedermayer was present to offer his congratulations to the 36 year old, who in addition to leading the Anaheim Ducks also led Team Canada to Gold this past season, at the press conference.

8) The Edmonton Oilers named former Rangers Coach Tom Renney their new head coach.
9) According to his agent Allan Walsh, Capitals' Blue Liner Milan Jurcina is set to become an Unrestricted Free Agent. No real details on what that means other than it probably means there are no meaningful talks/negotiations ongoing between Walsh/Jurcina and the Caps.
10) Mike Green is working out hard and doing yoga this off season. Okay is that really all that news-worthy, no but I found it interesting.

11) Willie Mitchell says he is now symptom free from the concussion he suffered in January and vows to play next season. I'm not that up or down on Willie but I think it's great news to see a guy come back from an injury. So even though this is the sort of story that usually only gets picked up and talked about on a "slow" news day, I'm going to pass it along in case you missed it.


My only real musing on all this is basically - "wow, that's a lot of stuff for ~24 hours in the "off, off season" - what's this all mean?

Is it September yet?

LETS GO CAPS!!!!

Saturday Morning Musings ...

Wow, it's Saturday June 19th and it's going to be a hot, humid day here in scenic Bristow, VA. Real hockey news is basically a little slow and of course there's lots of other things to muse about right now. Of course being slightly hockey obsessed means I'll have a few hockey related musings today mixed in with musings about just how much water I have to put out there to keep the cattle pasture type grass we call lawns here in Northern VA from turning all brown and looking and feeling like dried straw. I of course will have intermittent, random musings about wingman's imminent return from being at sea half-way around the world in Singapore and Thailand in a couple of weeks and wondering if it will be in time for our Fourth Of July Bar-B-Que/Soiree. But for the most part putting any more than "that" out there about "that" doesn't seem all too interesting. In fact it's a bit counter-productive with regard to keeping my mind off those things so the time passes faster. So what about that ice hockey stuff anyway.

Well let's take a quick tour around the "blogsphere."

First RLD has their posts up about the three Norris Candidates with three different bloggers explaining why the think each of their choices for the Best Defenseman in the League should win. I found the Doughty related post uncompelling and a bit "Homer McFanboy" of course this could be because I think Doughty is the #3 guy of these three and probably shouldn't be up there as a finalist except for the fact the committee was too embarrassed to nominated 39 YO Nicklas Lidstrom, again, and as far as Mike Green goes, I'm a bit of a Homer McFanboy myself. I found the Duncan Kieth post generally well done, except the tribe sidebar comment as to Mike Green being basically a "forward" since I don't know too many forwards that log his TOI or block 150 shots in a season. Penalizing a guy because: a) the game has changed, b) he's a great skater so he frequently joins the rush and c) as a result of a & b he's been putting up points in addition to being his teams number one defenseman, seems as foolish as saying that Kieth shouldn't be nominated since he's not even the number one defenseman on his own team if you look at current season salaries. Of course I found any minor flaws in the post about Mike Green were significantly overcome by the conclusion of the post.

There's some chatter that the Dallas Stars might do a portion of their training camp up on Prince Edward Island. I'm all for it, I've been meaning to go to PEI since I was fourteen and this would give me yet another thing to see and reason to go in August which is supposed to be the most beautiful time of year up there.

The blogsphere continues to talk about the Halak trade and most folks continue to wonder what Montreal was thinking... at least here's some fodder for Hockey Humour out of it though.

Well the good news is that this coming week the NHL rumour mill ought to really get going as we lead up tothe Draft....

Is it September yet?

LETS GO CAPS!!!