Backup plan

That's about it for another week. Feel free to check out the latest comments here over the weekend, and add your own opinions. We'll have a new question for you on Monday.   

Welcome aboard, Jean-Sebastien Aubin. The young-yet-experienced goalie was signed yesterday by the Maple Leafs to push Mikael Tellqvist for the Ringo role to Ed Belfour's rest of the Beatles. We're thinking Leaf fans hope Belfour's back holds up and the Buds have to rely on neither this year.

And if you're wondering what this whole OLN thing is about, well, hockey fans in Canada are well taken care of (CBC lockout pending), but in the U.S. they're doing the math, while diehard fans have some questions.

Around the horn:

The Devils are preparing to play without Scott Stevens this year.

In Washington, they'd like to have Peter Bondra back, but it's up to the scorer to decide.

Curtis Joseph is looking forward to being a desert dog for a couple of reasons:

"I've never played in a warm place," he said.

The Boston Bruins would like to add some depth to their blue line and could use slick winger Sergei Samsonov or P.J. Axelsson as trade bait.

Tampa Bay continues the negotiation "process" with firecracker Martin St. Louis, but could lose him after this season.

A sign it's time to move on from the Todd Bertuzzi-Steve Moore incident?

"I wish (Bertuzzi) could be playing in Colorado with me," Avalanche winger Alex Tanguay said from Team Canada's Olympic camp.

Comments

[Martin Bradley]

JS Aubin's re-signing is either a smart move on JFJ's part, or it is further evidence that even he knows Mikael Tellqvist isn't a great goalie (the second coming of Hardy Astrom perhaps?).

The Av's Alex Tanguay and Joe Sakic ... wow, what team mates. If I were Steve Moore, I'd be wishing them both season-ending injuries ... from Bertuzzi no less.

Those new Team Canada jerseys are just awful. I hear the players don't like them either. Guess not. Tighter uniforms can only be found on swimmers and volleyball players. I'd rather see a return to those ugly Cooperall outfits the Whalers and Flyers wore a few years back.

[denial]

A little sad to see what's happening to Tampa Bay; they're being Marlinized from without thanks to the CBA. Bettman (who is looking/acting a bit less than a stressed-out Michael Corleone these days) is hopefully appropriately grateful that the Flames didn't win the cup. In Tampa, they might moan a bit and wonder if they should trade in their 1/4th of a season ticket for a new RV. In Calgary, they'd be setting themselves on fire (no pun in tended...well, hell, why not) if flames started fleeing away thanks to the 20%+ bump in salary they'd all want for winning the cup.

Smiles Gary, Smiles. You are on fffffffffffffffffffantasy island.

There are some goalies, like Joseph, who claim to like a lot of shots (I have a the feeling that unless he's blocking shots and flipping around, he starts to think too much...thinking=bad for goalies). But if the Leafs have any sense of MERCY -- forget about deep playoff aspirations -- they will, as a unit, do something to prevent Belfour from seeing 40 shots a night. I've been subjected to the leafs since the early 80s and I don't think I can remember a team that was in the top 10 of the league in terms of fewest shots allowed. I can only imagine that this is what Luongo is trying to convey to Mike Keenan.

Speaking of Mike Keenan, WHAT is he doing? Guys like Keenan are NOT built for the "new" NHL. For coaches, the old NHL was built on tactics and logistics. The new one will be built on strategy and diplomacy. Look at how Andy Reid is handling things (so far) in that Eagles freakshow. It may have taken Reid a millenium, but he's getting it. Keenan doesn't, and he's absurdly lucky -- Gary Bettman style lucky, but without that head bobble thing -- that he's doing this in Florida, where they don't understand much and don't care even less. If Keenan tried this in a real hockey place where they have blogs and ric-ho-chet's, he'd be asking people if they want to upsize their combo for .79 cents.

[mm]

Denial I have no clue what you just said. NO clue.

[Peter Magill]

ThisSteve Moore bugs me. THe passes himself off as a super clean player. Truths is he was a little cheap shot artist who nearly knocked Naslunds block off with a cheap blindsider. And the other thing is he is lamenting the fact he is now out of the NHL. but the truth is he was a fringe player who probably wouldn't have stuck anyways. Sour grapes from a little suck I say...

[denial]

mm...

grasshopper, you must read the words in between the words. You cannot find mm inside my blog. You can only find mm inside mm, where it waits for you; where it shall wait forever, throug the wheel of 840,000 species.

But in the meantime, here's a coles notes. Feel free to share this with your family.

- The Tampa Bay Lightening are being torn apart, now or in the very near future, by the hard cap. The fans in Tampa Bay are going to tolerate this one way or another. And if they don't, who really, really cares? But if Calgary, after winning the cup, was forced to fall apart by individual players expecting refinancing, then the fans in Calgary would make lots of anti-CBA/anti-Bettman noise. So Gary Bettman -- who looks way too much like Michael Corleone in G2 -- is probably breathign a sigh of relief. He is also, hopefully, being taught that you eat pizza from the small end first, especially when you're going to be on TV.

- The Leafs have historically allowed their suffering goaltenders to deal with about 40 shots a night. This goes further back than Ken Wregget (hey -- do any of you remember that save against St. Louis in '85 or something? That glove save against Tambilini or somone with lots of vowels in their name? I made that save 300 times in street hockey -- I used to stand outside of the net just so I could do it. BUT I DIGRESS). If the leafs subject belfour to 10 trillion shots, his back is going to snap in half. He doesn't deserve that. Nobody does.

- Luongo doesn't deserve that either. The horrible Panthers have stolen at least 1 full season off of that young man's career because they let him see 50 billion shots already. It will catch up to him when he reaches Eddy's age. He's right for asking for $3 million, especially since the Canucks are paying almost that much to Cloutier for some strange reason.

- Coaching in the old NHL was about tactics (taking advantage of opportunities and manipulating things to exploit them) and logistics (making sure you had enough stuff to do things). Now with the cap, it's going to depend on strategy (manipulating situations to achieve well-defined objectives) and diplomacy (understanding that pro athletes are somewhat mental, and finding a way to play into that system). It's what NBA coaches do and why the successful ones succeed. It's what Andy Reid is going to learn to do if he wants to keep Owens. You see, Owens is doing this DELIBERATELY. Owens is not stupid at all. This is all planned. Owens is telling the Eagles, and McNabb, that this is his team. And it has to be that way, becase McNabb CAN'T lead a team to the superbowl. McNabb can coordinate a team to the superbowl, just like Gretzky could do that in Edmonton, Yzerman could do that in Detroit, Modano could do that in Dallas, and Sundin COULD do that in Toronto. But none of these aforementioned players are leaders -- they don't WANT to lead. And that's not an insult. To lead, you have to be a real jerk sometimes. Some people CAN'T lead this way. So they coordinate; they, paradoxically, lead by understanding that they aren't the right person to lead their team.

Jeremy Roenick is a team leader.

And lastly: what makes you think that *I* understand what I'm saying?

O WHAT A MIRACULOUS SAVE BY WREGGET

[Andrew Spencer]

I'd like it if Denial was GM of the Leafs. Yes, I think I might like that a lot.

[mm]

Well you just won my vote as the new Cherry on HNIC. Tor Star ed's are you taking note?