Hockey Playoffs Approach


caroljane

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Shall we start a separate thread for the Stanley Cup game by game predictions and series predictions woman?

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Pain just never ends for a Torontonian.

Farmteam finals are on now. Calder Cup. Toronto Marlies v Norfolk Admirals.

Norfolk, Va??? Up 2-0. Skaters in Norfolk, Va???...Ice?...Does no locale exist Toronto will not travel to to be defeatea\d?

No wonder I am a fatalist.

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  • 3 months later...

Playoffs are always approaching from somewhere in hockey, but not faceoffs this year in the NHL.

The recurrent attempts of the billionaire team owners in the US to recoup the losses of their failed expansion gamble have resulted in the second lockout in five years,

As usual the fans are the losers because, yawn, as one owner succinctly put it, "Public opinion is not a factor in this dispute." He is right , NHL is a business and there is plenty of revenue and reserved cash still in the management coffers. They have a good deadlock on many municipalities to extract fees and guarantees from them, while providing no services. Edmonton? Threaten to move the team. Phoenix? Wanna go bankrupt? And so on. The transfer process of sending the cash from the rich (Canadian) teams to the poor (southern US) teams was not generating enough profit, so it is time to squeeze the players again...cutting labour costs is the first line of economy, as everybody knows.

Hockey itself is thriving, however, wherever there is ice. Many of the best young stars are locked into the minors and juniors, and I can follow the Marlies and the Sea Dogs and the Icedogs, and hope that the plutocrats will graciously "resume negotiations" in time for the Winter Classic, and that they might possibly be forced to shrink the league and shorten the exhaustingly prolonged season. But I have no reason to hope they will.

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Why on earth don't the owners copy the effective, innovative solution adopted by the NFL? Instead of cancelling the season, they should just have hired replacement players.

It isn't too late. I and all the Senior Sizzlers are ready, willing and able to take to the ice and show those mooching, spoiled, we-re-so-entitled second-handers that real hockey players share the philosophy of their visionary bosses: proud individualism and a commitment to excellence.

Well, all of us but Rahida, she is willing but her rheumatism is acting up again.

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I feel sorry for the die hard fans who would have to traipse halfway across the country to see their young stars playing on the farm team. (I am assuming nobody is so die hard that they will go to Finland or Slovakia to see top NHLers. Switzerland, maybe)

At least the Marlies are here in Toronto and will get a boost from Kadri and Gardiner aficianados. And let's face it, the Marlies were better than the Leafs all last season. And the season before, and....

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I do not pretend that the grass roots, old-timey joys of minor and junior hockey are not without their pains however.

My Saint John Sea Dogs have started the season by losing twice --twice!!!--to Prince Edward island. This is unprecedented, unheard of. Nobody loses to PEI. But the wins are explained by the fact that two emergency players were drafted from the Charlottetown Women's Field Hockey Team. The PEI coach's lame excuse? "Their brothers were sick."

I don't think so.

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Everyone is seeking a screamer...

...but off the ice you can't get a squeak out of them.

Care to put some of these on that statement?

126px-Canadian_bills2.jpg 126px-Canadian_1_and_2_dollar_coins.png Canadian banknotes: Canadian Journey Series notes depicted; new $50 and $100 polymer notes (Frontier Series) in circulation not depicted Canadian one-dollar coin (loonie) and two-dollar coin (toonie) as of 2012

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Everyone is seeking a screamer...

...but off the ice you can't get a squeak out of them.

Care to put some of these on that statement?

126px-Canadian_bills2.jpg 126px-Canadian_1_and_2_dollar_coins.png Canadian banknotes: Canadian Journey Series notes depicted; new $50 and $100 polymer notes (Frontier Series) in circulation not depicted Canadian one-dollar coin (loonie) and two-dollar coin (toonie) as of 2012

I never realised how much the late Jack Layton resembled Robert Borden. I do not see many $100 bills.

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Word has leaked from behind-closed-door negotiations that the Edmonton Oilers Fans Union have threatened to move Daryl Katz to Seattle, in five separate containers.

Asked for comment, Edmonton great Wayne Gretzky said, "It'll never happen."

His old teammate Mark Messier said, "Don't be so sure."

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The reason that NHL negotiation sessions have always ended at lunchtime, resulting in two weeks and counting of no season start, has been discovered. Observers hope that adjustments will revive the process and bring both owners and players back to the table.

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  • 6 months later...

Yeah, they are approaching again. Next week or thereabouts. The Leafs have not made them for nine long years, but this time...I don't dare to say more, except, it sure would be nice to be able to cut off this beard. I keep tripping over it.

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I am in the sad position of hoping and praying that the Winnipeg Jets, whom I love, will lose their next two games.

What's not to love about the Jets, who returned from their exile trailing clouds of pride and honour, if not quite glory? They have the perfect mix for the PC sports fan - the first NHL Cuban-American player, and the first Armenian American player plus bona fide homeboy backyard-rinkers. They have a goalie who looks all of 14 years old. And they have the ever-entertaing Dusty "the Skipper" Buff, behind whom guys have died of hunger in the buffet line.

So go Jets go. Just go down for a couple of games and then rise again in glory.

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Leafs have only got a black judge's son, an Evangelical Mennonite, a wily Arab-Canadian and a paranoid Belarussian.

Plus the usual suspects. And Scrivens who lives with his wife in a basement apartment. Why not spend your money and emerge to the daylight Ben? Or do you prefer not to?

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  • 2 months later...

Playoffs not approaching fast enough. God I hate this time of year. Everytime I have to go out I come home with heat blisters. Feeling deprived since there is absolutely no hockey news, unless you count Restricted Free Agents Still in Contract Talks, which as news is on a par with Duchess of Cambridge still Pregnant.

\Looking at Joffrey Lupul in ESPN magazine, but it is not cooling me down any. He has the most beautiful...eyes in hockey. It is too bad Ayn Rand never cared about athletics, I know she went for the lithe type but I bet Lupes could've changed her premises.

Dreaming of ice and cosy winter Saturday Nights in Canuckistan .

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Just heard a great comment on sports radio. Liewicke, the new boss of all the Toronto teams, has announced that he will be a new broom and sweep away all the icky sentimental attachments of the Leafs past to usher in a new era of Winning. "I hate arrogant Americans," said the commentator. "I see one every morning when I look in the mirror."

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Looking at pbotos of Elisha Cuthbert wedding to Phaneuf. Best. Weddingdress. Ever. Dion even sort of smiled, but even on the happiest day of his life he still had a face like a frozen haddock.

Beauty and the Beast indeed.

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