Killing Spin on the Puck, Melnyk Extends Murray’s Deal
Posted by jtbourne on April 8, 2011 · 8 Comments
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New Puck Daddy: Managing your star players ice time for playoff success
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Yeah good call.
Congrats to Ottawa Senators fans, who receive the gift of three more years of Bryan Murray.
Two guesses why Melnyk re-signed him:
1) He was so impressed with Murray’s ability to de-build a team, he figured he’ll be just as good at the rebuild.
2) He really loves summer, and sees no need to put someone in place that may make him work longer than necessary
Odd that it comes right after a Sens OT win – you get the feeling Melnyk was so pumped from the win (like George Costanza’s “I’m giving you a raise!”) that he just blurted out, mid-hug “I’m signing you to a new deal!”
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Honor of all honors – Bourne’s Blog has been included in the blogroll for Norm Macdonald’s “Sports Show” that premiers on Tuesday and is inevitably going to be great.
I mean, it really doesn’t mean much aside from the fact that somebody who works on Sports Show knows about my site and thinks it’s half decent, but hey…. that matters. I’ll take any association with Norm I can get, dude is hilarious.
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You know what blows my mind about goals like this:
Kaboom.
Okay, well that wasn’t the greatest example of my point, but it gets me to where I’m going: when Mike Cammalleri gets a puck in a spot like that, it never, ever seems to be spinning. He kills spin like I’ve never seen – the puck always seems to just sit where it’s at, because he takes passes so well.
It’s one of those things that people sitting at home can rarely see, but when you get a rebound kick out to you, or a pass off the boards, or just a direct pass, the puck is spinning in a certain direction – in different directions depending on if the pass is from a righty or a lefty. You don’t always know if it’s going to hit your blade and climb your toe or heel.
It’s not really a problem on one timers – if you can get through the puck quick enough it seems to be void. But I assure you: if I got that pass back door, I would one-time it to make sure it wasn’t gonna spin off on me, which makes it tough to shoot. Cammalleri just has magic pass taking hands, I guess. It’s like he’s a premier NHLer or something.
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My man Bubba.
I’m confused by the fact that they only put a few hours of the Masters on a day, even during the final rounds. You end up missing either Phil or Tiger’s entire round – you telling me they wouldn’t get good ratings if they showed an extra couple hours?
If that request isn’t telling enough, I’ve been (predictably) loving the Masters. It’s on Masters.com basically from morning til the last round is done, and I haven’t been shy about having it on while I type so I can at least listen to what’s going on. Puts me in a nice calm place to write.
My Masters picks, however – Bubba Watson, Anthony Kim, Ernie Els and Le Tigre – are badly tanking. When Tiger is your best hope, at this point, it ain’t a good thing (he just opened with a bogey on one, SWEET).
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Enjoy the golf and a fantastic finish to the NHL season friends. Happy weekend.
I'm a hockey player turned writer. After playing for Alaska Anchorage in the WCHA (NCAA), I carried on with an NHL tryout (New York Islanders in 2007) before spending a couple seasons in the AHL/ECHL (last year was 2008-09). My father, Bob Bourne, won four Stanley Cups with the Islanders in the '80's, as did my fiancee's dad, Clark Gillies. I'm now the web editor for theScore's hockey blog "Backhand Shelf."
Dude, no DirecTV? http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/content/sports/golf/masters
Congrats on the blogroll inclusion – *I* think it’s a big deal!
As a Bruins fan you can’t call me a homer, and I think the media has down played this a lot more then they should have considering you never hear them bring it up when they criticize the Senators, but I think Bryan Murray got shafted when he was forced to trade a top ton talent in the league (Heatley) and got basically a 4 or 5 d-man and someone who’s was once a point producer but now has been relagated to the AHL. Try and tell me they are as bad as they were this year without that deal. I see them battling for a final playoff spot with Heatley.
I have to learn how to not write run on sentences, my apologies
top ten talent*
Those channels only function during the 3-7:30 window while they televise the event, sadly.
Way to go with getting on Norm’s blogroll! Pretty pumped to see the premier. Even more pumped that now I know he’ll at least have one reasonable voice around for hockey.
Honestly as long as they can somehow restrict brian murray from signing players, and just let him draft away i’m happy.
As a Flames fan, I was so disappointed when Darryl Sutter decided to watch videos from the 2002/03 season again and do his darnedest to pick up Cammalleri. I am a big believer in chemistry on and off the ice. Cammalleri, on top of his great puck handling skills, seems to be a really positive person. When he joined the Flames, I was excited. I thought for sure the Flames had a chance at a deep playoff run. But as John Pinette would say: “Ahhh, Nay Nay”. Sutter decided to give up a 1st round pick and Matthew Lombardi for Olli Jokinen. This turned out to be Mark Visentin and Matthew Lombardi. The problem wasn’t getting Jokinen, the problem was that Sutter, who picked up Bouwmeester in the summer of 2009 could no longer afford to have Cammalleri on staff. Mixed with the poor chemistry brought to the Flames by Jokinen and the Flames quickly departing the post-season contest that year, the stage was set for me to be let down. This was also when people needed to realize that Darryl Sutter needed to go. Who takes Jokinen over Cammalleri any day of the week? Cammalleri would have taken $6 million a year, which is worth it in my opinion and he could have been the next leader of the Flames. Instead we have Matt Stajan as our future. *FACE PALM*
Okay, I’ve bitched enough.
If you listen to PD Radio with Wyshynski and Pizzo, they talked about the Bryan Murray thing. Essentially there argument was: Murray – you broke it, you fix it.