Sports Prediction of the Year

I love sports for a million different reasons.  Last night was the best example of reason number 834,777 that I’ve ever seen in my life.

#834,777  - the random prediction come true.  You know, when you’re sitting at your cubicle and you call your shot with the crumpled paper -- “Off the printer, clip the water cooler, then garbage”.  Bam.  In the garbage. 

Whether you call it a prediction, or a called shot, you have to love those moments.  And it’s just as great to call someone elses shot.  It’s fun being the guy standing behind your buddy while pointing Out-Of-Bounds right, just before he tees off… only to have him hammer it Out-Of-Bounds right.

Listen to the call by the Mariners announcer before the game - a prediction about a kid who’s never hit a big league homerun.  I so so apologize that the only place I could find the clip was from *shudder* Rachel Maddow (poorly clipped too.  The announcers start getting excited earlier in the count when it starts looking possible).  But you’ll enjoy it:

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Sick.

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Sooo, what the hell?  Hossa is out til “late November”?  And I was so pumped about picking him up as a third rounder in the Bourne’s Blog Hockey League.  Don’t worry though, I just checked out my team and we’re still stacked.  There was nooo bias in my “Carey Price is going to have a good year” comment from the video blog… Noooo bias at all.

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And last… It’s official.  I’m a USA Today staffer.

The blog on their site was sort of a “tryout” period, so thanks for all your support -- especially you, Alaska and New York.  You combine for almost 50% of my blog hits (with my long-time hometown of Kelowna contributing about 1-2%… thanks Mom, Dad and Bro).  To those of you who’ve linked to my blog, and promoted me on hockey forums, blogs and everywhere else… more thank you’s.

I’ll be writing a bi-weekly NHL column called “Other Side of the Glass”.

So, throughout the year, I’ll be looking for NHL topics to write about.  Given that the column isn’t all that frequent, I’ll have ample research time.  Hit me up if you think you have something story worthy!

Video Blog – NHL Predictions

Every few days leading up to the NHL season, I’m gonna run a video blog with a couple predictions for the season.

This is my first crack at it, so cut me a little slack.  To make it easier, I’ve made the first two predictions my “safe” ones.  It’ll be harder when I start trying to defend predictions like “The Vancouver Canucks will struggle in the regular season, but have a great playoff run”.

Oh, and one other thing before the vid -- I went to the Coyotes/Kings game last night and have a crazy long list of things to write about today, so look for that in the next day or two.  Unfortunately, I won’t be linking to what I promised yesterday (my take on the Coyotes sitch) because (thankfully) the Arizona Republic bought the article to run in their NHL/Coyotes preview piece in a couple weeks.

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(By the way -- thanks to those of you who’ve made it so I don’t have to charge for “premium content” or anything of the sort by donating a couple bucks to the cause.  Makes the time put in easier to justify!)

The Perfect Salary Loophole

In an attempt to postpone the slow but steady journey from hockey player to fat cynical writer, I’ve given these so-called “Perfect Pushups” a try.  I gotta believe any product with “perfect” in it’s name is probably not the most reliable item to exchange legal tender for, but c’mon…  that guy on the box is jacked.

Anywho, they’re money.  They really are.  They better be, cause it’s shirt-off weather in Phoenix about 13 months a year, and I need to make some changes.  Apparently, a day of writing burns roughly four calories, and that sack of chocolate covered pretzels I just humbled contained a number similar to the national debt.

Moving on.

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How about those shade-ball owners in the NHL abusing the salary cap loophole?  I mean, come on.  For the Flyers to claim with a straight face that they think Chris Pronger has seven good playing years left is pretty feeble, isn’t it?  He’s got the operating speed and mobility of an early 90′s desktop computer, and they didn’t think it was just a little too obvious that they were trying to circumvent the salary cap?  I’ve seen more subtlety in Andrew Dice Clay jokes. 

Pleasedon'tmakemecrossover, pleasedon'tmakemecrossover...

For the uninformed, here’s a quick rundown of how and why you’re seeing massively long contracts:

NHL teams have a salary cap of $56.8 million for the 2009-2010 season.  The cap hit that each player costs is simple: the dollar total of their contract, divided by the amount of years.

Thus, in the case of Marion Hossa and Chris Pronger, they were signed to long term deals where they make the league minimum in the last few years, so the teams yearly cap hit comes down.  For example, Hossa signed for 12 years, roughly 60 million dollars.  But, he actually makes nearly 8 mill a season for the first seven years, then peanuts for the last five.  Instead of taking an eight million dollar cap hit (which is what they’re paying him), his contract works out to a five million dollar hit (60/12=5), so they Hawks are free to spend more money.

And now, an outside firm has been hired to figure out if the teams were intentionally signing guys to contracts that they weren’t actually going to play out.  Apparently, they’ve called the Hardy Boys, Sherlock Holmes, and the Scooby-Doo crew to crack this difficult case.  Pronger, $525,000 (league minimum) at 40?  Noooo, I’m sure he intends to play, right?

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Everytime I think about writing a book (which is becoming more often), this clip brings me back down to earth with a laugh.  Then I make a martini.

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Ahhhh, crap that’s funny.

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So, our first celebs arrive tomorrow to hang out for a day or two before our Hockey Greats Camp starts, and I’ve got good news:  I will be blogging.  I’d be a fool not to.  Last year one of these guys told my Egyptian friend he looks like a half-chewed caramel.  These guys are a gold mine for material.

Over the  next day or two, the following is the group of gents we’ve enlisted to help make our camp a success (chosen on a formula of what great guys they are times how good they were):  Dave Semenko, Bryan Trottier, Steve Shutt, Billy Smith, Gary Nylund, Clark Gillies, Doug Bodger, Dale Hawerchuk, Ron Flockhart, Cliff Ronning and Larry Melnyk.  27 Stanley Cups between em.  Not bad.

I’ll be tweeting the frequent gems that stumble out of these guys booze-holes as the week goes on.

(Last year, the same tale was rehashed a half dozen times: A player gets beat when an opponent - frequently cited as being Pierre Laroche -- puts the puck between his feet and goes in to score.  After getting berated by his coach, the player says “Gee, I guess I shoulda kept my legs closed” to which the coach responds “No, your mother shoulda“.)

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And last, one more thing - Brianna gets here on Tuesday, marking the start of “NeverApartEverAgain time”.  Married men, pour one out for me.  Looking forward to it, honey!