R&R: Moving Day, Part XII

Don't worry, the whole "R&R: Moving Day..." thing will end soon. There's only so many more days before training camps around the league will begin and be followed shortly thereafter by the pre-season and regular season games. Hockey's back. I can almost taste it.

However, until then. There are more transactions of which to be aware. First things first. Marty, Marty, Marty. Get a new agent. Clearly the dope you have working for you now is not handling things well. You will come back to us, man. You will.

Now to direct my attention back to the reader, if you were unaware, Marty's rep decided to postpone today's meeting with Jay. Why? Because he sucks. I know Vinny got a huge wad of cash, but dammit Marty, you play for love of the game more than he does. Sorry, I slipped back into addressing Marty.

There's no other jersey I would be comfortable seeing him wear in October. He's got to stay with us. He's got to.

Then, of course there's the Stinkin' Panthers who took out an insurance policy on the whiny Roberto Luongo by signing Jean-Marc Pelletier (another in a long line of dual-named French Canadian, "once-a-Penguin-always-a-Penguin" netminders — Marc-Andre Fleury being the other).

Anyway. Luongo's arbitration hearing is Wednesday and if the Stinkin' Panthers dislike the result, they'll at least have Pelletier to fall back on. Not a bad plan but I sure wouldn't want to lose Luongo. I didn't want to lose Khabibulin. And I'd take Luongo over Khabibulin any day.

Moving on, now. Some other guys are getting new jerseys this fall. They are as follows.

• Randy Robitaille, formerly a Thrasher, is the newest addition in Music City;


• Ex-Lightning forward Steve Martins has left the Blues to join Ottawa;


• Joel Bouchard is darting Manhattan for a job on Long Island;


• and with his Chicago job gone, goalie Steve Passmore is now a Coyote (filling the void left by Pelletier).

You guessed it, now I will list the players re-signing contracts. In no particular order, they are Brenden Morrow of Dallas. Yeah I know, that was a long list.

Before I click "Publish Post," I thought I take a second to again mention the Comcast hockey contract. The press release came out today and it really has me looking forward to hockey on the tube. It looks like they are going to be offering more than ESPN ever did. The release mentioned new VOD (video-on-demand) capabilities that would include game highlights as well as more high definition broadcasts among other things.

The only question I have though, is who OLN will get to sit in front of the microphones? Will we get brand new broadcasters we've never seen/heard before? I would like to see OLN have access to Barry Melrose, Bill Clement, Gary Thorne, Darren Pang, et al. I don't know what their ESPN contracts (if they still have them) are like, but it's a thought.




Calgary's Hockey Mecca (Space's Perspective)   Here's the Saddledome, home of the Flames. From the sky. If you're wondering why I posted this, I refer you to yesterday's post.

R&R: Overload

I haven't written here in a few days, so things have started to pile up.

The most important bit of news is the re-signing of Vinny Lecavalier. He'll be counting nearly $7 million a year for the next four years with his new Lightning contract. That money could give the Bolts a problem keeping Marty St. Louis, but I'm not that worried. The two guys are equally important and Feaster knows this.

That was on Tuesday. Then today, Tampa Bay made several signings. Jim Campbell of the Islanders and Norm Milley of the Sabres will join the Bolts, if for no other reason than to stock the Falcons. We also re-signed Brian Eklund, who, based on my recollection, has never actually seen NHL ice.

With no more Lightning transactional news to speak of, below is a list of the players who have signed contracts with new teams in the last few days.

• Most notably, Curtis Joseph beat a path out of Detroit to join Wayne Gretzky's Coyotes (if I'm not mistaken, CuJo and Gretzky actually played together in St. Louis);


• Alexander Mogilny is leaving Toronto to return to the Devils, the team he once won a Stanley Cup with;


• Jozef Stumpel will join the Panthers, leaving Los Angeles in the dust;


• Anson Carter also left the Kings to play in Vancouver;


• Curtis Leschyshyn turned down the Sens and is headed back to Denver;


• and Andy Delmore is headed to Hockeytown after leaving the Bruins.

On the other hand, more players than not re-upped with their current teams. Among those players continuing on with their respective clubs are David Aebischer and John-Michael Liles of Colorado, Steve Sullivan of Nashville, Glen Wesley and Josef Vasicek of Carolina, Chris Bourque (son of Ray) and Dainius Zubrus of Washington; Dan Cloutier of Vancouver, Travis Green of Boston, and Radek Martinek of the Islandrs.

We're inching ever closer to that day on the calendar when the Lightning finally return to the ice to defend the Stanley Cup. Technically, October 5 is the opener, but I'm just looking forward to September 19, when they head to Detroit to begin the pre-season. September 24, on the other hand, will be the first Lightning game in Tampa since June 7, 2004.

It's been too long.

Oh, and don't let me forget. Comcast's OLN will be the new home of NHL hockey this season. It will certainly be different. ESPN has been covering hockey as long as I can remember. It should be interesting to see who they get as primary broadcasters.

The Comcast contract provides for airing games on Monday and Tuesday nights as well as the conference finals. I'm sure there will be other games covered. But that we won't know until OLN creates its hockey schedule.

Here on Bright House cable in Tampa, OLN is channel 74. And I can honestly say I've never had any reason to watch it before. In October, it's going to go from one of my least-watched channels to most-watched.

You watch.




Tampa's Hockey Mecca (Space's Perspective)   I got bored last week and, well, ran out of good, relevant hockey pictures. So I managed to find all 30 NHL arenas from space via Google's Maps service. So first things first. This is the Ice Palace. More later.

R&R: Moving Day, Part X

A few days without much player movement was driving me crazy. I wasn't sure how to process this. Then John LeClair moved across the state of Pennsylvania.

Pardon my use of an overused phrase, but it's quite possible that the Pittsburgh Penguins go from zero to hero this season. If Crosby's all he's cracked up to be and LeClair and Lemieux aren't too old, it's very possible that this team at least makes the playoffs. But as always, it's too soon to tell.

The Lightning are proof that players need time to adjust to and get to know each other before they can really play as a team. The Rangers are proof that stock-piling all-stars will get you zilch.

Anyway, there hasn't been much team-switching the last few days, but there have been quite a few contract inkings. I'm not about to list them all but some of the more notable re-signings were Pavel Brendl of Carolina, Patrick Marleau, Marco Sturm and Brad Stuart of San Jose, Saku Koivu of Montreal, Oleg Kvasha of the Islanders, Tom Poti of the Rangers, Jason Arnott of Dallas, Jochen Hecht and Maxim Afinogenov of Buffalo.

By the way, I'm reminded that there was a free agent signing made yesterday that dashed the hopes of Tampa fans wishing for the return of original Bolt Roman Hamrlik. Hamrlik signed with our Western Conference nemesis in Calgary. A crying shame, that is.

Not much else to report here, except to say that Todd Bertuzzi is very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very sorry.

Very.

Sorry.

And "ice hockey" in Icelandic is "íshokki" in case you read my other blog and were wondering.

You weren't, were you?

That's okay.




Names You Know In Colors You Don't   Isn't it so weird to see a Flyers jersey with "Forsberg" strewn across the nameplate and a Maple Leafs sweater donning an 88? What is the world coming to?

Coming Soon: Should the spirit compel me, Hockey Anagrams may begin this week. Don't ask. You'll see.