August is what I like to call a hockey writer's nightmare. It's extremely slow in regards to news, and it gets pretty boring when you have nothing to write about. Despite the still impending league wide work stoppage, news has still been slower than a damn snail. However, there has been a little bit of news that has managed to trickle down the pipeline lately.
Count Bettman and his evil minions, the NHL owners, continue to play hardball with Donald Fehr and the rest of the NHLPA. While many fans like to place all the blame on Bettman, that just can't be done.
It really irks me quite a bit that the two sides can't get a deal done. While fans sit around watching replays of their favorite team's games all day, owners and players are sitting on opposite sides of a table bitching about who gets a bigger chunk of the pizza, a pizza that's made by fans. And in case you don't understand the metaphor, the pizza is the revenue the league gets that is split by the owners and players.
It's ridiculous to imagine that these players make more money per year than many could ever imagine to have in their lifetime, their unemployment benefits that they will get during the lockout are still more than many could ever imagine having, and on top of that many of the top players will split to Russia, Finland, Sweden, etc. to play in the European Professional Leagues and make a ton of money over there.
Another major issue with the CBA negotiations is the owners. While they sit around and complain about how the players get too much money, they go out and sign them to absolutely ludicrous deals (see: Zach Parise, Ryan Suter, Shea Weber, Taylor Hall). This will inevitably come back to bite the owners in the ass. To complain about the amount of money that they themselves are deciding to pay the players is insane. No wonder the players are so pissed off.
Enough lockout talk for now, though.
In other news, the Bruins have signed first rounder Malcolm Subban to an entry level contract.
Chances are he'll go back to the Belleville Bulls of the OHL considering he's a solid 4-5 years away from the NHL and not a lot of first round picks spend time in the AHL. But it's good to see the Bruins have that kind of confidence in his potential to be a #1 goalie in the NHL. Well, that or they really want to see him stuff his pain in the ass brother PK and put on his troll face afterwards.
The next day, the Bruins signed forward Brad Marchand to a four year contract extension worth $18M. For those of you that are bad at math like I am, that comes out to a $4.5M cap hit.
This calls for a little celebration, eh Marchy?
It's good to see the Bruins getting ahead of the game with their pending free agents. With the amount of money players are getting, they're managing to get what appears to be fair value for their players and not overpaying like crazy.
Finally, it sounds like Greg Jamison has finally gotten the money together to keep the Coyotes in Phoenix.
Why he's doing that I do not know. It's common knowledge that the Coyotes have very, very few real fans. The "fans" don't show up until the team is in the playoffs, if they even make it that far. At that point, you can walk into the Jobbing.com Arena and hear "Yeah! Shane Doan just scored a goal! Wait, what's that again? Maybe it's a touchdown..."
Speaking of Shane Doan, now that Jamison has the money to buy the Coyotes, he's agreed to a new contract that will be signed as soon as the buy is complete. It's great to see a guy like Doan stay with the team he's played for his entire career, but when you have a team that's owned by the frigging league and in serious financial trouble, you should be getting the hell out of there as fast as you can and never looking back. I mean honestly, does he ever want to win a title?
My gut feeling is that towards the end of his career, Doan will have to pull a Ray Bourque and ask for a trade to a contending team so he can finally win a Stanley Cup. Doan is a great player and a great team guy, and he deserves to win a championship. Especially in a city where people actually care about hockey, considering a Coyotes Cup parade would consist of less people than the LA Kings parade.
The @lakings are playing the @phoenixcoyotes? I wonder which city that shouldn't have a hockey team will win.
— Conan O'Brien (@ConanOBrien) May 25, 2012
It's quiet today in LA. Reminds me of the day the Kings won the Stanley Cup.
— Conan O'Brien (@ConanOBrien) July 14, 2012
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