For the Love of Hockey

Every once in a while there is a story that touches your heart in the most profound of ways. The story of Nick Lambden, a 10 year old hockey player who died while playing hockey outside after being struck with a puck from a nearby game, is tragic. Considering only the age that Nick was when the accident happened tears at your heart.

The media, specifically Don Cherry on Coach's Corner (here) and James Duthie (here) fill us in on more about this kid and the type of person he was.

Oilers Turning off the Lights?

I wonder if Edmonton is calling it a season trading away one of their few positive defensemen for a prospect, or if they are clearing cap room for Ryan Smyth. Either way, it is not a good sign for this year if you are an Oiler fan. I'm not particularly a fan of the Oilers, but it takes away the chances of all 6 Canadian teams in the playoffs (a hard trick when three are in the most competitive division anyway)

Grey Cup Sponsorship

This is a mistake. The CFL board of governors underestimated what people will think of renaming the Grey Cup to whatever sponsors want. This is not curling or a college bowl game, this is the championship of Canadian professional football. Should this go through, I may be missing from some games at Taylor Field Mosaic Stadium

What do you want from a coach?

I was listening to Drew Remenda's show yesterday when they talked about the firing of Steve Young from the Moose Jaw Warriors. A coach who led his team (for the first time ever) to the WHL finals. A coach who lost a number of good players from last year. A coach who suffered when one of the players was seriously injured in a traffic accident. A coach who has three players left at this point who played there last year.

In junior hockey there is always a rebuilding situation after a strong season. It is the nature of the beast. Your high impact players get picked up for the NHL or grow too old to retain. Consistency in Junior should be graded on the speed with which you return to competitiveness in league standings not winning it all year after year.

The people involved in this decision made a mistake.

GO LEAFS GO

Some time ago, I related that I would not be able to cheer for the Leafs with Lindros in the lineup. He has been gone, and I am happy about that. There are some times this year that have been hard on the Leafs and right now it seems that they are doing a good job in surviving serious injuries to key personnel.

Peca , Wellwood and Tucker have missed big numbers of games and the Leafs struggled to get by for quite some time. Now they are on their way, and a goalie is leading the way. Raycroft's save last night was highlight reel caliber and his play over the last week got him player of the week honors. He is stealing some games for the Leafs and they need that help.

Sometimes you can't be Quiet

Sometimes you can't be quiet. I was reading a blog today that was slagging John Gormley's position on the provincial government. Okay, John's a big enough guy to take the stuff that is being said, but what was being said in the comments almost made me sick.

As with the way things go, I started to do a reply, but thought I ought to step up and write something original. What I did was start looking at our current provincial situation in relation to the SGEU. I found a Stats Can table that shows the following information for 2005:

Saskatchewan Provincial business enterprises
# of Employees = 13,632
Wages and Salaries ($ thousands) = 635,043

Alberta Provincial business enterprises
# of employees = 3,131
Wages and Salaries ($ thousands) = 81,434

Check it here.

Obviously this comparison shows the difference in political ideology in practice. Next, I found a document for each of Saskatchewan and Alberta showing populations for the same time frame:

Saskatchewan = 990,930 (from Saskatchewan Annual Population report 2005)
Alberta = 3,182,178 (from Alberta 2005 Official Population List)

So we have roughly 4 times the # of employees in government run businesses, and pay them 7 times the amount that Alberta does in total (or almost twice as much per employee).

Now do you support their strike?