The Predators dancing girls have their own blog.  And it’s brilliant, perhaps even inspiring. For instance, here’s yesterday’s good times: 

I definitely have to send a big thank you to Ron’s mom, who sent him with three bags of homemade cookies (Ron works with the Preds and helps Adam coordinate a lot of our events). The cookies have been a big hit!

XOXO
Taylor
Goal Girls

Gosh, she sounds so sweet…

The Bertuzzi/Crawford story all over the ‘net today has felt like an episode of deja vu as it reminded me vaguely of something else from the moment I read the first reports.  But it wasn’t till I read this headline and opener on TSN that it finally clicked:

Sound familiar? No?

It’s that overused theme of sports-equals-war I’m talking about.  To make it clearer, Jack Nicholson has kindly offered to help me with a very light re-write:

TSN seems to have all kinds of fun in store for Canadian hockey fans this year, and their off-season news rolls out nicely when considered together as some demented screenplay.

For instance:

I love watching the Olympics but it occurs to me to wonder: Is there something a bit… off… about watching this stuff?

While it’s amazing to witness the triumphs (i.e. the Michael Phelps story was a big ‘wow’ (not to mention, a financial payoff likely to make even Mats Sundin jealous); or the redemption of the Canadian men’s eights as they abolished memories of Athens, etc) it seems that far more Olympic-watching-time is about witnessing disasters than successes.

EA Sports is putting out NHL ‘09 on September 9th, and in anticipation they’ve released their player rankings for every team’s roster.  Those rankings use a pile of criteria some of which appear more subjective than those determined by straight statistics.

For the details, you can click here and scroll down to see each player’s rankings on their team page. Sort of entertaining if you use them as a predictor of how the player will perform in real life.

Byron Ritchie à Genève

Selon divers médias romands, Genève-Servette a engagé le centre canadien Byron Ritchie. En provenance des Vancouver Canucks (NHL), ce centre râblé est le 5e étranger des Vernets sous contrat pour la saison à venir.

That’s from 24 Heures but Hockey Bums makes it slightly easier to understand: Byron Ritchie has a 1-year deal in Switzerland.

In other ex-Canucks news, Trevor Letowski went to Russia (which earned him a pay raise over the NHL) and Jan Hlavac went to Sweden. (Sadly, Jan’s Glasgow, Scotland career just wasn’t destined to be. Damn.)

P.S. (Updated at 11:44am PT) And Tyler Bouck is now a Sabre. So at least one of the “Ghosts of Canucks Past” are staying in the NHL this week.

I’m not too hip to pop culture, and so the fact that Tori Spelling has a reality television show with her Canadian love monkey Dean McDermott had barely registered on my radar.  That is, till Dean brought a video camera to the arena with him to play some hockey, and explained why he needs the sport in his life:

“I kinda need my man-fix… I’m feeling like a bit of a housewife.”

and

“F#@k, we’re guys. We’re stupid. We need to be stupid!”

And (God love him, he makes my day) he says this all while wearing an Edmonton Oilers jersey t-shirt.  Here’s the video:

Mats Sundin and Peter Forsberg were both golfing at the same charity tournament yesterday, the photos taken by a friend of the Denver Post’s Adrian Dater. 

Clearly, these are two athletes in a big hurry to get back into hockey shape.

Sigh. I’m worried for Mats—I think we’ve reached a stage where people blow an ankle just looking at Forsberg at this point. 

From Al Strachan at FoxSports:

[Brian Burke] started off as GM of the Hartford Whalers, a team that had just made the playoffs for seven consecutive seasons. Once Burke got there, they missed.

But he was much better in Vancouver. There, he won a playoff round. Granted it took six seasons to do so, but geniuses can’t be held to the same standards as everyone else. In those six seasons, he missed the playoffs twice and went out in the first round three times.

Of course, Strachan fails to mention the levels to which Vancouver sucked before Burke came to town, but what the hell—Al is on a roll in this column. 

Yesterday on Discover Foothills.com, a great mystery was solved:

The identity of a 22 foot cowboy in the foothills has been revealed. [...]

It’s part of “Raised Right”, the new marketing campaign for the Alberta Beef Producers and a 22 foot image of Dean Kennedy, a Pincher Creek area stockman and former NHL player now welcomes visitors at the Bar U turn off on Highway 22.

Promotions Committee Chairman Roy Eckert says another NHL’er will be blown up to sell Alberta Beef.

I’ve ignored almost everything “Mats Sundin” that’s come along in recent weeks, which is probably foolish from a popularity point of view.  Judging from the glut of stories being published daily on the subject, the mainstream media and a few shrewd hockey blogs have found a sure-fire way to generate summer hockey traffic. 

That is: think about Mats Sundin; write about Mats Sundin; post about Mats Sundin; think about writing and then posting about Mats Sundin… etc.

Mostly I just find it boring, but I suppose the matter needs to be dragged up and aired out once in a while.  Especially when Howard Berger says something dumb enough I’m forced to actually defend the Toronto Maple Leafs…

With its pink walls, the Miami Arena became known as the “Pink Elephant” to some, the design seemingly-inspired by Don Johnson’s wardrobe in that other prominent 1980s embarrassment of the region.  Built in 1988, it became the first home of the Florida Panthers in 1993 before they departed in ‘99 for their current residence—the luxurious but disturbingly under-insured and just begging-for-a-hurricane Bank Atlantic Center.

But the Miami Arena has been gutted in recent days and the building will be demolished by the end of summer, taking with it a small piece of hockey history.  And while it may be hard to imagine these days, hockey was actually a hot commodity in Miami for a while…