Then Dan Gross of the Philadelphia News points out: “A group of Flyers, including Daniel Briere and Martin Biron, came into Saloon [...] for steak and lobster and a couple of bottles of red. Briere, who just signed an eight-year, $52 million contract, covered the bill.”

Apparently Clay Aiken was also in town this week. Make of that what you will.

Fishing:
Don’t know what the origins of this story are, but Grant Kerr made this stray, unexplained remark in his column this morning: “While some NHL general managers went fishing in British Columbia this week with David Nonis of the Vancouver Canucks…” Geez, I’d love to know who was on that trip; and I’d love to have recording equipment on that fishing boat; and finally, I’d be entertained to see if Kevin Lowe is around to “accidentally” get knocked off the vessel somewhere in the Pacific Ocean…

Bill Ranford’s Retirement is Going Badly:
As mentioned yesterday on Kukla’s, Ranford has had a bad week at home in New Westminster. While at a neighbourhood Block Watch party (I kid you not) a huge personal collection of his hockey memoribillia was stolen from his home, including “an all-star game watch, a 1993 World Championship watch, two NHL Players’ Association watches, and most prized of all, perhaps, a silver TAG watch inscribed with the words: “Once an Oiler, always an Oiler.”

I’d love to make a joke that this is just Edmonton karma, but I won’t. That’s actually pretty awful. We’ll just have to wait and see how long it takes the dumbasses who sold it to realize that there is no way in hell to pawn this stuff without ending up in custody.