• Canucks Hockey Blog’s perspective.J.J. considered how the media handled the Roberto Luongo quotes from Saturday night, and scores them with a ‘fail’. He mentions the words “slippery slope” and I wonder how soon till some of them hit bottom? To be fair, I think Vancouver has one of the more principled media hordes of the NHL, but their adaptations to the internet and the importance of immediate information—ironically by their apparent efforts to compete with non-journalists—is sometimes leading them off their high ground of ‘journalistic standards’ and into the gutter. At least, that’s my worry. The Garrioch Effect is nearly a viral disease these days
  
• Mom & Me: The night the flooding began—last Thursday—I took my mother to her very first hockey game. (Dear St. Louis, thank you for losing.) Mom has lived in Canada for nearly 40 years, but has just this week moved back to England. I felt it was my duty to educate her enough to help spread hockey propaganda in the UK. Not sure if the mission was accomplished though. I need to find her some team near Manchester to cheer for…
  
• From Elliott Pap via the National Post, news regarding Ryan Kesler:

  Vancouver Canuck forward Ryan Kesler has been admonished by the NHL Players’ Association and asked to keep his lip buttoned on the matter of players - other than himself, that is - taking below market value contracts to be part of a winning team.The Canucks rising star suggested last week that he and his mates should emulate the Detroit Red Wings and maybe take a little less to keep their lineup intact.NHLPA director of player affairs Glenn Healy apparently set Kesler straight in a recent phone call.“I am told by Glenn it was a very good conversation, and a fairly brief conversation,” said NHLPA executive director Paul Kelly, who was in Vancouver Tuesday.“Glenn just wanted Ryan to understand that sometimes we make public comments that might get misinterpreted - to the extent he was encouraging other players to take pay cuts. That’s not a message that he wants to present. I think Ryan and Glenn worked it out.”

  I’m curious about that “admonishment”, but imagine it amounts to nothing more than the actual phone call. While the union is understandably justified in wishing Kesler—and others—wouldn’t say such things, there’s nothing they can do about it. It’s just Kesler’s opinion and it’s not likely to cause anyone any grief but himself, next time he’s negotiating a contract.

About my 3 feet of basement water… it’s a big basement, and thus, a bazillion gallons of water had to be pumped out, but not before destroying everything in range. Some of the stuff was not too useful, I’ll admit (i.e. that giant Barbie Camper I got c.1980 had to go sometime...) but other things were a bit more painful. Like all the hockey stuff.

The equipment can be replaced, but other stuff is impossible. Aside from the loss of many old books (nothing incredibly valuable down there, but Stan Fischler and friends, we’ll miss you!) I think one of the worst things lost was an 1976 Canada Cup souvenir program. ‘Twas very cool. On the other hand, a lot of old Toronto Maple Leafs programs were destroyed, and there’s bound to be something to smile about with that. :)

Another sad loss was a 1970s edition of Strat-o-Matic Hockey strategy game. Did you ever play that thing? It looked something like this…

Sigh. R.I.P. hockey memories. And Barbie, too.