Here and there

This and That

Greedy owners have contributed to the early problems of the Maple Leafs. Not the Leafs owners — they are greedy enough on their own — but all NHL owners, who insist on too many pre-season games played which doesn’t leave enough time for practice. When you change almost half your roster, the way the Leafs have, you don’t get better playing meaningless games, you get better practising … The poor NHL just can’t avoid running into itself. So Phoenix is over for now and the NHLPA is trying to figure things out and the league is looking like a bunch of rubes as a fired referee fights in court to get his job back … When we look back at this baseball generation, the stars will be rated: 1. Albert Pujols; 2. Derek Jeter … Funny, the Maple Leafs’ so-called tampering of Canucks players is huge news in Vancouver and sidebar stuff in Toronto. If every general manager who leaked a name or two of players available, or in this case broadcast it, is thought to be tampering, the whole league would end up in jail … If the NHL wants to deal with tampering, why not hammer some of the teams that sign players in the first minutes of free agency?

Hear and there

If you do the math, with Johan Franzen hurt and Marian Hossa, Mikael Samuelsson and Jiri Hudler gone, the Red Wings are missing 114 goals from last season’s Stanley Cup final team. Don’t think Todd Bertuzzi and Brad May are going to make up the difference … Department of really dumb decisions and even dumber explanations: Sportsnet Ontario not showing the sudden-death game between the Minnesota Twins and the Detroit (near Ontario) Tigers, which only turned out to be a classic, and then blaming the consumers for not ordering the full package of channels … Don Cherry loves to scream about Ron Wilson not supporting his players, which is his right, and we love his screaming, but we wonder what Hardy Astrom thinks of all that … In late February, Dominic Moore turned down a two-year, $3.4-million US offer to stay with the Maple Leafs. In October, Moore signed a one-year $1.1-million offer to sign with the Florida Panthers. Guess he didn’t major in math at Harvard … The more I see of Steven Stamkos’ shot, the more I think the Canadian Olympic people have to seriously consider him for a place on the Olympic team in Vancouver.

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