http://triangle.bizjournals.com/triangle/stories/2006/08/21/daily38.html
For the love of Forseti, why are the ‘Canes even thinking about bringing David Tanabe back? Is this like a total regression to 00-01, or what?
Maybe we can get Igor Knyazev, Cousin Jeff Heerema, and Nikos Tselios to come back too!
I’m reposting this for folk from the scout.com message boards who haven’t heard (because scout.com’s band of toolbags has decided to start bashing the guy who started the threads):
The Admins, Community Mods and Moderators of these hockey boards invite you to join us at out new home … The Scoreboards.com.
www.thescoreboards.com/forums/index.php
All you need to do is follow the link, sign up and post to your hearts’ content. The admins, CMs and mods will be familiar to you as they are basically the same people doing those jobs on these boards.
Why is this happening?
Because the people left to run this site were doing so with ever diminishing support from the Scout.com community. There was a very real risk that we would lose hockey boards altogether in the near future, and thus we decided to go ahead and make a proactive move. We hope that we can also re-establish the kind of community that we used to have back in the Hockeyboards/Fanhome days before we became part of a for-profit community with Scout.
We’ll see you at the new place … and we hope you enjoy the re-birth of the best sports message board community on the internet.
Now, I have been a poster on the fanhome/scout.com boards since waaaaaay back in the days when they were hockeyboards.com (which is how I know John F). I know that John and company had their reasons for selling out to Scout.com–but that move pretty much shattered what had been a very good community to that point. The Jackets fans are all on metroboards.com now, the Thrashers fans (who had the fourth most-active hockey board on fanhome.com–after the NHL board, the Leafs board, and the ‘Canes board) are on smirkinchicken.com now, and so on.
And, of course, since no board-move is without its drama, I present to you the rebuttal from Kevin at scout.com:
JeffBear has, in order to promote his new site, taken to spreading a rumor that “the hockey boards are going to be shut down”.
That is completely false. I regret that he’s taken to trying to break up long-standing communities (since 1999) with false rumors.
Please feel free to contact me or Scout with any questions. In the meantime, his spam has been deleted.
- Kevin @ FanHome.com
Gee Kevin, lie much? The move to scout.com already did a lot of the damage–but who cares about those Blue Jackets and Thrashers fans, anyway? Who cares about the people that left for a better board somewhere else, because not only was bitching about the move not allowed, but people were banned for it (and MetroBoards’ hosts were threatened with lawsuits until I helped that site’s admins find a host whose lawyers had the sack to tell you to shove off)?
The community was already fractured by the move to scout.com and their craptacular ezboard software, and JB (who I consider a friend) did not say that the hockey boards were going to be shut down. He said that “there was a very real risk that we would lose the hockey boards altogether in the near future”.
Screw you, Kevin–and screw your clown-shoe of a site, too.
Feed fixed. All in order. You may go on about your bidness.
James Mirtle posted his thoughts on the sad and twisted tale of Mike Jefferdanton and his former agent, David Frost. In the comments, you see mudcrutch79 raise the spectre of “reasonable doubt” because it took the players who did talk so long to come forward (i.e. after CBC’s “The Fifth Estate” ran their expose about David Frost).
Lyle Richardson (better known to many of y’all as Spector from Spector’s Hockey) counters quite rightly that it can take years for the victims of sexual abuse to speak out against those that harmed them.
Lyle’s right, kids.
There are two groups of people that get huge stigmas attached to them right off the bat: Children who have been sexually abused by somebody “respectable”, and rape victims. It’s immediately assumed that they’re lying, that they’ve been somehow “coached”, that they’ve got some kind of axe to grind.
I should know, because I fall into both groups.
I was sexually abused as a child by one of my uncles–and my mother’s only solution was to simply throw him out the house before he decided to move on to my sister…and that happened only because he admitted it to her when he was drunk. She refused to go to police, and the subject was officially verboten in the house for the next 28 years–my sister didn’t even know about it until I told her last summer. We still don’t talk about it, because all my mother does is make excuses for her brother. It was ‘Nam, he’s not right in the head, it was years ago, just let it drop. I love my uncle, but that doesn’t change what he did to me and it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve had to spend 28 years trying to get myself right again.
I was raped at 18 in Montana and again at 20 in Idaho, and neither time was anything done by the authorities; the first time because I was inebriated at the time the assault took place, and the second time because I was unfortunate enough to not get the shit beaten out of me when I was assaulted. Even now, when I bring it up there’s invariably somebody who either calls me a liar or accuses me of having some kind of axe to grind because of some base reason; my attacker(s) were probably lousy lays, I didn’t get a reach-around, the condom probably broke, they never kissed me, no charges were ever filed. Take your pick–I’ve heard it all before. In the late 80s and early 90s, if you got raped anywhere in the Intermountain West, you were screwed when the case went to trial, unless you sustained life-threatening injuries in the assault–and even then it was hit or miss because when you get on the stand you get assaulted again by defense attorneys who try to paint you as some kind of tawdry whore who was “asking for it”.
People who file false allegations of sexual assault don’t do people like me (or, for that matter, investigators and prosecutors) any favors either. There’s a reason why there was an intensive 2 1/2 year investigation before charges got filed against David Frost, people–it’s because the OPP wanted to be absolutely sure that there was something to corroborate one person’s allegations. The road of justice is littered with the corpses of cases brought by overzealous prosecutors who didn’t feel that they had to take the time to make sure that the allegations being brought had at least some truth to them, who asked leading questions and took statements made by “questionable” people on faith or told real offenders “name names and we’ll go easy on you.”
Kern County, McMartin Preschool, Scott County, Gary Dotson, the Duke Lacrosse team. For every case like that, there’s a Graham James or a Paul Bernardo or a Brent J. Brents who really did do what he was accused of and who really does deserve to be locked up.
James is right; this case is going to get very ugly. It’s going to be hard on the accusers and hard on the defendant and hardest of all on the investigators who have to stand up in court and defend their investigation. But regardless of the right or wrong of David Frost and what he’s done or not done, don’t immediately dismiss or belittle the accusers because it took them so long to get the courage to speak up–because that, friends and neighbours, is the greatest wrong of all.
Just sayin’.
Added a few links to the blogroll and tidied it up a bit. Still working on the RSS issue, for those who (like me) use readers like WizRSS and T-bird.
T-minus 22 days to Training Camp.
An little bird has relayed to me the following blurblet from today’s New Haven Register:
Chip Malafronte writes:
Care to get a glimpse of the Stanley Cup? Then clear some time in your datebook because the most famous trophy in sports will be in East Haven next week. The East Haven Youth Hockey association has arranged for the Cup to make an appearance on Tuesday from 5-8 PM in a fundraiser program at DiLungo Rink. For a $5 donation, fans can get a close look at the trophy, which was won by the Carolina Hurricanes in June. East Haven High Hockey Coach Lou Pane said the league got hooked up with the trophy partly through former Branford resident Mike Amendola. Pane also has a relationship with Carolina assistant coaches Kevin McCarthy and Jeff Daniels dating back to the late 1990’s when the Beast of New Haven practed at the East Haven rink. McCarthy, who was the Beast’s head coach, used Pane’s office at the rink before and after practices while Daniels played for the team.
I’ve got it on pretty good authority that the “partly” was actually a “mostly”, if not a “wholly”–as in, Mike called this guy and said “Hey, this day I have the Cup, would you like to do a fundraiser?”
I’ve also got it on pretty good authority that neither Jake nor Kato have much of a relationship with this guy–but really, that’s neither here nor there. I can understand wanting to raise money for youth hockey, and I’m all for it. But I wish that reporter had been honest about whose idea the fundraiser was and given some credit where credit’s due.
Just sayin’.
I ask again:
Why in the Hel was this man even allowed near players?
Hopefully this latter-day Graham James will be locked away–far away–and Mike Jefferdanton will finally be able to get the psychiatric help he’s been in dire need of for so long.
OK, so I got this formletter-esque spam in the mail from some outfit, asking me to join his “sports library”. I filed it in the trash, along with all the Penis Enlargement spams and Nigerian Wire Fraud scam-spams and eBay account phishing spams that I get–because it’s spam, and I loathe spam and the people who send it.
I got a second e-mail today from this outfit:
Hi,
I previously invited you to have your blog included in Spammer Site’s sports blog library. Since I have not heard back from you, your site has not been included. The site is more fully developed and will officially be launching on Labor day (in a little less than two weeks). I am inviting you one more time to be part of the sports blog library. In order to entice you to become part of the library, I am providing the URL to show you what it looks like and how it works. Check out URL deleted because I refuse to give a spammer a link. You will see that as a member of the library, people that may be interested in reading your blog, will have a place where they can more easily find it. Be advised that although the rest of the site is operational, most images and articles are space holders at this point. I do hope you contact me and allow me to include your blog in the library.
So I go and check it out–and I see that I’m the only hockey blogger not named Mirtle, Golbez, Kukla, or Cason that hasn’t replied to the guy’s form-spam. Are you people kidding me? Do y’all know something I don’t?
I replied with the following:
$SPAMBAG,
I don’t care for impersonal formletter-spam (which is how your initial e-mail and this one have been presented to me). That’s why I didn’t respond. Thanks for the “invitation”, but I’d rather not be seen as condoning unsolicited commercial e-mail.
Have a great day,
AQ
If there’s one thing I hate more than a certain Central Conference team from Michigan, it’s UCE/UBE (i.e. spam). I could have been a lot snarkier with the guy (like, for example, telling him that the Nigerians do a better job of trying to disguise a spam as a personal e-mail than he did), but I decided to be polite.
Stop laughing. I can be very polite when I want to be.
Soanyway, he replied with this:
No problem. I will note that you’re not interested. I know that the emails are very impersonal, but unfortunately, unsolicited email is the only way I can create such a community. I respect your choice and your conviction.
$SPAMBAG
Like Hel it’s the only way. Whatever happened to dropping a line to somebody like (for example) Paul Kukla and saying “Hey Paul, I’m trying to get this site set up, can you pass the word along to bloggers that you think would be a good fit?” That’s certainly better and (dare I say it) more ethical than sending out unsolicited bulk e-mail. “Everyone else does it” is no excuse, either–and don’t tell me I’m making too much of this either, because dammit wrong is wrong…and bulk-mailing, no matter how “noble” the motivation, is W to the R to the O-N-G.
Or, as I’ve said about other things that are wrong: “It’s legal to stick a knife down your pants and lop your own nards off in public, but that doesn’t make it right.”
Just sayin’.
Since I’ve been either too busy fending off the beer-loving minors at Stop-n-Rob or flat on my back and doped up on Flexeril, I pretty much missed a lot of stuff–like, for example, Cory Stillman’s shoulder needing surgery and Frankie Kaberle’s shoulder not needing surgery (thank Eir for that). Props to d-lee and CasonBlog for keeping the Caniac end up.
Anyway. Back around the Ides of March, Eric McErlain (who has his own set of medical woes to deal with–get well soon, bubba) about the All Blacks and their pre-game ritual: the haka. One of the clips he posted was one from a New Zealand/South Africa Tri-Nations match:
The day of Game 3 against the Habs, I started a thread on teh LGC entitled “If this doesn’t get people fired up, nothing will”–and I posted that link. The Hurricanes won that night and the next seven games afterward. Even when the streak was broken, watching the haka (and my bumping the thread) became a game-day ritual–win or lose. It got a little silly toward the end when certain posters were told that they couldn’t post in the thread anymore because the ‘Canes lost a game, and much of the thread is just me saying “bttt” (back to the top), but it was all in good fun.
What, me superstitious? Perish the thought!
The day of Game Seven, the thread (which sadly almost got lost in the Great Board Migration of 2006 along with so many other Hall of Fame threads) became a sort of bonding ritual, as fans down here watched it along with fans in Brazil and Poland and Canada and even the Middle East (Thor keep you safe, Joe and Kevin). I still can’t watch it without a shiver going down my spine, and it’ll always be known to be as The Haka That Won The Cup.
Because if something like that doesn’t fire people up, then nothing else will.
(caveat: the duplication of many posts in that LGC.com thread came as a result of a db error when migrating the board from phpBB to vBulletin. Trust me, it wasn’t intentional.)
The Penalty Killer: Team allegiances
Chris’ post (and Da Chief’s commentary thereon) struck me as interesting, mostly because with two exceptions I’ve stuck with the same teams my whole life.
I already talked about my childhood love of the Oilers (according to some bitter smacktard in Buffalo, this apparently means that I’m insane–puck ‘em).
All my other teams, though, were from Los Angeles (where I was born and lived until I moved to North Dakota at age 10). Except the Rams. I was an NFL fan without a team after Carroll Rosenbloom died in ‘78, because I flat didn’t like Georgia (his widow)–and for a kid who thought Vince Ferragamo was the MAN, that says a lot. I really didn’t like the woman. Still don’t like her, never trusted her, just the mention of her makes my skin crawl and my hair stand on end even after 28 years. So I forsook the Rams and went teamless until I was 12, when Fourth of Four (my dad’s fourth wife) got me hooked on the Redskins. So I’ve been a Redskins fan ever since, and despite their current idiot of an owner–the Redskins are why I tend to get along so well with most Capitals fans, even though I loathe the Capitals.
But beisbol and basketbol (when I bother to watch the NBA, anyway)? Still the Dodgers and Lakers. I barracked for the Twins in 91, because they were playing the hated Braves (who are second only to the Giants on my list of hated MLB teams). I even barracked for those damn Yankees when they played the Braves in the WS–and I loathe the Yankees.
I’ve been a Lakers fan since before Showtime, I was a Lakers fan after Showtime, and I’m still a Lakers fan despite Kobe Bryant (who I hate, frickin’ primadonna) and despite Mitch Kupchak’s foolishness in not getting rid of Kobe to keep Shaq. I hate the Pistons almost as much as I hate the Red Wings. If I were as much an NBA fan as I am a hockey fan, I’d probably hate the Pistons even more. I have nightmares about a Dodgers-Tigers World Series (unlikely as that might be), because the Dodgers getting pwned would be so me (and because I am thoroughly convinced that Detroit hates me, even though I’ve done nothing to that damn city).
But then, the Hurricanes won the Cup (I no longer feel wierd saying that), Shaq beat the crap outta the Pistons, and my beloved Azurri won the World Cup (despite a huge scandal involving half the players on the team) in the same year, so maybe my luck’s changed for the better.
Or it could be the Tramadol talking. Who knows?
Anyway: There is nothing that bugs me worse than revisionism. If you forsake one team for another, be honest with your reason. Don’t act like you’ve been a fan of a team your whole life, when you’re a recent convert. Be honest about why you converted, even if it’s “because they’re on top”.
I may be a raving nutter in the eyes of some Buffalo Bittermen, but at least I’m an honest nutter.
That’s why, back in May, I fired a broadside at 850 The Buzz program director Adam Gold, who bashed the Hurricanes every chance he got for the first five years of their existence in North Carolina (and would hang up on and then proceed to insult anyone who called in to his radio show to take issue with him). Adam denies it on a regular basis–but I trust my memory and the memory of every O.G. Caniac that had to put up with The Buzz and their shabby treatment of the ‘Canes at the start far more than I’d trust the ego of some arrogant little nebbish who can’t handle the truth.
There’s a reason why 850 The Blog doesn’t have me on the ‘Canes blogroll–and it’s not because of the salty talk I use every now and then.
And finally….
Perhaps somebody with a WordPress blog (especially one hosted on DreamHost) can help me out here. For some reason that I haven’t been able to figure out, when the blog first gets loaded in Firefox, it loads a blank page–but when you reload, everything comes up properly. Not only that, but for reasons I can’t divine some feedreaders can’t parse the RSS feed (and I know damn well that I have it set up right).
I’m stumped. If anyone has insight that doesn’t amount to “setting up an RSS feed isn’t that hard”, drop me a line.
Local radio stations WTSB and WDUR fold, Radio Bristol seeks new Triangle home
Now, these two stations were the Triangle’s last best hope for good sports talk radio. Even lower-powered and with a smaller radius than 850 The Buzz/620 The Bull, but better than either of them (mostly because their program director isn’t a revisionist who can’t handle the truth). Now they’re gone, and The Mighty Forslund has to find a new home for his weekly ‘Canes radio show–more than likely 850 The Buzz.
More commentary later.
Proof positive that Alex Ovechkin is a badass…
…for sufficiently Vanilla Ice-like values of “badass” anyway.
…yeah.
Had a chance to look at the TV schedule yesterday, after I got home from work. Nice to see that the Champs will actually be on national TV on Opening Night (but that’s only because they didn’t beat the Favored of Comcast on their march to the title)….but since they’re a small-market team, they still get skroobed.
Here’s the breakdown of OLN’s schedule, courtesy of a poster on the scout.com ‘Canes board:
Anaheim 3
Atlanta 3
Boston 8
Buffalo 7
Calgary 0
Carolina 4
Chicago 5
Colorado 7
Columbus 3
Dallas 6
Detroit 7
Edmonton 0
Florida 1
Los Angeles 2
Minnesota 4
Montreal 3
Nashville 1
New Jersey 6
NYI 2
NYR 7
Ottawa 0
Philadelphia 7
Phoenix 1
Pittsburgh 7
San Jose 6
St. Louis 3
Tampa Bay 2
Toronto 1
Vancouver 0
Washington 2
Wow–even the Leafs get the shaft this year. I guess they gave San Jose and Buffalo more games so that they can say “Hey look, we’re paying attention to the smaller markets”, but overall OLN pays little if any attention to any team that isn’t in a Northern US market (and the Islanders). It’s the same small handful of teams getting the lion’s share of the games, with two additions (SJ and Buffalo), and everyone else (including the Canadian teams) gets told to step off.
And NBC? Not much better (schedule breakdown courtesy of the same poster).
Anaheim 1
Atlanta 2
Boston 4
Buffalo 1
Calgary 0
Carolina 2
Chicago 3
Colorado 3
Columbus 3
Dallas 4
Detroit 4
Edmonton 0
Florida 0
Los Angeles 2
Minnesota 0
Montreal 0
Nashville 0
New Jersey 3
NYI 2
NYR 4
Ottawa 0
Philadelphia 4
Phoenix 0
Pittsburgh 4
San Jose 2
St. Louis 2
Tampa Bay 1
Toronto 0
Vancouver 0
Washington 1
Gee, that looks kinda familiar. Boston, Dallas, Detroit, New York Rangers, Philadelphia, and Sidney Crosby get the bulk of the games. And who gets hosed? The little guys and the Canadians, as usual.
I am willing to give OLN and NBC the benefit of the doubt regarding the Canadian teams–there might be some rights issues with Rogers Sportsnet, the Ceeb, and RDS that are preventing the Canadian teams from being shown on US networks. I can understand that the NHL wants “marketable” teams getting the bulk of the schedule–but since when the Hel did Boston have anyone “marketable”?
The more things change….
The Pregnant Motie Warrior gave birth to Fletcher Raymond this morning at 10:18 AM EDT. He’s 20.5″ long, 8 pounds 5 ounces, and just cute as a little button.
It’s official: I’m an auntie now.
Mom and baby are doing fine, and I’ve already made plans to buy a little pair of skates and a stick for the kid as soon as he can stand. Someday, when he’s older, I’ll tell him tales about the Warchief that he shares a birthday with.
newsobserver.com | Forslund will do OLN games, too
It just won’t be the same Tripp Tracy next to him holding forth on comestible materials and various other little bits of insanity–but any game that the Mighty Forslund calls, I’ll watch.
Mike Chen’s Hockey Blog: Five Weird Things
So Mike tagged me to post five weird things about myself. Oh, the humanity.
1. After the NY Giants beat the crap out of my beloved Washington Redskins in the 1986 NFC title game, I decided to place a wager with some people at school: If the Giants beat the Broncos in the Super Bowl, I’d get a mohawk. Elway choked, and I got a mohawk–and then I got the bright idea to try to peroxide it and go all Wendy O. Williams. The attempt failed, and my hair turned orange. I blame Tom L. for this, cos he’s a Giants fan.
2. I can count in seven languages (English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, and Finnish). I can hold at least a simple conversation in six of those seven, parse written statements in five of them, and have great fun driving my boss up the wall by switching randomly between all seven languages while counting something at work.
3. I am mildly autistic–and no, I definitely do not have to buy my underwear at K-Mart.
4. I love the cold. When something needs to be done in our lovely 28-degree cooler at Stop-n-Rob, it usually gets assigned to me. When the temperature falls to the 30s in the wintertime, the most I’ll put on is a light jacket. I’ve been known to turn on the AC during the wintertime to drop the temperature in my apartment a dozen degrees or so, which drives my husband up the wall.
5. I loathe shopping even more than I loathe all Detroit sports teams and the Dallas Cowboys, and will go to great lengths to avoid having to go to a mall or store for anything that is not computer hardware or software. The only time I make any kind of exception to this is when I’m on a roadtrip, when I’ll go buy some kind of tchotchkes as a souvenir. Otherwise I’m at home patching my jeans for the 2394724th time so I don’t have to go buy new ones.
Since I don’t think they’ve been tagged yet, I’m tagging:
James Mirtle (whenever he gets back from vacation)
Tom L.
Tom Benjamin
Pat from Black Dog Hates SkunksÂ
And Mike from Confessions of a Hockey Fanatic
Not that they’ll do it, but what the hell.
Hurricanes sign Jesse Boulerice, WWE fans rejoice.
Actually, that’s really not fair to Jesse–I don’t think he’s much of a WWE kind of guy.
But anyway. The Day of the Brawler (as in, “does nothing but fight”) is pretty much over, and Jesse knows this–or if he didn’t before, he certainly got that wake-up call when he was traded to the Blues right before the Canes’ stretch run. See, Jesse was actually improving as a player in the 03-04 season. However, for some inexplicable reason he decided not to sign a contract anywhere during Ragnarok. Why? I have no idea. But all the improvement that he was starting to show toward the end of the last season pretty much went *pffft*, and believe me it showed post-Ragnarok. Despite his efforts to get back to where he was, it just wasn’t happening–and his temper started flaring again (there was one incident in a practice here right around December or so where Bolo got into a fight with Martin Gerber, and one Blues blogger reported about an incident involving Jesse deliberately taking a run at a teammate in St. Loo). Those two incidents had me thinking that Bolo may be effectively done careerwise, but if I’m hearing right from a few buddies on a couple boards, Bolo might have a very important ally in his quest to get his career back on track:
The Warchief.
If the Warchief is on Bolo’s side, then who the hell am I to argue?
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