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July 30, 2008

Guess who's back

Don Granato is the new coach of the Chicago Wolves. Good to see he's doing well.

John Walton points us to GrahamMink.com. (If you're counting down to Islanders training camp, you can use Mink's Countdown to Capitals Camp; they appear to begin on the same day.) Much sympathy with his latest post. I had one fry while I was working on it; blew the motherboard. I'm surprised I'm alive.

Things you don't know*: Goalie Nolan Schaefer's wife, Lisa, is from Orange. She has had a long and painful battle against Lyme disease, and they have a Web site here to promote awareness.

Schaefer and Zingoni have a camp at Milford Ice Pavilion, Aug. 18-22, for kids 10-18 (in two groups, 10-13 and 14-18). E-mail competitiveedgehockey@hotmail.com for more info.

Bridgeport is looking for new members on its Fan Advisory Board.

Look who's in Tampa's kiddie campa: Luch Aquino and Daine Todd. (Both on tryouts, it appears.) Shakey's brother is moving from Iowa to San Antonio.

Finally watched "Mad Men" (though I caught it about 10 minutes in). Seemed pretty solid, though naturally I spent most of those 50 minutes figuring out who was who. Curious what devotees thought about the season premiere, as it compared to the first season.

If you missed "Dr. Horrible" the first time around, what's wrong with you it's up on Hulu.

More from the project: The World Taekwondo Federation Web site is www.wtf.org. I shouldn't chuckle.

And most importantly, as Elite Prospects pointed us, Mario Chitaroni plays on!

*-And by "you" I mean 'I.'

Posted by mike on 11:46 PM | Comments (2)

July 28, 2008

NOPZ Update

Norfolk signed Peter Zingoni (and Mike McKenna, but he's not from Newtown).

Posted by mike on 3:59 PM | Comments (3)

Coaching add

The Sound Tigers have announced Matt Bertani as their second assistant, replacing the departed Bernie Cassell. He'll be responsible mostly for video work. He had been an assistant with the Penn State club team.

Posted by mike on 1:44 PM | Comments (0)

July 27, 2008

Projecting

One of the projects I'm working on allows me to alert you: There are 2,021 days remaining until the 2014 Winter Olympics. Get prepared.

Elsewhere...

It's not so much Mike York's signing with Columbus... It's that he took a two-way deal to do it. Fascinating. And Yanick Lehoux signed with Montreal.

If the cab doesn't crash... No Hernandez. No Perez. No Shawn Green. Sanchez, not Heilman, pitching to Molina, maybe. Or things go wrong elsewhere. And remember, no Perez: no Ollie to pitch that game. But is there a Game 7 to begin with? Because there's no Mota to shake off the change... And then we wake up from that what-if to see Xavier Nady in a Yankees uniform. Strange things happen in this world.

And most importantly, RIP, Hal Levy.

Posted by mike on 4:24 AM | Comments (3)

July 25, 2008

Oldies but goodies/Songs from the past*****

Babelfish doesn't work quite the same on Yahoo as it used to on Altavista. Disappointing. The Web-page translation is very spotty; it seems as if it never works with frames. At least you can still cut-n-paste text, which is the only way we can tell you this about Matt Keith: "A good ice skate runner with much course is Matte to the gate, in addition no duel from the way still goes." Keith signed a one-year contract with ERC Ingolstadt today. That puts him with Allan Rourke, Matt Higgins, Bruno St. Jacques and Eric Nickulas, among others.

Greg Logan reported the signing of Bruno Gervais, long-term, last night. Tyler Mosienko re-upped with Vegas.

Patrick Williams found this bit on the possibility that Baltimore might tear down the old Arena and build itself a new one.

And Martin Grenier is off to Chelyabinsk. Some lengthy but excellent Fun With Babelfish:

Previously "[(Sport Express)]" it already informed about the negotiations with this hockey player; however, his name and surname of "[Traktor]" it did not advertise.

- The director of our club Isaac [Valitskiy] concluded with Grenier contract for two years on the conditions, which somewhat better than those, which to player proposed in [NKHL], it noted (coach Andrei) [Nazarov]. - I will emphasize that our debutant is strong not only in the fist fights, but also in the tedious defensive work. When we together spoke in favor of " [Finiks]" , Grenier, who then only broke through in [NKHL], several times attacked me with the cams. It was necessary to put it in place. But already then I noted this fellow, he understood that in it is nature, the desire to appear.

Beautiful. ("Finiks" is Phoenix. And the "KH" in "NKHL" is one letter.) I think the coolest thing in that whole thing is that Andrei Nazarov is a head coach.

----

Mind-blowingly, there is about a month missing from our archive, Feb. 28-March 27, 2006. (Even more mind-blowingly, it's one of the months that I really wouldn't remember, except for my personal refresher course of reading what I'd written about it...*) Trade Deadline, Second Virginia Travelogue, Viewer Discretion, Evgeny Tunik's Miracle At Providence (breaking the hex of the House of Pain), Hamilton's "ankle injury"... vanished from the search function.

Well, if you need to find the March 2006 archive, it is here. Though, because it's our old blog system (the one that crashed -- twice), that page has about three posts on it; you have to go back manually, one post to the next.

Elsewhere, found something I'd written 11 summers ago, one of those dumb Internet questionnaires, just running through some of my favorite things. Sports teams obviously came up. Ran through 'em: The defunct New Haven Nighthawks, Fordham basketball, Columbia football, and my favorites in the Big Four. Hilariously, the only one of the four that I apologized for: the New York Football Giants. Times have changed. (Especially because the Nighthawks are my only favorite hockey team now. Darned impartiality.) My five favorite songs, however, have not changed, for whatever that says about me****.

I answered the "In 10 years, I want to be..." question with the cheeky "32." Just made it.

Some beautiful pix of a 1973 Shea Stadium here, and great Shea pics throughout this long thread (clear your schedule, seriously). I am starting to feel the pangs. I haven't been there often the past 10 years or so; I may not make it back for one last look. I have said many semi-affectionate bad things about it over the years. But it will be obliterated within nine months, and that's starting to hit me.

And finally, nuptial congratulations to our buddy Jonathan.

*-Got to thinking about my favorite blog posts. I had saved this** on my hard drive as an example***, and when I went to find the link, I couldn't... Had to dig into the alternate archive and fiddle with the settings to find it...
**-And with the green ones, I take the ball downtown.
***-Yes, my favorite blog posts don't usually have much to do with hockey. Sorry.
****-And yes, my two favorite songs still have the clearest enunciations of that certain obscenity that you'll ever hear on the radio... And I still maintain that it's a coincidence.
*****-Bobby Fuller and the Fanatics, Donna 1403.

Posted by mike on 3:21 PM | Comments (2)