Soundin' Off

Did it actually work?

Are these things actually here?

Is THIS actually here?

Wow.

Look, if you’ve been waiting for something to happen here since Sept. 7, please take a hop over to the Lifeboat. If things are actually working here, we’ll be back live here shortly.

And thanks for your patience.

what is going on with this blog?

It wasn’t 24 hours earlier that I watched people spraying champagne around Flushing.

So how could I forget, covering the Bridgeport Bluefish tonight as they tried to clinch, to bring a change of clothes?

(All I could imagine was getting pulled over on the way home. “Officer, look, can you draw the blood here? Because no matter how I smell….”)

Boy, you show up for just one night, and look what happens to you…

(I am really taking a lot on faith by continuing to post these entries, eh?)

Hopefully COMPLETE LIST OF BST IN NHL CAMPS

COLORADO — Ben Guite, Peter Tsimikalis (ATO)
CHICAGO — Jeff Hamilton, Steve Munn
BOSTON — Jay Leach
MONTREAL — Eric Manlow
NEW JERSEY — Justin Papineau
CALGARY — Eric Godard
EDMONTON — Tim Sestito, Raffi Torres
FLORIDA — Juraj Kolnik, Branislav Mezei
PITTSBURGH — Alain Nasreddine
NASHVILLE — Patrick Leahy
NEW YORK RANGERS — Stephen Valiquette
ATLANTA — Jason Krog
MINNESOTA — Wyatt Smith, Mattias Weinhandl
NEW YORK ISLANDERS — Luciano Aquino, Jeremy Colliton, Blake Comeau, Jason Guerriero, Trent Hunter, Matt Koalska, Masi Marjamaki, Robert Nilsson, Ryan O’Marra, Steve Regier, Jeff Tambellini, Joel Bouchard, Ryan Caldwell, Chris Campoli, Bruno Gervais, Dustin Kohn, Radek Martinek, Kevin Mitchell, Allan Rourke, Rick DiPietro, Wade Dubielewicz, Chris Madden

(Vancouver only supplied a veterans roster. Calgary supplied only a rookies roster, but we took Godard to be a given.)

Might not be a spring (a supahring?) afternoon in the park, but life imitates Tom Lehrer anyway:

TEXARKANA, Texas (AP) — Poisoned pigeons began nose-diving into pavement and dying on downtown sidewalks, marring the city’s annual festival.

Maybe they can do in a squirrel or two next.

Hockey content, if this ever appears: Jeff Hamilton is in camp with the Blackhawks on a tryout.

In case this ever pops back up…

So how about that 15-year deal? Insane, huh? Well…

I’m not sold on “insane.” Weird? Sure; you don’t watch a guy sign a 15-year contract every day. Questionable? Hey, there’s a lot that can happen between now and 2021*. (I was trying to remember myself 15 years ago; I come up with at least two lifetimes between now and then. I guess 24-to-39 is a little different than 16-to-31, but…)

But insane? Not at $4.5 million. If it works out, it’s golden for all involved. If he gets hurt, there are ways around it. If it doesn’t work out… Well, there are probably more ways around that. (Tom Benjamin points out a fun one.)

The joys of a salary cap.**

Happened to be on the way to Long Island anyway, catching up to a few guys before they head to Nova Scotia. A little piece on the two-thirds remaining from “3M” should run either Thursday or Friday — and hopefully this blog entry will have appeared by then.

Glad to see Chris Madden, who’s feeling good and is the same guy as always. I think he said he was on the grounds crew at a hospital this summer… the details slip away because he then mentioned he learned how to use an excavator. “It was like a giant video game,” he said. “I skipped a lunch break to use it.” I don’t blame the man.

*-”In the year 2021… If the Coliseum is done… If this game’s still any fun…” (Worst. Zager and Evans parody. Ever.)
**-And who’s to say this NHL*** CBA will be in effect after 2009?
***-And who’s to say there’ll be an NHL on this earth**** by 2021?
****-”Now it has been 15 years… Fans have cried a billion tears…” Never mind.

The night before was so typical: the Giants, some surfing, a lot of data entry, long-term advance for the preview. Sounds a bit like last night. I rolled over at about 3:30 or so, maybe closer to 4, ready for an afternoon/evening workday, call Steve Stirling in Lake Placid for a first-day-of-camp update.

Things — as they sang about the same town 100 years earlier — have changed since those times. Because the next thing I remember is my father waking me from a weird nightmare at 10:30 to tell me what had happened in the previous two hours.

There is little to say that hasn’t been said in the five years — good gravy — since. Except that we have not forgotten, and we will never, ever forget.

If you haven’t heard it, Tom Paxton’s “The Bravest” is worth a spin today (or any other day). Download it from Paxton’s Web site. Apparently not online but also quite worth the seeking: Loudon Wainwright III’s “No Sure Way.”

…Actually, before that, just caught that Paul Flache signed with Gwinnett in the Coast. Here’s hoping this is a better year medically for the big guy.

UPDATE — Check out this story from the Gwinnett Daily Post: Flache broke his C6 vertebra a month ago in a mountain-biking accident. Good gravy.

Now to your regularly scheduled attempt at humor: These should look pretty sharp in person, but on the Web, San Antonio’s new sweaters look like someone flipped the switch from color to black and white…

One year ago today, this popped up in this little corner of the Interweb, followed quickly by two placeholders and a little further introduction. I had no idea what was gonna come next.

So thank you all for making it worthwhile… And for tolerating it when I got roadgeeky and point-for-the-referencey.

(To actually provide content — what a concept — Captain Eddie is off to Utah.)

Last year, I went away in August and came back with the idea for this blog.

This year, I went away in August… and all I got was this lousy windburn. (Not even this Irish skin was gonna get sunburned in this absence-of-light.)

We bought some cheap gas, outran Ernesto’s leftovers home, shipped TLP back to Illinois, and now… well, technically, now, I’m still off. It’s nice. But since this is Post 300, I figured I’d make it back-slappingly self-referential and self-aggrandizing, just for the heck of it, while finishing up the autos agate. (Who’s off?) After all, our occasional Arrested Development references appear to make us the best writer’s blog in the AHL’s East Division. (I’d question both the criteria and the ranking, Jason.) In that spirit, this Mr. F asks: Just who is this Hermano guy, anyway?

While away, the power button on my laptop somehow got jammed under the frame; couldn’t push it at all. So Compy stayed on throughout. Got home, and CompUSA wanted money to fix it. So I brought it back home, grabbed a fingernail clipper and somehow pulled it back into position. Why it worked, why it went wrong in the first place? No idea. But it works now, so who cares? (They want money to fix that ‘E’ key, too. I think I can deal.)

Everyone ready for the new TV season? (Me neither.) Caught up with the Deadwood, Entourage and Rescue Me finales tonight. Some good stuff. Also caught up with last Monday’s Prison Break. That show is awesome… unless you stop for a moment to think rationally about anything going on. So I turn my brain off for an hour*, and it’s awesome, man, awesome.

The daily search for Bridgeport references in the papers turned up this the other day. I guess any Steve Regier reference is a good Steve Regier reference, but when I saw that link, I guess I was hoping for more. (This is easy for me to say, not having written a substantial word for print about hockey in two and a half weeks.)

Speaking of Edmonton the city, Edmonton the organization will send one player to every team in the minor leagues, or so it seemed at first glance, with all the press releases cascading in about Team X affiliating with the Oilers. It’s actually five AHL teams and an ECHL team, including Iowa and Hamilton again, and Wilkes-Barre, as that non-Arrested-Development-referencing blog had a long time ago. Bridgeport wasn’t in that running; no room, allegedly, at the inn.

Closest thing to a Sound Tigers reference on the Eurohockey.net list of recent transactions: Yuri Butsayev switching teams, to Lada Togliatti. Butsayev was nice enough to score two minutes before final deadline on June 3, 2002. What I learned that day: Always pack before the game, just in case it runs into the night.

Drove Friday night down George Street. Got choked up at Orange. Had a tear by State. If I wasn’t driving, forget about it; I’d have lost it. If this makes me a sissy, I’ll deal with it.

One idea I had, and I don’t know if it’ll take, is to throw a “Line of the Moment” up in the right margin. (It was mostly hatched because of the Line of the Moment of this moment.) During the season, it might even be hockey-related. I’ll see if it goes anywhere, but if you’ve got strong feelings pro or con, let me know.

A minor technomalogical update may follow soon…

And speaking of magic numbers…. aw, some other time.

*-No jokes.

Sad news out of Slovakia, where Islanders draft pick Stefan Blaho died Tuesday in a car accident. Just 21.

The Islanders announced today the signing of Peter Ferraro.