It took a while, but the proposed trade between the New York Rangers and Calgary Flames was finally completed late Monday night.
The Rangers shipped forwards Christopher Higgins and Ales Kotalik to the Flames in exchange for center Olli Jokinen and rugged winger Brandon Prust, a deal that was nearly consummated Sunday night but was delayed a day.
Kotalik’s limited no-trade clause and his ability to nix the deal was partly responsible for the holdup, but he ultimately agreed to the move, a source told ESPN.com.
The trade call between both teams occurred following Calgary’s game Monday night.
Calgary is scheduled to play Florida on February 5th. Which would have enabled the Panthers all-time leading scorer(Jokinen) to make his first South Florida appearance since he was traded to Phoenix after the 2008-09 season. That has now been delayed till April when the Rangers come to town.
The Panthers beat writers have been hammering the Jokinen return to death IMHO. Does the Miami Herald’s George Richards or the Sun Sentinel’s Steve Gorten care to tell us that Jokinen will now be coming to Florida two times a year rather than once every two years? Jokinen is in the last year of his contract, but that isn’t pointed out but I don’t see mention of that or the chance of Jokinen coming to Florida two times a year if he should stay in New York.
As for the deal, both teams rid themselves of players who either couldn’t get along with their coach(Kotalik vs. the volatile John Tortorella) or a underachiever who isn’t supposedly giving a full effort(Jokinen). I think the Rangers come out better on this deal if they re-sign Jokinen but its a close thing. This was Jokinen’s third trade in less than two years and he is now working on his 6th NHL team.
George Richards in a blog post about this trade, made a huge sportswriting blunder.
Of course, Olli isn’t headed east to New York just yet. According to reports, he’s on his way to California to meet up with the Rangers in Los Angeles. Sports is funny this way, yes? Olli’s NHL career started with the Kings. They then traded him to the Panthers where he enjoyed his most professional success. Olli didn’t want to leave the Panthers, know that.
Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Jokinen is heading back to a NY area team for the second time in his career. He played a year with the NY Islanders. And how did the Florida Panthers acquire him?
June 24th 2000- Jokinen and Roberto Luongo traded to Florida in exchange for Oleg Kvasha and Mark Parrish
Florida only got a great goaltender and its all-time leading scorer in the same trade. This was only the biggest transaction the team ever made that went the right way for the Cats. Forgetting this trade is like a New York City baseball reporter forgetting the New York Yankees got Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox.
Next thing George will be doing is tell us Jacques Martin didn’t coach in the NHL prior to Ottawa (like at least one other Panther beat writer did) and that Martin had great confidence in Craig Anderson!
If the same points system had in place last championship season, Jenson Button would have still won the title but by a larger margin. From AP-
Formula One is set to formalize new regulations for the expanded 13-team championship that includes a points system that would reward the top 10 drivers while handing race winners 25 points.
Second-place drivers would earn 18 points, followed by 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 and 1 point, the sport’s governing body FIA said Tuesday. Since 1993, it went 10, 8, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1.
Jenson Button would still have captured the 2009 championship with the new system, but by a greater margin over Sebastian Vettel.
“It’s a good decision to change this points system,” Toro Rosso team principal Franz Tost said. “The reason for it is we are pushing for more overtaking maneuvers. We just hope this will be the case.”
I think the news points system is better. A win should be worth more and have a wider points gain over finishing second. Three points just doesn’t seem big enough.
FIA is also proposing to have the top-10 race qualifiers start on their qualifying tires, while the rest of the field could use new tires. F1 will also reduce the number of dry-weather tires available to teams to “encourage teams to run during the Friday practice sessions.”
The tire change rule isn’t finalized yet. Is F1 trying to bring parity to its racing by taking away an advantage from certain drivers or trying to better define its best driver every season? I see a little bit of contradiction in their actions.
Things get pretty heated between Beehive State rivals. From AP-
Utah freshman Marshall Henderson has been suspended one game for hitting a BYU player in a game last week.
Utes coach Jim Boylen said Monday that Henderson will sit out Wednesday against Colorado State.
Henderson was ejected with 34 seconds left in BYU’s 82-69 win over Utah on Saturday in Provo for a flagrant foul on Jackson Emery.
Emery was following Henderson along the baseline after the initial play and had some words for the Utah player, who hit Emery in the face with a backhand.
Under NCAA regulations, fighting warrants an automatic suspension. Is one game sufficient enough a penalty? I would have gone for two myself.
Here’s the incident on video. Note that the person who posted it to Youtube thinks Emery exaggerated the impact of the punch he received.
I attended the game in person tonight but I’ll use the AP article to lead off this blog post.
It took a swing through the Sunshine State for the Anaheim Ducks to salvage a 13-day road trip.
Jonas Hiller made 33 saves to earn his second shutout of the season, and the Ducks beat the Florida Panthers 3-0 on Monday night.
Ryan Getzlaf, Teemu Selanne and Corey Perry each scored for the Ducks, who wrapped up the six-game trip and snapped Florida’s five-game winning streak at home.
Hiller’s other shutout this season came on Nov. 5 in a 4-0 win over the Nashville Predators. Hiller, who has six NHL shutouts, was coming off a 30-save effort in the Ducks’ 2-1 shootout victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Friday night.
*****
Florida’s Tomas Vokoun stopped 22 shots. Vokoun was coming off his seventh shutout of the season, a 33-save performance in the Panthers’ 2-0 win over the New York Islanders on Sunday.
*****
The Ducks went ahead 3-0 on Perry’s goal at 17:18 in the third. He scored with a slap shot from the right circle after taking a pass from Getzlaf from behind the net.
Selanne gave Anaheim a 2-0 lead with a power-play goal in the final second of the second period. James Wisniewski’s shot ricocheted off the left post and hit Vokoun in the back, and Selanne then tipped in the loose puck.
After a scoreless first period, Getzlaf netted an unassisted goal at 15:17 into the second. He picked up the puck on a turnover by Keith Ballard and scored with a wrist shot from in front, beating Vokoun on his stick side.
Corey Perry scored the final goal of the game with under three minutes to go in the game. I was already out of my seat and getting ready to leave but saw the goal go in the net. Just prior to this the Panthers had two consecutive power plays, which overlapped one another for about 30 seconds resulting in a 5-3 for the cats. The score of the game tells you how Florida fared with those advantages.
Florida got thoroughly outplayed tonight. This was one of their worst home efforts of the 2009-10 season.
Now some random comments and occasional barbs related to my night out at the Bank Atlantic Center.
*- Tonight was my first visit to the BAC. In fact, I haven’t seen a professional team sporting event in person in almost 20 years.
It took me a while to find my way around the parking lots on arrival but did ok. On the way out, I found my car with ease and got out of the parking lots but headed in the wrong direction on the Sawgrass Expressway. South instead of north to Palm Beach County.
*- Food prices at sporting events is ridiculous. $6.00 for a hot dog. I can buy a package of buns and a 8 pack of hot dogs at the grocery store for less. 20 oz. Coke was a ‘cheap’ $5.50. If sodas were priced were priced the same amount times over hot dogs were, they would have been $10.00 or more tonight.
How does a family manage a night out at a game? Even with half off Monday, the family of three in my row had to cough up about $170 for their tickets. That doesn’t include food and anything else bought at the stadium. You better be upper middle class to go see a game or expect to make a car payment to see 60 minutes of hockey.
*- My seats were 6 rows behind(Section 102) the Panthers bench and almost right on center ice.
*- Now I know why Florida has a ticket promotion called ‘Half Off Mondays’. The BAC was only half full tonight.(Or worse)
That meant I had half a row to myself with no one seated on my right for 3 seats and only people seated on my left but with an empty seat between us.
*- Anyone attending a Panther game should bring earplugs. The BAC does what they call ‘Rock the Rink’. Loud Rock music that I could have done without. It blared incesantly all through the pre-game warmups.
*- Dumb rude fan moment of the night. A person in their twenties wanted to get out of my aisle. At the time I was standing up, he could have said excuse me and I would have moved. Instead he climbed down a row, stepping on a seat in the process. Wouldn’t you love to be the fan who had to sit there later on? NOT!
*- Should Panther fans forced to view the back of Peter DeBoer’s head all night get a discount on their tickets?
*- The Panthers have a team mascot named Stanley Panther. There’s a kids version, little stan or something. I got nothing against Mascots except they are blocking my view when the puck is in the opponent’s end of the ice. Get your big heads down!
*- One of the reasons I chose tonight’s game to attend, was the fact there was zero television coverage of it. As part of the imbecile deal the NHL made with the devil Versus, no other games are allowed to be aired during that Network’s ‘Game of the Week’.
*- BAC has a computer area where someone can check email etc before the game or during intermissions. I did exactly that between the first and second periods of play.
*- Anaheim Duck Teemu Selanne played tonight. Wasn’t he supposed to be out for over a month with a broken jaw?
*- The Florida Panther who came closest to scoring a goal tonight? Goalie Tomas Vokoun and he almost put one in for Anaheim! The Panthers were on a Power Play and the Ducks shot the puck out of their zone. Vokoun went to handle it and passed it across the goal mouth. I swore the thing was going in for a moment.
*- Florida Panther David Booth played in his second game since suffering a concussion. He played well for two periods but looked fatigued in the 3rd.(He did similarly in a game yesterday but managed an assist.)
That’s about it. Did you have enough already? I needed something to do to help unwind in preparation for bed.
A NY Times article headlined ‘Insuring Endorsements Against Athletes’ Scandals Ken Belson and Richard Sandomir write-
In the wake of the Tiger Woods scandal, insurers are being inundated with inquiries from corporations seeking to protect their investments, their brands and even their sales when their celebrity endorsers suffer public embarrassment.
*****
Dan Trueman, who runs the enterprise risk department at R J Kiln & Company, the managing agent for Lloyd’s, said his firm had seen an eightfold increase in inquiries into this type of insurance between September and December, the bulk from pharmaceutical and financial service companies. “It’s more than just the flavor of the week,” he said.
Is one source proof that companies are insuring their endorsements? Note the things in bold. The Tiger Woods scandal started on the last Friday in November.
But the article cites insurers as making more inquiries going as far back as last September. Or a full three months before the Woods scandal went into full gear.(The beginning of December) So if what Mr. Trueman is saying is true, then how much of it is really Tiger related?
Also note the word ‘enquiries’. Asking about possible insurance isn’t the same as actually taking out the insurance. The Times headline and article are therefore out of sync.
The article also says-
An increasingly common strategy for companies to better protect themselves is to change the language in their morals clauses to cover more contingencies. The more specific the language, the more expensive the insurance becomes, according to executives in the industry.
A change in the wording of contracts isn’t the same as actually taking out insurance.
One more thing.
Indeed, the stock prices of the seven publicly held companies that have or had sponsorship deals with Woods lost $12 billion in market value in the month after Woods’s statement in December that he was taking a leave from golf, according to a study by Chris Knittel, a professor of economics at the University of California at Davis.
The Woods study appeared online, accompanied by a university press release, barely two weeks after Mr. Woods stepped away from the links. It isn’t unusual for universities to trumpet studies before they undergo peer review, but this one made some rushed shots into the rough, researchers said.
Prof. Stango acknowledges, in an interview and in the paper, that several challenges may have undermined his findings. Some of Mr. Woods’s sponsors are part of large conglomerates, and news of his infidelity trickled out slowly — both factors that made it tougher to interpret investors’ decisions to buy or sell. “It’s just a very difficult thing to disentangle,” Prof. Stango* says.
From today’s article I have to conclude NY Times editors and reporters don’t pay much attention to WSJ or Waggleroom. That’s just pitiful when it causes them to put out nonsense like the above.
Phoenix Coyotes forward Scottie Upshall is out indefinitely with a torn ACL in his right knee.
*****
Upshall was injured in Thursday’s 3-2 win over Calgary and missed Saturday night’s 3-2 victory over the New York Rangers. The club said surgery will be necessary to repair the tear.
The 26-year-old right wing has a team-leading 18 goals in 49 games this season.
Upshall is most certainly out for the rest of the season. How will this impact Phoenix’s playoff chances? The Coyotes are 4th in the Western Conference at this point and 7 points ahead of the 9th place team. I have been negative about this team’s playoff chances all year but they’ve kept plugging away. Maybe other players will pick up the slack.
She was a 7-time national champion. Funches died over 3 weeks ago but her death was only reported yesterday in the Washington Post. RIP.
Ethel Funches was six days short of her 48th birthday when she teed off against Althea Gibson in the quarterfinals of the 1961 black women’s golf national championship.
Gibson, the tennis champion who had recently traded in her racket for a set of clubs, was famous. Mrs. Funches, who was a cafeteria manager at Dunbar High School in Northwest Washington, was not. But what Mrs. Funches lacked in renown she made up for with a long drive, an elegant chip shot and a fierce distaste for losing.
“My name is Ethel P. Funches,” she was fond of saying. “The ‘P’ is for powerful.”
Mrs. Funches not only won the match against Gibson, she also captured seven national titles and, during an amateur career that spanned more than 30 years, went on to win so many tournament trophies that she had to set aside the basement of her Northeast Washington home to hold them all.
“Between 1950 and 1980, Ethel Funches was the best of the best,” said M. Mikell Johnson, author of “The African American Woman Golfer: Her Legacy.” “She would have been identified as a phenom according to the standards of today.”
Mrs. Funches died Jan. 6 of cardiovascular disease at a D.C. nursing home. She was 96.
