Friday, March 28, 2008

Around the League in 80 seconds



First of all congratulations are in order to Roberto Luongo. He is the proud father of a baby girl, Gabriella Luongo. It's a joyous occasion for the Luongo family so my best wishes go out to all of you.

Luongo is quite the trooper, he's racked up some serious frequent flier miles in the last few days. He took a red eye from Colorado to Florida. Made it there for the birth of his baby daughter and was off to Minnesota the next day to make the start earlier tonight. Too bad the end result wasn't great but I'm not going to blame him for the loss. We'll leave that for a future posting...

Next up, we have the never ending Bertuzzi/Moore saga continues.

It takes a twist today however, Mark Crawford has now been named in the lawsuit.

Bertuzzi sought to have Crawford included based on the claim that his NHL contract compelled him take orders from his coach.

"It was a term and condition of Bertuzzi's employment with the Vancouver hockey club that he was to take direction from Crawford in all matters related to his role or function as a player," court documents state.

After this I have no doubt in my mind that Bertuzzi and Crow will now continue their hate-hate relationship. Old habits die hard.Frankly, I'm sick of it. Sort it out amongst yourselves, I don't want to hear about it anymore. You're all to blame. To quote Newton, "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction".Moore shouldn't have taken a run at Naslund. Moore should have just simply fought Bertuzzi that night and gotten it over with. Bertuzzi was equally responsible for stalking Moore and Crawford is claimed by a few to have told his troops to make Moore "pay the price".
Bertuzzi has filed a "cross claim" that if legal damages in the $37 million civil suit are awarded, the Canucks should have to pay, the Toronto Star reports. The team, meanwhile, has filed a similar suit against Bertuzzi.

This lawsuit is like the freakin' energizer bunny. They need to settle it. I'm sure there's nothing the NHL would like better than to sweep this scandal under the rug. The game has enough image issues in the US, and I'm sure the Chris Simon incidents didn't help this year either. It's pretty much a PR nightmare.


Next.

Torts named US National team coach.

Good for him. I'm not really a big fan of his but you can't really knock a Stanley Cup winning coach too much I guess. However, he's the winningest American born NHL coach, so it only really makes sense.

If there's a goalie controversy to be had this spring on team USA expect old Johnny boy here to be stirring it up.

To me he's like the American version of Mike Keenan. Come to think of it, if his hair thins out more he really would look like Keenan. They have the same iron fist mentality that doesn't always bode well with his players. They have a winning reputation that slowly erodes and then slaps them with a "reputation". We'll see if Torts lasts another season in Tampa.

So that effectively rounds up the news to share with you. I was ultra disappointed with the Canucks game again (hmmmm...... deja vu) as it's definitely coming unraveled here in Vancity. I'll touch more on that this weekend.


Hopefully it only took you 80 seconds to read this otherwise my clever blog title is not so clever or relevant for that matter. So as Billy Madison says to the fat kid in Mrs. Vaughn's class... "Tuh-Tuh-Today Junior!"