Saturday, June 23, 2007

1st Annual PVR'ed NHL Entry Draft Running Diary PART TWO: #1 thru #6

No surprise at #1 with Patrick Kane going number one. AS HF29 pointed out, the top two picks are American; although I'm not so convinced we need to bow down to our future hockey overlords south of the border quite yet (I don't see a Sidney Crosby among the Young Americans currently on the radar).

(While we're on the subject on the 1st pick, is there a worse run franchise in hockey that the Hawks? If you haven't read Net Worth by David Cruise and Alison Griffiths (as soon as HF29 shows me how to place links I'll get the Chapters.ca link - HF29 update: here you go), pick it up. Bill Wirtz has killed that franchise. I think it's the Curse of Ted Lindsay in reverse: by accepting to be part of crushing the NHL's nascent players-union movement in the 50s, they accepted to take Lindsay off the hands of the Wings - but really it was a move to protect the league, and by extension, his own franchise. Plus he got one of the most celebrated, nastiest power forwards in the history of the game - although he never scored more than 22 goals in his 3 seasons with the Hawks. Plus, Wirtz is so cheap he didn't even pay for the name to be sewn onto the jersey of the Hawks 1st ever first overall pick.

You can imagine this conversation between Wirtz and Kane: "Here kid, keep this jersey clean and don't lose it - you only get one for free from the team. The away jersey is $230, just make the cheque out to "William Wirtz, Professional Corp." Cheap bastard.)

To say that TSN's recently fired executive du jour, Doug "As a GM it's more like Dung" MacLean, doesn't live up to the expectations of his predecessors Brian Burke and Pierre "P.Mac" Maguire is like says Columbus doesn't live up to Montreal as a hockey market. He just said that the Flyers acquired Kimo-Timo and "so-and-so". Not quite outstanding, but funny - probably a mid-70s on the Bills Simmons Unintentional Comedy Scale.

Hello again, Mrs. Turris. So Kyle Turris has Joe-Sakic like upside. We'll see. The Yotes have had a bunch of early 1st rounders but none have jumped up and grabbed a roster spot yet, so we;ll see how their record stacks up next to teams like Quebec, Pittsburgh and Ottawa that stacked a solid nucleus through early 1st rounders.

Lombardi goes off the charts for Thomas Hockey, who wants to be like Scott Neidermayer. We'll see; I guess Peter Forsberg was a surprise at #6 and look how that panned out. But He's a Seattle Thunderbirds, so there are Bilodeau/Vallis parallels.

Don't like the Caps new "retro" jerseys. I like the Eagle version better, although P.Mac described them as "postal-worker uniforms". Isn't that a good image though - they're intimidating cause you never know when one might snap. Alzner played with the Hitmen this year.

There also appears to be a major Canadian inferiority complex. Big deal, the first 2 picks are Americans. Dave Gagner, Sam Gagner's father, is making a big deal about how happy Sam is to go to a Canadian city. I guess he's not a big Pronger fan.

Edmonton is obviously hoping Gagner can be another Doug Weight, or maybe Paul Kariya. Supposedly he has awesome hands.

NEXT:" Part 3, #7-?

1 comment:

Young HF29 said...

Oh man that Wirtz comment killed me. Seriously, if you're from Chicago, how do you deal with his crap???