The_Admiral

Coyote Fever: Catch It! (Then die!)

I don't know how much of it can be traced to Anschutz, because Anschutz is some sort of reclusive weirdo who lives on a ranch in the goddamn nowhere West and communicates by messenger pigeon, but it is interesting that the Kings' website has made fun of the Coyotes situation and the realignment, both of which are pretty touchy subjects for the league. More likely than anything is just that the AEG empire is too vast to govern and so the Kings' website can safely be left to the sort of waggish nerdlingers who would become internet-savvy hockey fans in southern California.

Travel concerns, obviously.

Pointless NHL realignment idea:

Western Conference

Division A: Los Angeles, Anaheim, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, San Jose, Phoenix

Division B: Chicago, Nashville, Dallas, St. Louis, Minnesota, Winnipeg, Colorado

Eastern Conference

Division C: Detroit, Ottawa, Boston, Toronto, Montreal, Buffalo, Tampa Bay, Florida

Division D: New York, Long Island, New Jersey, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Washington, Columbus, Carolina

All four division winners make the playoffs, along with the second and third-place teams in each division. Teams are seeded 1-8, with the two division winners being seeded 1 and 2, the two next best teams after the top three teams in each division being seeded 7 and 8, and the second and third-place teams being seeded 4 and 5 if their division winner is seeded 1, and 3 and 6 if their division winner is seeded 2. What I really like about this thread is that it allows you to throw out some really crazy hypothetical concepts.

No doubt Quebec City's a shoe-in for team 31 if Seattle gets the Coyotes, but there shouldn't even be a team 31 in the first place.

I should probably add that ideally a 30 team NHL would have franchises in Quebec City, Seattle, and Milwaukee, but we had to go chasing the housing bubble instead.

You know what really chaps my ass about those states? The whole economy is a house of lies. They undermine the entire industrial midwest/northeast where unions fought like hell to make sure workers could be treated like human beings, then the South, which never manufactured anything that wasn't distilled, comes in all "hey free tax breaks for everyone and we have air conditioning now," and so now you have all these non-union shops in Tennessee that they can afford to have because of all the tax money DC has given them for lagging so much behind the traditionally developed part of the country. I mean, they don't have a hockey team, thank God, but how much of Alabama's economy is based on the Pentagon giving them money to build warships to nowhere and generally play with expensive guns and stuff? Mr. Destructo said it better than I can in a rant about college football fans:

The southerner who mocks Detroit for being bombed-out post-industrial crap never notices that he lives in a place of never-industry, where productivity was never built because low-income workers fled north and west in WWII and in the first two post-war decades. The southerners who mock northern union wage-slaves by citing their larger salaries never note that they work service jobs where those salaries disappear paying for the benefits that union wage-slaves already get.

So yeah, it just breaks my heart to watch Detroit and Buffalo fall apart while these johnny-come-lately sprawlsvilles like Nashville and Raleigh pop up to gobble up everyone's blue-collar and white-collar work because they're able to pretend they're better off than they really are. But I mean, it can't go all the way downhill. We're all descended from Scandinavians and Germans and European Jews who spent the winters staying indoors and thinking, so we'll think our way out of this, too, right? The North will rise again.

Isn't the Canadiens' RDS coverage considered a national television package, and distributed among all 30 teams? Wouldn't the Nordiques' TVA coverage, in turn, be national and divided among all teams?

Fifth-row club seats is plumbing a new depth of crapulence.

RIght, but they speak American, so this is clearly better deal than the one where a Quebec City team would be an anchor tenant and have none of these problems.

Also Gary Bettman's head just might explode during the press conference if he had to confirm a second sunbelt team moving to Canada in under five years.

I really want Quebec City to get the Coyotes because it's an undeserved market full of knowledgeable, passionate hockey fans. That being said my main motivation for wanting to see them move to Quebec City at this point is just so I can see what that press conference would be like. He threatened to move the Jets at theirs, and he didn't even care about the Thrashers! I can only imagine what a "Coyotes to Quebec" press conference would be like at this point.

"I don't think there isn't not anything that doesn't have to go unsaid at this juncture," amidst a flurry of Parkinsonian twitching.

RIght, but they speak American, so this is clearly better deal than the one where a Quebec City team would be an anchor tenant and have none of these problems.

Nope. They couldn't even sell to Atlanta interests because the team had been evicted. It was let them move to Winnipeg (under the sale terms for Phoenix so they couldn't get a deal on a cheaper asset) or fold the team. Obvious choice.

Which is when there wasn't anyone else interested (unless you count that one guy who invested in churches or something).

I'm not ready to hop on that particular bangwagon.

Probably paying for her server space or something. I don't know why an old lady who doesn't even like hockey is hanging around with a bunch of dead-end weirdos. The whole thing gets weirder every day.

An intrepid HFboarder confirmed every half-intelligent person's suspicion that creepy George Fallar is running that Joyce Clark blog.

post 1

Posted on March 7, 2013 by gfallar

new post goes here

Should've screencapped it, though!

What I would do is different, I think the NHL and NBA should keep their current structure but dump conferences, at least for playoffs (Can still used for All-Star Game for instance). The playoffs should be seeded 1-16 league-wide. Perhaps give the division winners a guaranteed top 6 seed than the rest of the league fight for the other ten spots.

The NHL and NBA conferences are really pretty pointless. In the NFL one conferences was once a rival league, in the MLB the two league were historically completely separate entities and one still has a different rule set than the other (DH in AL). However in the NHL and NBA its just geography and while it may have served a purpose for travel costs or what have you at one time it clearly is pointless today.

I mean, imagine a Leafs-Habs Stanley Cup, or Wings-Hawks, Bruins-Rangers, Penguins-Flyers, even the Lighting-Panthers

But seriously, I see no reason not to open it up like that. At the very least it provides several new intriguing matchup possibilities. Same in the NBA, imagine Knicks-Celtics-Bulls being able to face each other, or Clippers-Lakers or other local bouts or historic rivalries.

Obviously much different but the Arena League used to do this and it provided amazing Arena Bowls like Tampa Bay Storm-Orlando Predators, and San Jose Sabercats-Arizona Rattlers. They should bring that back too really.

The NHL did this in the early '80s. We had a Long Island-Philadelphia Final once.

I like it in theory, as there's nothing inherent about The West and The East like there is with NL and AL, but teams and networks would throw bitchfits over Sharks-Bruins first rounds. I mean, this is also the league where it's the worst thing in the history of sports that the Red Wings are made to play two road games a year in Los Angeles.

Oh, and if you're scoring at home, pretty much everyone who facilitated this big mess has been removed.

Mayor Elaine Scruggs (she was for it before she was against it): chose not to run

Steve Frate (just another foot soldier as best I can tell): chose not to run

Phil Lieberman (was for it before against it, the guy who voted yes because of an eight=year=old boy in a Shane Doan sweater):retired

Joyce Clark (alleged that Mexicans conspired to move the Coyotes, sock puppet of strange man from another suburb): lost her seat

Ed Beasley (city manager who brokered all these bad deals): "retired"

Craig Tindall (city attorney): made to resign

Horatio Skeete (acting city manager): not retained

They've been at such a competitive disadvantage that they've won four Stanley Cups in six tries over fifteen years, and their television ratings are so bad with all the west coast starts that they're routinely among the best American television markets.

Strike up La Marseillaise: Glendale just fired their attorney and their city manager.

Gonna give that 14/18 IHL/AHL thing a whirl.

IHL Central Division

Chicago

Rockford

Milwaukee

Peoria

Grand Rapids

Cleveland

Quad Cities*

IHL Southern Division

Houston

San Antonio

Austin

Oklahoma City

Charlotte

Norfolk

Gwinnett*

AHL New England Division

Manchester

Portland

Springfield

Worcester

Providence

St. John's

AHL York Division (the state of New York, and Toronto, which used to be York)

Toronto

Hamilton

Utica

Syracuse

Rochester

Binghamton

AHL Central Division

Wilkes-Barre/Scranton

Allentown

Hershey

Hartford

Bridgeport

Albany

It would! The only problem is those are on a Hammond organ, and some of the runs in "Chest Fever" might get lost in the big sound of a theater organ, but I'm sure the modern stuff is all flexible and electronic enough to approximate a Hammond's timbre.

I read somewhere that the Barton organ could have been salvaged more than it was (even though the organ was basically built into the walls of the building), but Pellico found the whole setup too byzantine and welcomed a fresh start. The new one is supposed to have sampled the old one pretty well, but a fat lot of good that does when all he plays is "Eye of the Tiger," "Theme from Rocky," "Maniac," and generic doo-doo-doo sports riffs.

Jennifer Hansen, right? whoa

Jennifer Hansen, also in disbelief over being suspended

The Blues have more organ than most arenas do, most shamefully Chicago and Detroit, so kudos to them for that aspect of their in-game production.

I don't eat Little Caesar's because Illitch owns them and the Red Wings

it shouldn't have had to come to this

I've had mostly good experiences with Subway. Spicy Italian with pepper jack cheese, jalapenos, pepperoncini, giardiniera, oregano, sweet onion sauce, I mean any meat ambiguity is masked by the peck of pickled peppers I put on it, so really it all works out fine.

Portillo's is the best, if that counts. Culver's is probably the next best, but too expensive for what it is, and I never come away from the food itself like "I'm really satisfied with having eaten that." The frozen custard is good, though. I like Beef-a-Roo when I'm in the beautiful Rock River Valley.

I don't go to any other fast food chains.

Phoenix, Nashville, and Florida have this weird triumvirate of really obnoxious power play announcements where they make a big deal out of saying "POWER PLAAAAYYY!!!!!" and sometimes the crowd joins in and then kind of politely applauds itself for successfully saying "power play" together. This must be like when p.a. announcers for NBA games would say "TRAAAA-VELIIIIIINNG!!!!! 'Traveling' is when you don't dribble the ball" or whatever it was.