backlund on backlund is over :(

while he hadn't written anything since the world championship last spring, mikael backlund's blog has been officially removed from the airwaves.

bummer.

we'll miss your insight, mickis.

gio re-signs and makes me happy

i'm sure everyone is expecting a comment from me regarding gio's deal, since he's widely known as my favorite player. as i said over at flamesnation: i think it's awesome... and in darryl sutter's team hierarchy, he fits exactly where he SHOULD fit* ----with the (speculated) exact same cap hit as robyn regehr. in the years moving forward, gio is the most likely candidate to become a shutdown/PP hybrid and i think +/- 4mil is where he would've slotted in on most NHL clubs. getting him for 3.5 would've been a steal and i think daz is smarter than to give him a second slap in the face to the tune of $3,999,995 [the first slap being, of course, two-way deal offered and declined in '06]. the difference between those numbers is less than what we threw away to see raitis ivanans to play one game (6 minutes ?) in a flaming C.

bottom line: i think everybody wins.
:)

i thought this might be a nice time to post my entry to the calgary sun "meet mark giordano contest," whereby the winner will be the person who best describes why #5 is their favorite player. hey, i'll probably lose to some kid with a big box of crayons who draws a fun likeness of the 10am shadow, but my mini-essay was honest and as concise as i felt i could be on the subject with the price is right rules (ie: without going over). in the end, i probably lost the competition by not using caps, or more likely by slagging anders eriksson and randy sportak, but.... meh. it was worth it:

It won't be difficult to convince you why Mark Giordano is my favorite player, but it will be difficult doing so in 300 words or less... ;)

when calgary's #5 opened the 2009/2010 season's scoring with a beautiful goal against vancouver, my phone went berserk with text messages. not only had "gio" scored a goal, but my favorite player had tallied the team's first goal of the year !! all of my friends country-wide watching the game acknowledged that nobody would be happier about it than yours truly....

i first started applauding gio as a player in 2006 and i was up in arms when darryl wouldn't sign him to a one-way deal (ultimately forcing him to go to russia). i've often lamented how much better the team would have been with giordano on the blueline the subsequent year, instead of anders eriksson (who was signed the day after gio announced his overseas intentions).

in 2008 when i got my jersey lettered GIO, i was a trailblazer at the saddledome. earlier the same year, i engaged in a spirited email debate with your own randy sportak when he suggested Sutter's aforementioned non-contract decision was a sound one (i wholeheartedly disagreed).

this February, i had the pleasure of speaking with giordano's AHL coach (tom rowe), who was surprised to hear me name him as my favorite player. though he'd always respected his work ethic and hockey sense, he didn't think gio was 'superstar' enough to unseat guys like iginla or kiprusoff as anyone's most-loved flame... the next night, #5 dumped 6'3" 210lb hurricanes' blueliner, joni pitkanen, into the carolina players' bench and virtually onto rowe's lap. i'm sure in the commotion of it all, rowe grinned a little about that gal from calgary who knew a thing or two about mark giordano....

:)

*presuming, of course, that iggy starts earning his 7mil, and jaybouw starts earning his 6.6 mil.

It won't be difficult to convince you why Mark Giordano is my favorite player, but it will be difficult doing so in 300 words or less... ;)

When Calgary's #5 opened the 2009/2010 season's scoring with a beautiful goal against Vancouver, my phone went berserk with text messages. Not only had "Gio" scored a goal, but my favorite player had tallied the team's first goal of the year !! All of my friends country-wide watching the game acknowledged that nobody would be happier about it than yours truly....

I first started applauding Gio as a player in 2006 and i was up in arms when Darryl wouldn't sign him to a one-way deal (ultimately forcing him to go to Russia). I've often lamented how much better the team would have been with Giordano on the blueline the subsequent year, instead of Anders Eriksson (who was signed the day after Gio announced his overseas intentions).

In 2008 when i got my jersey lettered GIO, i was a trailblazer at the Saddledome (https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1YOkQk_39JWzYwRhHjzAkVeFjUNxXykaf_6Xp-eIMQrJ7WYuDXhZYW6AZE1xDETmFwEsPkwLh-sKO7z-9OuWNF1ZitK66D4gzOIue08zApundNZ_4-DPTxcUb5R79iXFZ-O1v6oWkyLU/s1600-h/P1011447.JPG). Earlier the same year, i engaged in a spirited email debate with your own Randy Sportak when he suggested Sutter's aforementioned non-contract decision was a sound one (i wholeheartedly disagreed).

This February, I had the pleasure of speaking with Giordano's AHL coach (Tom Rowe), who was surprised to hear me name him as my favorite player. Though he'd always respected his work ethic and hockey sense, he didn't think Gio was 'superstar' enough to unseat guys like Iginla or Kiprusoff ... The next night, #5 dumped 6'3" 210lb Hurricanes' blueliner, Joni Pitkanen, into the Carolina players bench and virtually onto Rowe's lap. I'm sure in the commotion of it all, Rowe grinned a little about that gal from Calgary who knew a thing or two about Mark Giordano....

:)

M&G gamethread spillover: afterthoughts

i'm kinda bummed i missed the M&G gamethread last night since it was all about the flames nerdherd, with all of my favorite nerdy blog buddies (except kent) talkin' shop, cuttin' up jokinen and staios, swapping recipes & "how-to-make-beer-BETTER" conversations, and otherwise generally being all-around awesome.

instead, i went over to my buddy AA's place to watch the game cause he's a dirty greasers fan and i figured we'd have a couple beers & figuratively noogie the hell out of each other. except apparently he's a little down on his luck ("man, we can't catch a break." " i'd love to see my team win once in awhile." "it's been so depressing for so long now."). after the flames scored the fourth, he got all pouty and switched the channel to basketball so i totally missed my boy gio pounding somebody's head in. boooo !!!

anyhow, something we were joking about a few games back (over on M&G) was the fact that you can hire the predators' mascot, gnash, for "a birthday party, a classroom full of kids, retail promotions, school fundraisers, corporate events, parades, or even wedding receptions." well, low and behold less than a week later, my friend in smashville posted her kid's birthday pics on the ol' facebook:
what an awesome mom. floor hockey and gnash for a 4 year old birthday ?? i wish i was her kid... ;)

nothin' else goin on, really, except that today is the deadline for the "meet mark giordano" contest. i friggin' better win.

for fun

my buddy ken$$'s "nhlpa approved" oilers merch.
coupled with eberle, this is almost enough to make me like the greasers.

flames v. preds: who cares, my JERSEY'S HERE !!!

here's the thing.

after spending over a year bitching and whining to anyone who would listen about not being able to get a flames retro jersey, now third jersey, in a ladies' cut: i would like to present the ladies cut third (retro) jersey. for sale at the flames' fanattic (and probably other places too, but whatever).

now, if ONLY i knew who's name to get on the back.... i still kinda want #11 sjöström (cause that's who sparked the whole mission), and still debate #11 mickis, but to be honest: neither feels RIGHT. when i got the #5 GIO jersey, i just KNEW.... i'm still toying with getting this one lettered #5 GIO as well....

it sucks there aren't any other good character players on this team.

tonight i'm stoked to see our lombo line up against his old team and i have no idea how the flambés will respond after a win (with a lot of issues).

win !!!

this has nothing to do with hockey (other than the fact that naheed knows mikeH and TOTALLY watched sid and the boys lose to the yanks with us at the ANZA club in vancouver during the olympics), but how rad is it that nenshi won the mayoral race, and MORESO that he kicked the race's ass through a viable platform, social media, and the youth vote. i can't wait to hear the stats but 300,000 votes in the election ?!?!!! that's unheard of in a generally apathetic city like cowtown. i also think it's CRAZY cool that the "redneck calgarian" stereotype took a massive hit. oh, and that nenshi went to school with my buddy who owns a scanner.

booyah.

flames v. grease: my prediction

if you close your eyes, this is how i imagine tonight's game will go:

goals ? what goals ?

yesterday on flamesnation's florida panthers' pre-game, in response to kent wilson's comment "Watch for Iginla to be matched against Weiss' line and for that to be the primary conflict," i mockingly wrote:

"i think the primary conflict will be the flames meager arsenal trying to get one past a big-name goaltender. this is not our forté."

call me nostradamus.

but it doesn't take a visionary to see that the lineup the flames are currently icing is simply not a winning team. i remember when we gave up cammalleri and bertuzzi (the latter, admittedly, i never liked but acknowledged he was still good for >ten per season), i got lambasted on the message boards for asking "who's gonna replace those goals ?" i was told that hockey isn't a goal-for-goal scenario, that the team collectively needs to just pull up its socks, and that goal scoring would be a shared duty by all four lines.

uh hunh.

well, here we find ourselves in the midst of a drought that (let's face it) is now entering not its' third GAME but realistically its third MONTH with this team. darryl seemed to ATTEMPT to address this lack of scoring by picking up stajan, hagman, and kotalik to end the season, and by giving mickis a shot --but let's not kid ourselves. stajan is not derek roy, hagman is no stamkos, kotalik is no ovechkin, and backlund is no patrick kane.... and i hate to say it but iggy's over in the goalscoring world. i'd be totally content to eat my words, but i'm afraid i'm way too right...

sure, we've got some injuries, and our two best "goalscoring" types are in the pressbox (bourque, kotalik), but darryl should've seen this coming. bourque is forsberg incarnate (in the injury not the skill sense) and kotalik was coming off of a pretty hardcore shitty season in NY so the over/under on him regaining status as an elite player was pretty low. darryl went all-in on these two anyways, and then wasted the valuable remaining dollars shoring up a blueline with unusable, aged stop-gaps (i'm lookin' at you, staios), and bringing on $1.2 mil worth of worthless goon.

how fucking good would nigel dawes look out there, right now ??!?!

just sayin'.
(countdown to the flames calling up jon rheault ? 3-2-1....)

here's my take: iggy needs to shut his cakehole

my guess is that this theory won't go down very well with the masses, but the good news is that only a handful of folks regularly (if ever) read my meanderings.

scott cruikshank wrote an article over in the herald that points out how our captain, my captain, had a high-decibel disagreement with assistant coach dave lowry at practice the other day about the powerplay. "Lowry seemed to want more of a slot presence from the captain. Iginla seemed to want something else altogether."

um. sorry ??

with all due respect to #12, players should play, coaches should coach, and managers should manage. end of story. there is no way in hell that iggy should be telling lowry where, on-ice, he's gonna hang out on a powerplay, no matter how many millions he's banking or what letter is sewn on his chest. good lord, could you imagine if young backlund piped up "yeah, i think maybe i should be on the blueline, actually."

laughable.

if there are truth in rumours, then i've heard some things about iggy over the past few months that piss me the hell off. i take this hearsay with a grain of salt because (let's face it) it's not like i'm getting this stuff from jarome. BUT i've heard he was instrumental in the return of alex tanguay, and i've heard that he refused to play on a line with daymond langkow.

ie: i've heard he's a player, manager AND coach.

and, if you ask me, a once-elite power forward who's visibly struggling and fighting the puck every night, and who's stats have been on the decline for years now, should shut the hell up and listen to his COACHES.

just play, friend.