More Updates
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
Our thoughts and prayers go out to Jean Beliveau. Good health, my friend.
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It has been announced that The Who will be the halftime performers at this year’s Super Bowl in Miami. I hate to beat a dead horse here, but the NFL gets The Who, and the NHL gets – Chaka Khan. I’m telling you – pointing this out never gets old. I will be Chaka Khan-ing for years to come.
Signed Olympic jerseys may be tougher to come by this year, as it seems Nike seriously underestimated demand for their product. There are no jerseys to be had at the wholesale level right now, and apparently no more are being produced. I had a request to provide 30 Team Russia jerseys for the wives of the players to wear in the stands, but coming up with the jerseys was an impossibility. We are doing an autograph session with Phil Kessel this week, but have no access to Team USA jerseys. We have a handful of Canada jerseys in stock, but are debating whether or not to save them for possible higher-dollar sales down the road.
I am sure that Nike had vast amounts of unsold product after the disastrous 2006 Olympic hockey results, and played it extra cautious this time around. Hopefully there will be enough jerseys available to at least come close to meeting customer demand.
Nike did not make Pro Olympic jerseys available to retailers at all. The only place to purchase them is at official Olympic stores in Vancouver, for the bargain basement price of $400 a jersey
Here’s an interesting statistic. Jarome Iginla and Roberto Luongo are the only two players from Canadian-based teams to make Canada’s Olympic hockey roster. Is it bad for the state of the game when your hometown heroes aren’t even from your own country?
To update a previous story, I received notice that, upon their reopening, BC Sports did indeed compensate ex-employees for monies owed. That is good to hear.
Sports Collectors Digest (SCD) has been the sports collectibles industry publication dating back to the 1970’s. It was a must read, and I remember eagerly anticipating each week’s issue and reading it cover to cover. In its heyday, some issues were over 400 pages thick.
The economic downturn has obviously hit the company hard. It was not unusual for issues in 2009 to peak at 36 pages, while they rarely exceeded 50. SCD took to accepting ads from less than reputable companies in an effort to stay afloat. This never would have happened in the old days, when all advertisers were screened and the publication diligently followed up on customer service issues.
A couple of months ago, my new issues stopped coming. Did I cancel my subscription? No – I was just never sent a renewal notice, and no one ever bothered to contact me to see if I was still interested in receiving issues. I had been a subscriber most years since 1981. How the mighty have fallen.
Gordie Howe was in 4th place in the Frozen Pond Hockey Pool as recently as early-December. It would have been quite the feat for Mr. Hockey to become our first-ever repeat champion, after winning the pool several years ago. Unfortunately, Gordie has since dropped to 213th place.
I let it go the first time, but there’s no way it’s going unmentioned again. The Toronto Marlies, the Maple Leafs AHL affiliate that is also owned by the parent club, sent out an email blast in November promoting their upcoming bobble head nights. I had to send the Leafs an email, making note that 3 of the 5 players listed had their names spelled wrong.
Vesa Toskula (Toskala)
Terry Sawchuck (Sawchuk)
Jonus (Jonas) Gustavsson
My communication went unreturned, but a month later, a similar email blast was sent with two of the names still spelled incorrectly. Call me petty (Peddie?), but this is entirely inexcusable and answers a lot of questions about the poor performance of the team over the past several years. Success on the ice beings with successfully knowing how to spell your player’s names, does it not?
Remember all the Fabian Brunnstrom hype last year? Dallas won the sweepstakes for the free agent Swedish star, and he looked like an amazing find after scoring a hat trick in his first NHL game (only the 3rd player ever to accomplish the feat). This year, he has one goal and eight points and has spent time in the minors.
We can actually play this game with a lot of players. Last season I called Kyle Turris a “Jonathan Toews clone” and picked him to win the Calder Trophy. After a disappointing 20-point year, Turris has spent the entire 2009-10 season playing in the AHL. Viktor Tikhonov and Mikkel Boedker also spent the majority of last season on the Coyotes roster and had huge expectations thrust upon them. Right now, both are struggling to score for the San Antonio Rampage.
Other players having disappointing seasons include:
Shawn Horcoff – 19 points in 45 games and making $5.5 million a year
Chris Drury – 19 points in 47 games
Sergei Samsonov – 15 points in 40 games (so much for his re-birth)
Dennis Wideman - -8 for Boston after finishing with a +32 last season
Chris Higgins – 13 points in 51 games for the Rangers
Jonathan Cheechoo – 13 points in 51 games for the Senators – did he really win the Rocket Richard Trophy in 2006?
Rod Brind’Amour – 12 points in 49 games
Andrew Cogliano – 12 points in 50 games
Ethan Moreau – 8 points in 49 games
Ville Leino – 7 points in 42 games; Justin Abdelkader – 6 points in 48 games – see my comments on them in “The Pond Chronicle”
Alexei Kovalev – take away two big games and he has 5 goals all year
Russ Courtnall was not prepared when the Leafs honored him during “1980’s Night” earlier this season. A video montage of career highlights was followed by a standing ovation from the Toronto faithful. Courtnall told me that he never felt like he was going to faint before, but had to do everything in his power to prevent himself from collapsing to the ice. He was overcome with emotion and did not expect to receive such a great reaction.
McFarlane Toys recently released a promotional photo of Jonas “The Monster” Gustavsson signing bases that are to be randomly included in packaging for their NHL 24 series being shipped in April.
My favorite part of the image is the framed autographed photo of Patrick Roy in the background. That was actually my Christmas gift to Jonas. He idolized Roy as a youth, and the photo is inscribed “To Jonas, Best of luck in your NHL career, Your friend, Patrick Roy”. Thanks for your help Patrick.