I’m doing some repair work on Spouse’s mom’s computer. The sick toaster arrived on Thursday along with its disappointed users. It had a “virus” according to the folk at the computer shop who wanted to charge her big bucks for fixing it.
I doubted very much whether this was the case and – at my request – the afflicted machine was presented for my inspection prior to the authorization of any such repairs. I have my doubts about these repair shop chaps; the primary hard drive wasn’t even connected to the mother board when I opened up the case of the machine. A couple of quick connections later, I at least had the hard drive responding. I now suspect that the master boot record, a file Windows needs to get started, has been damaged one way or another when the computer was being used. I am hoping to attempt a repair. There’s nothing wrong with the hard drive itself – I’m actually typing this post on the machine in question. I downloaded an image for the Debian installation of (Linux) Ubuntu 9.04 and installed it on this machine earlier this evening. (For those who don’t know, Linux is a totally free open-source operating system; the advantage of the Ubuntu 9.04 version, as I understand it [easy there, Linux guys, I’m new to this] is that it can easily co-exist with previously installed Windows operating system, a neat little trick.) My hope was to install this version of Linux and examine the contents of the hard drive (I don’t have the Windows backup disc right now, and the machine as presented was failing to boot into anything, so I needed an operating system that would grant me access to the hard drive.) A couple of quick mouse clicks later, la voila, Firefox is up and running and I am typing this here post.
Wish me luck. At the moment, I’m having some trouble getting Linux to grant me access to that portion of the hard drive partition that contains the Windows stuff; I can see it (and the files it contains) in the Linux equivalent of Windows Explorer, but I can’t seem to manipulate data over there (can’t write files, can’t delete them either). For now, it’s too late to continue the investigation. But tomorrow is another day.
Uncle Henry, don’t be dumb,
Liquor up your youngest son!
For he represents the royal army’s
Chances in the war.
Say hello to him for me
Ask him if his dog predicts
That the Maple Leafs are gonna beat Detroit
For the Stanley Cup!
…with apologies to Mike (a Red Wings fan that I like despite this obvious character flaw).
No, the above passage from the fine Rheostatics song “Uncle Henry/Cephalus Worm” does not represent my season preview in the form of song; I don’t really think the Leafs are going to be among the teams in the building when Lord Stanley’s mug gets handed out sometime in June of 2010. I am, however, much more excited about this year’s version of the Leafs than I have been in a long, long time. Click here to continue reading Home Opener Eve
Okay, Barilkosphere, here’s your chance to pick up a piece of Leafs memorabilia.
My wife and I are running a charity auction tonight. One of the items that’s up for grabs is an autographed hockey stick that Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment was kind enough to donate. It’s autographed by the 2008-2009 Toronto Maple Leafs; you know, the pre-truculent ones.
Now I know that there will be some among you who say, “Meh. No Nasty Nazem, no Komikazi, no Happy Trails. I am excited about this year’s team. Last year is so – well, last year.” But there’s a lot of this year on the stick too; Luke Schenn, Mickey Grabs, Nick Hagman and Nikolai Kulemin, for example, were all Leafs last year. And if I could identify all the signatures on it, I would be able to assure you that they’re all there (just kidding – most of them added their numbers beneath their signature).
There are also some elements of history and soon-to-be-history. For example the stick is signed by Nik Antropov and Anton Stralman. Since both of those players were traded by the Leafs, the successful bidder is virtually guaranteed* to own a stick signed by sure fire future Hall of Famers and future winners of multiple Norris, Hart and Art Ross trophies.
The stick comes with a certificate of authenticity. I picked it up myself from MLSE; it’s the real deal.
The auction is taking place between 5:30 and about 8:00 tomorrow night. If you’re interested in submitting a bid on the stick, I can do it for you – we can communicate by Twitter (my handle is warwalker) or email (junior [at] heroesinrehab.ca) on my iPhone. I’ll cough up the dough for the charity, you can PayPal me the amount of the bid if you win, and I’ll even pay to ship it to your home, apartment, dorm room, cardboard box or park bench. Which is a joke, of course, but it’s a nice way to segue to…
…the charity. It’s called “Miles for Smiles“. We’re raising money for homeless and street-involved youth here in the City of Hamilton. All the money we raise tomorrow is going to the Good Shepherd Centres and is specifically ear-marked for two facilities they run for these kids, Notre Dame House and Brennan House. They’re places that these kids can go when they have nowhere else to stay; they offer social support services and try to hook the kids up with counselling and educational services to help the kids try to address whatever problems may be causing their homelessness. This year, our honorary chairperson is a young lady who once found herself having to make use of these services, but who has made a success of her life – she’s off the street and attending a post-secondary institution, and she wants to become a social worker to help the clientele of these facilities. So it’s a good cause. If you’d like to help out, I’d appreciate it.
——————–
*If you listen to the mittenstringers, anyway. What I’m saying is that the guarantee is entirely fictional.
Spouse and I stopped in to the Chapters store in Ancaster on Saturday; part of the purpose for our visit was to pick up another copy of the Maple Leafs Annual (click on the link to find out what this is, the details of my contribution, and why you need to buy it in order to avoid the sudden onset of leprosy). I am going to donate a (signed, if the successful bidder so desires) copy of the Annual for the charity auction that Spouse and I will be running this coming Thursday.
I have received two copies of this magazine in the mail – one, I bought for myself as soon as orders were being taken, and one was sent to me by Maple Street Press as an “advance copy”, I guess as a thank you for participating in the creation of the publication. I don’t know why, but I can’t bring myself to part with either of those copies, and in any event they are well thumbed and not exactly pristine any more.
I have to confess that there was something really cool about seeing the publication on the regular display racks in the magazine section at Chapters. Here they are at left, racks and racks and racks of the things.
I loitered around for a little bit, hoping to see somebody stop by and browse through one, but I had no such luck. I can tell that a lot of people have been standing there reading them, because the copies at the front of the top two racks pictured at left had both obviously been handled quite a bit – can’t say whether people are actually buying the things after that, but they’re definitely handling them.
Spouse and I will have a couple of weeks off from work starting at the end of this week, and I have half a mind to just go sit in the Starbucks there and watch until somebody takes one down off the rack. I’d probably run up, grab it out of their hand and buy the damn thing for them.
As an aside, I’m more than a little interested in hearing what people think of this magazine, so if you come across any reviews, criticisms, etc. please feel free me to drop me an email with the link to junior [at] heroesinrehab.ca.
Imagine, if you will, Brian Burke sitting at his desk in the MLSE offices today. Any GM
Clancy is an intimidating ghost
of the Leafs is no doubt a busy man, but Burkie’s recently been a bit busier than most. On top of the usual day to day stuff, he’s still dealing with some of the remnants left behind by the previous occupant of the office: emptying the crayons from the top drawer in the desk, tossing out the half-finished Word Jumbles and comic books scattered throughout the office and executive bathroom, and (most labour intensive of all) scrubbing the yellow highlighter off the computer screen.
Imagine that as Burke is attending to these various tasks, shuffling things about on the managerial desk, he finds a dented and scratched old coffee can that’s filled with a bunch of dust. The magic marker/masking tape label has long ago faded and is now illegible. What Burkie can’t know is that the battered tin, a relic from days gone by, contains the ashes of a deceased player – unceremoniously stored there years ago after the player’s cremation by a skinflint owner determined to economize wherever possible .
Seeing the tin, Burke is puzzled. He feels sure he would have noticed the disfigured canister on his desk before, but he has not. He picks it up to examine it, and as he does so, it tumbles from his hands to the floor. A pile of dust spills on to the plush blue carpet; there is a flash of light and a puff of smoke. Burke rubs his eyes in disbelief and stares at the apparition that now stands before him in the office.
Something very rare and incredible has happened: Brian Burke is speechless.
Slightly less unusually, the ghost of a hockey player dead for more than 23 years has spontaneously appeared in a downtown Toronto office building wearing full equipment and a period uniform.
The ghost appears as he did on the night of March 17, 1934: wearing a bright green sweater with a large shamrock emblazoned across the back where his trademark number 7 ordinarily appeared. He is carrying a stick and wearing skates. He is pale and very obviously dead.
GHOST: Greetings, Mr. Burke. I (dramatic pause) am…
BURKE: (recovering his senses) Great, another stick-wielding zombie in my office. Look, I told Chris Chelios just a couple days ago, we’re not looking for any undead players at this time..
I’m going to go ahead and say it – fuck “Leafs Nation”. Strange words to hear from a lifelong Leafs fan and recent contributor to the Maple Leafs Annual? Maybe. Hear me out.
Kim Jorn, Godd Till and mf37, the Three Amigos of the Barilkosphere, have combined their considerable forces to launch a new blog called Zambonic Youth. Armed with a somewhat confusing but nevetheless distinctly unsettling manifesto that takes time out from hockey issues to warn against the coming cyptozoological war, the electronic Zambonic goes sardonic on the Leafs Abomination lexiconic – yo they be riffin’ supersonic’ like the London Philharmonic¹ – on the recent Random House offering by Dave Feschuk and Michael Grange, Leafs Abomination.
Mf37 concludes his review thusly:
One last message: whatever you do, don’t buy this book.
Seriously.
One of the authors’ central arguments about the Leafs is that fans have supported crap for far too long and that support is partially responsible for perpetuating a four-decade string of mediocrity.
If you shovel $20 at product like this, there’s a real danger that it’s only going to encourage more publishers to hire basketball writers to pen a half-baked book about your favourite hockey team. And no matter what franchise you’re a fan of (and there are plenty of them that have gone 30+ years without a Cup to chose from) no good can come from that.
I believe the appropriate phrase would be “hoist by their own petard.” Nicely played.
I have to say that this book does seem to be the lexical equivalent of a Howard Berger blog post, squarely raising the issue of why it wasn’t released in November, when things matter. Others have rightly pointed out the hackneyed resort to cheap tricks like the upside down Leaf on the cover, the supposed selling price of $19.67, the guy on the cover with the bag on his head and so on. I don’t know whether Feschuk and/or Grange were involved in making those design choices, but it doesn’t sound as though these features of the book’s exterior are thematically inconsistent with the actual content of the tome. At the very least, Feschuk and Grange would seem by inference to be implicated as being complicit in this lazy and blatantly obvious resort to familiar cliches. The whole idea (of both cover and book), presumably, is to attempt inflame those who retain the capacity to be astonished by such nakedly calculated shit-disturbing and thereby gain publicity for the publication (remember the Maclean’s issue purportedly dedicated to exploring “Why the Leafs Stink“? Bet that issue, sporting the Leaf-bashing cover story sold a shitload of copies too.) All in all, shame on Messrs. Feschuk and Grange for falling victim to the sporting world’s equivalent of populist demagoguery.
For my own part, I am going to take the opportunity presented by the release of this book and the consequent recent focus on these tired memes to make a declaration. I am going to formally and officially express my discomfort with the term “Leafs Nation”, a (hilariously witty, no doubt) perversion of which phrase serves as the title for the Feschuk/Grange offering. Click here to continue reading Leagues of Nations: Enough. No, Leafs, No!
I know I promised to try and post some odds and sods that didn’t make it in to my Maple Leafs Annual article. I haven’t had a chance just yet to go digging through the digital archives, because I’ve been working almost literally all weekend (aside from a spin on the lawn tractor and a brief visit with my family) on this charity event that’s coming up in two weeks. Spouse and I have helped with the organization of this event every year for many years now, but this year’s a little different: for one reason or another, we’re down several members of the organizing committee, so much of the work has fallen directly on our (Spouse’s) shoulders.
We’ve also been crazy busy at work, and it’s been very difficult to manage to find the necessary time to put together an event like this during working hours, and to remain focussed on the necessary details. For example, I did some work a few weeks ago to get some media exposure for us, and managed to get a live radio interview with our Honourary Chair (a young woman who at one time made use of the very services we’re fundraising for) on a local station. It took a bazillion phone calls and emails to get it all set up and to arrange for another committee member (someone who knows the necessary details) to participate in the interview too. The last thing I had to do on Friday was confirm all these details for all the participants – and I came damn close to completely forgetting to do that. I was so busy with other stuff in my real job that it very nearly entirely slipped my mind. That would have been bad.
Anyway, cross your fingers and hold your breath. Here’s hoping we can pull this together and raise some money for the kids.
I’m donating a signed copy of the Maple Leafs Annual to the charity auction, in case anybody is interested. I’m going to sign it with my hockey player autograph (#17 inscribed beneath my name).
Spouse and I did make the drive down to Kitchener last night (earlier this evening, actually) to watch the Leafs rookies vs. the Penguins rookies. I’ll have more to say about the game later – right now it’s late and I need to get to bed if I’m going to be a productive member of society tomorrow – but here are some preliminary thoughts:
Kid Kadri!!!!1 He’s the real deal, people. He could use some bulking up, especially up top, but the guy is slick smooth with incredible hand/eye co-ordination and a retinue of subtle moves, little shifts from side to side, slight changes of pace, small stick movements, etc. – that put his opponents off balance and allow him to sift through defenders and to find open space. I don’t think he’s NHL ready right now, but I would be willing to bet he’ll make the Leafs next year;
Jesse Blacker has a howitzer for a shot. That kid is some steady, too. I was impressed with his play, though he was on the ice for the Penguins’ second goal, scored on a soft little spinerama move on the goalline by Moon;
Stalberg and Stefanovich showed lots of promise and combined on the Leafs’ only goal of the evening – basically a short 2 on 0 after a Penguin defender turned it over to Stralberg in the high slot;
I didn’t notice Bozak and Hanson as much as I thought I might. I did see Hanson a lot, and he seemed to be playing well positionally, but they didn’t seem to accomplish much. The power play (which featured these two prominently) was an abomination worthy of an actual big league Maple Leafs power play – it was that bad;
Dale Mitchell continues to get noticed. He’s full of energy and plays a smart positional game, especially defensively. He played on a line with Gilati and Kurtz, and these three were more visible to my eye (especially in the late stages of the game) than Bozak and Hanson (though Stalberg, the third forward on that line, did impress me);
Andrew Engelage (former goaltender for the Memorial Cup Champion Windsor Spitfires) unfortunately didn’t do much to increase his chances of landing and keeping a big league deal – the Leafs had scored to make it 2-1 and were coming on in a big way and threatening to tie the game midway through the 3rd when Engelage coughed up a Raycroftian hairball and whiffed on Robert Bortuzzo’s weak shot for the 3rd Penguin goal, effectively extinguishing the Maple Leaf comeback attempt. Too bad for Andrew, I’d like to see him get a shot somewhere.
Here’s a quick mashup of some video I shot at the game. There are no fancy transitions, ’cause I haven’t figured out how to use that part of my new video editing software yet. Shown in this video are:
A picture of the teams lined up for the national anthems;
The Leafs skating out on to the ice for the 3rd period;
The Penguins first goal, the one iPhone and I combined to describe on Twitter as a “Quasimodo breakaway” – you gotta love “autocorrect”. And yes, those people in front of me DO have rather large heads, and yes, I should have used the “zoom” feature. Thanks for your help;
The fight between Slaney and Bortuzzo. Bombs away, this is truculence;
A bit of the play – featuring Bozak, Hanson and Stalberg, if I recall correctly; and
Kid Kadri doing some stuff, and then unfortunately getting drilled – he’s the guy taking the draw and wearing number 43.
I’ll take a little closer look at the footage I’ve got on Friday night and see if I can’t cobble together a little something better than this. In the meantime, enjoy.
Spouse and I are leaping into George in a few moments to head for KW, where we will take in the Leafs rookies vs. the Penguins rookies. Hoping to see the Monster and Kid Kadri. I will be twittering updates from the game as and when I am able, i.e. whenever Spouse isn’t looking (lest I receive the gaze of disapproval/pity).
You can follow on Twitter at @warwalker if you’re interested. I’m hoping to have some pix from the game to post later on tonight/tomorrow too.
Away! (Or are we the “home” team for this one…?)
UPDATE (via iPhone): Leafs lose to Penguins 4-1. More to come when I get home including some video (hopefully). For now, I give you truculence, courtesy Jesse Blacker.
Sorry, can’t tell if this is horribly blurry or not.
James Mirtle’s work following the Phoenix Coyotes bankruptcy matter as it has unfolded has made for a fascinating read. If you ignore for a moment the fact that this corporate soap opera is a passion play wreaking havoc with the emotions of fellow hockey fans – fans who are loyal, hardy and dedicated enough to (in the middle of a desert, mind you) root for a perenially underachieving and brutally mismanaged team that has so often been an unwanted afterthought for its own owners – it’s been an entertaining diversion, and a way to fill the days in an off-season locally short on summer weather. At some point in the next few days Judge Redfield T. Baum will deliver a ruling as to whether Jim Balsillie’s company, PSE, is a bidder qualified to participate in the upcoming auction of the team. Many other consequences will flow from that ruling for the Coyotes and their fans; depending upon the identity of the successful bidder, a greater or lesser likelihood that the team will leave town. Whatever the result, appeals and further litigation remain a distinct possibility. For the Coyotes, all that is presently certain is that there will be uncertainty surrounding the future of the team.
Regardless of Mr. Balsillie’s status upon delivery of that ruling, however – whether he’s declared a qualified bidder or not -Balsillie’s desert offensive is likely to have far-reaching implications for fans of NHL hockey in southern Ontario. Specifically, it now seems very probable that at some point, someone will bring another NHL team to southern Ontario. If and when that happens, fans settling into their seats before the faceoff will have Balsillie and his attorneys to thank for it.
Balsillie’s choice to force his showdown with the NHL into the public arena via the courts has, for the NHL and the Toronto Maple Leafs in particular, opened a kind of Pandora’s Box. As a result of the public nature of this dispute, we now know the following things about the business of hockey in southern Ontario:
There is potful of money to be earned by anyone who puts an NHL franchise in Hamilton. Through Dr. Andrew Zimbalist’s declaration on the relocation fee issue, we learned that PSE was estimating (in its pro formas) first-year revenues for the Hamilton club at almost $73 million dollars – in relative terms, more than 12 other NHL clubs, and “within five million dollars” of another four (see Zimbalist’s declaration, paragraph 12). According to Zimbalist’s declaration, PSE believes that revenues would increase by a little more than 9 per cent annually in each of the first four years, as renovations to Copps Coliseum are completed and the capacity of the building to earn some bank for its corporate masters is suitably tricked out. Common sense tells us that Balsillie’s expert analysis, advanced in a situation in which (by relocating into a market) he may well be required to compensate the league for the theoretical value of a lost expansion opportunity, would have a tendency to quantify the value of that lost opportunity somewhat conservatively. Seventy-three million bones coming in the door starting in year one is likely to get the attention of sports-minded capitalists everywhere.
Did I mention that there is a potful of money to be earned by anyone who puts an NHL franchise in Hamilton? The NHL responded to Zimbalist’s declaration with two reports of its own: The first estimated the value of a team in Hamilton as between $261.8 million and $279.8 million. The second estimated the value of a team in Hamilton as approximately $315 million. By comparison, the same reports suggest the value of a team in Phoenix somewhere in the range of $120 million to $176 million dollars.
The Toronto Maple Leafs don’t have a “veto” that would allow them to prevent another team from moving into the area. The commonly accepted wisdom is that the Leafs have been the driving force behind the league’s historical refusal to place a team in Hamilton. In view of the almost papal level of secrecy surrounding NHL Board of Governors meetings, it is difficult to know the truth of the matter on that issue, but it does seem clear that – at least as recently as 2006 – the Leafs have behaved as though they do have a veto over such a relocation. Forced into the courts by the Coyotes bankruptcy, however, and facing certain immutable facts of life in terms of the applicable antitrust law, the NHL sees the writing on the wall and cannot espouse the untenable position that one of its member clubs could unilaterally prevent the relocation of another into its home territory. Backed into a corner in the courts, the NHL has had no alternative but to publicly align itself with the “no Leaf veto” theory. Whatever the secret and private reality of the arrangement between the Leafs and the NHL in the past on the issue of the veto, the league has now been forced to publicly espouse the view that relocation of a member club into the territory of another may be approved by a majority vote of the Board.
So let me do the math for you: quite a few NHL teams are losing money in their current market. The market in southern Ontario has been identified as undoubtedly superior to many such existing markets. It seems likely that a team relocating to that market would quickly become one of the more valuable properties in the league.
And all it takes is a majority vote of the Board to get you there.
It’s one thing for the NHL to clandestinely or surreptitiously enforce a Maple Leafs veto by denying entry into the league for someone wishing to avail themselves of the Hamilton opportunity (perhaps by rejecting the prospective owner on the grounds of his purported lack of “character” or “integrity”; such a thing might easily be accomplished when the votes are taken behind closed doors by folks who are already members of the fraternity. It’s quite another for the league to be able to preserve unanimity on this issue in perpetuity among its existing members. Sooner or later, one of the have not franchises – already admitted into the league, present for the discussion and votes on all league issues, able to avoid any backroom chicanery – will seize the southern Ontario opportunity for itself.
How long will it be before a club wanting to seize such an opportunity would have the votes necessary to achieve the result? Teams struggling in their own markets and receiving financial assistance from their richer brethren might want to see one of their fellow have nots stop taking funds from the revenue sharing pool – and likely start paying a substantial amount into the fund instead.
