CanadianChris

There another weird one going on in Toronto. The A's have 7 hits through five and have held the Blue Jays to just one hit, yet trail 3-2.

Now Volchenkov is out after taking a puck IN THE FACE. That looked awful, blood everywhere. Pittsburgh is pretty much facing the Binghampton Senators at this point.

This is an honest question. For the playoffs, who would you rather have in net, Gerber or Emery? My honest answer: I don't think it matters at all.

So, I was listening to the pre-game tonight, and hearing about how the Penguins still didn't have much playoff experience, and everyone was counting the Senators out, and how this was like the start of the playoff run when they were huge underdogs and still managed to take Buffalo to a seventh game in 1997 and then beat New Jersey the following year, made me think the Sens could still pull off an upset. Then the game started.

The article was talking mainly of the first 20-40 games, though. If you look at all the years where they made the playoffs this decade, they were at least four games under .500 at some point after the first three weeks of the season four times out of 5: 2000: 9-13 on April 26 2001: 8-18 on May 1 2002: 20-26 on May 23 2003: never under .500 2006: 23-29 on May 30 I'd call each of those a slow start.

Two miles to work for me. I normally walk or bike in the non-winter months. Otherwise, my wife drops me off on the way to her work (probably about 5-6 miles, not served well by our public transit).

That was a bad article (maybe lazy's a better word), but typical of today's short-attention-span world. The only two teams not from the past decade are two of the most famous teams of all time. And I'd hardly put a team whose "bad start" was 0-3 in the top 9 comebacks from slow starts. The '89 Blue Jays started 12-24, fired their manager, and then proceeded to win the division, leading for the entire month of September. THAT'S coming back from a bad start. And didn't the A's make an art form out of the slow start at the start of this decade? No mention of them, either.

Damn, I forgot to PVR the par 3 contest. Hopefully TSN will re-air it sometime tonight.

I put down Woods, Goosen and Singh in the Masters pool at the Ottawa golf show. I think they finish in that order.

That's a little optimistic, I think. Calgary doesn't have the firepower to beat San Jose on offence, and Kiprusoff hasn't been good enough this season to beat them in a goaltending battle.

Rich Harden will miss tonight's game against the Blue Jays with a sore back. I can now consider the season officially underway.

Nope, second. Tampa Bay won the lottery. I wouldn't be surprised to see them swap picks with the Kings, though.

Wasn't this his first year on the ballot?

Uh, what? Both of ESPN.com's college basketball guys took Kansas. And Kansas WILL have to contain Memphis' guards.

The networks can't force people to follow a particular team. The ratings are always going to be lower when a team from a smaller market is involved, because that team will necessarily have fewer fans. With a few exceptions, baseball is very much a regional game.

Yes because the largest fan base doesn't deserve to watch their team on national television. There are 29 other teams, each with their own respective fanbases that would like to be able to watch their teams too. There's no reason to put three Yankees games on national television in one week. Be realistic. The two teams likely to draw the highest ratings for a national broadcast are the Yankees and the Red Sox. They're playing each other this weekend. That's pretty much a no-brainer to me. Besides, you say it as if Fox and ESPN should get together and agree not to show two games from the same series on their respective networks.

With all the games they missed to injury, they should've missed the playoffs with room to spare. Looking at their stats, I still don't know how they made it. They only had one guy in the top 60 and three guys in the top 100 in league scoring, and their goaltending was perfectly average. Besides, there really isn't a HUGE abundance of talent on this team. Stastny is probably their best player, Hejduk and Brunette are still pretty good, Svatos is decent, and Wolski is up and coming. Sakic can still play well, but he's almost 40 now. Forsberg...who knows if he'll survive a playoff run. And that's about it.

Don't sell Quenneville short. The Avs were picked by many to miss the playoffs, and they had even more trouble with injuries this season. He did a nice job getting Colorado in contention for the division title down the stretch. The trouble with Babcock is that the Red Wings are supposed to finish first every single year. Not many coaches win the Adams just for meeting expectations.

I really doubt Babcock will be one of the nominees for the Adams. There are too many other candidates who'll be seen as more deserving. I could see Michel Therrien as a finalist, and maybe Joel Quenneville or Ron Wilson.

Details?

I have: Canadiens in 5 Penguins in 7 Capitals in 6 Rangers in 5 Red Wings in 5 Sharks in 5 Avalanche in 6 Stars in 6 If the Senators can't make it to the final, then I want to see the Canadiens and the Red Wings. You best believe I'll be at the Bell Centre for a Cup final game if at all possible.

Yeah, there's nothing you can point to and say, "THAT is why they're so bad." Everything's just awful. Granderson being out hurts, as does their big offseason acquisition hitting a buck eleven. But no one else in that offence is really doing anything either, except for Guillen, and the starting pitching has just been atrocious. Dontrelle Willis will be in the bullpen at some point this year (SEVEN walks!).

The matchup is the same, but the storylines for Penguins/Senators couldn't be more different from last year.

Final line on Josh Beckett today: 4.2 IP, 3H, 5R, 5ER, 4BB, 6K. He left with the bases loaded in the fifth, and Frank Thomas CRUSHED the first pitch from Manny Delcarmen for a grand slam.

This match was a prime example of why I hate "dream matches" in this sense. Hogan was and is no longer believable as an in-ring performer, as he can barely move out there. There was no possible way to give a rub to anyone who could use it. The only potential benefit would be to get more eyeballs watching their other programs on the card and getting hooked, but the business isn't so appealing to the casual viewer that this could be realistic. And yet, he's taking up tons of prime TV time. It was classic WCW booking, in that was done to pop a couple of ratings and a one-time buyrate. No one was helped by this match, least of all Shawn Michaels, who really should have known better than to try and get one over on Hulk Hogan.