"If there's one lesson that life has taught me, repeatedly, it's to know when I'm beaten." -- Seymour Skinner
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Congrats to Amelia for getting out on parole. Wait, no, congrats on getting married.
Don't have too many out of the ordinary stories despite knowing her since 7th grade. When we were in Econ in 12th grade, I had the seat behind her. I forget why, other than being an attention whore, but I brought this giraffe hand puppet to school with the sole purpose of harrassing people in class. So there's studious Amelia, trying to jot down notes when out of the corner of her eye there's a giraffe hand puppet looking at her.
Anyways, the first and only time I had met her husband was winter break of freshman year. It was a bit of a showcase time for all of us as we weren't too far removed from high school, but it seemed like most people were showing off the significant others they met at college to the old friends. And 10+ years later, they had stayed together the entire time and gotten married, which I find genuinely awesome.
Tried to convey that thought on their wedding card. But alas, it appears as though I will marry twice for money, and maybe once for power.
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Every year it seems like I tell myself I'm not going to waste money on a Halloween costume that I'll only wear once. And every year I ask myself something like "Why do I have this pair of unreturnable opera gloves and unopened can of red hair dye?"
Didn't really have any concrete plans this year. Had a couple friends who were doing Halloween in Vegas, so I was mildly tempted to go on short notice despite knowing that Vegas was a dud with regards to Halloween last year.
In terms of a costume, I had mentioned this to my cousin earlier in the month during my NY/NJ visit. I wanted to possibly pull off early 90s Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day. The outfit would be pretty easy to do, but I really wanted to make a replica of his guitar even though it'd be completely for my own amusement. Tried to find a cheap Fender/Fender clone--Armstrong's guitar (named Blue) is itself a Fernandes brand Fender clone--that I could attempt to paint.
Decided to check out eBay and immediately found a close to accurate replica. Personally would have liked it to actually use as well, but the bidding ended up over $200 and the reserve wasn't even met. Plus it was likely that I wouldn't have received it in time for Halloween regardless.
Ended up joining Travis and a group of his friends who were doing an Alice in Wonderland theme. Since I was late (for a very important date) to the group, all the main characters were snatched up. So I was another one of the Queen's playing cards/guards. I drove with Travis downtown, he was the 2 of diamonds and I was 2 of hearts. So we're walking side by side and we had a handful of people make "Hey look, it's pocket deuces" comments at our expense.
The night was mostly a blur, but as a group we finished 2nd in a costume contest at one of the bars.
In a "it's a small world" moment, after doing the obligatory Facebook adds on Monday, I started getting a bunch of email notifications from one girl commenting on all my hockey photos. Took me a second to put two and two together, but realized that the Cheshire Cat was the same random girl who showed up to Stout wearing a Sharks jersey.
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Did an impromptu Staples Center doubleheader. Jeff had comp'd seats for Clippers/Grizzles and it took a few days before I realized that the Kings had a 1pm start on the same day. Figured if I was making the drive up, we ought to squeeze in both games.
After beating the Stanley Cup Champion Penguins two days before, the Kings laid an egg against the offensively challenged Predators. Also still annoyed of their selection of jersey shirts. Previously, they had a rack of shirts for healthy scratch Peter Harrold. They added a new rack recently for stay at home defenseman Rob Scuderi. Meanwhile, they still have nothing for the awesomeness that is Drew Doughty. Even comparatively speaking, they had Jack Johnson merchandise ready to go pretty quickly after his debut.
Wanted to pick up a Lakers related gag gift for my old roommate's birthday. If it's weren't $90, the Adam Morrison jersey would have been pretty sweet if only to hope that my buddy might end up on the pages of Straight Cash Homey in the future.
Also debated a Jordan Farmar jersey shirt....would have been an inside joke since our mutual friend used to tutor Farmar in high school. And he's a little bitter that Farmar is an NBA player now but sucks at Physics. Farmar changed jersey numbers this season, so the shirt (with #5) was already outdated.
Eventually settled on this goofy Andrew Bynum shirt which seemed funnier at the time. Shirt features a large image of Bynum's face which was oddly menacing. Perhaps should have gone with the equivalent Pau Gasol shirt instead.
The Clippers game was my first NBA experience. I was a little curious to see what kind of people are Clipper fans. Definitely seemed like a strange mix of fans and people with free tickets. We ended up in the third row next to the court. First impression was how much smaller the playing surface felt.......on TV you forget that they're playing on virtually the same dimensions that we did growing up on the playground.
Even back in the days of the Loy Vaught Clippers, they'd sell tickets by advertising the opposing team instead of the Clippers. In particular, it seemed like most of us were still curious to see Allen Iverson. But earlier in the day, he left the team for personal reasons.
Game itself was pretty good as the Clippers came from behind and held onto a 113-110 win. At the beginning of the decade, I was annoyed that most of my friends were back on the Lakers bandwagon. The cynical side of me was hoping for the day when the Clippers were the better franchise, just so I could watch those same people attempt to explain "No, no, I was really a Clippers fan all along."
Also annoyed to see after the game a Lakers fan actively taunting everybody. Not sure if it was the need for attention in the "If Poochie isn't around, everybody should be asking 'Where's Poochie'?" sort of way that did it. Not sure if it was the slightly askew hat that did it. But it just seemed like the equivalent of a trust fund kid going out of his way to go to a high school in an impoverished area to point out that his car was better.
Guy next to me also spotted former Kings' owner/ex-con Bruce McNall sitting in the first row. I was mildly tempted to go shake his hand since he was a driving force behind getting Wayne Gretzky to Los Angeles. No Wayne maybe means I never end up liking hockey and instead become that annoying Lakers fan.
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Awhile ago, I had a long winded post about Eric Lindros' hockey career and how it seemed fitting that karma basically erased him from most fan's memories.
If somebody had asked me any time in the last ~5 years which player I hated and would never want to see in a Devils uniform, I probably would have said Dainius Zubrus (guh) or Nik Antropov. But after those two, I very well might have said Mike Van Ryn. Why Van Ryn?
The Devils drafted Van Ryn in the first round in 1998, one spot of fellow New Jersey first rounder Scott Gomez. Van Ryn had just completed a solid freshman season at the University of Michigan.
Before the lockout, there were some weird eligibility rules with drafting college players. In a nutshell, most NCAA players had to play their freshmen year prior to being drafted in order to retain their eligibility.
A side effect was that NCAA players were being drafted at age 19 unlike everybody else who was eligible at age 17/18.
Drafted NCAA players were also different (and still are to this day) in that NHL teams maintained their rights for up to 180 days after they graduated or left school. But in the case of a player drafted out of one of the three main Canadian junior leagues, an NHL team only holds their rights for two years. If the Canadian league prospect didn't sign, he would re-enter the draft unless he was over 21. In which case, he was an unrestricted free agent.
GM Lou Lamoriello, with a previous background in the NCAA, noted that they could watch Van Ryn gradually "grow" into an NHL caliber defenseman at Michigan. They could let him finish out his four years in the NCAA and let him develop in the minors after that. The Devils were the model franchise in the late 90s with not rushing young prospects.
At the time, the Devils were having good luck with Michigan prospects as well. The Devils had a young Brendan Morrison who had won the Hobey Baker Award at Michigan in 1997. They had also signed fellow Wolverine alumnus and future Selke winner John Madden. No doubt they were looking forward to see Van Ryn's progression under Coach Red Parker's tutelage.
Things were looking great, Van Ryn had another solid year at Michigan and captained Canada's World Junior team. By the time Scott Stevens was ready to retire, Van Ryn would be ready to hit his prime....
....but later in 1998, Bruins' draft pick Ben Clymer found a loophole in the system. Clymer was the 27th overall pick but in the 1997 Draft. Clymer had been playing at the University of Minnesota before quitting school and joining the WHL for the 1998-99 season.
At the end of that season, the NHL ruled that Clymer was to be treated as a player drafted out of Canada since that's where he finished the season. And as a result, the Bruins then had to sign him by June 1999 or else lose his rights.
....but since Clymer was drafted as a 19 year old in 1997, he was 21 in 1999 and thus eligible for unrestricted free agency if he didn't sign. So he had all the leverage as he demanded a higher entry level salary than the 27th overall pick had been getting. Boston balked at paying him top dollar which led to Clymer signing a free agent deal with Tampa.
So while this was happening in 1999, Van Ryn suddenly dropped out of Michigan and joined an OHL team for the 1999-2000 season. And naturally at the end of the year, he tried to exploit the same loophole although only after trying to get the team to promise he'd make the NHL immediately.
Lamoriello fought harder than Boston did with Clymer, but in the end Van Ryn was granted free agency. Later, the CBA was amended to include the "Van Ryn Rule" which patched up the loophole (but not before Mike "He's a dick" Comrie could use it against the Edmonton Oilers).
Draft picks refusing to play for a certain team isn't new. But guys like John Elway, Eric Lindros, Eli Manning, and Danny Ferry each refused to play for the team that drafted them because those teams were complete trainwrecks. Elway was drafted by the Baltimore Colts who were threatening to relocate. Lindros was drafted by the Nordiques who had similar issues. Eli was drafted by the then Chargers who had a lackluster roster and stadium issues. Ferry was drafted by the Clippers, who were....well, the Clippers.
In Van Ryn's case, the arbitrator made the ruling two weeks after the Devils won the Stanley Cup in 2000. So the fact that Van Ryn basically snubbed the reigning champions always bugged the hell out of me.
The Blues eventually signed Van Ryn to a three year deal for 1.025 mil per year with additional performance bonuses (compared to Scott Gomez who got ~650K/year on his entry contract with the Devils). In 2001-02, it appeared like Van Ryn had earned a permanent spot on St. Louis while appearing in 9 of their 10 playoff games.
In 2002-03, Van Ryn got off to a sluggish start and spent half of the year back in the minors. At the trade deadline, the Blues (who couldn't quite get over the hump in the playoffs) panicked and dealt Van Ryn to Florida for "Mr. Candace Cameron" Valeri Bure. Bure, an impending free agent, would play eleven combined regular season and playoff games for the Blues before resigning with the Panthers.
Also, later that playoff season, the Devils would win the Stanley Cup. Although it might be a bit of a stretch to assume Van Ryn would have been more than 3rd pairing/healthy scratch for New Jersey during that run.
The next five years of Van Ryn's career would be spent in the hockey purgatory that is Florida. Van Ryn put up decent numbers culminating in two straight 37 point campaigns, but it was like the tree falling in a forest with nobody around to see it.
Then in 2008, he was traded to the Maple Leafs. While the fans were more rabid, the team stunk worse than the Panthers as Van Ryn had an injury riddled year. His "highlight" was being on the receiving end of a glass shattering hit from Milan Lucic.
And in 2009, Van Ryn underwent what possibly will be career ending knee surgery.
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Speaking of loopholes.....
When Dean Lombardi was GM of the Sharks, he used his best law talkin' guy skills to exploit a rule to artificially get extra draft choices. Prior to the lockout, it was commonplace to poorer teams to cry foul when they lost a top player to a big market club via free agency. The NHL tried to throw the small market teams a bone by giving them a compensatory draft choice for those players.
The one caveat was that if you signed a comparably paid player, you wouldn't receive a pick. Since he wasn't high on the crazy prices of free agents, Lombardi had a great idea: What if I traded for an impending free agent with the sole intention of "losing" the free agent to get the compensatory pick.
On 6/26/02, the Sharks traded for Theo Fleury from the Rangers for a swap of 6th round picks. The Rangers were a week away from spending almost 70 million on Bobby Holik and Darius Kasparaitis, so they stood to get nothing for losing Fleury.
Rangers' GM Glen Sather must not have realized Lombardi's true motive or else he could have gotten a better return. Back in 1998, Lombardi traded a 9th rounder to get the rights to Gary Suter who did sign with San Jose. Eventually the Sharks be awarded a high 3rd rounder in the 2003 Draft, which they would use to move up to draft
Only days after the Fleury trade, other GMs of small market clubs realized they ought to exploit the loophole as well.
On 6/29/02, Nashville gave a 5th round pick to Dallas for the rights to Ed Belfour--Dallas would spend 45 million on free agent winger Bill Guerin a couple days later. The Predators were awarded the 49th pick in the 2003 Draft, where they would select current franchise cornerstone Shea Weber.
On 6/30/02, the Flames would send a 3rd round pick to Toronto for Curtis Joseph. The Leafs would sign Belfour as CuJo's replacement. Meanwhile, the Flames would get the 47th pick in 2003 as compensation. Gotta love the market correction as Sather probably felt kinda dumb.
This would occur a few more times prior to the lockout before draft pick compensation was discontinued in the new CBA (This is why we can't have nice things).
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Speaking of the draft.....
It appears that I finally lucked out and the 2010 NHL Draft will be hosted in Los Angeles this year. My buddy Eugene, season ticket holder, is already on board with getting us tickets. We both came to the agreement that both of us could legitimately sit through about three of the seven rounds (the first round is on a Friday, the rest is on Saturday).
Awhile ago, Jeff asked me how it was possible to track draft prospects since there's little mainstream exposure. To me, it's not entirely different than the NBA Draft nowadays. Most of the elite talent is filtered into a finite amount of teams/leagues, and for the most of us armchair GMs it is a lot of word of mouth.
Watching a couple weeks of Blake Griffin during March Madness isn't all that different from watching a couple weeks of John Tavares in the World Junior Championships. Obviously there's not a lot of ESPN/network coverage for junior hockey, but they love that stuff up in Canada.
NHL Central Scouting just released their preliminary rankings. It's kinda funny, I had lamented ahead of time that the Portland/Seattle game I saw last month featured two of the worst teams from 2008-09. But it turns out that Portland might have been one of the more interesting teams I could have caught as they had four of the top 13 players ranked in the WHL with Nino Niederreiter and Troy Rutkowski possibly being first rounders.
It's always a bit premature to talk about the draft in November, but generally every year the top of the pack is kinda known. This year's top 3 appears to be winger Taylor Hall, center Tyler Seguin, and defenseman Cam Fowler. Most people have Russian winger Kirill Kabanov at #4 but the dreaded Russian factor seems to weigh him down and will put whomever is selecting fourth in a potentially tough spot. On talent alone, Kabanov seems to be only a slight downgrade from the other three.
(Recently, 2008 #6 pick Nikita Filatov left Columbus to finish the year in Russia.)
Hall has been in the spotlight for the last couple of seasons. Most compare his playing style to that of Pavel Bure: blinding speed and great hands. Seguin is a bit of a newcomer as he came from nowhere to have a comparable scoring pace to Hall, despite having a vastly inferior supporting cast. Then there's Fowler who is the annual prospect to be labeled as "the next Scott Niedermayer."
So the draft lottery will be interesting this year as #4 seems to be the undesired spot. Usually the focus is on who wins and gets to pick #1, but an equally interesting but often overlooked story is the years when a team slated to pick second/third/etc gets bumped and subsequently donkey punched. For example:
2001: The Tampa Bay Lightning were coming off a miserable season and were in the #2 spot. The Thrashers won the lottery and jumped up to the #1 pick which was used on Ilya Kovalchuk. The Islanders got bumped down to #2 and traded it away to Ottawa who would select Jason Spezza. The Lightning then had to settle for the consolation prize of Alexander Svitov......fortunately for them, they spun Svitov a few years later for Darryl Sydor who was a solid cog in their Cup winning team.
2002: After winning the previous year, the Thrashers got hosed in '02. They were in a position to pick first and presumably get uber prospect Jay Bouwmeester. But division rival Florida won the lottery. Atlanta also passed on Rick Nash partially due to spending their previous two first rounders on Kovalchuk/Heatley. Instead they picked Kari Lehtonen who has had an injury riddled career.
(In hindsight, most people had Lehtonen #2 at the time. But it's still a pretty good lesson to not pigeonhole yourself into not taking a certain position just because you are currently well stocked.)
2004: The Blackhawks were in the #2 spot in the Ovechkin/Malkin draft, only to see Washington win the lottery. Most of the press was lamenting about how the poor Penguins had to settle for Malkin. Meanwhile the Blackhawks ended up with the good but hardly elite Cam Barker at #3.
2007: The pre-lottery order was Flyers-Coyotes-Kings-Capitals-Blackhawks. If the order has remained the same, it's likely that Patrick Kane would be a Flyer while James van Riemsdyk could be a King.
But alas the Draft Gods made up for 2004 and Chicago won the lottery to get Kane. This also bumped the Kings down to #4 in what most considered a year with a top tier of 3. LA ended up going off the board and selected defenseman Thomas Hickey, which nowadays isn't as ridiculed as it was at the time. But imagine the Kings, who have been having trouble finding a legit LW on their 2nd line, with van Riemsdyk (19 points in 21 games) instead of Teddy Purcell or Scott Parse.
2000: This might be the one case where the lottery winner ended up being detrimental to a franchise. The Islanders won and in the process jumped up from #5 to #1. So instead of drafting Raffi Torres or Scott Hartnell, they'd get their choice of Dany Heatley or Marian Gaborik.
Meanwhile, Rick DiPietro was a freshman at Boston University. He had a decision to make. The goalie class of 2000 was relatively poor and he'd be the first goalie taken. But if he opted in for 2000, he'd have to give up his college eligibility. If he waited until 2001, scouts had him third behind Pascal Leclaire and Dan Blackburn. DiPietro figured being a top 10 pick in 2000 was better than being a potential late first rounder in 2001.
Islanders GM Mike Milbury became overly enamored with DiPietro's puckhandling abilities. In his head, he was getting his own version of Martin Brodeur who was fresh off winning his second Cup.
So they picked DiPietro #1. In selecting DiPietro, the Islanders decided the crease wasn't big enough for him and their other 21 year old goalie prospect.....some guy named Roberto Luongo. Even though they had spent the 4th overall pick in 1997 on Luongo, GM Mike Milbury decided that he wasn't the goalie of their future despite having only played 24 games as an Islander. So they shipped Luongo (along with Olli Jokinen) to Florida.
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My Christmas list is delightful small in comparison to last year. More money for tacos.
