June 2008 Archives

Well, it's hardly news now, Visnovsky is an Oiler.

My wife and I listened to the interview he gave, and two things that jumped out at both of us were: 1) the Kings organisation never contacted him, even after his agent and Kevin Lowe had, and 2) he'd only wanted to go to two Canadian teams, and Edmonton wasn't one of them. #2 is the big one. Dan Tencer asked him the hard question: will this be an issue? No, said Vish. Still, I'm sure he will be or is a little bitter, but it doesn't sound like it will get in the way - he said all the right things about playing in Canada in general, and Edmonton in particular. Still, as my wife said, "I'm surprised he admitted that, especially to Edmonton."

Speaking of wives, Vish is engaged, and she's pregnant. "For family it's a better life in LA, and for hockey it's a better life in Edmonton . . . she's ok, she's very strong . . . if I will be happy, she will be happy too." He asserts that he will be happy, but didn't sound totally certain - hopefully a language barrier and not Chris Pronger II.

He was definite about playing right defense as well, and thought that a lot of his problems last year arose from playing LD. I'd thought Souray played RD on the power play at least, with Stoll on the left point, but maybe I'm wrong or maybe Souray can slide over, given that the left is his natural side. Seems weird though, Souray's definitely a left shooter, wrong side for the one-timer.

I can't really speculate any more what this will mean beyond what everybody else has already said - if nothing else, it seems pretty clear that Joni Pitkanen's tenure in Edmonton is over. But most of the speculation seems to be that this means Pitkanen's gone in a trade. I wonder if Lowe is really hoping that he'll sign an RFA sheet and give Lowe a decision to make. Perhaps Lowe would even match then trade him. I don't think Lowetide's speculation that maybe Souray's up for retirement has legs, although I don't think LT does either.

All that said, while I look forward to seeing how the team - and particularly the power play - does with the New Guy On The Block, I'm going to miss Stoll and Greene. You have to give quality to get it, but both players seem like pretty good guys, the sort you wouldn't mind having as a neighbour, and it can't be easy for them. Greene in particular was, I'm sure, pretty popular in the dressing room, and he definitely had some chemistry with fellow college boy Marty Reasoner. Of course, it's not certain that Reasoner will be back, but the Oilers definitely have one more free spot up the middle now.

Update (01 July 2008): David Staples has a bit more on the Vish interviews, this time a "gist of it" translation of Visnovsky talking to the Slovakian media. Yep, Vish was pissed. Hopefully Hemsky can make him feel comfortable, and if the hockey's good, maybe that will be good enough. That's what Visnovsky said, of course, but we'll see.

The Toronto media just cannot leave him alone:

"But if Sundin ends up in Montreal, a team he refused to be traded to for an impressive package at the trade deadline, his Toronto legacy will forever be tarnished." says Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun.

So, to recap: Mats Sundin signs a contract with the Leafs in good faith. He provides faithful service for the duration of the contract, plays the good boy in public even though he can't enjoy losing, and does nothing but be the team's best player every year. The GM screws the pooch, not once but repeatedly, and now it's Sundin's fault that he didn't want to uproot himself just to save the team from itself, waiving a clause he probably left cash on the table for in the process? And now that he's considering, horror of horrors, signing a contract elsewhere, his decade of service will be tarnished? 981 regular season and 76 playoff games, averaging just over a point a game in the RS with 443 goals, all of that will be tarnished because he held the team to its word? Over a decade of blood, sweat, and (I'm guessing) tears thrown away? Oh, but it's ok if he signs anywhere else.

Tough crowd. I'd want to sign elsewhere too, ungrateful wretches. Of course, every good Canadian knows that about Toronto anyway.

Just submitted to my university's opinion website:

----

Many a criticism of universities starts with something like "You'd think a university...", so much so that it's a bit of a joke, but here goes.

You'd think that a university would be committed to things like ensuring a cleaner environment and enabling its employees and students to do the same. You'd think that would go double for an institution with an entire faculty devoted to Environmental Sciences. Apparently, you'd be wrong.

A co-worker of mine car-pools to work from another city with up to 4 other people in the car. To even things out, they rotate vehicles. So far so good. From the point of view of Parking Services, however, they must represent a loss of income, not sensible environmentalism and fiscal responsibility. They are still required to each get a parking pass at full price for their individual vehicles, despite the fact that it is people like them that allow PS to oversubscribe their lots and make still more money off the available spots.

I understand the importance of the revenue stream that selling parking spots represents to the university. But in a city where it seems that summer days mean smog alerts almost as often as not, it seems to me that Waterloo could lead the way in this sort of thing rather than simply maintaining the status quo. It's still worse when the university seems determined to put a building over top of every parking lot while simultaneously expanding the number of people on campus.

People like my co-worker could be -- and are -- helping the university out in this respect, and are getting nothing in return, even when getting something would cost the institution nothing at all.

----

Some afterthoughts: No matter where you are in your organization, no matter what you do, you are also marketing. You are marketing yourself, and you are marketing your department. When my co-worker gets told "we never thought of that, and are unlikely to consider it," what he's really being told is really "I'm sorry you feel that way, now please go away and let me go back to what I consider to be my real job."

If you sit at a public-facing desk, you're a marketer. If you respond to email from people outside your department, you're a marketer. If you answer your telephone, you're a marketer. If you tell the people who spend their valuable time to try to contact you that they should go away -- either explicitly or through your actions -- you're doing a poor marketing job, and those people will wonder why your department exists. I shouldn't have to say that's not a good situation in which to find yourself.

Courtesy of the always-excellent xkcd:

Philosophy is, of course, so far out of picture to the right that the mathematician can't even hear the philosopher, who also somehow exists simultaneously to the left of the sociologist. Philosophy is the hoop that binds the academic disciplines together.

Apparently Hockey Night in Canada will not be renewing the agreement to use the HNIC theme. They'll get along without it, I'm sure, just as they've survived many other changes, but so many of my Saturday nights have included that theme, it just won't be the same without it.

In other news, I finished tied for top spot after a very poor start in the prediction pool. I claim first amongst equal though, since I Kreskined both the correct team and number of games in the finals, whereas my co-winner only guessed the correct number of games. Thanks to Marc-Andre Fleury for the one last game of greatness before he put the Cup winning goal in his own net last night. Sorry bud, them's the breaks - maybe next year.

The CBC ran a blurb about the Chinese Paralympic committee's documentation on dealing with people with disabilities.

While the language used in said docs is indeed fairly shocking to (at least some) Western ears, the reaction of one of the (now-former) athletes was interesting. He said, "Their society has come a fair distance already, but I think it's clear that there is still a fair distance to come."

Without speaking to Chinese society at all, having a disabled wife has opened my eyes somewhat to our own mores. She has a disabled pass, and uses a cane to walk more often than not. Her handful of meds both morning and night is just that - a handful. She has crutches which get used semi-regularly, and probably should be in a wheelchair a week every month, but we can't afford one and live in a third story walkup anyway. Her meds leave her sometimes unable to remember conversations 15 minutes later. She is, by any account, physically disabled. She also suffers from PTSD. Yet a couple of times a month, she meets new doctors who have the amazing ability to diagnose disability at a distance and without an examination. At least, that's the only conclusion I can draw, since they are somehow able to tell at a glance that she is not worthy of parking in a disabled spot - and tell her so. On a couple of notable occasions, she's literally been ganged up on; once, one of the gangers-up didn't even know the original interlocutor.

I think it's clear that regardless of Chinese progress, our own society has a long way to go itself.

It would seem that a wife's job is an obstacle to be overcome.

If only Burke had married a simpleton without a life of her own, Toronto would be more easily able to get what it *deserves*: Brian Burke and his Stanley Cup winning ways. Time to plan the parade.

At least they gave her a name.