NHL needs to shake their collective heads.

Gary Bettman, NHL boss, hates Canada.  At least you think that it just might be true.  The league did little to protect the Winnipeg and Quebec fanchises from moving to the U.S. yet they  seem to be fighting every possible move of a bankrupt U.S. team back to Canada.  What are we in Canada supposed to make of this?

How is it that New York can have 3 franchises while southern Ontario cannot have more than one.  This fascination with U.S. cities that have no history nor experience with Hockey having NHL teams while viable markets in Canada are ignored.  The NHL U.S. Strategy hasn’t, doesn’t and will not work.  Bowling on TV will outdraw hockey in most US markets.   It’s barely a niche sport in the US.  Hockey is an important component in many countries in the world besides Canada, for instance Russia and Sweden come to mind.

The league seems to not want to deal with a Canadian who has the money yet it has dealt with a large number of questionable owners in the U.S.

I find it discouraging that the league rolls its eyes if there is a Canadian team in the Stanley Cup playoffs since they can’t sell the TV rights in the States even though there wasn’t any interest in the first place.  Heaven forbid that there is a final between 2 Canadian teams, they might have to outlaw that possibility.  It’s like we are second class in the leagues eyes.

It might give us a complex or maybe we should learn to love bowling and invest our entertainment dollars in that sport instead of Hockey.  The league won’t miss the Canadian fans at all.

You’re 13 and they are down a goalie, what do you do?

From the Ottawa Citizen:

Christian Rusu got to live the dream of a lifetime yesterday when he was called to play goalie during a Senators scrimmage at Bell Sensplex.

Christian Rusu will have quite the story to tell when he goes back to Broadview Public School with his Grade 8 class next week.

One minute late yesterday morning, the 13-year-old house league goaltender was laughing with his friends, taking off his equipment in the dressing room after a hockey camp session at the Bell Sensplex.

The next minute, he was back on the ice, facing shots from the Ottawa Senators’ Chris Kelly, Chris Neil, Chris Phillips, Shean Donovan, Anton Volchenkov and Jason Smith and several other National Hockey League players.

“I was undressing and a guy just came running in and said, ‘We need a goalie’,” Christian said after his 90-minute whirlwind taste of life in the big leagues. “There were three other (goalies), but their stuff was already off, so, I guess, well, they picked me.”

While NHL training camps don’t begin until mid-September, many players have already returned to the ice for informal pick-up games to get ready for the season.

However, one of the expected goaltenders failed to show, so the call went out for an immediate replacement.

Enter Christian.

As he put his equipment back on, he could hear the sounds of NHL players warming up, their heavy shots ringing off goal-posts and crossbars and echoing off the end boards, no doubt wondering what he was getting himself into.

Was it a step up from anything he had ever experienced before?

“More like a big leap,” he said as he removed his goalie mask, revealing his braces and the beginnings of a moustache.

“At first, I didn’t know what was going on in the drills because they were going so fast. It’s nothing like I have ever seen before. I came out to the top of my (goal crease), and, all of a sudden, I looked one way, then the other, and the puck was behind me and I was thinking, ‘Where did that come from?’”

Christian, a goaltender for the past three years, will hook up with a Kanata Minor Hockey Association minor bantam house league team next month.

Regardless of where his hockey future takes him, no one can take away yesterday’s scrimmage against the big leaguers.

As the pick-up game went on, a small crowd gathered around the boards, wondering who, exactly, was manning the net.

Christian made several saves, but the highlight had to be a stop against Donovan, a 14-year NHL veteran, on a breakaway.

“It was great to see him out there,” said Neil, who tapped the young goaltender on the pads several times during the workout. “What a great opportunity. I’m sure it was exciting for him.”

Kelly says the NHL players tried to make Christian relax as much as possible.

“He was really good,” Kelly said. “I’m sure it was fun for him and the boys were trying to get a rise out of him.”

The game was also the only thing on the minds of Christian’s campmates for the rest of the day.

When Christian’s father, Petru, arrived to pick him up at the end of the day, he heard the story from everyone before Christian had a chance to fill in the details.

“All the other kids told me about it right away,” Rusu said. “It’s very cool. He was so thrilled when he was coming home. He has always been such a big fan of the Senators and when they said they needed a second goalie, he said, ‘For sure, yes, yes, why wouldn’t I play?’

“Something like this doesn’t happen every day.”

Just in case his school buddies think Christian might be putting them on, making up a story about what happened on his summer vacation, he may still have a few bruises to show them next week.

“I’m a bit sore, but I’m OK,” he said. “At first, the fingers inside my blocker really hurt, the way they were throwing pucks at me. And then it was the fingers on my glove hand, smacking into my palm really hard. But then I got used to it.”

© The Ottawa Citizen 2008

My vote for the greatest hockey player – ever!

Bobby Orr – I first saw him play junior when Oshawa would play against Niagara Falls. He was great. Both teams were Boston farm clubs and this was the start of the good years for the Boston Bruins.

Winter Update

Ok so we are at 355 cm of snow this winter while the top record is 444.1 cm we are number two and we don’t want to try harder. They were predicting maybe 10 cm on Saturday coming but now they think it might be the worst storm of the winter whatever that means. The people that got into snow plowing for profit and don’t have cm limits are losing money and going out of business. I am surprised that people expect to have all their snow removed quickly for $250-$400 no matter how much snow. One man was saying that his crews have been out 60 days so far plowing. There has to be give and take by customers and suppliers. The snow banks are getting awfully high – in my back yard the snow is up to the top of the fence – 5 feet. This last snow fall was a mix of ice pellets, rain and snow and it was heavy. I had a hard time shoveling.

The Senators gained a single point losing in overtime to San José Sharks. They at least forced them to come back from deficits. At their current pace, the Senators might even miss the playoffs. Boston is 4 points behind with 2 games in hand and apart from a 10-2 spanking by the Capitals they are on a roll. As much as I’d like to see them do well in the playoffs I don’t see them pulling it together and going very far. They will have to get a goalie in the off season because Ottawa’s problems from the start have been in goal. This team would be unbeatable with a good goalie. I like Darth Gerber ;-) he’s good most of the time but he is fragile. Razor is a distraction and he thinks he doesn’t have to work to have the position of number 1. He has to go.

We’re supposed to be going to Morrisburg to visit on Saturday but with the potential storm I think we will miss out on Supper. We will have to get Hannah on Monday – she’ll be here for the spring (?) break.

I bought an OEM copy of Microsofts Home Server. I am using my old computer that wasn’t working all that well with XP Home. I dropped the ATA hard drive and used the 2 SATA drives and a WD Mybook external drive. I have over 700 gb of server storage. I am moving my common files like music, photos, videos and my administrative files (email and money) to the server. Setup was very easy and now it’s just setting up the files the way I want. The server can backup and restore your PC as well. With shipping and taxes it was $190 which is just a few dollars more than Vista Home Premium.

Ok we give up already

So as of now we have had the second snowiest winter in recorded history for Ottawa. We were at 327 cm before the storm and as I sit here we’ve had another 20 cm with another 10-15 cm possible (Estimated final tally 36 cm). This is a bad storm because the snow is so heavy. I found that it’s probably the heaviest this season. Now the joke is getting old about the snow. They are having a hard time finding places to store the snow. Last week they actually removed some snow in our area and we went from a tight 2 lanes to almost normal size. We have company that night and they could actually park on the street without blocking traffic.

There was a review in the Citizen yesterday about a networking product that uses your electrical wiring.

The Corinex High Definition Video Connectivity Kit is sure to become the best friend of homeowners who don’t want to knock down walls or fish fibre optic cables from the basement in order to network their older houses.

It is pricey — around $170. But it’s also ridiculously easy to set up. If you can plug in a lamp, you can use this product.

The Corinex device allows users to network electronics devices in their house through their home’s power lines. Just plug an adapter into a wall socket and plug your modem into the adapter. Then plug another adapter into an electrical socket anywhere else in your house. You’re done.

No software to install or computers to configure.

The adapter will send your Internet signals and extend your home network over your electrical cables. The adapter does all of the work, deciphering electricity from network traffic. All information transferred across the Corinex network is protected by 128-bit encryption.

You can have up to 32 adapters in any one home. And if you live in an apartment, don’t fret. According to Corinex, the network will automatically protect your signal from a neighbour who may also have a Corinex network installed. In other words, neighbours can’t piggy back on your high-speed Internet connection.

The Corinex kit comes with two adapters to get you started.

Why would you want to network your devices over wires when wireless technologies exist today? Well, wireless technologies are still far slower than the speeds users can achieve over wires.

While wireless may be fine for surfing the Internet, checking e-mail or downloading music, it’s not for people who want to connect two Xbox 360s in order to play head-to-head, or for anyone considering streaming video from a computer to their television sets.

Just try streaming that video of little Johnny on the swing set from the computer in your office to the TV set in your living room over wireless. The video will likely come out choppy as the network struggles to keep up.

The choppy video becomes even worse when there are other people on the network around the home or when the video is in high-definition.

Most current wireless technologies can move information at speeds of up to 54 megabits per second. Newer, more expensive versions of Wi-Fi (802.11 N) can move information at up to 120 megabits per second. Corinex’s powerline technology can transmit information at speeds as fast as 200 megabits per second.

Then there is the hassle of setting up encryption and firewalls for a wireless modem.

While many don’t find the installation of a wireless network complicated, there are those who would prefer to avoid the task.

The Corinex kit comes with a built-in firewall and offers MAC and IP address filtering — for you real techies.

While this kit is called the “High Definition Video Connectivity Kit,” Corinex offers other kits of its home networking technology that come with the same components, but carry another name on the box (the Corinex GameNet kit contains the same components). It’s a marketing thing, not a technology thing.

The company’s kits work on both PC and Mac computers.

If you’re less technically inclined and are looking for an easy way to move photos, video and music files around your home, the Corinex kit offers a straightforward solution that will work right out of the box.

I am beginning to wonder if the Senators will even make the playoffs. They are stalled and everyone else is moving up.

More Snow coming and other things

So we have 10-15 cm of snow coming in the next 36 hours or so and then on Friday there is a clipper coming with more of the white stuff.

Our friends from Toronto came for the weekend but it took them over 7 hours last Friday because of a snow storm that wasn’t supposed to be much. Anyhow, it was a good visit. We had a group over on Saturday night for a good meal and a great visit. We even had a Wii tournament – most of them were rookies and it showed. They all need some practice. They accused me of spending all my time playing the Wii.

We watched the Sens-Pens game and the Sens were lucky to come away with a win. I’m watching the Sens-Toronto game right now and the Sens aren’t doing it. Toronto leads 1-0. I support the Sens but I can’t see them going very far in the playoffs. First, there is no consistency in their play, you never know which team is going to show up. They got pushed around by Columbus and couldn’t match the physical level of play which is the way they play in the western conference. Next if you stop Alfredsson you’ve stopped the Sens. Paddock seems to be doing everything he can to destroy the confidence of Martin Gerber while going with Ray Emery who sucks. There may be some trades – too bad they can’t trade the coach – I just don’t get him and I don’t see him inspiring the team. Maybe Brian Murray should come back behind the bench after the trade deadline.  So the Sens got spanked good by the Leafs (5-0) and the Leafs were full value for their win.  It should make it easy for Murray to move some of the non performers – right now they would get knocked out in the first rounds – pray that they don’t play Washington who cleaned their clocks for a 4-0 record this year.

There is a federal budget tomorrow but we can’t expect much since they’ve already giving us tax relief. The changes from the economic statement will help us a lot.