Speaking of Hockey…

After all this mess with the lock out and whining from players and team owners about only making millions of dollars a year I thought I might just ditch my Canucks jersey and take up watching professional knitting. “Go Grandma!” I even neatly avoided blogging about the hockey strike the whole time it was on but, now that it’s about 99% sure there’ll be a season this year (I’ll say 100% when the first puck drops) I feel like a hockey fan again. It must be a Canadian thing…

The CBA has already seen players bouncing around the league to stay under the salary cap. Of note Scott Niedermayer, a once proud New Jersey Devil, is going to Disneyland to play with the Mighty Ducks (Does my semi look-alike Emilio Estevez still coach the Ducks? Oh wait, taht was a movie. Nevermind.) and Peter Forsberg is leaving those whinging, Bertuzzi suing, mile high a-holes in Colorado in the lurch and heading to Philadelpia for cheese steak sandwiches. We’d have likeed to have seen Forsberg here in Vancouver to play with Markus, but not for two years at least without a major trade.

Speaking of the Canucks (Go Canucks! Go!) and specifically Nazzy, he has been resigned with the Canucks for another three years that will see the destitute hockey player earn a mere $18 million under the new agreement. On a semi-sad note, sometime lazy ass Canucks defenseman Brent Sopel and his horrific hockey hair were traded to NY Islanders for a conditional 2006 draft pick.

The Canucks roster is still in doubt as according to the NHL’s website, specifically the page on free agents, Vancouver has a number of people as yet unsigned and still free agents a lot of which are players of some stature in our fair city. Here’s the list:

Bryan Allen, Tyler Bouck, Artem Chubarov, Dan Cloutier, Matt Cooke, Jason King, Brendan Morrison, Mattias Ohlund, Jarkko Ruutu, Sami Salo, Daniel Sedin, Henrik Sedin, Nathan Smith, Brent Sopel (gone already).

Holy crap. Looking at it again it reads like the whole team. I think I just pooed my pants. Come on Canuckleheads let’s get most of these guys signed before the season so we can a little breathe easier. Notice I said most… Cloutier? I’m not a big fan, but I know Calgary’s cocky Finnish netminder Miikka Kiprusoff is up for grabs. The Canucks should snag him and piss off all the folks in Cowtown. That would make the Red Mile turn green.

Yay! Hockey’s back!!