the 4th star

This past summer has been all about the money. There was the unrestricted free agent *frenzy.* That was around the same time the Phoenix Coyotes financial problems came into the spotlight, when BlackBerry billionaire Jim Balsillie threw his two cents into the fray and the league kept talking out of both sides of its mouth. You know, the place they seem reluctant to put their money in.

Screwed up contracts — both legitimate Chicago fuck-ups and the over-spending variety — became commonplace, and some players decided to gamble on the bigger payday in Russia. Terms like “escrow” and “cap numbers” came to be a part of the conversation, too. Then there was even more change — and even less sense — from Patrick Kane, who allegedly tag-teamed a Buffalo cab driver with his cousin over 20 cents.

It seems talk of climbing out of this recession has put money on the mind and our mind on the money, so in the spirit of cash, let’s take a look at all 21 teams 30 teams as training camps get set to fire up this month. Like most financial ventures, some teams will offer a greater return than others.

ST. LOUIS BLUES

Central Division
2008-09 record: 41-31-10, third in the division, sixth in the conference
Cap space: $9.823 million

Tip sheet:
The ‘Baby Blues’ have all grown up and now face the prospects of having to supplant the Chicago Blackhawks and the Detroit Red Wings in the Norris. Man, talk about bad timing on the rebuilding project…If this team can somehow stay out of the trainer’s room, they could be a force…There’s no getting around the fact that GM and president John Davidson has done a wonderful job. What I really like about the way JD has transitioned from the broadcast booth to the running the show is the manner in which he’s handled himself. Very composed, very insightful. Back in the CBC and Ranger days, he was the king of the yuk-yuk sect, and it overshadowed his commentary. I thought so, anyway…Keith Tkachuk is still in the NHL, eh?

Fun fact:
While in St. Louis, you’ll find the Anheuser-Busch tour quite boring.

You should really invest in this club because…
The young forwards up front. They don’t get the benefit of the NHL or TSN hype machine like say Kane and Toews, but David Backes and TJ Oshie are terrific players. I thought Backes was the best player on the ice in the series with Vancouver last spring.

The bottom will fall out with…
Goaltending. St. Louis has the lessor of the Mason tenders in Chris. Steve would be a huge upgrade. Hell, even Bob might be at this stage of his life.

Key acquisition:
Again with the net. Is Ty Conklin an answer back there?

Bottom line:
Andy Murray is a smart coach and deserves some Lindy Ruff/Barry Trotz-sized credit for getting his club into the post season last year. Now that everyone knows the Blues are a real deal, how will they respond to the challenge night in and night out?

This past summer has been all about the money. There was the unrestricted free agent *frenzy.* That was around the same time the Phoenix Coyotes financial problems came into the spotlight, when BlackBerry billionaire Jim Balsillie threw his two cents into the fray and the league kept talking out of both sides of its mouth. You know, the place they seem reluctant to put their money in.

Screwed up contracts — both legitimate Chicago fuck-ups and the over-spending variety — became commonplace, and some players decided to gamble on the bigger payday in Russia. Terms like “escrow” and “cap numbers” came to be a part of the conversation, too. Then there was even more change — and even less sense — from Patrick Kane, who allegedly tag-teamed a Buffalo cab driver with his cousin over 20 cents.

It seems talk of climbing out of this recession has put money on the mind and our mind on the money, so in the spirit of cash, let’s take a look at all 21 teams 30 teams as training camps get set to fire up this month. Like most financial ventures, some teams will offer a greater return than others.

SAN JOSE SHARKS

Pacific Division
2008-09 record: 53-18-11, first in the division, first in the conference, first in the league
Cap space: $3.332 million

Tip sheet:
Doug Wilson should have made more moves this summer…Tim Hunter remains my favourite Shark player, ahead of Greg Norman…Patrick Marleau will never be as good as everyone wants him to be…At some point during the season, Dan Boyle will be introduced to Evgeni Nabokov…Pat Falloon may have been a fat balloon, but he could find the net…Someone named Rob Gaudreau scored the first hat-trick in franchise history…Who remembers the Cow Palace?

Fun fact:
Through a fan contest, the team was originally named the “Blades.”

You should really invest in this club because…
The Canadian content. Of the projected 12 forwards, nine are Canucks. Of the projected eight defencemen, seven are from Canada. What is wrong with this playoff picture?

The bottom will fall out with…
Five to seven playoff games.

Key acquisition:
Contract superstar Dany Heatley. A one-shot scorer, Heatley will get you 50 goals. He’ll also get you booed out of every Canadian rink.

Bottom line:
Grabbing Heatley to change your post season fortunes? Karma says good luck with that.

What do you get when you Google search ‘hot men?’

That’s right. Saturday special. All you can eat Man Sandwich.

This evening on the Hustler & Lawless show, Manitoba Moose play-by-play voice Brian Munz suggested the existence of a gentleman’s agreement between the American Hockey League club and the parent Vancouver Canucks. According to Munz, Canucks management has promised to ship an NHL quality forward down to the farm at the end of training camp.

OK. Speculation time.

The player would obviously be on the lower end of the pay scale. Here are the options:

LW Mason Raymond — $760,000
RW Jannik Hansen — $550,000
C Rick Rypien — $550,000
L Darcy Hordichuk — $775,000
C Kyle Wellwood — $1.2-million

Though he’s as slow as an AHLer, Wellwood is out of the mix due to his contract. Period. Rypien is battling Ryan Johnson for the fourth-line centre spot. Johnson is a killer penalty-killer when healthy, while Rypien is an incredible spark plug who is always day-to-day. Or month-to-month. Johnson makes $1.2 million and is a veteran, so he’s not going anywhere. Same deal with Darcy Hordichuk. Thanks but no thanks. The Moose aren’t in the market for a tough guy.

So Rypien is still in the mix, along with Hansen and Raymond. Hansen hasn’t stuck as a regular in the Canucks line-up the last two seasons, while Raymond found himself no longer part of the regular rotation. With hot-shot wingers like Cody Hodgson and Sergei Shirokov coming up the pipe, things can’t be comfortable for the Hansens and Raymonds on the club. Maybe Shirokov is the player that Munz is talking about. Who knows?

My guess is Hansen. Based on absolutely nothing.

If you were smart, you would have picked the opposite of what I put out there last week. That way, you would have finished in the black and felt good about yourself and your new financial windfall — no matter how stiff the breeze. What am I talking about here?

My picks blow. While I enjoy turning up the heat on a game with a little monetary pressure, the bottom line is that I usually struggle to meet a bottom line. Betting on sports has always been a losing proposition for me.

I remember sitting through at Jets games with friends. To help pass the time, we used to bet on what the next whistle would be. Everyone would put a quarter on their knee and declare the next stoppage a goal, an offside, an icing, or a penalty. Sometimes there would be a carry-over, say if the puck went out of play but if someone hit the whistle right, they would get the change and we’d do it all again before the action started up again. Hey, what do you want? The Oilers were up by three after the first. We had to entertain ourselves somehow!

It’s not like I’m losing a tonne of dough. The small amount lost is like a personal cover charge I pay for to ensure added enjoyment. You should see me at the track — throwing away money on longshots, pretending to know how to read the racing form, doubling up because I like the shine of the coat. Don’t even get me started on the grays. I should just let the horse eat the $20 right out of my hand before he loads into the gate.

The message here: Don’t use this site as your future financial plan. Go the other way or better yet, save your money. Chances are I’ll need to hit up one of you for a loan before this is all done. The three picks, each a $10 wager, as follows:

Washington at Detroit
Lions plus-6.5
Here we go again. This week’s sucker bet brought to you by the 4th Star. The Lions burned me last week by not being able to score a late TD against the Vikings, so the gamble here is that they won’t be able to screw me two weeks in a row. The Redskins aren’t strong in any area and Detroit can’t keep losing forever. Or maybe they can if I keep picking them. mark my words: If they don’t pay off this time, I am never taking them again. At least not until next week.

Kansas City at Philadelphia
Chiefs plus-8.5
Upset special? Donny McNabb is listed as doubtful. Kevin Kolb is not the answer. Mike Vick returns, but who knows where his game is at? I see the Iggles cobbling a decent game, but I’m not convinced they will blow the doors off a KC team that needs a win to remain hopeful in the brutal AFC West.

Jacksonville at Houston
under 47.0
This might be the easiest of the bunch. Who thinks the Jaguars will break the 10 point barrier? No one. Who thinks the Texans will put up 40 on a defence-first, low-scoring team? No one. I’ve already spent this $9 victory…

For those Winnipeg Blue Bomber believers out there, Saturday welcomes the biggest game of the season. A pair of awful teams, Winnipeg and the Toronto Argonauts, just trying to cling to a piece of wood in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in hopes that someone is on the way to rescue the 2009 campaign. A win gives the Bombers a tie-breaker advantage should the clubs end up even-Steven (and ahead of the last place finisher in the west). As it stands this afternoon, though, the B.C. Lions hold a four-point advantage over the Bombers and Argos in the cross-over format. Things don’t look great for either eastern promise.

There are seven games left. If the Bombers want to make the post season dance, they need to at least find a tie with the Lions. That mean if Winnipeg can go 5-2 down the stretch, B.C. has to be a 3-4 operation. Everyone around these parts will say that this is the CFL and anything can happen, making the prospects of the Lions stumbling a very real possibility. However, those same people will hum and haw when asked if the Bombers can put together five wins over the next seven weeks. Sadly, win or lose tomorrow, things do not look good in Bomberland. On to the questions…

Toronto Argonauts (3-8) vs. Winnipeg Blue Bombers (3-8)
Saturday, Canad Inns Booze Can
8pm

1. Who will throw the ball?
Damon Allen Michael Bishop will get the start, but the real game starts when he gets yanked. Casey Bramlet will probably be next in line, followed by the Ricky Santos Experiment. Bramlet has a bad case of the happy feet, which doesn’t make coach Mike Kelly very happy, but he’s probably too busy laughing with Bishop to even notice. Santos may be a decent prospect — did you hear that he tore it up in Division II? — but getting thrown to the wolves in front of a drunken, Saturday night home crowd that is looking for some anger release might not be the best way to nurture seeds. According to my math, the Winnipeg back-up (Bramlet) will have a total of eight attempts of CFL experience if Bishop goes down early. Quite a lack of depth heading into the biggest game of the season. Who knows what’s going on over there in Bombers camp?

2. Who will catch the ball?
As “Lawless” points out today, Fred Reid will be a busy man. Before I get to that, thank God he didn’t refer to Reid as ‘Fred-Ex’ in the story. It’s a terrible nickname and highly unoriginal. Dear Winnipeg: ‘Fred-Ex’ is Freddie Mitchell, the former Philadelphia Eagles receiver. Let’s come up with something better. Thanks. Back to the question now. Terrence Edwards is out. Romby Bryant is gone. Aaron Hargreaves is in his second-year and the longest-serving Bombers receiver. At least the guys they traded Bryant for won’t play this week. Yikes. I would explore why Kelly would leave himself so short-handed at the pass-catching position heading into the biggest game of the season, but what’s the point? That drum has been hit so many times…

3. Are the fans really speaking out?
Ticket sales for the Hall of Fame game are reported to be at the 20,000 mark. Those factor in season tickets, and some older holders have told me that they will not be attending the game to avoid the liquor-fueled *new* Bomber fan that will no doubt make the most of a Saturday night start time. Factor in the last warm Saturday of the year, and some will be at the lake. Plus, there’s a sold-out Keith Urban show at MTS Centre that night. Plus, some of us have to work. Sprinkle in a match-up between 3-8 teams, and you have to wonder if they’ll hit 24,000. Could look pretty bad on television. Oh, don’t worry. It will probably be blacked out in Winnipeg. And for the biggest game of the season, too.

Not sure what the better moment was.

It might have been when Tim Hoover, also known as DJ Co-op, went completely crazy for the song Most People are DJs at The Hold Steady show last night. He was a few bodies ahead of me as the stage grew larger and his excitement certainly captured the moment many of the middle-aged men felt as the show wore on. That’s what happens when you get an older nerdy guy churning it out on the stage: The older nerdy guys in the crowd relate to the receding hairline and glasses, and for that one evening, that one split second, believe that they are up there being a rock star. That was a solid moment, when Hoover stole that spotlight. Pretty sure most on the floor knew what was happening. The high five to Uptown editor John Kendle was certainly worth the thirty bucks.

That great exchange was quickly replaced by the next one, when Craig Finn started into his mockumentary on DJs. How he would go to places like the DMV or the laundromat and find a guy with a couple tables in the corner “trying to find the right mix.” Most people were laughing at Hoover. He was right in front of Finn. It was almost like the DJ was set-up — the timing was just so perfect. Co-op took it like a champ, though. Good for him. Not the best show I’ve seen them play, but you can’t mess with Texas.

And there’s your show review.

This past summer has been all about the money. There was the unrestricted free agent *frenzy.* That was around the same time the Phoenix Coyotes financial problems came into the spotlight, when BlackBerry billionaire Jim Balsillie threw his two cents into the fray and the league kept talking out of both sides of its mouth. You know, the place they seem reluctant to put their money in.

Screwed up contracts — both legitimate Chicago fuck-ups and the over-spending variety — became commonplace, and some players decided to gamble on the bigger payday in Russia. Terms like “escrow” and “cap numbers” came to be a part of the conversation, too. Then there was even more change — and even less sense — from Patrick Kane, who allegedly tag-teamed a Buffalo cab driver with his cousin over 20 cents.

It seems talk of climbing out of this recession has put money on the mind and our mind on the money, so in the spirit of cash, let’s take a look at all 21 teams 30 teams as training camps get set to fire up this month. Like most financial ventures, some teams will offer a greater return than others.

PITTSBURGH PENGUINS

Atlantic Division
2008-09 record: 45-28-9, second in the division, fourth in the conference
Cap space: $1.812 million

Tip sheet:
Sidney Crosby will be insufferable now that he’s won a Stanley Cup…It will be interesting to see how the Penguins handle being ‘the team’ this season…Much like the Gretzky-Messier debate in the mid-’80s, there are large camps for both Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. Call it sitting on the fence, but not much to choose between either player…When are the Pens getting a new building? Is it this year or next? I’d look it up but I’m getting sick of writing these. This is like writing about the weather every week…

Fun fact:
Mario Lemieux’s best move — and he’s had a few as a player and as a *hard-done-by* owner — was back in the day, when he got Dan Quinn to take all the heat for that incident in the Minneapolis hotel room. I think it was in the Twin Cities. Maybe there were been twins involved…

You should really invest in this club because…
The NHL marketing machine gives the hockey fan little choice. And Crosby’s wisps of masculinity. Look at those! Monsieur Crosby! I’m in love! He needs to sport that tiny junior high duster all year!!!

The bottom will fall out with…
Hate to say it, considering that he won Game 7 in Detroit and all that jazz, but Marc-Andre Fleury remains a pitfall. It’s like watching Chris Osgood play: Yeah, he’s got the resume now but every time a shot floats in there you’re not sure if the next face-off will be at one of the corner circles or the big one at centre.

Key acquisition:
Post season experience and a boatload of bandwagonners.

Bottom line:
Let the Pens be a lesson to all of you terrible teams: If you want to turn things around, put in a decade worth of losing, build up some high-draft talent, and go from there. The problem is getting through those 10 years….

The Houston Texans are a killing machine!

Another week, another casualty in the 2009 4th Star Suicide Pool. First the Texans took two readers out with a putrid effort against the New York Jets in Week One. This time around it was MasterClark, who by not relenting on his iron-fist rule of our longtime hockey keeper draft tempted the karma gods and saw his Tennessee pick succumb to the powers of Texas. What’s that? The Titans lost before we held our draft Sunday? Meh. Either way, he’s out and I’m stuck picking guys like Andrew Ladd and Chris Higgins as Tony Romo throws another ball up for grabs Sunday night.

As an aside, I’m all for tradition but when three guys keep winning the thing it’s time to make a change for the good of the game. Or maybe I’m just unhappy with my Martin Erat pick. But I digress. I’ll have more on my terrible draft team later. It’s football time. Here’s who still has a lust for life.

ruther
DKUN
Hot Live Stardom
wazoowazny

My pick: Let’s see where Cleveland is playing…oh, Baltimore. Perfect. I’ll take the Ravens. Those of you still left, give your picks in the comments. Good night and good luck.

Make no mistake, this is no mistake.

A bonus wrap jam for you folks interested in this little blog, as I count down the hours to the Hold Steady show at the West Ender tonight. Oh yeah, I’m excited. The above track will probably not see the sun on Ellice, which is too bad. If you’re one of the unfortunate ones who doesn’t have a ticket, or if you’re going to blow your entertainment dough checking out the Tampa Bay-Edmonton exhibition tilt at the Chipperdome, I thought it would be nice to show you — the time waster reader — a taste of what you’ll be missing. Hell, if we’re lucky, maybe we’ll even get a nice AC/DC encore, too.

I’m pumped. I know this kid is fired up, too.

Holly wore a string around her finger. She said it helps her to remember all the nights that we got over. Besides, it ties her outfit all together. Holly wore a string around her finger.