Game Tonight!! Woooooo!

Pens and Rangers. Tonight. Only game in the NHL and it just happens to be on TSN.

Know what that means?

No studying for my quiz tomorrow. Eh.

It's the Penguins - 9 game point streak going on, and I just have to watch it otherwise they'll lose and they won't win a game for the rest of the season and they'll hunt me down and beat me. Yep, I can justify watching the game, for sure. It's for my own well-being.

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All joking aside, the mess in Toronto is really shaping up to be a disaster of epic proportions. Well, at least that's what you'd think if you paid attention to the Canadian sports media, which holds the Maple Leafs above all others.

What's really a kick in the face is that fans thought all season that Scotty Bowman didn't want the Toronto gig. They could deal with that - who the hell in their right mind would WANT to go into Toronto? The Leafs organization is seriously messed up. But then Scotty Bowman came on HNIC on Saturday night and told Ron McLean - and the rest of Canada - that he had meetings with Tanenbaum and Peddie of the Leafs and that he WANTED the job, but that they said no.

The reason why I think (and I'm speculating here because Tanenbaum, Peddie and company haven't given their reasons) Bowman wasn't hired was because he wanted a Bryan Colangelo type of deal, where he had complete control over what happened with the team/management and MLSE didn't want to relinquish control over their beloved Leafs.

Let's look at things...

Colangelo came in to the Raptors, shook things up, made some controversial decisions, and made the Raptors a pretty good team in the NBA. In fact, last season's improvement over the season before pretty much parallels the success of the Penguins.

Scotty Bowman = money. And not in the sense that he would be too expensive for the Leafs. Heck, the Leafs are swimming in cash. They love the salary cap because it leaves more money for the big guys up top. Bowman was asking for $3M a year minus whatever the GM would be making. For a team that is consistently the most valuable franchise in the NHL, they can spend a few measley million dollars on Bowman.

No, the money comment on Bowman refers to his track record. He has nine (NINE!!) Stanley Cups. NINE!!!! He knows what it takes to win, and he knows how to put a team together.

But hey, why would the big guys at MLSE want to bring someone in and give up complete control over the team? Not winning the Stanley Cup since the Original Six era (1967 to be exact) hasn't hurt their attendance record and merchandise sales aren't exactly down. The Leafs can keep on being a bad team, and people will still flock to the games and the suits will still buy the luxury suites and fill the lower bowl.

Who cares what a Stanley Cup win would actually do to the city?

Who cares that you'd have the biggest Cup celebration of all time if the Leafs won Lord Stanley's Mug?

At this rate, the Raptors will win an NBA championship long before the Leafs even look like Cup contenders. And that's too bad, really.

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One final note, my heart goes out to the families and friends of the seven students and teacher killed in an accident over the weekend in Bathurst, NB when their 15-passenger van hit a transport truck on the way back from a game in Moncton. The seven students were all members of the Bathurst High School boys basketball team and the teacher was the wife of the coach. The coach, his daughter, and two more students were taken to hospital.

Sad times in the Maritimes...