Little Baby's 19 and All Grown Up

Happy 19, Kiddo.

Now go shave for the first time. Look at you, you're a man now, right before my eyes.

The Morning Bell for Wednesday February 29, 2012

Today's ringer: February 29.

Anyone patient enough to exist every four years deserves some form of acknowledgment. This here blog respects that.

There are so many things I could ask to revert to an Olympic appearance:

 - cabbage rolls - just pretending to like 'em hun.
 - a sandra bullock movie. Blindside was good, see you in 4 years
 - a Habs/Blue Jackets game
 - winter
 - gastroenteritis, no make that 8 years

 I'm told the Habs played again last night. I'm telling whoever just told me to mind their business. I will say this, with our luck this year, watch those lottery balls pop out in this twisted ouija like order and hand the Habs the 27th pick in the draft.

It's a leap year. Let's look forward to something more enjoyable.

We've got some entertaining hockey in a few weeks, finally. We've got the Euro in the summer. If the Australian open was a sign of things to come we've got 3 more majors of unbelievable tennis and a potato sack race involving crocodiles on Discovery. And we've got London calling. Yes, baseball, I know but forgive me if I relagate baseball and the CFL to areas in my brain I prefer to deny. If you enjoy them, good for you. I would rather french kiss a porcupine.

 Happy leap year everyone. Now go leap.

Our Thoughts

Most of you know why HF33 turned into HF4.

In using his number I wanted to acknowledge something that is often lost on our society today: kindness.

There is no sense in getting ahead of ourselves. All we need to do at this point is pause and offer a kind moment to an ailing human being who has done so much for so many he knew so little.

Mr. Béliveau, in our thoughts, we join you today in this struggle and offer our loving encouragement.

We love you.

 - THE PKISTS AND READERS

Deadline Day? More Like Flatline Day

I admire TSN's crew for having stayed with it yesterday. That was the best air-time filling I've seen since Peter Mansbridge's ongoing reporting on the gestational period of Bella the whale in San Francisco.

Impressive stuff indeed.

Duthie: Any trades?

Johnson: Nope.

Duthie: What about now?

Mckenzie: I think so, let me check my blackberry. Crap I left it off. No, no, it was on.

Duthie: Farber, you got anything?

Farber: I have the immeasurable pleasure to declare on this fortnight that nothing has come of this wretched tirade!

Duthie: What?

Farber: I got nothing.

Duthie: Ok, let's go to commercial break. No? No break? Too soon? Alright, can we can Landsberg in here? Maybe get him to mud wrestle Chael Sonnen? McGuire's available today. He's always got something.

McGuire: I'm trying to trade Andrei Kostitsyn. Is my mic on?...

Duthie: Ward? What do you have?

Ward: I've got pocket queens, I'm going all in.

Duthie: What's up with The Artist? I guess the best thing is that the French are so annoying I would have muted that shit anyways.

Dreger: Amen brother.

McKenzie: True that.

Duthie: This show is better than the Oscars on Sunday right? Cause that put me to sleep. This is better right? Right?


Ferraro: The show is silently splendid, like liquid poetry.


....


....

McKenzie: ...


Duthie: Ok! This is big, Evgeni Malkin is now a Sabre!

McKenzie: He's not a Sabre, James.

Duthie: He could be a Sabre...Ok, what about PK Subban, was he traded?

Panger: I'm not touching that one with a 10-foot sherwood.

Hodge: Can you speculate like that? What kind of stupid network is this anyway? I mean this network is so backwards...I have to stop doing this.

Ferraro: Speculate, S-P-E-C-U-L-A-T-E. It's a gorgeous word.

Landsberg: Anyone see my speedo? Somebody say mud wrestling?

Onrait: You borrowed mine last week and I WANT IT BACK.

McGuire: Know your place, Pierre Gauthier. Mic's off right? Somebody's got to turn this bloody mic off.

Duthie: Panger, any news from the west coast?

Panger: Uh yeah, sure. Something's gonna happen soon. I'm sure of it. My blackberry's gonna buzz. Crap, it's off.

Duthie: You know folks, I never told you about my childhood...I was bo...

McGuire: Can somebody turn my mic off? Yes, he misses his brother, yes...

TRADE CENTRE ALERT!!!!!

Duthie: OK, great! we've got a trade to announce! What's this?...Rogers stock is trading at an all-time low as a result of this telecast. Merck stock is shooting up as sales for narcolepsy drugs have soared today.

McKenzie: Get me my broker on the phone.

Dreger: Bob, you can't, that's insider trading.

Duthie: DID SOMEBODY SAY TRADE?!!!

Johnson: Where's Ferraro? What's he got?

Panger: Ferraro's reading Hamlet. In German.

Duthie: How much longer?

Producer: 3 minutes.

Duthie: No, I mean till the deadline.

Producer. It's 9:07 in the morning, James.

McGuire: OK, THIS IS BIG!!! I've, fuck!...The Canadiens have traded Andrei Kostitsyn to the Nashville Predators.

Duthie: Wow! That's huge. We're going to break this one down for you. We've got our Reporters standing by. We've got Dreger on the phone with both GMs. McKenzie will offer a 30-second high decibel opinion that will then be posted verbatim on our website. We've got the players involved on their cell phones. Their wives will also tell us how this will affect life at home. We have a mathematician from Yale who will break the trade down for us. We've got a palm reader from Kingston who'll tell us how she anticipates this trade to impact both teams. My parents may drop by to say a few words and Landsberg will submit Sonnen in a muddy mess.

McGuire: This is a good deal for the Habs. Lots of organizational responsibility and physical commitment to depth and constructive dedication for an impact player positioning to elevate levels of atonement in a cohesively cohesive cohesion. I like the deal.

Habs get second boobectomy, lose other tit.

So the over hyped trade deadline day got started with the Montreal Canadiens trading enigmatic winger Andrei Kostitsyn. Years ago, Andrei and Sergei were baptized Big and Little tits by our own HF4. Back then, this team had a great rack. Sergei was a young feisty centerman with great vision and Andrei was a strong winger with incredible hands and a great shot. Fast forward 3 years and, well, the Habs are now titless.

This move was hardly a surprise considering all that happened in the last few weeks. Andrei saw his playing time get reduced considerably and once his trade value hit rock bottom, Pierre Gauthier worked his magic and traded him for less than he got for Hal Gill.

Let's analyze this trade, shall we? We traded a former 1st round pick that, aside from this year where everybody and their mother sucks, consistently scored 20 goals in this league. In exchange, we get a 2nd rounder who, if we're lucky, will one day score 20 goals in this league. Andrei may not have reached his potential. He may not be the hardest worker. He may have gone weeks without scoring. But is he worth less than 64 year-old Hal Gill?

You wanna trade AK, fine. I won't lose any sleep. But you think you can get a little more than a 2nd rounder? And in case you didn't bother to check, Pierre, Nashville is a good team and is currently 5th in the NHL, so their 2nd round pick might not be worth much. Especially with you having a say in it.

So now that the deadline has come and gone, here are a few things you should be aware of.

1: You're a douche

2: If you don't sign Travis Moen to a contract that is universally described as a great deal for the organization, you're an idiot.

3: I loathe you

4: You are not fit to be the GM of my nephew's house league team.

5: You once again failed to accomplish anything useful on deadline day. Granted you have a lot of worthless assets on this team, but you're the one who put this roster together, so you get no sympathy.


So there you have it. Yet another disappointing day in Habs history. Or as Pierre calls it, Monday.

TRADE STORY

We have worked hard with WikiLeaks to obtain a copy of the confidential written presentation General Manager Pierre Gauthier has prepared for the GM's in the league for trade deadline day.

My fellow General Managers,

I submit to you my list of available players that I would like you to consider today, the last day we can all make a super deal together. I am offering you these players with tremendous sadness, as I not have yet  spoken to anyone of them during their stay with the team. I hear they are very pleasant people and that some are wonderful cooks. I love bouillabaisse, you know this. I wish these players and I had enjoyed a nice bouillabaisse together.

So here we go.

Mr. Campoli was one of my best signings ever. He was supposed to fill that all-important role of 11th defenseman on our team and motivate Alexei Emelin to learn English, French. He will be very missed as he has helped our coaches exercise their ability to provide excuses to healthy scratches. The last one Mr. Cunneyworth gave Mr. Campoli was great: Sorry, Chris, because of the full moon, I need more defensemen born in March on the ice tonight.

Monsieur Cole was my biggest mistake and I am ashamed of this. We will offer you Monsieur Cole and in exchange all I ask is for one of you to give up tickets to a Justin Bieber concert wherever the show may be. I just want to see Justin Bieber.

Monsieur Darche may have the best hands in the entire NHL and we know you'll all give us your best offer to get your hands on him. For this reason, as we know demand will be high and we don't want to down our fax lines, I ask that you only submit your offers for Mister Darche between 1 and 1:06 p.m. today.

Monsieur Desharnais is a towering might. I asked our coach Jacques Martin to bring him into the line up to create more space for our forwards and bring in the intimidation factor. He makes our team fearless, and I know you'll appreciate this shoe-in UFC-like dynamo. He's so tall he can pee on Zdeno Chara's head and he doesn't even have to stand on his tippy toes.

We ask that you take a good look at Madame Diaz and Madame Eller. It has been brought to my attention that Monsieur Diaz and Monsieur Eller have had difficulty concentrating on their game as a result of their significant others' political allegiances to mainstream Danish and Swiss ideologies. Now hear this. WE WILL NOT TOLERATE THIS FORM OF EXTREMISM. There is no place for such brutality in the club de Hockey Canadien. We would package both of these women for Carey Underwood.

Monsieur Emelin is a distraction to our team as he is way too outspoken with our local media. We cannot accept this but I am sure your players will enjoy his verbose ways. Not to mention the best knock-knock jokes I may have ever heard and a dead-on impersonation of Betty White.

Monsieur Gorges was recently signed to a 23-year 67-million dollar a season contract. We feel that he fit perfectly with our corporate profiling of defensemen with non existing anterior cruciate ligaments. But our medical staff in Guatemala has assured us that a certain Mr. Someone with this same problem is about to make a comeback and so we feel that it would be wrong to steal that special Mr. Someone's thunder.

You may be shocked that I am making Monsieur Kaberle available so soon after having signed what I consider to be the best defenseman ever to wear a Canadiens jersey. He has single handedly revived our multi dimensional power play. His performance on a recent goal was legendary as he attempted to halt a puck with his uncanny ability to watch it float by him.

I'm sorry she's off the market - she has begged me to send her off to Nashville because she's in love with her brother-in-law and finally wants to confess her feelings. Awkward!!

I have no love lost for this player. He has no courage, no will to win and purposely crashes into stanchions during games. He has no consideration for his vertebrae and I can't respect a person who doesn't respect vertebrae. Zero scoring skills, zero strength, VERY LIMITED skating ability, and hands which would make that Edward guy in the Tim Burton movie jealous.

I would be tempted to call Monsieur Plekanec "Madame" because he himself says he plays like a little girl. He does. A little girl who can't play hockey. Mister Plekanec looks weird, with that red nose and blue face. He looks like a confused maple leaf on this picture. He would fit right in, Toronto.

I know this will be the hardest deal to make so please stay with me, my fellow general managers. Monsieur Price has no hockey IQ, we all know this. But his knowledge of country music is unparalleled. He knows Travis Tritt's entire discography. That's unbelievable. He can't hold a goalie stick but he can play the shit out of a banjo. He has no idea what a butterfly is on the ice, but he can play the entire soundtrack to Madame Butterfly with a harmonica. Monsieur Price is yeeehaaaw good.

Monsieur Subban is always frowning and demoralizes our team. Look at him, a huge downer. Please take him and give me any player willing to flash his pearly whites. Monsieur Subban spends most of his time in the dressing room discussing the process of enriching plutonium. He chews my ears off about the complexity of the Dodd-Frank act. It's so annoying. We think Mister Subban will be a good fit on a team that is looking to slow the pace on the back end because we've seen Jessica Tandy skate quicker from one blue line to the other. You must take caution that should you take Monsieur Subban, you must also have a player on your team willing to be on the receiving end of jokes involving saran wrap and toilet bowls, and  awkward triple lo-fives.

Our best player. Will only accept Mr. Ovechkin or Mr. Malkin in return, a first round pick for the drafts through 2043 and a signed copy of a Mister Mister album.

Tony Marinaro: Geoff Molson Has Effectively Fired Pierre Gauthier

Well. This is an interesting one to discuss, for many reasons.

The first question everyone will ask, and rightly so is: Is this true?

The answer to that question strikes at the core of both Tony Marinaro as a journalist and journalism itself which has been felled by a large degree of corporate enmeshment.

The story of Marinaro's ascent to household name in the Montreal sports media scene is a compelling one. He worked hard at being part of the conversation. He called in on sports radio shows and offered his advice. He impressed the radio hosts with his quick wit and knowledge. His passion made it clear that he would work tirelessly at creating a space for himself within the industry. People noticed. So he worked harder. Trained himself to be more constructed when delivering the message, not just verbose. 

He was offered a spot on the Team 990 and slowly rose to become the most informed fox in the hound.

Marinaro did not accomplish this on feeble scoop attempts. He understands both the game of hockey, as it must be played on the ice, and the corporate dynamics that lie behind the scene that assemble the parts of what is to become a hockey team.

He understands the contracts, their impact on a team and the monetary value of the players. And he discusses it with stunning ease and dexterity.

Marinaro's employer, Team 990 recently became TSN 990. With that change came the rights to the Canadiens games and a far closer relationship with the team. One with less insight on the reality of journalism today would expect this to foster more information to flow from the Canadiens to TSN 990 and then to the public. 

Nothing is more false.

Journalists at TSN 990 are caught in this uncomfortable paradox: their relationship with the team obliges them to act with far more prudence, caution and even retenue. Adventurous reporting may ruffle some coprporate feathers and so scoops that can hurt the team create tension between both groups.

When Marinaro reported on the state of Markov's knee and the type of discussions that occurred between the team and the all-star defenceman's camp, the Habs were infuriated. The truth is a dangerous thing to an organization that guards information as if it were a state secret.

Marinaro stands to lose everything he's built if he started reporting recklessly. You can disagree with his opinions, you can take exception with his style that some have come to brand as arrogant, but you cannot say that Tony Marinaro is in the business of tabloid fodder. He has always held himself to a better standard. His success story is built on effort and hard work. There are no shortcuts. 

The fabrication of a story is everything that Tony is not. If the story isn't there, he won't report on it. When it is, contract with the Canadiens or not, Marinaro will break the story. And that's the way it needs to be.

The tentacles corporations have grown into the freedom of the press are stifling reminders that the news is often times only news when it's allowed to break. Special interests have swayed the social discourse in a way that makes it harder to engage in open, honest and meaningful dialogue. 

Marinaro works in a field that is different from the one in which Tevan, Blackman and Fisher toiled. Access to information, to the players is guarded in ways that dent the purpose of reporting. Red Fisher once told me the players, who are now coached by the team to speak with the media, have become robotic distributors of clichés.

To stay relevant, Marinaro has had to work against this grain and look hard for stories that years ago were easier to discover. That means a world of undisclosable sources, more nebulous ties to the facts and reporting that at times seems far fetched. But Marinaro is not in the business of far fetched reporting. He has spent hours creating contacts who want to speak to him because they can rely on him to report the story faithfully.  He doesn't spin the rumour mill, he breaks the news when it's there.

Again, the fact is, Marinaro is in the business of fact. 

The news he broke yesterday is sensitive. It's sensitive to the team and it puts everything a journalist lives and breathes with at risk: his credibility.

Marinaro has worked far too hard to expose himself that way on a story most of us knew would be in the makings sooner or later. Add to the mix the construct of the relationship he has with the Canadiens and his honest and grinding efforts to get to where he is today and you're left with a simple reality: nothing suggests Marinaro is wrong in reporting Gauthier has been all but replaced.

         

BLOGGER EVIDENTLY DESPISES EVERYTHING BUT GHANA

So you may have noticed that we're having some trouble with the site. We are hoping for a late period surge but we may trade the pkists to Wordpress before the deadline.

The posts before the previous blogs are there, just in the older posts a clic away.

More to come as we try to resolve this issue. For now let's just say our blog has a lower body injury.

Special Morning Bell: African Nation Leapfrogs over Habs

EASTERN
Rank	Team	GP	W	L	OT	PTS	GF	GA	Home	Away	Last 10	Streak
1	NY Rangers	58	38	15	5	81	161	118	19-7-2	19-8-3	7-3-0	Lost 1
2	Boston	58	36	20	2	74	194	134	18-10-2	18-10-0	4-6-0	Won 1
3	Winnipeg	63	30	26	7	67	161	178	19-9-3	11-17-4	6-3-1	Won 1
4	New Jersey	59	35	20	4	74	168	162	16-10-3	19-10-1	8-1-1	Won 4
5	Philadelphia	60	33	20	7	73	198	183	14-10-5	19-10-2	3-6-1	Lost 1
6	Pittsburgh	60	34	21	5	73	186	160	18-8-2	16-13-3	5-4-1	Won 1
7	Ottawa	62	32	22	8	72	190	185	16-11-3	16-11-5	5-3-2	Won 4
8	Florida	59	27	20	12	66	146	165	14-8-8	13-12-4	4-5-1	OT 1
9	Toronto	61	29	25	7	65	182	186	16-10-5	13-15-2	3-6-1	Lost 1
10	Washington	60	29	26	5	63	161	173	19-8-2	10-18-3	3-6-1	Lost 3
11	Tampa Bay	60	27	27	6	60	169	201	18-9-2	9-18-4	5-4-1	Lost 1
12	Buffalo	60	26	27	7	59	150	176	15-11-7	11-16-0	5-3-2	Won 2
13	NY Islanders	60	25	27	8	58	140	176	13-14-5	12-13-3	4-5-1	Lost 2
14	Carolina	61	23	26	12	58	160	184	16-12-4	7-14-8	5-2-3	OT 1
15	Ghana	61	24	27	10	58	161	167	11-14-8	13-13-2	5-4-1	Lost 2

16	Montreal	62	24	28	10	58	161	171	11-14-8	13-14-2	5-4-1	Lost 3