HLOG Suckitude Fantasy Draft

Shit. I forgot to do the HLOG suckitude league draft/had other reasons not to be around for it, and I pretty much got a fantasy dream team. Unfortunately that was the opposite of what I was trying to achieve.
This is what Autodraft gave me:

Team Non-Domination
Round Pick Player Position
1.) 8 Dany Heatley RW
2.) 9 Roberto Luongo G
3.) 24 Evgeni Malkin LW
4.) 25 Alexander Ovechkin LW
5.) 40 Jaromir Jagr RW
6.) 41 Jason Spezza C
7.) 56 Vincent Lecavalier C
8.) 57 Dominik Hasek G
9.) 72 Chris Pronger D
10.) 73 Ryan Whitney D
11.) 88 Henrik Lundqvist G
12.) 89 Dan Boyle D
13.) 104 Philippe Boucher D

Whoops. My first matchup appears to be against HG. My money's on her.

Shoot Me in the Face

Just when I thought I couldn't hate the Ducks any more...it turns out that I can.

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/news_story/?ID=219404&hubname=

This is only going to up the press coverage that smug asshole gets. Anaheim had better hope that Lauren Pronger doesn't get a bug up her ass and decide that she hates California, or else they will lose two captains in two years. Not gonna lie, I almost hope she does.

On another note, does this signal that Scott Niedermayer isn't coming back?

Suisse

Have you evert wondered why Switzerland writes Suisse on their sweaters instead of Schweitz when 2/3 of the population is German speaking (I should say, speaks German as a primary language)? Just me? Ok. Well in case you were secretly wondering, or are ever on some trivia-type game show, here's why.
I emailed the IIHF to ask them why this is, and they referred me to Karin Hoerhager, who works for the Swiss Ice Hockey Association. Here is what she said: "In the history of the Olympics the short form for Switzerland has always been SUI, that's why on every Swiss uniform (skiing, swimming etc.) you'll find Suisse instead of Swiss or Schweiz. I cannot tell you why exactly they chose to do that but over the years it has just become a rule."
The culture of Switzerland facinates me due to their intense multilingualism, and everyone I was told to email was really nice about sending quick and polite responses. I wish everyone were as nice as random people from Europe when you show interest in their team. I'm also pleased when I find that I can write Swiss German almost as fluently as I can speak it.

Things are starting to look good

Well, after their stomping on Tuesday night, the Wild have decided to get it together. Two more wins under their belt, and the kids are starting to get sent down. Much as I like getting to see them play, to me seeing the regulars in the lineup makes me think the season is really getting here.

To celebrate that fact, I made a hockey corner in my room using the pennents for all the NHL teams, and also some posters, pictures, and newspaper clippings. I'll decorate more later, but it's early in the school year and I'm already getting dumped on.

It's not much, and my camera is kind of fuzzy (or maybe I'm the fuzzy one), but it makes me smile.

The picture in the far left corner is of Boogaard looming over Chelios. That is definitely my favorite part of the wall.

Also, I'd like to send a big thank you out to Teebz for sending me a beautiful copy of the Heritage Classic game. I finally got a chance to watch it last night, and it's awesome! Thank you so much, Teebz!

Ooops

Well, that first preseason game didn't go so well for the Wild, but Wes Walz was a very speedy bright spot. He played like a man posessed. Boogaard managed to get himself into trouble, and Lemaire and MacT wore pretty much the same expression all night. Osgood was super lucky tonight. I can't even believe how much the Hockey Gods smiled on him.

Congrats, Steph. You have won this time, but there is a rematch on Thursday!

TSN Season Previews

TSN has their season previews up!
Here is the one for the Wild: http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/feature/?fid=11200
My own season preview will hopefully be up soon.
Margee is doing a season Squee-view, so besure and stop by SportSquee and let her know who the MVSquees are of your team!

Training camp is finally here!

The Wild don't have a preseason game until Tuesday against the Dead Wings, but training camp has started! Technically it started yesterday, but whatever. I was busy/tired yesterday. Apparently Dominic Moore played well yesterday. From what I can tell (there are probably more that I'm not aware of...), the following players are in camp:
Center:
Wes Walz
Eric Belanger
Peter Olvecky
Somebody Fiala (I have never heard of him)
Pavol Demitra
James Sheppard
Serge Payer
Mikko Koivu
Dominic Moore
Steve Kelly

Left Wing:
Brian Rolston
Benoit Pouliot
Matt Kassian
Aaron Voros
Somebody Graham (yet again, I have no idea who this dude is)
Petr Kalus
Roman Voloshenko
Colton Gillies
Ryan Hamilton
Branko Radivojivic
Morten Madsen
Derek Boogaard
Somebody Hirsch

Right Wing:
Pierre-Marc Bouchard
Matt Foy
Cal Clutterbuck
Somebody Gutierrez (Yep, don't know him either, but maybe he is the one from Alaska that my mom was talking about?)
Marian Gaborik
Stephane Veilleux
Joel Ward
Mark Parrish
Danny Irmen
A. Foster ( I want to say it's Aaron, but I'm not sure.)

Defence:
Nick Schultz
Kim Johnsson
Keith Carney
Brent Burns
Shawn Belle
A.J. Thelen (Gross, I thought we were done with him)
Andre Lakos
Paul Albers
Clayton Stoner (YAY! I am pleased to see that he's healthy this season)
Sean Hill
Kurtis Foster
Martin Skoula
Petteri Nummelin
Eric Reitz
John Scott
Somebody Noreau (damn, another one that I don't know.)

Goal:
Josh Harding
Niklas Backstrom

Ok, so now that I feel like a bad fan for not knowing who half of these guys are, I will mention that I think there are only something like two roster spots up for grabs. Wonder who will get them? If I had watched the prospects tournament last week, I would probably have a better clue, but last week was crazy. I suppose I could go through and review what happened, but that's almost more time comsuming than going to the website and looking them up, googling, or asking people. I'm pretty sure we got 4th place in the tournament.
Sounds like Sheppard and Moore are currently in the top positions as far as making the team this year, but Ward might, and people in Minnesota think Irmen might, and they are pulling for him to do so (go GOPHERS!). Matt Foy almost made the team a couple of years back, makes me wonder what happened to him? Pouliot is always mentioned, but I don't think he's ready for the big show yet.
I appologize for not really knowing what's going on, I am still searching for efficient and effective ways to keep tabs on these things from the west coast. Games are easy, prospects are another thing.

Fantasy Hockey

So the HLOG league I'm in drafted today. Here is who I got:
C-Joe Sakic
C-Chris Drury
LW-Rick Nash
LW-Wojtek Wolski
LW-Clarke MacArthur
RW-Brian Gionta
RW-Ales Hemsky
RW-Brian Rolston
D-Niklas Lidstrom
D-Zdeno Chara
D-Brett Clark
D-Mike Commodore
D-Tom Poti
G-Niklas Backstrom
G-Vesa Toskala
G-Josh Harding
I'm pretty stoked about Lidstrom especially. I couldn't decide what do to about Niedermayer. I didn't want to get screwed over, so in the end I decided against him. MacArthur is finally getting to play with the big club. I love his style and have followed him since his junior days, so I really hope he does well. Sakic will hopefully continue to be ageless, and I'm hoping for a repeat performance from Backstrom. Should be a decent team, I'll have to see. I'm up against Sherry this week, and she has Spezza, Alfredsson, is a hoser and took Boyle, and has my boy Parise.

Could be worse

I have been very outspoken about the fact that I did not like the loss of the green sweaters. Minnesota has always been associated with having green sweaters, that's just how it is. I still do not like the loss, but they didn't make the new sweater awful or anything, so I guess I should count my blessings. All they did was add weird piping to the third jersey and raise the price a whole bunch. They are now tremendously spendy, so I guess I can banish any thoughts of buying a sweater between now and the time that I get a job that pays extremely well. I'm kind of wondering why the Wild aren't special enough to have pictures of players modeling them for us. All the other teams get to...apparently our players weren't on hand, or are boycotting them.

In other news, Scott Niedermayer is still taking way, way too long to decide what he's going to do. He's either an attention whore, really indecisive, or just doesn't really care about the rest of the world since he lives in his own little happy, perfect world.

I redid the colors of the blog, just to mix it up a bit. I'm not sure if they look ok or not, since I don't really have a creative eye...hence the science major.

Since I'm always bored at the end of the summer, I'm used to having to find things to do to amuse myself. Typically that means I overcommit myself at the beginning of the school year, and then once hockey starts I don't have time to follow it. Looks like I'm on that path again, but maybe I'll learn how to say no this year. On the other hand, my homework actually gets done at the beginning of the semester because I'm not blowing it off to watch hockey. (I can do my homework during playoff baseball no problem. There is definitely enough down time in baseball. Hockey, not so much.) If you have suggestions for things to keep the offseason rolling, please let me know.

Since the Wild aren't doing anything at the moment, I will just make do with the Twins. Seriously, the Wild have done almost NOTHING recently. Their news headlines have been the same for at least the last week.

Justin Morneau has been nominated for the Hank Aaron award again this season. I would strongly recommend voting for him...even if you don't vote for him, you can still win a free TV.
http://minnesota.twins.mlb.com/mlb/fan_forum/ha/y2007/index.jsp

Leeeeeewwwwwwww Ford is back with the Twins. After being demoted to their AAA affiliate, he is now part of the September call ups, and will be available to play tomorrow.
Source: Minnesota Twins

One last random note/warning: The Bombers lost to the Riders yesterday at the end of the game, so I'm pretty bitter about that. Several people got very, uh, annoyed responses this morning when they asked me over AIM how the game went. I would recommend giving it another day before attempting to discuss the game.