A simple request to the NHL on draft day

Dear Gary Bettman,

While I know you're brilliant and always have this league firing on all cylinders, here's a crazy idea you may want to try on draft weekend.

At the beginning of the draft, you go up to the podium and announce that you checked with all 30 teams, and they would all like to a.) thank Ottawa for hosting, and b.) congratulate the Detroit Red Wings for winning the Stanley Cup.

Then when it's their turn, tell the teams to just skip the preamble, make their freaking picks and get the hell off the stage.

We could get this whole thing done in an hour.

Hey Caps fan: Scoreboard

A quick observation from five days spent just outside of Washington, DC...

Total Capitals' logos spotted: zero. Not a one. Not on a fan, not on a bumper sticker, not hanging in a store window. Nothing. Even after Ovechkin's big night on Thursday, the Caps have zero summertime presence around here that I can see.

Total Maple Leafs' logos spotted: about a thousand. That number breaks down like this: one on my infant daughter's shirt, and the rest on ads for The Love Guru. That damn movie is everywhere. We were at the local mall today and its covered floor to ceiling in posters, cutouts and murals, and they all feature the Leafs logo.

Now I'm as big a Leaf fan as there is, but even I have to wonder about that strategy. My gut tells me that if you have a Maple Leafs logo in your movie, and you have Jessica Alba in your movie... you might want to go with a little extra Alba on the posters. Just saying.

Anyways, as best I can tell this is the Leafs first post-season road win in four years. The Ron Wilson era is already paying off.

They'd better be right

Hello from Washington DC.

Since I'm on the road, postings over the next week will be sparse. I'm not even going to have a chance to write my rebuttal to Steve at hockeyanalysis.com, explaining why he's wrong about the Leafs benching Darcy Tucker. (Short version: they have the right to ask him to waive and they have the right to buy him out, but benching him as punishment for wanting to honor his contract goes too far, is beneath the franchise and sends a terrible message for future negotiations). All in all this is probably a good thing since Steve is about 300% smarter than me and would probably respond with the intellectual equivalent of the Clark-Mackey fight.

But I do want to touch on the Fletcher announcement.

Basically, the cards are on the table now. Talking to Nonis was a hint. Hiring Wilson was a giveaway. But this seals it: The Leafs Plan A is Brian Burke, and there is no Plan B.

Well, that may not be totally true. Plan A is to put so much pressure on the Ducks that they get Burke this summer. Plan B is to get him next summer. But all roads lead to Burke right now, or they lead nowhere.

So my opinion is: They better be right.

If Brian Burke ends up being the next Leafs GM, then all of this will have made sense. The Leafs are often accused of not having a plan, but they clearly have one here. And they're executing it, even as the media screams and Gary Bettman stews.

But it has to work, because if it doesn't they'll be laughingstocks. Again. If you click over to TSN.ca one day and see that Brian Burke has signed an extension in Anaheim, then this whole process will have been a disaster.

So will it work? I have no idea. But I'm betting that Peddie, Fletcher and Kirke do. They must know something that the rest of us don't. They must feel like they can risk their credibility (well, at least in the case of Fletcher and Kirke, who still have some) on a roll of the dice. They must know that Burke is on his way, and that the plan is a sure thing.

They'd better be sure. This franchise, from ownership to management to coaches to players, has had five years of wrong answers to just about every important question that's come along.

They need to be right this time.

Richard Zednik thinks this is the cut throat move of the year

TSN is reporting that CTV and TSN have snapped up the rights to the Hockey Night in Canada theme song. Or, as it's apprently known now, "The Hockey Song".

This will no doubt come as a great shock to the blathering morons who had predicted that this was all a smokescreen and the song would remain on CBC.

Enough with the Hockey Night in Canada theme song controversy

I tried to stay away from this, but we're on Day Three of the nation-wide HNIC Theme Song Death Watch.

Folks, it's all a hoax. It's a contract negotiation, and both sides are playing the public to try to gain an edge. That's it.

Here's how it will play out: The CBC will claim the deal is dead and the composer's lawyers will say the same thing. CBC will stall long enough to get to launch its American Idol ripoff to find a new theme. Nobody will watch, everyone will say all the new songs suck, and a few weeks before the season there will be a shocking announcement that the two sides have reached a deal after all. The song contest winner will get played during intermission a few times, and then all of this will be forgotten.

Remember when Ron MacLean was absolutely, positively 100% not coming back? Hockey fans debated that for a week. And then the season started, and there he was. Same deal here.

When HNIC debuts this fall, the familiar theme song will be there¹. Absolutely guaranteed. So settle down.

¹This prediction is brought to you by the fine folks behind "Mats Sundin is just saying what we want to hear, of course he'll waive his no-trade clause at the deadline."