The game: New Jersey vs. Vancouver.
Why I chose it: It's Olympians Brodeur and Luongo at opposite ends of the rink. What other reason do you need?
In my case the other reason is Zach Parise: But mini bummer alert...he's down with a knee injury.
Alas it's not the luckiest of weeks for NHL superstars, therefore: I'm giving the Pens a break. Jordan Staal, mere days before his anticipated return from a gruesome foot infection, is now out with a broken hand. Talk about a bad break...quite literally and otherwise. On the other hand the team has several league leaders in hits, points and goals-against-average, and is known for stepping up when one of their own goes down. All the more reason to wish them well and mark the calendar for Staal's triumphant return later this season.
And I'm not the only fan of Portland Winterhawk Ian Curtis: oregonlive.com has been kind enough to welcome me into the community blog space that I now share with Dylan Bumbarger. Dylan's posted a really cool piece about Ian's contribution to the Winterhawks while he played out here: http://tinyurl.com/26e7kpr.
The New Year's Eve game to which Dylan refers is my favorite local sports moment ever. And it's definitely in my top three sports moments of all time. Period. No exceptions. We will be watching and waiting to see where Ian lands. If it doesn't involve an organization whose name ends in HL, maybe it's all just a sign...like say, he should go be a rock star (see previous entry).
Ok, I guess I'll try to understand the CBA, seeing as how I don't have anything else to do tonight: 11.15, Default. If a Club defaults in the payment of any compensation to the Player provided for in his SPC or fails to perform any other obligation under his SPC, the Player may, by notice in writing to the Club and to the League and the NHLPA, specify the nature of any and all defaults and thereafter: I didn't quite get all the "thereafters" but as far as I can tell, if the Club and the League can't figure out how to pay you because they agreed to pay you some huge amount of money like...say...$100 million over several decades...and it didn't quite go according to plan because they couldn't put butts in seats and make back the money...you're screwed.
Morals of the story:
The game: Just because they're supposed to pay you more money than God on paper, doesn't mean they will. Get an entourage my little rookies, and include in it an accountant, a lawyer and another lawyer in case the first one turns out to be an asshole. You'll thank me later.
Life: This rule is proof that even huge, organized, professional sports in America can get in over their heads financially and default on basic things like player salaries. But this is America, after all, where we can just vote to have Congress bail us out of our next big mistake that we won't have to worry about because it will be paid off by several future generations to come. Forget the default rule. In life, we need the almost default rule, in which our bank machine goes off like a car alarm if we even attempt to go up and withdraw a cash amount that leaves us with just enough to get to the next paycheck. And if we try to use a credit card because we don't have enough to cover it with cash, a huge crane should just fall out of the sky no matter where we are and snatch it right out of our hands.
Next up: Article 12, Salary Arbitration.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment