Civilized coffeehouses that offer a wide range of newspapers from all over the world are something you might find in Vienna, a hundred years ago (they even had special "newspaper waiters"!), but these days we have the Internet, often in coffeehouses.
Thus, this article from the exotic and faraway Toronto Globe and Mail:
The sense is that Kovalchuk wants to get close to the maximum allowed under the current collective bargaining agreement, which is 20 per cent of the ($56.8-million) salary cap – or a salary in the $11-million annual range, which would make him the highest-paid player in the game.
Is he worth it? No.
There is much to like about Kovalchuk – and in a different market, his personality might shine almost as Ovechkin’s level. For sure, his English is better; and he seems like a thoughtful individual; and wouldn’t Russia’s Continental Hockey League welcome him into the fold, if he were ever the prodigal son, returning home?
Theoretically, Kovalchuk could have an 11th-hour change of heart and sign with Atlanta before negotiations get past the point of no return, but if he doesn’t – and if the talks grind to a full stop – then the onus will be on general manager Don Waddell to maximize his return in a possible deal, in order to protect an organization that seems to be heading in the right direction.
Read the whole thing, draw your own conclusions, blah blah blah, so on and so forth, it's too icy to do Internet posting. My computer might hydroplane.
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4 comments:
On one hand, he (Duhatschek) is 100% correct; on the other, since he is a Bitter Hockey Queen of the Toronto media, if the Leafs got Ilya, he'd turn cartwheels...
I generally ignore what Canadian pundits write about the Thrashers. My reasoning is not that I feel targeted by them, though it certainly can seem at times as though there were trying to bring about the demise of sunbelt teams simply by having everybody and their brother write bad things or less than sparkly things about said sunbelt teams. Sometimes someone needs to call a team out even if we as sunbelt fans don't want to hear it, and they certainly know how to do that.
For the sake of my point, Ill use baseball as the sport of comparison. I generally ignore Canadian hockey media and bloggers because one rarely finds a sunbelt baseball pundit marrying a sunbelt team to a Canadian team in a one-of-us-will-not-survive-this type of trade involving the marquee player of the Canadian team, where baseball will never overtake hockey. The reason for this is usually that the baseball pundits just are not as familiar with the Canadian team, and as such, really have no business speaking as an authority on the matter of the Canadian marquee player.
So it kinda irritates me a little bit when a Canadian writer dons a very patronizing tone and speaks as an authority on a situation about which they almost always are not be a genuine authority. Speculation is fine. Hell, I enjoy speculating as much as or more than almost anybody. Its a fun way to pass the time. But pretending to be the genuine article and sees-all-knows-all regarding the situation is very improprietous of the media writer/blogger as a media writer/blogger.
Mutton S.-
Well-said, and I agree. If you scan the archives you'll find that this blog has always been hard on condescending Canuckledragger journalists; I was just passing along this article because...well, because I was running on empty.
All you say is exactly right, though.
Ha! Canuckledragger! Hadn't heard that one before. Ill remember it.
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