Feb 22

40 Blogs in 40 Days

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While I may not be given a VIP pass to the Vatican, I was still baptized Catholic. When this post goes live it will officially be the beginning of Lent.

Every year, I like to give up something. This isn’t because of any sort of religious conviction, but I think that self-denial is a valuable and important thing to do every so often. This isn’t out of any great religious need, but rather I think it’s good to test yourself every so often.

In the past I gave up swearing, drinking, and pop. I consider coffee, beer, laziness, and some other things, but as you can probably tell from the title, I settled on one thing. I am giving up excuses for not blogging. I like it, I should do it, right?

I did a “Daily Post” thing a few years ago, even if it wasn’t nearly so long. This can’t be much harder I suppose. So for all of Lent I will be posting every day either here or on my own personal site Glen Thoughts. Of course astute readers will notice that Easter is 46 Days away, so like the Lord I’ll take Sundays off.

I have lots of plans here, but lots more should just flow, either way it should be fun!

1 Down, 39 to Go

Feb 18

Wrestlemania 28: Predicting the Card Six Weeks in Advance

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In six short weeks we’ll see the matchup of a generation. In six short weeks the greatest streak in sports entertainment gets put on the line. In six short weeks the “best in the world” debate can come to an end.

But what else is going to happen?

Here is the first of a few attempts of mine to predict the card for the grand event. One match has been set, with the booking of Taker-Triple H and Punk-Jericho a mere formality. This leaves some really interesting possibilities for the likes of Sheamus, Daniel Bryan, Dolph Ziggler, Cody Rhodes, Kane, Big Show and lots more. Left to my best guesses, I think it may just end up like this…

Matches are in order that I think they will happen

Dark Match: WWE Tag Team Title Match: Hunico and Epico (c) vs. Justin Gabriel and Ted Dibiase

Gabriel and Dibiase could be a fun tag team and this could be a fun match to get the crowd going. Maybe it could be a Lumberjack Match to make sure that everyone gets a spot on the card. As much as I would love to see the Tag Titles on the main show, I think that Evan Bourne’s suspension made that highly unlikely.

Fireworks! Explosions! God Bless America!

R-Truth vs. The Miz

I love the symmetry of The Miz going from opening the card to closing it back to opening it in the past three events. Hopefully they can keep this feud going six more weeks and let them blow it off here. I think that these two could be a fun choice to open the show up as they are both over enough. I would put money on Truth winning, given the heat that is rumoured to be on The Miz.

Cody Rhodes vs. Wade Barrett vs. Christian vs. Alberto Del Rio
Kofi Kingston vs. Jack Swagger vs. Mark Henry vs. Santino Marella
Money in the Bank Ladder Match

I am so thrilled to see this match come back to the Grandest Stage of Them All, where it truly belongs. The dual-briefcase was a strange scenario, and was starting to burn the concept out a bit. This field comprises of all the guys I couldn’t find room for elsewhere. I put them in order of preferred winners. That’s right, I would love to see Cody Rhodes win the briefcase and go around running his mouth about being the third man in history to hold both a World Title and the Intercontinental Title. What’s better – he should cash it in successfully while he’s still holding the secondary title. I know that there were rumours of Cody feuding with Goldust at Mania, but I just don’t see that putting buts in the seats, maybe they can have a feud after the event. I know that this match is way too heavy on the heels, but I think that Henry is going to be a face soon, which should help balance things out a bit. I don’t have Rey Mysterio in here since I am not certain that he’ll be back in time, but he could replace Santino Marella or someone else easily.

Mick Foley vs. Dolph Ziggler
No DQ Match

 Like everyone else, I got really excited at the thought of this showdown when they had their promo duel before the Rumble. Hopefully they bring Foley back into the fold and let him put over the next hot heel like he did for Edge and Orton before him.

Daniel Bryan (c) vs. Sheamus vs. Randy Orton
World Title Match

This may feel like an odd placement, but with the other huge matches, we may want to separate it from the likes of Triple H-Undertaker and of course Rock-Cena.

We haven’t had a Triple Threat match at Wrestlemania in a few years, and this seems like as good of one as any to make happen. This of course assumes that Orton will recover from his concussion, which I think that he will. The fact that he missed out on his Elimination Chamber spot is great for the storyline here. He gets a clear claim to a title match, which can help set up this showdown. I’d like to see Sheamus win cleanly here, but I wouldn’t be upset to see any of these three guys standing tall at the end.

 Big Show vs. Shaquille O’Neal

Probably the worst kept secret in the industry. This match has the potential to be on of the more entertaining and fun celebrity matches ever. The build up and intrigue could really help sell some tickets. I kind of want to see a tag match involving Show teaming with Kane to take on Shaq and a face Mark Henry, but a one-on-one match against a recognizable star like Show is probably the best way to spike the buy rate.

 Zack Ryder vs. Kane

As I mentioned yesterday, if the current nonsense with Ryder doesn’t lead to a match against Kane at Wrestlemania, then it’s a waste of everyone’s time. Ryder is a perfect plucky underdog, and Kane is a great monster for him to go up against. The WWE had plans to break the record for most masks worn at a single event, and with Rey Mysterio and Sin Cara both missing in action, Kane is the next most logical choice to focus on. Maybe they could have Ryder get the crowd to wear these masks to throw Kane off. Long Island Iced Z would be great to hype this record attempt as it really plays into his interactive nature.

This match is somewhere in a cool down spot after some big time matches and before things kick it to overdrive with the big matches.

Triple H vs. The Undertaker
Special Guest Referee: Shawn Michaels

As I said yesterday, this is a match that I’m getting very excited for. Despite both of their ages, they gave a great match last year. Sure it looked a bit like a video game at the end with the power move, two-count, lather, rinse, repeat set that they had going on at the end, but I am confident that they can repeat it here. Hopefully Taker goes 20-0 to set up a huge match next year against John Cena.

Beth Phoenix, Kharma and the Bella Twins
vs.
Kelly Kelly, Eve, Alicia Fox, and Tamina Snuka
Eight Diva Tag

 This diva’s match is given the clear death spot on the card. I know that the big match is going to be Beth-Kharma, but if we can’t give it the time it needs it is best to not do it. They could work effectively as partners here before getting into a fight after a loss, setting up a huge match at Extreme Rules. This also gets all the Diva’s on the card, which seems to be a priority for this event

Chris Jericho (c) vs. CM Punk
WWE Title Match

 In many ways this match is the anti Rock-Cena, two men of different generations who truly believe that they are the best in the world (at what they do). This match will be an absolute delight for fans and I believe that Punk will stand tall at the end of this one. I do have Jericho heading into the match as Champ as I think that he’ll leave the Elimination Chamber with the belt, but it’s not required. Also note: I’m writing this before the Chamber takes place, so maybe something will change here.

The Rock vs. John Cena

 This match is so exciting and I for one can’t wait to see it happen. This is the Hogan-Rock for a new generation. A decade Hogan did the right thing and laid down for the top star of the new generation and I hope that Rock does the same thing here.

So that’s ten matches, which is as many as they had at Wrestlemania XXVI but two more than they had last year. Maybe Foley can take the night off, or either of the lower card singles matches could be cancelled and the Money in the Bank could be either modified or expanded.

What about everyone else, do you want a card like this?

Feb 17

Weekly Plus/Minus: Rick Nash Trade Talk, Triple H-Shawn Michaels Segment, Evgeni Malkin Dominance, The Detroit Red Wings Streak, Kane Ridiculousness, Leafs Trade Rumours, and More!!

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Welcome to the first in a weekly feature here at Bladejobs of Steel! The premise of the Weekly Plus/Minus is pretty simple. Highlight some people or groups in the hockey and wrestling world who have had great weeks, and some who have had not so great weeks.

Triple H and Shawn Michaels: These two flat out delivered on the microphone this past Monday night. When the rumours started to swirl that the WWE was planning on doing HHH-Taker III at Mania, I was very underwhelmed. I was really hoping for Triple H to go one-on-one with The Miz and Taker to face either Chris Jericho, or an young up-and-comer like Sheamus or Wade Barrett.  But as the weeks went on I grew to accept the showdown between two franchise cornerstones. This week though, I bought it. I’m damn excited for this match now. Triple H was fully believable in his respect for The Streak, and it’s impact on the bottom line, while Shawn was right in calling him out on it.  Taker’s video appearance was great as usual, and I can’t wait to see them all stand in the same ring. I hope that everyone in the business was watching this past Monday, as they gave a true lesson in hype. Not only am I excited to see the inevitable showdown now, but also I’m even more intrigued on how exactly they will get there.

Hey, speaking of streaks…

Red Wings Haters: This week the Detroit Red Wings won at home for a stunning 21st straight time, passing the 1929-30 Bruins and the 75-76 Flyers to set a new NHL Record. As they approached you could hear the haters start to add asterisks to this mark as they won three of those games in Overtime and one in the Shootout. The Flyers did not have the benefit of the extra period while neither team had the benefit of the regular season skills competition. This attempt to disregard the truly remarkable feat of the Red Wings is just plain sad. While I have tended to root against the Red Wings, it’s foolish to not be in flat out awe of their accomplishments this year. It’s flat out impossible to stack up teams across different eras, as the game evolves and rules change over time. It’s not the Red Wings fault that there is a shootout, so to try to hold that over their head is flat out wrong. If anything, the current streak of the Red Wings is more impressive now in the Age of Parity that the Salary Cap has given us. Remember the Flyers were playing in a time when the NHL had just tripled in size in a very short amount of time, so there were some pretty terrible, watered-down teams. Shall we put an asterisk on them too?

Evgeni Malkin, Mega Beast: I honestly feel like Evgeni Malkin is the most underrated player in the world. Sure he’s an All-Star, sure he’s won a Conn Smythe, but he’s never in conversation with the Crosby’s, the Ovechkin’s, the Sedin’s, or the Toews’s’s’s’s’s as the best in the world. On Sunday, Malkin had five points in a game for the third times this year and he’s really separating himself from the rest of the pack in the scoring race. The first few months had everyone strapping their cart to Kessel, Giroux, Stamkos, or one of the Sedins to win the scoring title, and now there is very little question as to who will be the winner. Sure he doesn’t have the good looks of a Crosby or Sedin, and he doesn’t have the personality of an Ovechkin or Kane, but he’s getting it done. If he wins the Art Ross he’ll be the first two-time winner since Jagr won his last one in 2001. No matter how much you may love your own favourite star, it’s time to acknowledge that it’s Evgeni’s world and we’re all just living in it.

Kane, Ryder, and Cena: This Kane-Cena feud sounded great in theory. It gives Cena a big name to kill time feuding with until he gets ready to face The Rock. The “Embrace the Hate” idea sounded like it could be interesting and could lead us down some interesting paths. Instead, it has failed in every conceivable way.  The cheesiness involving Zack Ryder, Eve, and the return of Kane’s evil magic has made for some of the least compelling TV in recent months, and that’s saying something. This has really done a lot of damage to Zack Ryder, distracted Kane from a simple Monster Feud with Mark Henry, and has not done anything to get me more excited to see Rock-Cena. If we don’t get a Ryder-Kane grudge match at Wrestlemania then the WWE may have another Hurricane Helms in ’03 on their hands.

The Columbus Blue Jackets:  With the rumours swirling about them deciding to trade the Face of the Franchise (Trademark: Smyth, Ryan 2007), they did something no one else has done this year. They added intrigue to an otherwise dull trade season. I don’t want to watch Bob McKenzie and Darren Dreger talk about who will win the Hal Gill or Travis Moen sweepstakes; I want them to talk about stars. I want to see exactly who will pony up what for a truly elite talent in this league. The Blue Jackets massively overestimated their team this year and it quite obviously has blown up in their faces. If they can get some real, tangible assets for Nash, and possibly Carter, then they can seriously fast track their rebuild, which will help this team out tremendously long term.

This segues nicely to…

Maple Leafs Trade Rumours: Let me get this out of the way first, I’m a Sens fan, so perhaps I’m a tad biased here. But  do the Leafs have some sort of a clause in their league contract that requires them to be in every single trade rumour? Toronto does not have anywhere close to the assets to get Rick Nash, they just don’t. Schenn, Kadri, and Kulemin is a decent start, but it doesn’t compare to the offers that the Jackets are no doubt going to field. Also, Rick Nash has a No Movement Clause, if you were he would you want to go to Toronto? He’s spent his entire career in relative anonymity on a losing team. Why would he want to be in the supreme spotlight on a losing team? Sure the Leafs are trending upwards, but they are a long way from being a true contender. Nash wants to win, and he wants to win now. Toronto is not the place for that to happen. Besides, Nash hasn’t found the connection with Carter, a fellow sniper, would he really find it with Kessel? In my own personal opinion, I think that he’ll end up in LA, Boston, or New York, although I would kill to see him go to Pittsburgh.

 

Prediction for Next Week: Jericho leaves the Chamber with the WWE Title after not spending anytime in the match with Punk.

Feb 15

NHL Realignment: A Modest (10 Division) Proposal – Fear and Relocating in Las Vegas (Part III)

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My last post in this series I looked at the hopes and joys of Canadians, this time we’ll look at their nightmare scenario, the Coyotes move to Las Vegas or even worse, stay in Phoenix. All of this through the eye of a radical paradigm shift. Instead of having each Conference have three divisions of five, each Conference will get five divisions of three.

A team in Las Vegas gives us some tough questions on the West Coast. Clearly they would want to get placed with the two LA Area teams, given their geographic proximity. Sadly, this would have to split the Sharks away from their cross-state rivals. While this may seem strange, remember California is a very big state and LA is about 100km closer to Vegas than the Bay Area. Also, this would no doubt help the new market in Sin City establish itself.

This would leave the Sharks to join the Canucks and Avalanche, their next two closest teams, which would let the rest of the West shape up as follows:

After looking at different possibilities for the Eastern Conference in previous posts, I think I like this one the best, it gives every team 1-2 rivals and lumps Columbus in with the two strong Ontario markets — plus it leaves the option for their potential relocation to Hamilton/Toronto. I guess looking at it I could be open for a swap of Ottawa and Buffalo, but as a Sens fan I want a chance to beat Toronto year after year, until the playoffs.

I’m a huge fan of the Central Division as it plays off of the NFL and MLB where Detroit, Chicago, and Minnesota all share divisions. We would just need the NBA to stop considering Minnesota close to Portland and Salt Lake City and we could be set.

Now should the unthinkable happen and the Coyotes stay in Phoenix, things could be pretty different. The California teams could stick together, same with the Western Canadian teams. This would lump Phoenix in with Colorado and Dallas in an all-relocated-in-the-90s division. Winnipeg and Minnesota would get lumped in with St. Louis, leaving Detroit-Chicago-Nashville as a very fun and highly competitive trio.

For the visual learners in the audience it would look like this…

From last time you’ll remember…

Schedule and Playoffs

The playoffs are pretty easy here, division leaders all make the playoffs, plus the next three best teams. With five divisions, we really don’t need them to be given the top seeds, but a guaranteed playoff spot is good. Since the divisions are so small geographically, the local networks that would have a much higher chance of covering the playoffs.

As for a schedule, I would set it up as follows:

- 8 games against 2 divisional opponents for 16 games
- 3 games against 12 non-divisional in-conference opponents for 36 games (rotate the extra home game every year)
- 2 games against 15 non-conference opponents for 30 games

Lots of in-division games, fair schedule, lower travel time, teams like Detroit and Nashville don’t have to go to California and Western Canada twice a year, every year.

And that concludes this particular realignment series. I’ve got a few other ideas to bring up later on.  Personally I like this get up with a Seattle, Kansas, or Quebec City team, which seem to be the most likely anyway. Chances are we won’t be seeing this anytime, it’s a bit too radical, and you know the rules, the NHL doesn’t do anything until the NBA does it first!

Feb 13

NHL Realignment: A Modest (10 Division) Proposal — Part II

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Get ready Canadians, you are about to have a sportsgasm. In yesterday’s post, I looked at possible ten division alignments contingent on the Coyotes moving to either Seattle or Kansas. Today we will look at the possible alignments that could happen if the team moves to either Quebec City or Hamilton.

Should the ‘Yotes move to Quebec, it’s pretty obvious that they would lump in with Montreal and Boston, giving the Habs their obvious two rivals. This leaves Buffalo with the two Ontario squads, and the rest of the Eastern Conference to fall into place easily.

The Western Conference is slightly more complicated for a change. Chicago-Detroit-Columbus is a good Central Division, leaving a few choices for the other six Midwest Markets. Winnipeg and Minnesota are going to be partnered up leaving either Colorado or St. Louis to join them. I like the idea of a vertical Midwest Division, putting Colorado-Dallas-Nashville for the Southwest. You could switch St. Louis and Colorado around, but that looks familiar.

Alternatively we could have Detroit-Columbus-Nashville as the Central Division, Chicago-Minnesota-Winnipeg as the Midwest and St. Louis-Dallas-Colorado as the Southwest, but I am really opposed to a Wings-Hawks split, and Columbus is along for the ride.

Now should the former Blackberry CEO get his wish and the team moves from the Desert to the (Canadian) Steel City. My Southern-Ontarian-Heart is giddy at the thought of a Hamilton-Toronto-Ottawa, leaving Montreal-Boston-Buffalo to give us a rivalry rich trio.

Columbus gets booted away from Detroit and Chicago in favour of an old school Norris Division Triad. Columbus may not be “South” but it fits in fairly nicely with Nashville and Dallas, neither of which have strong historic rivalries, also one of them will be guarenteed to make the playoffs every year which will be good for two struggling and one developing market.

From last time you’ll remember…

Schedule and Playoffs

The playoffs are pretty easy here, division leaders all make the playoffs, plus the next three best teams. With five divisions, we really don’t need them to be given the top seeds, but a guaranteed playoff spot is good. Since the divisions are so small geographically, the local networks that would have a much higher chance of covering the playoffs.

As for a schedule, I would set it up as follows:

- 8 games against 2 divisional opponents for 16 games
- 3 games against 12 non-divisional in-conference opponents for 36 games (rotate the extra home game every year)
- 2 games against 15 non-conference opponents for 30 games

Lots of in-division games, fair schedule, lower travel time, teams like Detroit and Nashville don’t have to go to California and Western Canada twice a year, every year.

Now that we’ve looked at the Northwest, the Midwest, and the Great White North. Only one more stop for next time, Vegas Baby!

Feb 12

NHL Realignment: A Modest (10 Division) Proposal — Part I

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After examining all of the simple changes that could take place to the NHL Realignment based on the Coyotes moving, it’s time to look at breaking the paradigm a bit more.

Since 1998 the NHL has had six divisions, each composing of five teams, this came after expansion made the four divisions of six-seven teams model obsolete. This has led to some strange peculiarities like Dallas sharing a division with San Jose while Minnesota shares one with Vancouver, not to mention Winnipeg being joined with Tampa Bay.

The scenarios I looked at before were unable to completely fix these problems, hell the plan that the NHL pushed had the Florida teams listed as “Northeast”, which we can all laugh at for a moment or two. Maybe the five-team division model just doesn’t work with the current distribution of teams in the NHL, and maybe it never really did work.

In this post, we’ll look at inverting that model, instead of six divisions of five, let’s for for ten divisions of three. Clearly there needs to be an even number of divisions, keeping with the current set up of two Conferences— although five divisions of six can actually work nicely— maybe we’ll cover that one later.

Admittedly, I got this idea from Tom Fulery, who looked at this possibility with a Phoenix move to Quebec. I’ll take it one step further and examine the options depending on the Coyotes moving to Seattle, and Kansas in this post, with Quebec, Hamilton, Las Vegas, and Phoenix examined later on this week.

Should they move to Seattle, which I still think is the most likely scenario, obviously a Seattle team should share a division with Vancouver, so there are two teams covered. Geographically, the third team would either be San Jose or one of the Alberta teams, but both of them are probably taken. The Alberta teams should stay together, and so should the California teams, meaning their third team would most certainly be Colorado. This enables an All-California division, and a Winnipeg-Calgary-Edmonton option.

Letting the dominoes fall, it should end up like this.

I tried to keep the names as standard as possible, with the obvious need to add a few names, including “Empire” which I loved so much that I stole from Tom Fulery as well. The West was pretty easy to figure out and so was most of the East. Obviously Detroit could be moved East instead of Columbus with little need to readjust things. I considered an All-Eastern Canadian division, but Montreal would not want to lose Boston as a rival, so they were kept together, this necessitated Buffalo joining them or else the New York Metro teams would have to be split up. Clearly Columbus could benefit greatly from sharing a division with Toronto, and hey they may end up being the team that moves to Hamilton, so we can avoid the later headache now.

Another, more geographically incongruous option, was to have Toronto-Ottawa-Buffalo, Pittsburgh-Columbus-Philadelphia, then Montreal-Boston-Washington, but I would like to stay as logical as possible, while preserving as many traditional rivalries as we can.

The only real losers I see here are Colorado and St. Louis would both lose some of their stronger rivalries, the Pennsylvania teams would probably like to stay with the New York teams, but they get reunited with Washington which is probably a good thing. Also, the three Southeast teams are really missing any sort of marquee names, but the guarantee of at least one of them in the playoffs could really help sustain these markets.

Now what if we end up with the Kansas City Coyotes? Their obvious divisional opponents would be the cross-state St. Louis Blues. Looking around they are close to Chicago, Colorado, Minnesota, Nashville, and Dallas. As much as they would love to stay with the Hawks, it probably doesn’t make too much sense to take them away from Detroit, same with Nashville. The Avalanche and Wild probably need to join the Jets, leaving the otherwise isolated Stars to join the Missouri dominated division, making everything else look like this.

I tried playing around with an All-Eastern-Canadian Division, which led to a few more dominoes falling. I tried to focus on Geography, which leads to the New York City teams going with Boston — building off of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry, and the Devils going with the Flyers and the Capitals. The Pittsburgh-Columbus-Buffalo division is very geographically logical, but separates some big-time NHL rivalries. I guess we could get a Boston-Buffalo-Columbus division, which may make less people unhappy in the long run.

Schedule and Playoffs

The playoffs are pretty easy here, division leaders all make the playoffs, plus the next three best teams. With five divisions, we really don’t need them to be given the top seeds, but a guaranteed playoff spot is good. Since the divisions are so small geographically, the local networks that would have a much higher chance of covering the playoffs.

As for a schedule, I would set it up as follows:

- 8 games against 2 divisional opponents for 16 games
- 3 games against 12 non-divisional in-conference opponents for 36 games (rotate the extra home game every year)
- 2 games against 15 non-conference opponents for 30 games

Lots of in-division games, fair schedule, lower travel time, teams like Detroit and Nashville don’t have to go to California and Western Canada twice a year, every year.

Really, what’s not to like?

Feb 10

Chris Jericho, Ultimate Hipster

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Chris Jericho has never ceased to amaze me.  The man always knows how to adapts. More than anyone else in the wrestling business, Jericho adapts.

He first started to get big in WCW in the late 90s as the young, lion-hearted braggart. In 1999 the countdown ends and he shows up in the WWF. His act was more or less the same and got over like crazy — perhaps a bit too over — and he fell into the trap that so many effective heels have been caught with, he got cheered.

Jericho stayed the same smack talking young punk, but he started to feud with the likes of X-Pac, Kane, Angle, and best of all Stephanie McMahon

Jericho was able to run with this face run very effectively for a while until he ran afoul of The Rock, which was bound to get just about anyone booed in 2001. What made his heel turn at this time effective was that he sold out and allied with Stephanie McMahon in the build-up to Wrestlemania X-8. Sadly, their alliance ended far too early without any real breakup. I maintain that had he stayed on the same side as Stephanie in 2002 he could have been a truly legendary heel at this time.

Fast forward a few years and Chris Jericho leaves us in 2005. We missed him, hoped and prayed that he would come back, but he had other plans for a full two years.

He came back to “Save Us” in late 2007 and had a bit of a lackluster feud with Randy Orton and a feud that started out hot with JBL, which seemed to get derailed so that JBL could feud with Finlay over Hornswoggle.

But in the Spring and Summer of 2008 the former Ayatollah of Rock-and-Rollah throw Shawn Michaels through a television and really showed us how amazing he was. Jericho did something that few wrestlers seem to do these days when they turn heel; he changed his persona.

Jericho knew that if he stayed as the wise-cracking cocky son-of-a-gun, people would still cheer him, the wrestling landscape was so different than it had been back in the 90s. Chris Jericho took everything people liked about him, his grand entrances, his high-flying moves, his flashy get up, and his energizing promos, and he took them all away. He started to wear suits and talk slowly and deliberately, and it was simply amazing.

Of course, in the fall of 2010 he took another break and we wanted him back.

While he was gone, Jericho started to plant the seeds for his return. On Twitter he would complain about the likes of CM Punk and The Miz stealing things from him, which he referenced this past week in his great promo.

Jericho revealed his next great evolution. I think that he knew that if he came out as suit-wearing, slow-talking Jericho. More and more of us Internet wrestling fans seem to be filling WWE arenas, so Jericho, a long-time IWC darling needed to become something that he knew they would hate. He became a hipster.

Listen to his promo again. He was claiming to be wearing suits, saying he was the best in the world, and even having female managers in high places before anyone else did. He was ahead of the curve and everyone else is just trying to be like him, while (ironically?) wearing a vintage jacket. Dude may as well have complained about Arcade Fire getting a Grammy while wearing Toms shoes.

He knows that there is a huge backlash against hipsters, especially by hipsters. Wrestling fans on the internet love to complain about how much they loved Daniel Bryan when he Bryan Danielson or how they cheered for CM Punk before he sat cross legged on that memorable June night. Yet at the same time, we revile others for doing the same thing.

The truest villains always hold a mirror up to the world. We hate them because we hate some part of ourselves that we actually hate and Jericho is a master at this.

As usual, Jericho is finding new ways to be reviled, and the first impressions seem to be that it is working and I for one can’t be happier to hate my favourite wrestler of all time. I know he wouldn’t want it any other way.

Feb 09

NHL Europe: Is it Possible?

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As recently as 2008, NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said that expansion into Europe could happen “within 10 years“. Now doing a little math, that means that it could happen in as little as six years.

Meanwhile back in North America, there are a number of teams floundering, so the solution is simple. Pack them up and send them across the pond en masse.

Let’s take the Coyotes, Islanders, Stars, Panthers, Blue Jackets, and Hurricanes, who are all near the bottom of NHL Attendance and send them to Europe.

This will leave 24 teams in North America, which we can split into three even Conference, making our maps of both continents look like this:

 

For anyone who doesn’t know their European Geography, that’s the Stockholm Coyotes, the Helsinki Hurricanes, the Prague Panthers, the Zurich (ironically named) Islanders, the St. Petersburg Red (?) Jackets, and the Moscow (Red) Stars.

So in summary it would look like this:

Western Conference

NORTHWEST DIVISION: Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg
PACIFIC DIVISION: Los Angeles, Anaheim, San Jose, Colorado

Central Conference

MIDWEST DIVISION: Chicago, Minnesota, St. Louis, Nashville
GREAT LAKES DIVISION: Detroit, Buffalo, Toronto, Ottawa

Eastern Conference

NORTHEAST DIVISION: Montreal, Boston, New York, New Jersey
ATLANTIC DIVISION: Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Washington, Tampa Bay

European Conference

Prague, Zurich, Stockholm, Helsinki, St. Petersburg, Moscow

I guess we could split the European Conference into two divisions of three, but it’s sort of the same one way or another from where I sit.

Now obviously the biggest issue with European NHL teams is the travel. Having so many teams make these long trips over seas is a tough, tough sell to the owners, and TV markets.

The way to fix this lies in the schedule. Have teams travel to Europe on a rotating basis.  One Conference can play a home-and-home with the six  European based teams, one Conference can go visit all the European-based teams, and one can have the European teams visit them, they can rotate every year, so that each year eight teams get a year off of making the trip across the pond.

I think that all four teams in the division should head over to Europe at once, play their six games in say two weeks, then come back, and have a their first few games back against each other to make sure that jet lag is not a competitive advantage for anyone. This can be arranged around just about anything including baseball season or the NFL playoffs, since those always seem to take a bite out of NHL ratings. Obviously they would try to have more weekend games to ensure viewers in North America can watch the games, but it’s clearly not fully possible.

So to break down the schedule I think it would look something like this:

European Conference

1 game each against two North American Conferences on an annual basis for 16

2 games against one North American Conference for another 16

10 games against other European teams for another 50

Bringing the total to 82

One North American Conference

2 games (one home, one away) against the six European teams for 12

2 games (one home, one away) against the 16 non-Conference teams in North America for 32

6 games against 3 divisional opponents for 18

5 games (teams can rotate who gets the extra home game each year – ensuring 41 home and 41 away games) against 4 non-divisional Conference opponents for another 20

Remember this is the one Conference that plays a home-and-home against the European teams, the other two follow a difference schedule, rotating every year.

Two North American Conferences

1 game against the six European Conferences for 6

2 games (one home, one away) against the 16 non-Conference teams in North America for 32

6 games against 3 divisional opponents for 18

5 games (teams can rotate who gets the extra home game each year – ensuring 41 home and 41 away games) against 4 non-divisional Conference opponents for another 20

1 extra game against six teams in the other North-American Conference in this group to balance out the home and away dates.

This may be the hard sell of this whole thing. If for example, the Western Conference does not have to go to Europe, the Central plays a home-and-home, and the East goes to Europe, then the East has to go to the West one more time. They could always do an MLB style-series to get both games out of the way if need be. For example, the Rangers could play the Kings on Monday and Tuesday, have a night off then play the Ducks on Thursday and Friday, take two nights off then play the Sharks on Monday and Tuesday. Obviously it’s not perfect, but it would save on travel costs.

Playoffs

It’s tempting to go with straight up top four teams in each Conference make the playoffs and go from there, but this would put an obvious advantage on the European teams since 67% of the teams in the division would make the playoffs. But we can tweak things up a bit.

The European Conference still has the top four making the dance, sure only two would miss out, but these players have much harder travel schedules so they deserve a bit of a break.

The North American Conferences will incorporate the Wild Card idea that the NHLPA floated around. The top two teams in each Division are ranked 1-2, and the next three teams in the Conference make the dance as well. The fourth and fifth seeded teams have either a one game play-in or preferably a best of three series with the winner getting the fourth seed.

Now those of you with some math skills will noticed that 4/6 is still higher than 5/8, but not by much. If you really wanted to we could have two Wild Card series per Conference but that seems excessive to me, I hate the idea of only eight teams missing the playoffs.

The first two rounds of the playoffs will be all in-Conference, so that’s easy. The final four will be a bit of a challenge of course. We can have the Final — or Frozen — Four be reseeded by regular season standings and go from there.

In this case the NHL would most certainly have to move away from their lovely 2-2-1-1-1 playoff format, especially for series that involve European teams. I would propose a simple 2-3-2 like the NBA uses for it’s finals (mostly because of all the Lakers-Celtics match-ups we had in the 80s), or if they really wanted to, they could start on the road and go for a 3-4 with a couple days of travel time in between. This would be a tough pill to swallow for the higher seed team as they would have to win one on the road or go down 0-3, and (worse) if they won in four or five they would have less home games which is clearly unfair. I guess some sort of revenue sharing model would need to be in place for playoff games like this.

Obviously playoff series involving European and North American teams would need to make use of as many weekends as possible to make sure that people can watch the games. There is a 12 hour time difference between California and Russia, which would make things very difficult indeed.

Ultimately I don’t think that this would really fly, I think it would be cool to have the NHL go for something this bold in the future, but it would take a very strong resolve that I don’t think that the league has.

But think of how cool it would be the have a Stanley Cup Parade in Moscow or Prague. The NHL would no longer have to worry about players defecting to the KHL, since they would be able to offer them the highest competition in their homes.

However, the costs, co-ordination, and time zones make this no more than a pipe dream. At least until teleporters have been invented.

 

Feb 05

Imagining How the Las Vegas (or Phoenix) Coyotes Will Affect NHL Realignment

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In the previous four editions of this series we looked at how the uncertain location of the Phoenix Coyotes affects the possibilities with the NHL’s divisional alignments for next year. Today I’ll finish it up with looking at what I consider to be the two most unlikely scenarios, the team moves across the desert to Sin City or stays in Phoenix. Both seem like pipe dreams to me, but it’s worth exploring.

A few important points from the previous posts in the series that you are too lazy to go back and read.

  • The NHL can’t have Winnipeg be in the Southeast for one more year, so some changes are coming.
  • Even if they can’t blow up the league for next year, I think that there can be some minor tweak now to set up for seismic shift down the line.
  • They have to wait and see where Phoenix goes first before any changes can happen – they don’t want to move Columbus, Nashville, or Detroit to the East, only to have them be forced to switch back a year later
  • I think that Columbus is the most likely team to move East, it’s the best hope of saving this franchise. Detroit will have to wait in line even longer. If the NHL decides to swap Nashville instead, that is an easy change from these maps, Detroit is more complicated though.
  • Also, if Columbus moves to the Southeast, they can join their division rivals in Florida and Tampa Bay in moving to join the Northeast in the plan that was vetoed, only they make some ounce of geographic sense.

Dallas really doesn’t belong in the Pacific Division, so let’s give them the Blue Jackets’ spot in the Central and Colorado really should slide in there.

The East is more or less unchanged, and the West has a simple domino effect with Winnipeg-Colorado-Dallas-Columbus all playing musical chairs.

Minnesota may not be the biggest fan of sharing a division with four Canadian teams, especially Vancouver being two Time Zones away, so we’ll try to keep them with Colorado. This will require Vancouver getting kicked out to form a true Pacific Division with Vegas and the California teams, who all share the same (very inconvenient) Time Zone. Which will make things look like this…

This is much better for Time Zones than the current paradigm. The Pacific Division is all on the same Time Zone, the Northwest has three on Mountain and two on Central, while the Central has four on the Central Time Zone and the lone Red Wings in the Eastern Time Zone.

Of course, this may not be ideal for Minnesota, who really would rather be in the Central Division, so let’s see if we can make that happen.

Dallas may of course be West, but it is certainly not North, at least 50% truth is better than the flat out lie that makes them “Pacific”. Of course there would be a slight increase in travel — Edmonton is about 300km farther away from Dallas than San Jose is — but there is only one Time Zone difference here.

After looking through these three possibilities, I think that I like the first one the best. It’s easy, clean, and logical. If you don’t feel like scrolling back up, the divisions will look as follows:

PACIFIC: Anaheim, Los Angeles, San Jose, Colorado, Las Vegas/Phoenix
NORTHWEST: Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Minnesota
CENTRAL: Chicago, Detroit, Nashville, St. Louis, Dallas
NORTHEAST: Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Boston, Buffalo
ATLANTIC: Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York Rangers, New York Islanders
SOUTHEAST: Columbus, Washington, Carolina, Florida, Tampa Bay

So this concludes my series of looking at Realignment with respect to the Coyotes. I may consider a few more zany ideas in the future.

Feb 03

Imagining How the Quebec City Coyotes Will Affect NHL Realignment

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In the previous three editions of this series we looked at how the uncertain location of the Phoenix Coyotes affects the possibilities with the NHL’s divisional alignments for next year. Today I’ll look at a very likely scenario of the Coyotes moving 4,490km North-East to La Belle Province.

A few important points from the previous posts in the series that you are too lazy to go back and read.

  • The NHL can’t have Winnipeg be in the Southeast for one more year, so some changes are coming.
  • Even if they can’t blow up the league for next year, I think that there can be some minor tweak now to set up for seismic shift down the line.
  • They have to wait and see where Phoenix goes first before any changes can happen – they don’t want to move Columbus, Nashville, or Detroit to the East, only to have them be forced to switch back a year later
  • With the Coyotes moving East, Colorado would be the obvious team to switch to the Pacific, leaving a Winnipeg sized hole in the Northwest Division.

So what of the Eastern Conference? Logically a team in Quebec would join Montreal in the Northeast Division. If we stick to geography, we would move Boston to the Atlantic setting off the domino of having one of the Pennsylvania teams going to the Southeast. Turning things to look like this…

This gives us a Stamkos-Ovie-Crosby division to make the good folks at NBC happy.

But, like last time, this splits up the best rivalry in the sport, with Montreal and Boston. So to keep them together as well as all four Eastern Canadian teams means that Buffalo should join their cross-state rivals in Manhattan and Long Island. Since Buffalo is quite close to Pittsburgh, we may as well keep the Steel City in the Atlantic Division, despite being almost 400km away from the ocean, and would make things look like this.

But this involves splitting the Pennsylvania teams, and the league doesn’t want that. I mean, their plan was to make Florida Northeast as opposed to splitting these two up. So an easy solution is to put both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia in the Southeast, which sets off a few dominoes.

I guess we could switch Carolina and Washington there if needed.

Astute readers will notice that things got a bit more radical on the Left Coast. Dallas really doesn’t belong in the Pacific Division and it seems logical that Gary Bettman would want to do their new owner a solid.  So let’s make the Pacific Division more “Pacific” with the addition of the Canucks, Colorado is the best choice to round things out. Obviously Dallas doesn’t belong in the Northwest, but at they get two division rivals in their Time Zone and the Alberta teams are only one hour ahead. Remember this is only a temporary measure since they will be on their way to some modification of the four Division idea that the league wants.

But this seems a bit too radical for the ever so Conservative NHL, so we will almost certainly be left with this far less radical alternative.

Yeah that’s Quebec in the Southeast Division, this makes slightly less sense than having Winnipeg in that spot, plus it keeps the two most rivalry rich divisions in the league intact.

Which in summary would probably give us something like…

PACIFIC: Anaheim, Los Angeles, San Jose, Colorado, Dallas
NORTHWEST: Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Minnesota
CENTRAL: Chicago, Detroit, Nashville, St. Louis, Columbus
NORTHEAST: Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Boston, Buffalo
ATLANTIC: Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York Rangers, New York Islanders
SOUTHEAST: Quebec, Washington, Carolina, Florida, Tampa Bay

Not the best option I suppose, but at least Quebec is halfway to Southeast when compared to Winnipeg. Hopefully they won’t be called the Nordiques though, cause that would be dumb!