NW Division Link Time

Hello everyone, I’m back again for this week’s links from the NW Division. Please enjoy as I continue to search out the best of the NW Division blog writers.

Low on Oil thinks that Penner may be earning himself a spot on the Team Canada Olympic roster…
-I would think that they are mistaken, but interesting read anyways.

One of the writer’s for Hitting the Post, aptly named Wild Road Tripper is following the Wild on their roadtrip. They started in Toronto, will miss Tampa Bay, but be in DC for the Capitals game for Friday’s nights game.
-Love the idea of hockey game roadtripping. The best part about the post is that when they hit Canada, because everyone up here clearly knows someone who knows someone who played with someone in the NHL:
The customs inspector played hockey with the brother of Cal Clutterbuck and still plays locally in and around Niagara Falls with his cousin, and also has met Owen Nolan, another Niagara region native. “You have tickets?” he asked. “Yes, sure do” was our reply. I thought for a minute that we were going to do a live version of ‘Leafs Lunch’.

Hit the Post travels down to St. Louis and discovers that ‘all you can eat snacks’ really mean all you can eat popcorn, peanuts, ice cream, cheeseburger, turkey sandwich, dibs ice cream treats, pepsi, diet pepsi, sierra mist….

Mozy19 from Canucks Hockey Blog compares Forsberg vs Sundin and makes a case as to why it IS a good idea for the Canucks to try to sign him.

And for you stats heads out there (not me), Five Hole Fanatics explains how to calculate your own team’s scoring chances yourself, which sounds to me as exciting as learning derivatives in Math 101…but hey, to each their own.

Do you think that you’ve written something worthy of next week’s list? Are you a reader of a smaller blog and feel it deserves some attention? Drop me an e-mail at thevancitycanuck [at] gmail.com and maybe you’ll end up in the next NW Links around the League.

Links around the Web, since the league didn’t do much for me this week

I am not a baseball fan. Of all the “major” sports, America’s ex-pastime is the one I have the most difficulty commenting on. Really, the most pointed analysis I provided in the Yankees’ run to the World Series was “C. C. Sabathia reminds me of a brontosaurus when he extends his neck.”

Maybe I’m just seeing things.

That being said, I couldn’t help but feel a little uneasy about the Yankees’ championship victory. It was as if the blond haired evil skiing high school quarterback steals the leggy blonde, but John Cusack is nowhere to be found.

Vance from Bangin Panger brought a great blog post by Joe Posnanski to my attention … it accurately captures my feelings of unrest. Even Chicago Blackhawks fans should be glad the NHL went with a salary cap after reading a piece like that.

Although ESPN the Magazine is at best the ugly stepchild of Sports Illustrated, they had an offer for a $3/year subscription so I thought, “Why not?”

I’m not sure if you’ll be able to read these because they’re “Insider” stories (let me know in the comments), but the “Player X” columns have been some of the more interesting/odd pieces I’ve read in a while.

On a bittersweet note, it’ll be pretty shocking if the magazine survives my 3 year, $9 commitment …

By now you’ve already seen Ohlund‘s vicious (but perfectly legal) hit on Phil Kessel, but it’s been a slow week in me caring about the hockey blogosphere so let’s bask in its barbarism:

Daaaang.

It would be useless – and quite futile – to point out a specific post; instead, I will just implore you (if you’re a blogger, a writer, a business person, if you have a pulse) to take a look at Seth Godin‘s blog. You might feel better about yourself, but you’ll probably also feel the need to do a little soul searching.

I know I’m far from being done with that, myself.

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Did you write something interesting this week? Or maybe you read something that simply should not be allowed to float off into the wild blue irrelevant? E-mail me your links at cyclelikesedins@gmail.com. Please?

Links around the League (Nov. 1)

Things look like they may pick up around CLS lately, so keep your eyes open and your RSS feeds refreshing.

I announced this fairly recently, but just to clarify CLS will begin collecting interesting stories from the league (and its divisions) with the hopes of eventually doing so on a daily basis. The goal isn’t to match Kuklas Korner, Puck Daddy or any of the other blogs who provide links posts but rather to try to find a) things that fall through the cracks or b) things that are too weird/crucial/hilarious to ignore.

For the first week, however, I’m going to share links to posts from years past that made me more interested in hockey blogging or stuck with me for one reason or another. This will also hopefully provide a decent (though by no means rigid) guide for our other contributors.

Sacamano’s Epic Beard Piece

On some level, the Oilogosphere’s coverage of Edmonton’s Cinderella run to the SCF may not ever be matched for its sheer hilarity and insane genius. One could devote many a post (and many links) to the great portions of comedy that resulted from that special time but it ultimately just makes me sad that most of those guys are long gone.

Why Sidney Crosby should embrace the role of villain

One of the reasons I run a general NHL blog instead of a Penguins-related blog is that Pensblog covers the bases I would attempt to as a Penguins fan: they write over the top, offensive and funny things about the Penguins and include professional wrestling references. This post is my favorite of theirs and is generally just full of genius. Bonus points for the hilarious Photoshop of a bloodied Mike Richards.

Rudy’s Off-Season post about Dogs (and hockey)

I never actually watched a single episode of the show Rudy was talking about, yet I’ll always go back to this post as a rebuttal for people who say that they can’t write anything interesting during hockey’s off time. This is one of the best posts to come out of BoC and it was during a dead time in the year. Rudy: “It’s like someone put a camera inside my head and filmed my dreams.”

Bird Watchers Anonymous with an in-depth look at drafting

Anyone who wants to contemplate how much of a crapshoot drafting can be needs to look no further than this exhaustive take on how each NHL team fares in the draft. It’s also a great example of making deep stat analysis digestible for the unwashed masses.

Five Reasons Justin Bourne Loves Hockey

Puck Daddy often hits Internet-wide features out of the park and one of the best ones is their “Five Things I Love about Hockey” specials. What makes this piece especially interesting is that it takes a very humanistic approach to what makes hockey great and is written almost at a Ken Dryden’s The Game-level. This shows that players can come up with some truly great stuff every now and then.

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Do you think that you’ve written something worthy of next week’s list? Are you a reader of a smaller blog and feel it deserves some attention? Drop me an e-mail at cyclelikesedins@gmail.com and maybe you’ll end up in the next Links around the League.