Fix Up, Look Sharp

Hola, nerditos. Just taking care of some last-minute crap before I head off to lovely Pittsburgh tomorrow for a conference. It's only for a couple of days, but the 'burgh of Pitts ain't exactly known for its roaring nightlife. I'm going by myself, so I would have been happy just to attend a Pirates game, but they're out of town. So it should be fairly boring.

Fiddle, faddle:

• Don't you just love how the NBA goes and settles its potential lockout situation in a week, while the NHL lets it fester for several YEARS before the thing becomes the worst labor dispute in the history of frickin' sports? Ah well, conventional wisdom has it that the NHL is close to a deal, so my thoughts are starting to turn toward my beloved Maple Leafs. Specifically, how many big contracts will they have to dump to be able to put together a decent team under a salary cap? Certainly, as the Toronto Sun argues logically, it stands to reason that GM John Ferguson Jr. will buy out some of the older players with huge salaries like Brian Leetch and Owen Nolan. Unlike the Bruins, who gambled correctly and only have a couple of players under contract and therefore plenty of room under the cap to sign plenty of new free agents, the Leafs are bogged down under the weight of the big spending they've annually done on veterans in the hopes of buying their way to the Cup. Every year, they pick up guys like Leetch or Ron Francis at the trade deadline, and every year, they knock off Ottawa in the first round of the playoffs and then run out of gas in the second round because they're too damn old. I'd love to see JFJ get creative and bring in some good, young players for a change. As the Leafs head into their 39th year without a Stanley Cup, I'm starting to appreciate what all my friends and neighbors who are Red Sox fans had to deal with all their lives until last fall. Hopefully, I won't have to wait as long as they did for a championship.
• Yeah, it's been done before, but this still cracks me up.

Time to do some work. I'll blog at ya in a few days.