Get It Together

Hola. Getting ready to fly to Vegas this weekend for a work conference. I'm not much of a gambler; the extent of my gambling includes football pools (for entertainment purposes only, of course) and the odd Megamillions ticket. But there is something to be said for the magnificent artificiality of it all.

Weebles wobble but they don't fall down:

• I'm still in shock over the Bruins trading captain and franchise player Joe Thornton to the San Jose Sharks for Marco Sturm, Brad Stuart and Wayne Primeau. I just don't get it. I'm a Leafs fan, so I'm glad to see Boston get rid of Thornton, but I don't understand their reasoning. Sure, they needed to shake things up because they've been horrible, but to trade your best player and captain doesn't make sense. And even worse, they certainly didn't get fair value in return. Stuart's a good, not great, defenseman and Sturm is a decent forward, while Primeau is yet another defensive role player. It figures; the only time the Bruins are the main topic of discussion on Boston sports talk radio is when they do something stupid like this. The whole thing smacks of a salary dump to me, which of course makes me think Jeremy Jacobs told Mike O'Connell to cut bait for the season; both O'Connell and Jacobs were on the radio today talking about how this makes the team better. Right. Why not trade Thornton to a team with another underachieving star, like Bertuzzi? Bruins fans will not be happy with this one, but Sharks fans should be psyched. This is like a bad fantasy league trade that gets overturned by the commissioner. And of course, as everyone predicted the team would be even worse, the Bruins went out tonight and shut out the awesome Senators, 3-0. And Sturm scored the game winner. Go figure.
• The craziness in Canada continues. A political party in Quebec has threatened to secede from the rest of the country for years, but now they're pushing for the province to have its own hockey and soccer teams playing in international tournaments. A comparison would be Scotland or Wales having their own teams in the World Cup, while still remaining part of Great Britain. The proposal is one of the Bloc Quebecois party's campaign promises, and its highly unlikely that stars like Mario Lemieux and Martin Brodeur would opt to play for Quebec rather than Canada. Still, sounds tres stupide (thanks to Off Wing Opinion for the tip).
• So, supposedly Scott Stapp (former lead yowler/Vedder wannabe of Creed) and members of crap rockers 311 got into a bar brawl last week. Makes one yearn for the good ol' days of MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch.
• And here's a couple of guys in Washington state who took a love of horses a little too far. Yikes.