Sporting Madness

Still working on figuring out the best time for this feature. Any thoughts on when you'd like to see it? As always, let me know in the comments or via Twitter , Facebook or e-mail . Be sure to leave your submissions for upcoming editions as well! Video Of The Day: Relient K - Sadie Hawkins Dance I've always liked this song. For one thing, it's a nice anthem for us somewhat nerdy types. For another thing, it reminds you of the dangers of egotism; thinking you're a big deal usually is a prerequisite to a fall. My Links: - None of the stories I've written this week have been posted yet, but you can check out this video I did for The South Delta Leader on the opening of the new Canada Line transit system Monday: The Best Of The Intertubes: Hockey: - The great Tom Benjamin fills Greg Wyshynski in on the five reasons he loves hockey . Benjamin's long been one of my favourite writers, so it's pretty cool to see why he likes the game [ Puck Daddy ]. - Benjam...

It's time for another instalment of The Link Train . As always, leave links for tomorrow night's segment in the comments or send them to me via e-mail or Twitter. All sports-related submissions are welcomed. Thanks for reading! Video Of The Day: Iron Maiden - Fear of the Dark I'm a huge Maiden fan, but this was a song that didn't really make much of an impression on me the first time I heard it on the eponymous album. It was cool, but it didn't particularly jump out at me. I then heard them play it live at Toronto's Air Canada Centre in October 2007 (still probably the best concert I've been to; you can check out some photos from it on my Facebook page and it became one of my favourites. This song is just epic live, particularly with a good crowd like the one at their headlining set at the 2001 Rock in Rio festival (which turned into an impressive live album ) above; it sends chills down your spine to hear a crowd that large singing the intro in unison...

Hope everyone had a great weekend. I'm taking off for a few days to go camping, so things have been somewhat light around here due to preparations for that. I do have a lengthy essay on sportswriting and Malcolm Gladwell scheduled to go up tomorrow morning, though, and I should be back with fresh content Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. Until then, here's a few links to tide you over: My work: - A post on the Canucks' acquisition of Mikael Samuelsson [ Canuck Puck - A piece on the death of former NFL quarterback Steve McNair [ The Phoenix Pub ] - A piece on the Sedins returning and a few other signings [ Canuck Puck ] Other good pieces: - James Mirtle sees the Canucks as a team with cash still to spend [ From The Rink ] - Joe Posnanski on the Royals' lack of speed - Neate on the Raptors picking up Turkoglu [ Out of Left Field ]

Reports of the death of fans' interest in the Toronto Maple Leafs have been exaggerated. Bob McCown and Jim Kelley spent the first 15 minutes or so of Prime Time Sports ' 5:00-6:00 hour today discussing the idea that no one cares any more because the team isn't in playoff contention, and offered two major arguments as to why this was so; the Leafs' game story from last night was on the fifth page of the Toronto Star 's sports section, and there have been less callers than usual who want to talk about the Leafs during their 4:00-5:00 call-in hour. This is a flawed analysis, however. First, let's examine the placement of the story in the Star. I don't have the print edition handy, but you can see the listing of the stories in today's paper here , which is generally organized by importance. The top story is about hurdler Perdita Felicien 's return to competition, which is a reasonably big deal; she's a well-known Olympic athlete and the Star is k...

The great Tom Benjamin found this site a little while ago, and I was intrigued. Basically, you type in a blog URL and it gives you a readout of the personality of the blog's author. I figured I'd try it with my site and some of the sites I read regularly. Results are below. For myself, Sporting Madness : "The analysis indicates that the author of http://sportingmadness.blogspot.com is of the type: INTP - The Thinkers." "The logical and analytical type. They are espescially attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications. They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to unders...

James Mirtle of the tremendous eponymous hockey blog (and a former CIS Blog colleague) has a terrific feature in Monday's Globe and Mail on Queen's football head coach Pat Sheahan . Anyone interested in Queen's football should give it a read: highly recommended.

Photo: Jaromir Jagr, with mullet [Photo from James Mirtle's blog ]. Perhaps the NHL can only tolerate one mullet at a time these days. In seriousness, Jaromir Jagr's decision [Eric Duhatschek, The Globe and Mail ]to sign with Avangard Omsk of the Continental Hockey League (KHL, to use the Russian acroynm) is only partially surprising, but it should serve as a wake-up call to the NHL that they aren't the only league in town any more. We've heard this song somewhere before: a new league pops into existence, featuring plenty of wealthy businessmen with money to burn on their clubs, and they suddenly make a large contract offer to an aging NHL star to give their league instant respectability. That Bobby Hull contract was the key factor that launched the WHA off the ground: with him on board, the league was taken seriously and became a viable alternative for NHL players looking for a bigger payday. Interestingly though, few media sources are making the suggestion that th...

Photo: Trevor Linden celebrates his game-winning (and series-clinching) goal against Dallas in the 2007 playoffs (Photo from Matt Gunn's blog ). The TEAM 1040's Jeff Paterson announced tonight on his blog at the Georgia Strait 's website that Canuck forward Trevor Linden will offically announce his retirement at a press conference tomorrow, 20 years to the day after he was drafted secondoverall in the 1988 NHL Draft by the Canucks (behind only Mike Modano). It's somewhat fitting that he played such a key role in knocking Modano and his ilk out of the playoffs last year. This retirement was perhaps inevitable, especially after Alain Vigneault's contract to coach the Canucks was extended. There have been several suggestions [Brad Ziemer, Vancouver Sun ] of Vigneault-Linden disagreements over the last couple of years, especially when Vigneault continued to inexplicably bench Linden in favour of inferior players like Byron Ritchie, Mike Brown and Jeff Cowan. Linden wa...

(Photo from The Red Line ) Gary Bettman's most recent interview with Ron MacLean, which just aired on CBC's pre-game show, clearly is deserving of its own place in history on the Unintentional Comedy Scale . I recommend at least a 78: better than the Super Bowl Shuffle but not quite up there with Bill Clinton's denial . Credit to MacLean for going after Bettman with both barrels blazing, instead of throwing the softballs usually delivered at the commissioner's public appearances (often by broadcasters from his league's own network ) or by callers to his radio show . A key topic of conversation was sports business columnist extraordinaire Rick Westhead's piece in the Toronto Star yesterday, which revealed that the six Canadian teams (20 per cent of the league, if you're keeping track) account for a staggeringly disproportionate 31 per cent of the league's gate receipts. This provoked incredible hilarity, as Bettman tried to bash the piece as sensationa...

With everything on the line, the Montreal Canadiens recovered from their dismal play in the last couple of games to beat the Boston Bruins 5-0 in Game Seven of their first-round series and move on to the Eastern semifinals. After taking an early 3-1 series lead, Montreal looked terrible in a 5-1 thrashing in Game Five and not much better in a 5-4 loss in Game Six Saturday, where they gave up four third-period goals. Tonight, they played cool and composed and proved that they were clearly the better team. They also showed that they can play tough defensively, blocking 23 shots, dishing out 38 hits and killing off all six penalties they took. It was a particularly good performance from some of the Canadiens who had struggled lately. Rookie goalie Carey Price was back to his normal unflappable self, with the Globe 's Tim Wharnsby describing his performance as the "best hockey" he'd played to date. Mark Streit, normally an offensive defenceman who has played up front in...

Queen's principal Dr. Karen Hitchcock announced her resignation earlier today, which came on the heels of some severe criticism of her by student leaders , professors , and even our own paper . It's no secret that I haven't been the biggest Hitchcock fan, especially given her treatment of the athletics review. Back in June, three months after the review's initial release date, she wouldn't even speak to our paper about why it was delayed or when it could be expected out. Instead, we got a statement from one of her plethora of spokespeople that she'd been considering it for a month and would release it in the near future. Well, that near future turned out to be nearer than expected: the day after we went to press, she suddenly released the review (perhaps prompted by our editorial criticizing the delay, or perhaps with the knowledge that any criticism of it would be delayed until our next print issue a month later, as we operate on a slower schedule in the s...

Yesterday night, the Canucks fired general manager Dave Nonis . Owner Francesco Aquilini told the Vancouver Province 's Ben Kuzma the decision was largely due to missing the playoffs. "I think this important change in leadership is critical to the future of the team and the direction we need to take," he said. "It's not acceptable to our fans or to us as owners that our team isn't in the playoffs." Aquilini also seemed to indicate that the defence-first style favoured by Nonis and coach Alain Vigneault didn't meet with his approval. "As owners we made a commitment to deliver the kind of hockey our fans deserve," he said. I've thought about this overnight, and I'm still conflicted. On the one hand, Nonis' teams missed the playoffs two out of his three years: on the other hand, they fell short by small margins each time. This year, a lot of the problems were due to injuries to the defence corps, which on paper at least looked like...

The NHL announced today that Anaheim Ducks defenceman Chris Pronger would be suspended for eight games for his stomp on Ryan Kesler of the Vancouver Canucks. Outstanding CKNW and Canucks TV colour man Tom Larscheid nailed it towards the end of the clip, calling it "A deliberate play by Pronger just to stomp on Kesler with his skate." In my mind at least, this was out-and-out dirty, right up there with the infamous Chris Simon on Jarkko Ruutu play. Of course, Simon's a fringe player, so the full book (a 30-game suspension) got thrown at him: Pronger wouldn't even have been suspended without the NHL suspiciously finding a "new angle" after they'd already ruled it was inconclusive. According to Pronger, the league told him Thursday night there would be no suspension, but then re-reviewed the tape on Friday and came up with the new punishment. I don't see how they deemed it inconclusive in the first place: even the original camera angle was far bette...