Sporting Madness

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...

This is a new daily feature I'm going to be running (and yes, I did steal the name ). The plan is to post a music video and a list of the most interesting links from the various sports I tend to write about each night. There will be a partial focus on the teams I tend to write about, but there will also be plenty of room for stories from around different leagues and other sports. Submissions and comments are welcomed, either in the comments section of the previous night's post or via e-mail or Twitter . Enjoy! Video Of The Day: To go with the efforts (led by Stephen of Stephen on Stuff ) to make Rush a trending topic, here's Rush with Limelight. My Links: - A piece I wrote on Y.E. Yang 's unexpected victory over Tiger Woods in the PGA Championship [ The Rookies ]. The Best Of The Intertubes: Soccer: - Duane Rollins weighs in on yesterday's Toronto FC win (which I live blogged here ) [ The 24th Minute ]. - Jason Davis has some good thoughts on the similariti...

I figured that 12-6-2 start was too good to be true. According to Iain MacIntyre of the Vancouver Sun , Roberto Luongo has left the Canucks-Penguins game with "what appears to be a serious left groin injury." As Neate wrote, "I never saw an entire team get helped off the ice before!" Sean Zandberg doesn't think it's too bad , though, because of the on-air reports. The Canucks can go a few games without Luongo, but he really is what makes this team anything more than mediocre. If he's gone for a long period, they may have trouble even making the playoffs. We'll have to wait and see.

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...