Playoff beards

Gentlemen, start your beards. Maybe Crosby will manage to grow one this time (apparently, the last time he tried, as a 17-year-old junior, all he got was a bit of a moustache).

Sidney Crosby will become the youngest player ever to sport a playoff beard! We will see the Cros-beard this playoff season! Oh yes my friends, mark my words.

More at the Playoff Beard website.

Things I learned from my hockey pool this year

My buddy Allan Marron runs a hockey pool every year, and I persist in participating, even though the best I've ever done is second in the playoff pool (the year Calgary went to the final, and I had the Kipper, Iginla, and a host of other Flames).

Sometimes I pore over the stats before making my picks. This year, I chose them in about 15 minutes. I came fifth.

Here's what I learned.

• It's a very long season.

• Being 20 points ahead in early February is no guarantee of anything.

• Don't count on the big guns playing on the last day of the season. A couple of points from Iginla, a shutout from Kiprusoff -- these could have vaulted me into the money. But both guys were rested for the final game.

• I thought one of the things I learned was not to trade too soon. I dumped Savard in his early-season slump and took Hossa instead. If I'd stuck with Savard, I would have had 96 points. By trading him for Hossa I wound up with 90. In effect, I had him during his worst slump of the year, then missed out on the rest of his high-scoring season.

I also ditched Tanguay, who wound up with 81 points. Instead, I took Afinogenov, but by the time he broke his wrist, I had used up all 5 of my trades, and had to sit and watch as other poolies overtook me (see #2, above).

But it's not that simple. I hung onto Nash for far too long, finally ditching him for Selanne. I wound up with 70 points from these too. Sticking with Nash would have given me 57. I should have gotten rid of him much sooner.

• Save up your trades so you can dump players when they get injured. I did well by dumping Spezza (for Lecavalier) and Pronger (for Visnovsky) once they got hurt. But because of my absurd Savard trade, I could do nothing when Afinogenov went down.

• Past performance actually is a pretty good indicator of future results, especially when it comes to goalies.
  

• I need to finally realize that Martin St. Louis is for real.

• There is a limit to how much your family is willing to listen to you go on about the hockey pool.
  

Now if only I had a list somewhere of things I've learned from playoff pools. At least the Habs are out, so I don't have to worry about picking with my heart instead of my head.

2014: Not here

When I posted about Halifax's Commonwealth Games bid being more or less dead last week, I was thinking that I would look pretty foolish if we wound up with the games.

I certainly never expected that come March 8 the bid would be really and truly dead, with both the provincial and municipal governments retracting their support.

I am relieved. Maybe it's partly because I grew up in Montreal during the Olympics era, and remember gathering around the TV as my parents and relatives waited for the Olympic Lotto results to come in. All that money was going to pay for the Games. Instead, the stadium was never even completed to its specs.

The local bid committee is sure to be passing around the blame, but really they need to take a long and hard look at their own ineptitude. Last week committee head Scott Logan was saying people would support the bid if they had more information. So give them more information Scott!

Yesterday, the politicians got more information -- a total cost of $1.7 billion. It was too much.

I was interested in this paragraph from the bid committee's statement, posted on its website.

CGC and the Bid Committee have been working diligently to respond to initial feedback on preliminary Games budget information from their government partners since February, providing options that reduced the budget (inflation in) from $1.6b, to $1.3b, and yesterday indicating a strong confidence in continuing this process to present a bid based on the available $1b of funding from its partners.

This is interesting. For months, we've been told that the games would cost $750 million -- no, $785 million. The $1.7 billion was a complete shocker. But, according to this, they were ready to come down to $1.3 billion. Great. Only that ignores the fact that this is still half a billion dollars more than what we were recently told the games would cost.

To me, that pretty much says it all in terms of this organization's approach to being straight with the citizens.

Department of Personal Stupidity

Clip and save this handy guide to weekend fun!

1) Play a game of capture the flag with a bunch of speedy little 7-10-year-olds on a slippery field covered in snow and mud.

2) Ignore the subsequent pain in your knee.

3) Go out dancing that evening.

4) Wake up in the morning unable to bend your knee.

5) Spend the day at the local hospital's emergency room.

Good riddance Commonwealth Games

Halifax's bid for the 2014 Commonwealth Games is in trouble. For months, people (some a little obsessively) have been raising concerns about cost overruns, and about some of the ridiculous claims the bid committee is making. The games are going to attract a million people to Halifax? More than the population of the whole province? I don't think so.

But the one issue that seems most likely to sink the bid is the inept behaviour of the bid committee, which has kept as many of the details of its proposals as possible secret -- even from the members of city council. Now, many on council are completely fed up. And the bid committee has shot itself yet again, thanks to its announcement that they are pushing back by two weeks the date at which they will finally reveal the details of the bid to council (behind closed doors, mind you).

I fervently hope that the 2014 games go to Glasgow or Abuja. Of course, neither of these cities has quite as brilliant a slogan as Halifax has come up with. Here is the gem that is going to put Halifax over the top, and convince residents of the city that they should pony up hundreds of millions in tax dollars for the games. Literally: "Here."

That's right. Here. That's the slogan. Take a look at it yourself, at the Halifax 2014 website.

For a while, it was all over the municipal buses and billboards. "Here." Yes, thank you. I am here. I hope the games will not be here.

Other than the missteps on secrecy, the bid committee came up with another brilliant PR ploy: asking shoppers at liquor stores to add a dollar to their bill, to fund the (completely secret) bid effort. Sign me up!

The sooner this thing sinks, the better. Then we can get on to better things -- though instead of doing that we're more likely to continue to squabble perenially over crucial issues such as whether or not parking should be allowed on the streets overnight in winter.