PhxDragon's Blog

After the NHL Draft, we see a few changes in the Coyotes for 08-09.

We picked up Jokinen for two defensemen (Ballard and Boynton).  While that will increase our salary liability by about $5 million, it is a step in the right direction.

Picking Mikkel Boedker as our first pick is a great step as well.

As we can clearly see, the front office is trying to plan for a white out this season!

Now that the "Stupid Bowl" is over, maybe the sportscasters can begin to focus on a team that has an actual shot at making the playoffs.....The Coyotes.

The Desert Dogs have been winning, and are in the chase for a playoff spot!  Their first since the '01-'02 season! 

Yes, there are nearly 30 games left to the season, but with the talent and youth currently on the team, they have a legitimate shot at making it.

Imagine.....The first "White Out" at Glendale (Jobing.com) Arena!

Come out and support the Coyotes!  Fill the arena! 

Well hockey season has begun.  The surprising thing of that is the Coyotes haven't lost 4 games yet.

The predictions were for this team to be near the cellar of the division if not the league this year.

The surprises are abundant, but come in the form of the players themselves, not the management or coaches.

Carcillo is the biggest surprise to date.  Usually the protector of the team, Carcillo is usually the guy who tosses the gloves and starts hitting an opposing player to spur the rest of the Yotes into digging in.  He has done that a couple of times, but during the last game against Minnesota he scored 2 goals!

Doan is also raising an eyebrow or two as well.  The type of play he is exhibiting so far is not usually seen by him until later in the season. 

Hitting is not a problem for most of the team.  In years past, finishing checks, bumping and knocking someone off the puck has been side-stepped, evaded and in most instance avoided at all costs.  This year, most of the team is willing to put up an effort to win in all aspects of the game.  Only Zigomanis has noticably turned his back, shoulder, leg and any other part of himself to avoid any type of contact on an opposing player.

The biggest change so far this year is the shot count and penalty minutes.  The shots are up and the penalties are down.  Great job on taking the shots, because the puck doesn't get to the net without them.  I'm sure the biggest reason the penalties are down is because Referee McGeough has not been on the ice during our games.

When McGeough is on the ice, he always calls the first penalty.  It is always against the Coyotes and us usually a hold or hooking call. 

Let's support the Yotes this year and make sure Saturday night the Coyotes fans and jerseys outnumber the Red Wings for this home game!

Finally, great job to the coaching and management staff for allowing the players a little extra freedom in passing, shooting and hitting.  Doug Moss, Wayne Gretzky and Grant Fuhr are showing great composure and knowledge of the game, their players and their skills in the lines. 

Will this year change the signs at Wrigley to "AC000000" for game one of 2008?

Anyone got tickets to the playoffs?

Where are really good local billiard tourneys.  I don't mean the league type, just the open style format.

My favorites are snooker, 14.1 continuous (straight pool), bank and 9-ball.

I live on the west side, but anywhere in the metro area will do.

The hockey season is just around the corner!

Now with the team salaries around $27 million, I wonder if we will get at least one win per every million paid this year?

From what I can see from the boards so far, I see last year's second string goalie set to become this year's second string goalie.  Looks like a minor leaguer will be promoted to the headline job.

Can we stand another "rebuilding" year?  By this time, we could have built the Avalanche, Senators, Stars, Sabres, and a few others.....Wait.  All those teams have at least 2 or more former Coyotes who weren't good enough to play here, but all made at least the playoffs?  We did build good teams....Just not ours.

Maybe the management took pity on them and traded them for the players' own good. 

Spending great amounts of cash on has-beens as we have in the past should have already shown that is not economically sound and play-off worthy!  Ricci, Hull, Roenick, and the list goes on.  Were these players just to sell tickets? 

You want to sell tickets?  Win games!  You can win the cup with unknowns and sell just as many tickets as you could with 4 or 5 seasons with no playoff hopes with names such as listed in the previous paragraph.

I see Gretzky is using a different tack to his coaching attack this year.  Maybe it will work, but only if the players work just as hard as the fans to have dragged themselves to Glendale (Jobing.com) arena to see "their" team win.  Unfortunately the majority of the fans aren't wearing the Coyote's colors in the stands, so they aren't so disappointed.

Let's just hope they use better checks than Sky Harbor uses to screen their security.

Given the "checks" that are done, how did TSA have someone who was allegedly military wandering around ARMED who wasn't even a member of the military (back when the military was assisting with security). 

How does gambling infiltrate the professional sports arenas?  Simple answer.  DOLLARS! 

Given the outrageous amount of money WE are forking over for "Star" players, they never get enough.  The players salaries are way out of line and the officials pay is disproportionately low.  Reminds me of State Employees, but that is another blog.

Outlaw gambling and only the outlaws will gamble.  Same as alcohol, smoking, guns, drugs, and any other currently legal form of "recreation" it will continue.

How to stop it?  I am not the authority to decide that.  I'm glad I'm not! 

As I heard from the commissioner's press conference, this is not the first infraction of gambling from this particular official, and this is also not the first infraction of any kind with even his neighbors.  When you have multiple allegations against the same person, not all of them are false, no matter what the guy says. 

The NBA's Code of Conduct has been violated by the guy through 2005 multiple times, yet nothing more than a warning from the NBA itself?!?

The FBI requests to meet with the NBA on June 20th, had a meeting on the 21st, and this guy isn't immediately fired?  Especially on the allegations made by that law enforcement agency!  At the most minimal, he should have been suspended without pay until the full investigation was completed.  The ref in question resigned on the 19th of July.  Nearly a month after being fingered! 

Providing information to others about the line-ups, scratches and injury lists of games he participated in is a DIRECT VIOLATION of NBA rules and regs!  A change in the point spread of more than a point or two the day of a game would tend to lend credence to the allegation of information leaking would be true.  But a 4 point change before a Spurs/Suns game when two high scoring players would be scratched? 

This guy is a smudge on the record of all of sports, not just the NBA.  This is just the first step in a more wide-spread investigation of sports, not just professional, but college level as well!