Blueshirt Boggle

More on Big Snake

Amazing how much news one can dig up on hockey and on the Rangers even during this lockout, even with the Yankees playing what is bound to be a legendary pennant series vs. their archrival Red Sox. We wonder how long we can keep this up.

The big one today is USA Today’s update on NHL players in Europe . Jaromir Jagr headlines, thanks to his prodigious scoring stats in his native Czech Republic. Save some for the Rangers, Jags!

The Ranger web site is intent on keeping us up to date on the prospects of our/their prospects. Today’s subjects -- Hendrik Lundqvist’s hot start in the Swedish Elite League and Jarkko Immonen’s good game in Finnish League play.

More on Robin Big Snake: an interview from before the Portland incident we wrote about yesterday, from when he was still with Hartford hoping for an AHL contract offer. The interview begs the question of what it feels like to be a fan favorite. And begs, and begs...

Best quote from RBS: “He [Nick Fotiu] would kill me if I said he was a big teddy bear, but he is actually one of the nicest people that I ever met.” Good thing Nicky doesn’t even know what country Owen Sound is in, let alone what Owen Sound is.

Stan Fischler weighs in with his usual column of this and that over at MSGN.com, with a couple of Ranger-related mentions, including a small tribute to Christopher Reeve and a note on Ranger fans showing up at Gerry Cosby’s on what would have been opening night at the Garden.

And if you happen to be interested in a sport other than ice hockey (I can’t imagine!), there happens to be this Game 7 taking place tonight for the AL pennant between two rivals as bitter as Rangers vs. Islanders ever was. No shortage of reading material, of course, but if we had to point you at any one link, we have to choose Mike Lupica in the News – even though he is too often dismissive of hockey, we happen to be partial to his snappy sports novels.

Yesterday we ran a recent photo of John Kerry stickhandling in a UNH uniform. Today, we’ve unearthed a photo of Kerry in his college days in a Yale uniform, so the UNH appearance was not just a stunt – this guy really played hockey! One unverified blogger claims that sportswriter Peter Gammons skated against Kerry in prep school and said he was a tough player. Well known hockey nut Denis Leary endorsed Kerry in August solely based on his hockey-playing background.

We believe one ought to base their vote on the issues at hand, but if you forced us to choose between one guy who played hockey in school vs. one who was a cheerleader, we’d have to follow our hockey-nut instincts and jump on Leary’s bandwagon.

[Photo of Jaromir Jagr courtesy Bruce Bennett Studios]

Behind Closed Doors

A bizarre turn of events awaited Robin Big Snake in Portland after his return from Wolf Pack training camp. On October 6th, the Native American of Cree and Blackfoot heritage was re-assigned to his junior team, the WHL Winterhawks. Hawk President and GM Ken Hodge welcomed him back, lauding “fan favorite” Big Snake for his impressive camp – Ranger Assistant GM Don Maloney told him Big Snake would have been offered a free agent contract with the Pack were it not for the plethora of players available to Hartford due to the NHL lockout, and Ranger GM Glen Sather was reportedly impressed with the feisty 20-year-old forward as far back as rookie mini-camp in Calgary last August.

But less than a week later, Big Snake was suddenly and shockingly cut by Hodge. Portland head coach Mike Williamson, citing the privacy of the locker room in reporting an un-resolvable issue there with Big Snake, nevertheless said that Big Snake was not “pulling in the same direction” as the team and was no longer able “to channel his competitiveness and talent in the right direction.” He also suggested Big Snake was no longer focused on the ice as a Hawk because “he may have been focused on his pro career” instead.

Hodge (who is not the same Ken Hodge who came to the Rangers from the Bruins in the still-infamous Rick Middleton trade) waived Big Snake after failing in his attempts to trade him. Big Snake was picked up the OHL’s Owen Sound Attack and promptly had a huge game in his debut with a Gordie Howe hat trick -- goal, assist, and fight, the goal turning out to be the game winner. Although Maloney had promised Hodge that the Rangers would watch Big Snake’s progress in juniors, Big Snake remains a free agent, not Ranger property.

Not much else happening news-wise today. Andrew Gross of the Journal-News returned from the land of the undefeated (the Jets) to write about his number one sport, about how the NHL lockout may be a boon in other precincts like Hartford and other minor league venues in Connecticut.

Yesterday, apropos of nothing really, I mentioned that I was wearing a UNH sweatshirt while posting the day's news. Today I ran across a photo of someone else wearing UNH gear.

Now that's an endorsement of sorts, eh?

[Photograph of Robin Big Snake courtesy of Chris Collins, story tip courtesy of BB's WHL correspondent Jess Rubenstein]

Cablevision and Fox, Together Again

The only news in Rangerland today is of the soap opera variety. Look for Cablevision owner Jim Dolan in a police line-up with embattled Fox talk show host Bill O’Reilly, Cablevision having become the latest target of a sexual harassment lawsuit, brought by cheerleader captain Courtney Prince, who claims she was fired for complaining about the harassment.

A new set of prospect notes were posted on the Ranger web site today, covering a much wider range of players than the prior set. There you’ll learn that Jonathan Paiement was the QMJHL Offensive Player of the Week, and you’ll see some interesting quotes from Ranger scouts on some of the players, like Christer Rockstrom on Lauri Korpikoski.

If you can figure this one out -- “Al Montoya turned aside 29 of 29 shots as Maine skated to a 4-4 tie with the University of New Hampshire” -- can you please clue me in? Never mind that Montoya doesn’t play for either Maine or UNH (he’s at Michigan), but how do you stop every shot you face and still give up four goals? Coincidentally, I happen to be wearing my UNH Hockey sweatshirt as I write this (no, I didn’t go to UNH, I just like the sweatshirt).

Wondering what some of the Ranger beat writers are doing during the lockout? No, they’re not in Prague covering the two-thirds reunion of the Czech Posse line (Petr Nedved and Jan Hlavac). Bridget Wentworth of the Star-Ledger, for one, gets to go to Jets games and write about a player or two on an undefeated team. Andrew Gross of the Journal-News gets to do the same. Not a bad gig!

Welcome to the Blueshirt Bulletin Blog

The Rangers were supposed to open the season this past weekend with a home and home series against the Pittsburgh Penguins, with the Rangers possibly icing a team as young as the Penguins’ for the first time in memory. But the NHL lockout that began just about a month ago continues with no major league hockey in sight.

On the flip side, a new era begins at the Blueshirt Bulletin. The next issue is in the home stretch of its production cycle. Look for it in your mailbox or at your local newsstand two weeks from today. It will include an announcement about some changes at the Bulletin, as well as articles recapping and analyzing what has happened in the Ranger universe since the last issue (the 2004 entry draft, major changes in goal and behind the bench, a Hartford preview, an interview with Brandon Dubinsky, and complete news and notes), plus of course the expected lockout stories, some of them from unexpected points of view (a fan roundtable discussion, a review of CBA-breaking deals, how past work stoppages affected the Rangers, and how young writers see this unfortunate series of events).

Many of our favorite beat writers will return to their familiar roles, providing many of the stories in the next and subsequent issues of the Bulletin. There will also be a lot of fan participation in the content of the issue – the fan roundtable, the young writers, and “fan reporters” normally seen on the web. Opportunities for readers to get into the act in print will be put in place for subsequent issues.

In the meantime, while we wait for the next publication to go to press, Blueshirt Bulletin is proud to launch a new website. We have chosen a new format – the increasingly popular weblog, or blog. Many of your favorite fan web sites are already set up as blogs, so we will not make any claims of originality. Rather, we will adopt too it with a tip of the hat to our predecessors.

What you can expect from a blog is a daily round-up of relevant links to Ranger-related content around the web, with a bit of our own commentary wrapped around it. If it works right, you will be able to come here for one-stop shopping, a Ranger portal to help you catch up with all the latest news, and a comments section for you to post your opinions to share with your fellow fans.

With that, here is the update for today:

For hockey news generated in local New York papers on any given Sunday, a good place to start is the indefatigable Larry Brooks of the Post, who continues to steadfastly (and in our opinion rightly) expose the NHL’s lockout for what it really is – a union-busting money grab by billionaire and near-billionaire owners. He didn’t say exactly that is his latest column (except for the union-busting part), but he used the Steve Belkin replacement player story to tee off again on Gary Bettman’s true fans-be-damned agenda.

Alan Hahn of Newsday does go on to point out the irony that “billionaire owners can’t afford to pay their multi-millionaire players” in wondering whether “the NHL should consider a ticket-price cap to go along with a salary cap,” kicking off a weekly lockout report with an E-mail interview with maverick Maverick owner Mark Cuban. He also has a story about how Islander fans went across Long Island Sound to see their AHL team, but we won’t link to that story. Instead...

Ranger fans can keep up with what is happening on their own top farm team, the Hartford Wolfpack, by following Bruce Berlet of the Hartford Courant. Bruce had a report today on the Pack’s season opening win after earlier this weekend giving us a season preview. If you can’t make it to Hartford to see the Pack play live, you can catch them on cable or satellite – the telecast schedule can be found at MSGN’s web site.

With prospects taking center stage during the course of the lockout, and with the Rangers in re-building mode either way, keep tabs on potential future Rangers by checking out the Prospect Notes on the Ranger web site, most recently updated on October 15th.

Darius Kasparaitis is, according to Bridget Wentworth in the Star Ledger, toying with the idea of signing to play in Europe. One of the reasons he hasn’t done so is that his contract is too rich for him to get insurance that covers him in case of injury. Coming off a season-ending shoulder injury and knee surgery necessitated by a World Cup-related injury, that’s a big chance for him to take. Bobby Holik is in the same bind of having a contract too big to insure, so he has chosen to stay home and wait out the lockout. He of course has the luxury of doing so knowing that his contract allows him to receive bonus payments even in the event of the lockout (which is true of Kasparaitis too).

Sherry Ross’s 2004 season preview appeared last Thursday in the Daily News, taking the hackneyed form a Q&A on the subject of the lockout. If you missed it, it’s worth taking a look at for, if nothing else, her final question to herself.

The Paper of Record, the Times, is struggling for hockey-related content in the absence of the Rangers and the NHL. Its latest opus, after a week of AP stories about how the lockout has affected lightning rod Chris Chelios, German-born but Swiss-bound Dany Heatley, one-time would-be Ranger head coach Ken Hitchcock, big-mouth new owner Steve Belkin, and the Mexican National Team, is a story about how the lockout is affecting Canadians, an article that begs the question, “Would you buy a used car from an NHL referee?”

The Journal-News reported on Saturday about one alternative available to fans north and northeast of the city trying to find a cure their hockey jones – going to see the UHL’s Danbury Thrashers, a team that has Gretzky in its line-up (Wayne’s brother Brent, that is), along with one-time Ranger Rumun Ndur, who has dropped steadily down the ladder of pro hockey leagues.

Finally: The third presidential debate ended with nary a mention of the NHL lockout. We were sure that at some point during the three face-offs, President Bush would whine about what hard work it was to own an NHL team and that Senator Kerry would tell us that he had a plan for ending the lockout, though he wouldn’t tell us anything about that plan other than he wanted to raise ticket prices for luxury boxes and lower prices for fans in the nosebleed sections.