Gretzky Trade Anniversary.......ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

1) We take it from the plethora of media reporting of a quarter century old trade that there is little else to discuss in hockey. While we are in the 'Dog Days" of August that is essentially true, we also are annoyed with the wall to wall coverage the 25 year old trade is receiving.  It seems every person involved in the deal from The Great One  all the way down to every player involved in the deal is getting interviewed by every hockey publication/media outlet.  Overkill might be a bit of an under statement.

2) We were especially amused by interviews of Jimmy Carson. The player regarded as the "center piece" of the the deal going TO Edmonton. The Michigan native basically blamed the trade on his career downfall.  The inanity of that is he scored 49 goals/100 points in his first season with The Oil! Jimmy's problem one exec with knowledge of the situation was and is "he's a selfish and self absorbed jerk".  He was beloved and fit in well with the LA lifestyle and was shocked at having to play in the 'Siberia' known as northern Alberta.  So he demanded a trade.If the process helping Edmonton win another Cup. (Oilers got Graves, Klima and Joe Murphy in the deal) But 20+ years later who cares about the whining of a has-been?!?

3) WE refuse to do any recap on the actual deal other than to say that its too bad more deals of this magnitude don't take place more often. At the time it really shook up the NHL and gave it good publicity in cities is rarely got any good acknowledgement. These days the salary cap has led to a paucity of big deals that in our opinion isn't good for the game.  In the mean time can we start to discuss actual hockey and not reminiscing about trades that are ancient?

Happy Birthday To Us!!

1 ) WE NEVER thought we would still be here to go into year 7! Yes, this blog is now SEVEN years old! Its amazing that we have reached this milestone. When we made our first post (inspired by the late summer drivel/rumours of the time)
 http://newfaux.blogspot.com/2006/08/making-up-shit.html   we never in our wildest dreams believed this would become what it has. We especially didn't think we'd still be at this when the dark days when our now vanquished blog enemy hacked and stole the original FAUXRUMORS blog. Though its still is out there for his sick amusement, its of little consequence to us now. We have long since moved on when we restarted things again in March 2007. In retrospect he did us a favour, as we feel this forced us to improve/upgrade the blog in many ways since then.


2) With over 1100+ original FAUX posts and growing to our credit since that first fateful blog entry, and hundreds of  thousand hits (and growing fast) we are proud of what we have grown here the past 7 years. As we were then, (and always will be) we are a totally FREE site/blog. We decline all advertising offers. For one, honestly we don't need the income, but more importantly, we feel that accepting money would be the wrong perception. We don't want to become Eklund. Selling nonsense/made up crap to sad/loser people. We look forward to the beginning of our EIGHTH year! Thanks to all of you!

As always, keep it here for the latest!

Save the Dates!

 Just some brief house keeping for our readers.  Below are the important dates to remember for the upcoming NHL season.

Aug. 2 - 4: Non-compliance buyout period on contracts

 Sept. 11 Start of training camp

 Sept. 13: Exhibition games begin

 Oct. 1: Opening Night of 2013-14 regular season

 Nov. 11: Hockey Hall of Fame Induction Night

 Dec. 24 - 26: Holiday Break

Dec. 26 - Jan. 5: 2014 World Junior Championship in Malmo, Sweden

Feb. 9 - 25: Olympic Break

March 3: NHL Trade Deadline

Apr. 13: Last day of regular season

Apr. 15: NHL Draft Lottery Apr. 16: Stanley Cup Playoffs begin

 May 9 - 25: World Championship in Belarus

June 27 - 28: 2014 NHL Draft in Philadelphia

Over Paid/Rated!!

 

1) What is it about Jay Boumeester that teams just feel obligated to throw money after the very mediocre defensemen?  His over rating started early going as a first round selection, third overall, of the Florida Panthers at the 2002 Entry draft. He did have a decent, but not spectatcular rookie season when he scored 20 points and was named to the NHL All rookie team in 2003.  He played seven seasons in the Panthers peaking in 2005-06 when he scored 46 points. he also has scored 10+ goals 3 times before being traded to the Calgary Flames in 2009, with whom he played four seasons.  His production fell to below 30 points/season there despite getting a hefty five-year, $33 million contract from Calgary.

2) To his credit he does hold the longest active NHL Iron man streak, having appeared in 635 consecutive regular season games as of the end of the 2013 NHL season.   Bouwmeester also played in the 2007 and 2009 NHL All Star games. However he has never really been a true top NHL defensemen, not having ever even been a Norris Trophy Finalist.  Despite this he has consistently been paid as such. Thus far he has made in excess of 35 million dollars!  Fast forward to this weekend when despite his diminishing production the St Louis Blues decided that Bouwmeester deserved a nice extension along the lines of 5 years 5.4 million/per!  To make that deal worse they threw in a "No Trade clause" on top of that already hefty paycheque.  Perhaps at age 29 Jay will finally start to play like a top defensemen in the NHL?