• So Grier and I are semi-addicted to Eklund, an ‘anonymous’ blogger on hockeybuzz.com. It’s pretty much impossible to be a reader of hockey blogs without running into various opinions on Eklund, whether he’s helping or hurting the reputations of hockey bloggers and journalists. If you really want to read about that stuff, you can start with our blog roll on the right. I’m going to stay out of it really, because it doesn’t seem like that significant of a story.
• So Grier is convinced that Doug Wilson has a big trade in the works. Supposedly we were going to trade for Redden, but he invoked his NTC. I’m not convinced that Wilson can make anything happen this late. There are several rumors floating around, and I’m not going to spread gossip. Oh, what the hell. Grier is seeing a three-way trade possibility with ourselves (Marleau), the Habs (Ryder or Higgins) and the Kings (Visnovsky). Adding Visnovsky would be an absolute coup. I hope it can happen.
• Grier has recently gone to the Tank (for an event that shall remain unnamed) and reports that the new scoreboard is just amazing. Can’t wait for the first preseason game.

As Sharks fans we have been waiting all summer. Waiting to see what the changes inside the Tank. Waiting to see what the Sharks new logo will look like. Waiting on Doug Wilson to make good on his promise to improve the Sharks roster in order to achieve the goal of winning a Stanley Cup.

Hockeybuzz.com has reported rumors for weeks about Montreal, Toronto and Boston’s interest in acquiring Marleau. I know Doug Wilson has said repeatedly he is not shopping Marleau, but I think he did make it known that the captain could be had for the right price, which MUST include a top defensemen and/or a 30+ goal scoring winger. I would hope that if we do business with Boston, a team that is majorly cap strapped, we would only deal Marleau if Zdeno Chara was included in the deal. If somehow we can get Glen Murray and Chara from the B’s for Marleau and Ehrhoff, the Sharks would vault to the top of the Western Conference. It would leave us roughly 17 million to resign RFA’s Carle, Michalek, Bernier and Clowe. It makes sense for the team to win now while not giving up too much of our future. If we deal with Toronto, we have been rumored to be linked to Pavel Kubina, who I don’t see as a solution to our problem. Marleau for McCabe – now we’re talking. I don’t see what Montreal has that we would want. Ryder is on a one year deal, so there is no advantage to adding him for Marleau – you may as well keep the captain.

Doug Wilson is clearly working to improve the roster. With the Ducks losing ground, I think he can smell the chance to become the front runner in the Pacific. Do not give up the captain unless we get extreme value in return! If Jovo-Cop is on the block, make an offer of some young players to get him on the team. Let’s get defensive!

No, not that one. Although KSK is must reading. In particular, this post, which left me laughing for about ten minutes, and I still laugh out loud every time I read it, which is fairly often.

But I digress. Drew Remenda is back! He signed a multi-year deal with Fox Sports to go back to being the color guy next to Randy Hahn. I’m so tortured- I want to know so badly what became of Marty McSorely, who left suddenly during the playoffs. No word has come why Marty left, whether it was personal, professional, or a combination of both nobody knows. And nobody seems to really care, except me. I guess life is full of little disappointments. I’ll get over it.

I think Drew is better in the booth, though I did like Marty. And Shark Byte without Drew was completely unwatchable. With Drew, it was merely lame. Don’t get me wrong, Shark Byte is a good program- any exposure the Sharks and hockey in general can get is a good thing. But I’m not the right audience for it. As someone who plays hockey, watches hockey, goes to hockey games, and thinks about hockey a fair amount, the show is a little boring sometimes. But it’s going back on the TiVo now. I can just skip past the segments where Rob Zettler talks about how to block shots, with the lesson being to get yourself between the puck and goal. Thanks for the revelation.

The Sharks announced their new logo today, along with several accompanying logos, to be used either as patches on the sleeve, or for merchandise. If you are a Sharks fan, chances are you’ve already seen it- it’s been leaked for a couple of weeks now. It’s quite similar to the old logo. The triangle is more curvy, the shark itself is going more down than to the right, and there’s more teal in the shark. Also a yellow-orange is introduced as an accent color, which I kind of hate. Too much like the Ducks. I like this shield crest the best:

This isn’t the right logo for the jersey though. It would be cool as a small front logo on a shirt or something. I might need to get myself a new hat, I lost mine last year. But looking at the online store, they’re still using the old logo, and don’t have any merchandise with the new designs. Way to bungle a sales opportunity, guys.

Now that Grier is off on a much-deserved vacation for the next week or two, it’s time for me to pick up some slack. And because there is so little Sharks news happening, I’ll have to turn to league-wide news and controversy. This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and I finally have a little bit of time to write about it.

So Rudy Kelly at BoC wrote a post called “Anger… Rising” (great title, by the way) about Adam Proteau’s article naming Lubomir Vishnovsky as one of the offseason’s 5 worst signings. First of all, I agree with Kelly that Vish shouldn’t be on the list. He’s an oft-overlooked defensemen, mostly because he plays for the Kings, who aren’t any good.

Actually, I think I agree with Proteau on only one of his 5 ‘worst’ signings, and that is Todd Bertuzzi. $4M per year is a nice lottery win for Bert, who’s managed to do just about nothing good in the league since the Steve Moore incident. He was part of a huge trade that brought Roberto Luongo to Vancouver, hurt his back, then was quickly run out of town in Florida. He landed in Detroit, where he played uninspiring minutes the entire postseason. Maybe he’s worth throwing a couple mil at, in hopes he can return to his dominating style when he had Brendan Morrison and Markus Naslund at his side. Doubling that number is nothing more than wishful thinking, idiocy, or both.

Here’s four others, in no particular order

• Chris Drury – 5 years, $35.25M ($7.1M per year). I think I’ve made my thoughts on Drury fairly clear before. I like him. I think he’s a fine player, and a leader. He’s a good faceoff man. But he’s never scored 70 points in any one of his 8 full NHL seasons. Spending that kind of money on a second line center is stupid. Ranger stupid.
• Scott Hartnell – 6 years $25.2 million ($4.2M per year). Hartnell’s had 6 years in the bigs, and hasn’t even topped 50 points. He’s only 25, so I can imagine future upside, but we’d have to see a major rebirth to explain that kind of money.
• Cory Sarich – 5 years, $18M ($3.6M per year). Played less than 20 minutes per game his entire career, only been a plus player once, never scored more than 20 points in a season. If you said “who the hell is Cory Sarich?” I would understand. Only my obsession with hockey and my brain’s freaky ability to retain names kept me from saying the same thing.
• Bill Guerin – 2 years, $9M ($4.5M per year). This makes Keith Tkachuk (2 years, $8M) seem like a bargain. Guerin is 38 years old. Why the Isles didn’t throw this money at Jason Blake is beyond me. Guerin will help a struggling team win nothing. You want a better leader for less money, go get Mike Keane.

One thing I’ve thought about is in these long term contracts the team might be hoping that the player ‘grows into’ it, and the last couple of years in the contract they are a bargain. First of all, this might very well be offset by overpaying the first few years of the contract. Secondly, that’s assuming that these players will still be that good in a few years. I don’t know of many players you can be that sure about.

Just to keep the pot officially stirred – I read an interesting rumor posted by Eklund on hockeybuzz.com that the Sharks are close to making a deal for (wait for it) Wade Redden. He says the asking price might be Marleau, which doesn’t make much sense. Ottawa could not afford to keep Marleau, so he would purely be a rental where the Sharks would make every effort to sign Redden right away to keep the #1 defensemen Wilson covets. I am guessing there is a third team involved here that wants Marleau (Edmonton? Montreal?) that has the pieces that will make sense for Ottawa in this deal.

We shall see…if Redden comes, remember you heard it here first! Let’s hope it can happen without giving up the Captain.

Sean Avery. He’s got it all. Big time hockey career that has taken him from Hollywood to the Big Apple. Talent and grit that allows him to score or fight, whatever suits his mood. A hot girlfriend, Elisha Cuthbert, that sweet piece from 24 and a host of slasher films where you see her running in the wood, boobies bouncing in the breeze.

For Doug Wilson, Sean Avery was not availabe as a restricted FA for the Rangers. Wilson obviously covets the trio of skills listed above and instead signed the next best thing. Sharks fans meet….Brad Norton. Let’s examine.

BIG TIME CAREER – Um…not really. He did play four games for the Red Wings last year getting into four fights. The ones I saw on You Tube show him getting his ass kicked pretty regularly by mid level tough guys. Result – negative.

TALENT – Not really from the research I gathered. There’s a reason why he’s played for five NHL teams and bounced around the IHL and AHL. Does he like to fight, apparently. 124 career NHL games and 287 PIM. Cheaper than Scott Parker I suppose, but Parker actually seemed to win his fights.

HOT WIFE – Check! Bingo – thank you Doug Wilson. Brad Norton’s wife is Tiffany Granath, model and host of Playboy’s afternoon radio show on Sirius. Heard her on Howard Stern and she is HOT! I hope she gets seats in my section! MAHALO!

http://www.tiffanygranath.com/

Sad when this is the big news of the week, but alas, it is. We look forward to watching you fight, oh brave Brad Norton. Whether you win, place or show – you will always have a hot piece of ass wife for us to stare at. Amen Sharks fans. Amen.

So instead of coming to a team on the cusp of winning a Stanley Cup, Souray showed his true colors and played it safe by going home to Edmonton to play for a bottom feeder team that is headed nowhere fast. Congrats to Kevin Lowe for getting someone to take part of the 20 million he has to offer. I am disappointed, but I still trust Doug Wilson and we have no reason not to. We know he takes pride on building from within, he pulled off the biggest heist in league history by landing Big Joe and he has had excellent draft after excellent draft. My man Mike is upset and he has every right – but to say the Sharks are a border line playoff team and that we have “the worst D in the division” I think is just the piss and vinegar talking.

Here are the Sharks current top six defensemen.

Vlasic, McLaren, Rivet, Carle, Ehrhoff and ??? (Wilson is going to add another veteran defensemen – I stand by this statement)

Now take a look at the rest of the division and how I rank the units.

#1 – Dallas Stars – Stars have a strong veteran group and are five deep.
#2 – Los Angeles Kings – Kings have improved considerably on the blue line and will have Jack Johnson for a full year.
#3 – San Jose Sharks – We have two rising stars in both All Rookie defensemen from last year. No other team in the division can stake this claim.
#4 – Anahiem Ducks – Schneider for Neidermeyer is not an equal trade. The Ducks have become considerably less scary and just as old. They don’t have a young core of D.
#5 – Phoenix Coyotes – Yikes! After Michalek, JovoCop and Morris, is there anyone left??

Now that Souray has signed, the rest of the UFA crop will fall into place. Sopel, Markov and Sutton will find homes now and we’ll see what Wilson has up his sleeve. So put the shitburger back Mike and don’t forget how good this team is. I still believe that Wilson has something in the works that will not only make the Sharks better, but the Sharks will take a step closer to the Cup. Whether it is trading for a Redden or adding a C+ veteran like Sopel, the Sharks will contend for the Pacific Division crown.

Souray signs with the Oilers. Sportsnet reports it as a 5 year, $27M deal. That comes out to $5.4M per year. So I can revel in the fact that I was right, and now that we went 0 for 4 on the guys I mentioned, the Sharks need to scramble to hold on in the Pacific division.

Some thoughts while I’m still nice and bitter:

• Have fun with that 9 month winter
• Enjoy playing for a team that couldn’t sign their captain or best defensemen, and replaced the D with two players that were a combined -53 least season
• I can’t imagine the Sharks offered less than that kind of money, which probably makes Souray the 2nd player in two years to take less money to not play for the Sharks.
• Rob Davison or Doug Murray? Kind of like, should I eat a shitburger or a tofurkey for lunch?

Unless Doug Wilson pulls another Thornton-esque trade out of his ass, we’ll have the worst D in the division, while watching several other teams in the West get better. If Carle and Ehrhoff don’t step it up in a major way this season, the Sharks could be fighting for a playoff spot. Figure the Wings, Ducks, Avs, Flames are locks, with Dallas, Minnesota, and Vancouver likely.

From this article:

The Daily News also has learned that Sather is shopping center Matt Cullen, with a trade back to the Carolina Hurricanes very much on the front burner. Should the Rangers shed Cullen’s contract (three years left at $2.8million per), they’d trim nearly $3million from this season’s cap hit.

That could simply provide flexibility for potential in-season moves. But it just as easily could be the first step in a plan to clear enough cap space to sign free-agent defenseman Sheldon Souray, whom the Devils and Islanders have pursued. Unloading defenseman Paul Mara’s $3million salary undoubtedly would be another requirement.

The planets would really have to align for the Rangers. Why would teams take on those salaries? Especially teams in the East, knowing full well the Rangers want to use that money to improve their team? I stand by my previous post, but I’m still hoping against hope that Souray will find his way here.