Two for Elbowing

TSN : CANADIAN HOCKEY - Canada's Sports Leader

TSN : CANADIAN HOCKEY - Canada's Sports Leader:

Created and organized by local volunteer businesspeople and veteran Canadian Olympic Team members such as Jennifer Botterill and Sami Jo Small, the Canadian Women's Hockey League (CWHL) will begin its season this fall with seven teams based out of Ontario and Quebec. It replaces the eastern division of the National Women's Hockey League, which suspended operations in May due to ongoing financial and structural woes.

"What makes this league different is that many of the teams will be supported by the girls' minor hockey associations in the communities in which the teams are located," Small told TheHockeyNews.com.

Long Beach Ice Dogs -- RIP

Sharkspage - San Jose Sharks, Hockey, NHL sports blog:

Long Beach Ice Dogs owner Ted Foxman informed the Board that the Ice Dogs would not play in the Long Beach Arena in 2007-08.

According to the LB Press Telegram, all of the Ice Dogs employees were laid off on Tuesday. The Long Beach franchise has struggled to bring fans in for several seasons, often drawing less than 1000 for a game. The ECHL team had been based in Long Beach for 9 years.

it's sad to see the Ice Dogs go. We used to host their web site, and a friend of ours was their webmaster for a number of years, and Laurie did some photography for them back when they were still in the IHL. In reality, the Long Beach Arena wasn't a bad place to watch minor league hockey, either.

Unfortunately, it's hard for the minors to survive in major metro areas where major league sports exist. We admit to being amazed the San Jose Giants still playin San jose after all these years...

TSN : CHL - Canada's Sports Leader

TSN : CHL - Canada's Sports Leader:

Kilrea became the first coach in Canadian junior history to reach the milestone with the Toronto-St. Michael's Majors visiting Ottawa's Civic Centre and he was honoured with a pre-game ceremony that lasted almost 20 minutes.

The 67's players took to the ice for warm-ups wearing their traditional red-black-and-white barberpole sweaters, each emblazoned with the name Kilrea and No. 67 on the back. Inside the numbers were a portrait of Kilrea and the team's logo.

(standing up and applauding......)

TSN : CHL - Canada's Sports Leader

TSN : CHL - Canada's Sports Leader:

Former NHL all-star goalie Patrick Roy says he is questioning his future with the major junior hockey team he co-owns and coaches following claims he was involved in a shoving match.

Saguenay police are investigating a complaint that Roy, who coaches the Quebec City Remparts of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, shoved a representative of the Chicoutimi Sagueneens following a game pitting the two teams Friday night in Chicoutimi, north of Quebec City.

Roy denied Sunday that he did anything wrong following the game Friday.

"From my part and the part of the Remparts, we have absolutely nothing to feel guilty about in this incident," he told a brief news conference following a Remparts game at the Pepsi Colisee.

According to police, the incident happened after about 50 fans of the Chicoutimi Sagueneens prevented the visiting Remparts players from boarding their team bus after a Friday night game.

I've seen a few blogs take a quick response to this critical of Roy, mostly, I guess, because he's a big name that's easy to criticize. Or something.

Me, I'm not so sure. It's not so easy to ignore a mob of people preventing your team from getting on the bus and going home. With, from the sounds of it, the owner of the team watching, or at the very least, in the area (doing what?)

When Laurie and I were first considering doing a hockey tour of eastern canada (something we still haven't done, but still intend to...), our friends in Quebec warned us off of going to some towns -- including Chicoutimi and Laval -- as places where the local fans tended to get a bit rough and out of control; he'd been roughed up in Laval one night when a pair of locals wanted his seats, and nobody at the arena was particularly interested in doing anything about it.

So, I'm sitting back and waiting to see what happens here. I'm not defending Roy -- but having been in an incident in high school where things got a bit out of hand and getting back to the team bus after a game was dicey for a while, I can well imagine what might have been going on in his head at the time.

Was the owner of Chicoutimi out here trying to help? Or was he encouraging them? Stories I've been told of that area lead me to believe I need to wait for the official investigations (especially the league one; not that I'm claiming the local police are biased, nope. not me) are in....

Was it my imagination?

Was it my imagination?
Originally uploaded by Planet Vicster.

Vicster said: "It's that time of year again, when my friend Chuq writes a post where he talks about our time working for the San Francisco Spiders. And every year, I'm always taken aback, just as I am when I see some random person on the street wearing a Spiders t-shirt or cap or sweater."

She's right, but this year, I'll let her say it for all of us.

She was one of the people we met that one glorious year down the rabbit hole where the reality of living the dream of working in professional sports met the fantasy of what most of us thought it might be.