NHL saves itself....

I normaly rant about some very random stuff. Today it is about the NHL.

Yesterday Ilya Kovalchuk signed a whopping 17 year contract with the New Jersey devils. This contract would have him playing til he was 44 and the last 5 years of the contract were basically at league minimum.

The NHL stepped in and rejected the contract due to "Salary Cap circumvention". Thus the NHL is stepping in and trying to save itself from well itself.

I have no problem with players going out and trying to get the most money for the most number of years that they possibly can but the GM's, Owners and the NHL really need to set up better rules to save themselves from being stupid. The salary cap was put in place to prevent GM's from signing tons of players for stupid salaries and thus forcing small market teams to fold as they wouldn't be able to compete. The GM's however have found a way around this by signing players to ridiculous long term contracts with the final years at extremely low salaries in order to drop the cap hit down and fit them in to the team.

My theory if the NHL really wants to save itself from these GM's it has to setup a couple new clauses in the CBA (the players would probably reject this).

1) No contract can be longer than 5-7 years and the cap hit is averaged over the largest 3 years of the contract.
2) No player can make more than 12% of the salary cap. This would prevent teams from over paying for players.
3) Put in that agents make a flat rate paid by the teams for every player they sign, not a precentage. agents will then try and get as many clients as possible signed not focusing on getting the biggest contract to get paid the most.

It should be a pretty simple break down for GM's in todays NHL. 3rd and 4th line players should not be making more than 2-3 million a year, 2nd line players should be making max 5 mill a season and your top 3 should be making no more than 7 million a season. The problem is GM's are tasked at making their team the best and have to answer to the owner and the fans that are screaming for top players. With this pressure GM's will always try to sign them and pay bigger bucks to get the coveted free agents. The NHL must step in to prevent the players from holding the GM's over the barrell and prevent the GM's from hurting the system.

Remember when movies were affordable?

Tonight I took my son to see The Last Airbender. He was very excited to see it and although I did not really care if I saw it or not I went to the brand new CrossIron Mills theater, which is Cineplex's newest and fanciest theater. They were only showing it in Real3D which means an extra 3 dollars per ticket. So with one Adult and one Child movie ticket, 1 Large combo for me and 1 kids combo for him the grand total comes out to 49.82.

I remember when a family of four used to go to the movie (not that many years ago) and it came to 50 or 60 dollars for four tickets and four combos. Cineplex and the movie industry as a whole is complaining of poor box office numbers for movies. Well here's a thought, LOWER PRICES. When it costs a family of four over a hundred dollars to go to a movie do you really think they are going to go out even once a month, specially considering half the movies that are released are recycled crap that the parents saw when they were kids.

Don't blame piracy and the Internet for your low ticket sales, lets start by lowering ticket prices so the average person can go to the movies a few times a month and once that is solved maybe you can start producing original movies again.

How do you remember?

So yesterday was November 11th which here in Canada is Remembrance Day and in the US is Veterans Day.  As with most people my kids had the day off from school and my day off from work was lost due to an emergency coming up.  Most of my clients worked in lieu of a day off at Christmas time.  So my question is how do you remember the sacrifices that the soldiers made and are still making if you are working and probably worked right through 11:11am with out ever realizing that you are to pause for a moment of silence.

I understand that in our society of mixed cultures that new immigrants may not realize the significance of November 11th nor do they probably care, but should that not be something taught to new immigrants to the country and taught to our children in school so that we don’t forget the sacrifices made to make our life better?

I know that one day is not really that big of a deal compared to what the soldiers went through but I think that is the least that our country can do for those that were killed, injured or simply fought so that we did and do not have to.

Today’s society has become forgetful and complacent with where we are in the world standing and it is a sad day that I think in the end will hurt us as a whole. With that I will leave you with a famous quote “Those who forget history are bound to repeat it”. Remember the past and if you see a soldier or veteran walking in the street don’t forget to stop and say thank you.

To be vaccinated or not?

Today Canada has released the vaccination for the H1N1 virus and are pushing radio ads, newspaper ads and pamphlets to say that you should be vaccinated and what to do if you get this horrific deadly disease.

I agree 100% that if you are at high risk for something you should get vaccinated for it. If you are not a high risk person I wonder why you would put your body through anything that could have possible side effects, one of which is death.

Some numbers for you to think about before you decide on whether or not to get the H1N1 vaccine. 250,000 - 500,000 people die every year from the regular run of the mill flu that you never hear about. This year (since January 1), 5000 people have died from the H1N1 virus world wide. Of those people that die from the regular flu or H1N1 nearly all of them have an underlying health issue that is exasperated by the flu and that is what actually kills them.

So I implore you before being a sheep and going and getting it just because everyone is telling you too, do your own research , talk to your doctor, see if your at high risk or not and decide based on facts whether or not you should put your health at risk by either getting this shot or by getting the flu. We are not talking about the black plague here, it is just a flu bug much like any other flu bug that you may catch this year.

H1N1, Pandemic or News Story?

So the top of the news list recently has been H1N1 and the way governments around the world are handling it (or mishandling it if you talk to certain people). I have an issue with the way this story is being portrayed and how misinformed people are about this "evil flu".

In 1976/77 a swine flu spread across the US and the world. People feared it was the same flu that caused world wide chaos and death in 1918 so they began to panic and called on the government to do something. They quickly released a vaccine for this flu and it turned out the vaccine killed more people than the actual flu did. Many to this day still believe it was more a political problem than an actual pandemic.

Now flash forward to the current situation, the media is hyping about how bad this flu is, how it is spreading world wide at unprecedented speed and how with out a vaccine the death toll will be massive. The WHO called it a pandemic before it ever left Mexico, the world has seen deaths in the hundreds (yes that is correct hundreds, not thousands, not millions but hundreds). Most people that get H1N1 get a runny nose, high fever, cough, sneeze and feel dead to the world for a few days up to two weeks (wow that sounds like how I feel when I get any flu). So what makes this flu so much different than any other flu strain that is floating around? I really don't know, I'm not a doctor or a scientist but the only difference I have seen is that it is giving the media tons to report on and the government's of the world something to fight over.

Now that fall is here and "Flu Season" is right around the corner what will happen? We will see death's from H1N1, we will see death's from other flu strains but the world will continue to survive and the government's will continue to fight, and the media will continue to blow things out of proportion in the name of ratings and sponsorship dollars. My advice to you is quite simple, ignore the hype, ignore the media, tell the government to get back to working on real issues and if you happen to get the flu, take something for it and if it seems to be getting worse go see your doctor and get him to give you something to help you out with the fever and the pain.
I personally will not be worried about dropping dead from any form of the flu but I will stock up on Nyquil cold and flu and will take to bed rest if I do get sick.

Political Parties in Canada suck.

It's been awhile since I posted my last blog as I have been busy and didn't really have much to blog about. Well leave it to the political parties in Canada to start fall off with a bang and give me more to get pissed off about.

If you haven't heard the Liberals have released 3 of 6 new pre-election ads to the Internet today. Now that in itself I don't have a problem with. What I have a problem with is how they (and their supporters) were constantly up in arms about the Conservatives having pre-election attack ads. Now I don't agree with Conservative attack ads either but at least we expected it from them. The high and mighty Liberals are always saying how they are offside and would never stoop so low. Well the English (1 out of the three) ad is very positive and saying how we can do better, the French ads are all about attacking the Conservative party.
Now why do you think they would do that? Quite simply, they know they are going to get more seats in Quebec than in the rest of Canada so why not bash the Conservatives the hardest where they can get the most gains.

What really pisses me off about this is that all the political parties do the same crap all the time. They say how they are so much better than the other parties and then turn around and do what they are yelling at the other party for doing.

Do I think the Conservatives are the god send to Canada? No. Do I think the Liberals will be a better government? No. Do I really think any other party has a shot in hell of winning? No.

Here are a few things to remember.

1) The Liberals started us down the road of economic shit.
2) The Conservatives have not really done anything to help.
3) The Liberals are wanting an election now so that they can take credit for a recovering economy even though it is recovering with out any real help from the government.
4) Every story that comes out is biased one way or another and the writer is trying to sell papers.
5) If you read a story actually look at what the history behind it is before you blindly believe anything you just read. (Example, Omar Khadr. He has been in prison for 7 years 3 of which the Liberals were in power and did nothing but the stories are always about how the Conservatives have done nothing).
6) All political parties are out for personal gain and could care less about you except during an election where they want your vote.

I know people have strong views when it comes to political affiliation but try and take your blinders off. I have voted in every Civic, Provincial and Federal election since I was 18 and take pride in doing that, however after 4 elections in 5 years I am really sick of the crap that is politics and the bs that every party throws out there. In Canada we have a lot of freedom which is great, I would not move from here for anything as I love my country but when you look at our political parties we have to give our heads a shake and really think what is best for our great country. We have a party that's sole purpose is to tear apart the country (the Bloc Quebecois), a party that is extremely left leaning socialist that will get in to bed with anyone to get any semblance of power (the NDP), a party feels it is their divine right to rule (the Liberals), and a party that is currently more about attacking other parties than trying to rule the country (the Conservatives). None of these parties are any better than the rest and if we have another election, nothing new will be settled. We will have another minority government and it doesn't matter which party is in power it will fail within a year and we will go to the polls again.

So my suggestion is that you write to which ever party you support, tell them to grow up, start acting like adults and work together without pushing their own agenda because in all honesty we know each political party is pretending to work with each other but the reason it is not working is that they are to busy trying to prove they are better and have better ideas than the other guy.

To end off remember the famous quote Anyone smart enough to be a good politician is smart enough to never become a politician.

NHL, Can they have worse Ref's?

I have been biting my toungue (more or less) on this issue for the better part of the season, but after watching the first round of the playoffs and a couple games of the second round, I can't really hold my toungue anymore.

The NHL is becoming more of a joke every year and every game. The penalties are getting worse and worse, you touch a guy and seem to get a penalty but when you go out of your way and head shot a guy, unless he goes down with an injury, you don't have a call. Perhaps the NHL needs to go with less rules instead of more in order to help these ref's as they seem to get confused as to what a penalty is. A guy putting his stick in another guy for .5 seconds doesn't really need to be called. Instead maybe you should call the penalties where guys are getting hit in the head with elbows, sticks or anything else.

Then if the penalties aren't dumb enough you have dumb and dumber up running the show and they suspend based on injuries to the player instead of making the suspension based on the action. I don't care if a guy gets hit in the head and bounces up or if a guy gets hit in the head and is out for the season, it should be the same suspension to both.

If the NHL really wants to make themselves a true professional support, instead of making rules to stop fighting perhaps they should look at the clowns in the striped shirts and try to improve the on ice play.