Yet Another Week in Review

Thankfully the time of the year is coming when I'll have enough to talk about that posting won't just be once-a-week give or take.

As mgoblog mentioned, Pat Kane still hasn't made up his mind. Michigan's got the edge in "distance from Buffalo" and familiarity since he's been here for a couple years already. BU has a bunch of his close friends. Here's hoping that Mark Mitera made a good impression at the WJC camp, because I'm not liking our chances a ton. But that's because it's summer and we're dealing with Michigan hockey.

From the "This is great news as long as they don't replace him with Josh Vernier" Department: Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrryan MaGuirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre is leaving WTKA. Good riddance. Maybe I'll start listening to the afternoon show again, depending on who they replace him with. That guy was just awful.

Keep your fingers crossed for Jed Ortmeyer. TSN is reporting he's out indefinitely with a pulmonary embolism. Tough break for one of my absolute favorites. On the plus side, those things can be life threatening, but the article states they don't believe it's life (or career) threatening at this point and that Jed was only in the hospital for tests.

Also today, as part of a continuing effort to not only bring back as many former Red Wings as possible, but also rebuild the pre-lockout Nashville Predators, the Wings signed familiar face Greg Johnson to a one-year deal today. I have mixed feelings about this one.

For the money and for what he brings to the table, this was a great signing. Johnson is a good faceoff man, good penalty killer/defensive player, good leader and historically at least he's had pretty good speed.

But at the same time, if there's one thing the Wings didn't need, it's another center, let alone another center on the small side. This makes eight centers on our roster (counting Zetterberg & Hudler, not counting Hussey). Not to mention the fact that--assuming the Wings sign that 20 goal scoring forward that Holland keeps saying he wants--that fills up our roster pretty well: Zetterberg, Datsyuk, Williams, Holmstrom, Lang, Samuelsson, Cleary, Franzen, Johnson, Draper, Maltby, 20-goal scorer. That's 12. Meaning there's not a lot of room for those AHL forwards that can't clear waivers this year.

We'll see what the rest of the offseason holds, but barring a trade, this seems like kind of a waste to me.

I haven't watched the ChampCar series a whole lot since most of the good drivers bailed for the IRL, but in the 3 or so years I've missed, at least one thing has stayed the same: Paul Tracy is still a douchebag. Back-to-back races he's gotten into a shoving match for wrecking someone pretty blatantly. Then he followed it up by basically admitting he did it on purpose and insulting all French people. Smart move when the next race is in Quebec, jackass.

Kevin Harvick is looking like he just might sweep the Busch and Nextel Cup championships this year. The Busch one is almost a formality at this point. Over in NNC, he's had 5 straight top 5 finishes, including a win yesterday at Watkins Glen. He's definitely gearing up for The Chase, and with the way he's going right now, just making it might not be enough.

The Packers looked pretty bad in their preseason opener, but it's not time to panic just yet. Going up against San Diego's line wasn't a good matchup for a young offensive line making their first start as a group--and their first start in a new system. Plus San Diego blitzed an awful lot, and the Packers played it pretty vanilla on their defensive side of the ball.

Favre and Rodgers looked good. Woodson didn't give up a completion while he was in there (Ahmad Carroll took care of that). Jon Ryan pretty much won the punting job. Mike McCarthy already has won more challenges than Mike Sherman did. Greg Jennings showed flashes of why they're hyping him so much, and AJ Hawk looked much better than he did during the scrimmage. The big downer was that Marviel Underwood was lost for the season. He was really coming on at safety, and the Packers have now lost 3 of their top backups (1 safety, 2 OL) for the year already.

They've still got almost a month to get things together on the OLine, and when you're starting two rookies, that's an eternity. If they don't get it fixed, however, Favre ain't gonna make it to the game I'm attending in December.

Finally, a quick story in honor of the ChampCar talk earlier: A few years back, I was in a fantasy CART league. It wasn't anything horribly elaborate...basically you picked two drivers at the start of the year and kept them the entire season. This one guy in the league took Jimmy Vasser and Gil de Ferran as his drivers. His team name? The Vas de Ferrans. I laughed for about ten minutes when I saw that.