Of jerseys, the draft, and ... George W. Bush invading an orchestra!?
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Hey, a Dis or Dat about George W. Bush! This should be fun!
There isn't a damned thing to talk about when it comes to the Blue Jackets this morning. The lockdown of news coming about interviews for the vacant GM job continues (and so does Stan Fischler's man crush on Jim Clark over at The Maven's blog, which I still don't understand), meaning not even Lupin the III could sneak out with any information before being caught. I'd do anything right now to find out which outside candidates are scheduled to come to Columbus later this week. Even if the list I linked to yesterday by Michael Arace is indicative of who to expect, you never know who may pop up out of nowhere for an interview.
Beyond that, the NHL draft is just a little over a month away! ... and I still haven't updated the draft post, like I said I would! Crap, crap, crap!
But fortunately, my buddy and fellow CBJ blogger Drew at End of the Bench has recently informed me that he will be around for the draft, meaning I will be forcing him to help me with setting up this blogger get together. I'll be damned if I don't take his offer of help, since this whole idea was his in the first place. And besides, why waste a perfect opportunity for a wide variety of bloggers from all over to get together and ... well ... fight about which team is the superior team, right? One of the benefits of the draft being in Columbus, of course, is just how centrally located it is to a wide variety of other NHL teams. Just off the top of my head when it comes to bearable drives from Point A to Point B, you have ...
-Pittsburgh, PA (3 hours)
-Detroit, MI (3-4 hours)
-Chicago, IL (5-6 hours)
-Buffalo, NY (5-6 hours)
-Nashville, TN (6-7 hours)
-St. Louis, MO (6-7 hours)
-Toronto, ON (7 hours)
-North New Jersey (7-8 hours)
-Philadelphia, PA (7-8 hours)
-Raleigh-Durham, NC (8 hours)
-New York, NY (8-9 hours)
-Atlanta, GA (8-9 hours)
-Ottawa, ON (10-11 hours)
So right there you have half of the league when including Columbus! Eat your heart out, "I'm stranded nearly 13 hours by car from the closest other NHL team" Vancouver!
One final musing thought about the draft, though: as most people have probably read via Off Wing, the Washington Capitals are planning to have their new duds, with the heralded "Rbk EDGE Uniform System" technology, ready for an unveiling at a draft party. But besides that, this part of Eric's post about the unveiling piqued my interest when I saw it a couple weeks ago:
"The Capitals are the first team planning to have their new uniforms on hand at the NHL Entry Draft."
Reason enough to wonder about the rest of the league. In truth, the league lacks any sort of uniform policy (get it? Uniform policy about uniforms? Haha ... ha ... yeah ...) when it comes to team's unveiling of the new threads. In my opinion, this could seriously put the league in a bind come draft time, where one or two teams may have their jerseys ready to sell -- or at least enough to put on their draft picks -- while others won't even have a single jersey to give to their first round pick on the first day of the draft.
In all honestly, I think the league is seriously missing a perfect opportunity here by not getting right on this issue. Even if Rbk can't churn out the new jerseys quick enough to sell at the draft, how difficult is it to just make a couple jerseys for each team to have for their picks at the draft? It's the best opportunity for each team to unveil their new uniforms, especially when you consider just how perfectly located Columbus is and how accessible it is compared to other places where the NHL Entry Draft could be held. People coming from so many locations just to be there, first hand, to see their team's new uniforms? Imagine how awesome that'd be, not to mention the business it'd bring to the City of Columbus as a whole!
But again, just my opinion. Who knows, right? Maybe as time winds down and we get even closer to the draft, more teams will publicly and officially announce plans to unveil their uniforms at the draft, as well. We just have to wait and see.
Labels: Dis or Dat, jerseys, nhl draft
