Odds and Ends...

I have a couple of odds and ends that I haven’t had a chance to mention yet, so here they are presented in glorious bullet form:

--The Philadelphia Flyers just gave Chris Pronger a seven-year contract. I literally laughed out loud when I read this news. Especially in light of that whole “35 and up” thing in the CBA. It’s almost depressing to see all of these other teams throwing dollars around foolishly while the always-brilliant Kenny Holland is handcuffed by the salary cap and can’t even make a mediocre deal.
--The Handshake Incident really won’t go away. I have a sneaky suspicion that my grandchildren are going to be hearing about this. First there was an interview with Kris Draper posted on Snapshots that dealt with it, and now it popped up again today over at THN. Seriously. Move on people. There’s plenty of stuff going on in the world of hockey that we don’t need to keep talking about this. And if there isn’t anything the hockey world that can hold your interest, there are plenty of other things going on in the real world that could occupy your time.
--There was a really nice article about Vladdie posted on the Wings website. I had never heard the story of how he defected from Russia before. It blows my mind to think of the risk that he and other Russians (like Sergei Fedorov and Alexander Mogilny) took to come here to play. Also, all these years later, it still brings a tear to my eye to see Vladdie. I only really got to see him play for a couple of years, but I still remember sitting on the couch in my family room watching news coverage of the crash as a 10-year-old.
--I stumbled across these icons (or avatars) in an NHL icons community on LiveJournal (don’t judge me). They’re pretty awesome even though only one is really related to the Wings. Please do check out both links, as anyone familiar with the NHL should get a chuckle or two out of them.
--I walked into a hardware store in Ann Arbor the other day, and the owner had hung a copy of the Kronwalled poster behind the counter. It made me smile.
--One of my professors announced that she’s from Pittsburgh and went on to talk about how it’s the City of Champions and the Penguins won. This was just another in a long string of FML moments that I’ve been enduring lately.