TOO STRANGE NOT TO SHARE

(NOTE: I stumbled upon a strange blog this past Tuesday. The more I looked at it, the less I could decide what it in fact was. I found it cruising through some Leafs fan blogs and didn't check the link. I retraced my steps more than once, later after reading it all through, and what I found was a completely different blog. I missed something along the way I guess. Possibly it got taken down. As I'm not exactly all that knoweldgable with blogs yet, I'm not sure if I can assume anything. I'm sure alot of bullshit gets passed around, but this thing had a serious tone that suckered me in. I have a habit of doing the cut and paste thing while I add up reading material I usually get back to later. I didn't go through much of this dude's blog unfortunately. All I can say that I recall of it, was that it was quite young. It had very few posts to it which I didn't read. I clicked the comments hyperlink to this piece to read the only reaction it got. Not many comments had been left on the blog. As for the dubious content of it, I still have doubts. I hesitated to post it at all. Seeing as things like this, I have heard, tend to grow legs and create questions of integrity as to it's nature, I had many second thoughts. Possibly others have seen it also. I'm posting it because I almost sounds surreal in that it details some inner workings of the hockey business. I make no claims as to it's validity. It's quite possible it is just the bored meanderings of some smartass kid looking for attention. But juicy it is! Can this really be real? You decide.)


Following up on the last information I told you about pertaining to what Neil has been up to with Anselmi and Lastman. Neil's been annoyed with me asking questions of him lately and immediatly hits the yard when the cell rings. Since he told me he was hired to study the CBA in 2004 it's become clear that he's poking for loopholes and ways to play with the cap. Taking what little he has been willing to say to me before I got excited and way too curious, I am beginning to put some pieces together. The following are notes culled from the things I over heard him say while pretending to not pay much attention in the last days.

- The Marlies have no cap. Salaries from minors do not count against NHL cap. Neil has been going on and on about two way salaries in the case of one particular player who wants to sign. I could only guess it's one of the five I named in the last post. The offered deal was something like 2.2 on the NHL side and 2.1 for the minors. As you saw last year, players were called up and sent down after almost every game, saving the team cap room. This thing he's looking at is how to do this without costing the player when sent down. I heard him say something like the Marlies can only have x amount of names on the roster at one time. Since they run into 4 and 5 days off without games, Neil said it's tricky.

- The initial thought was to get McCabe to sign a two way for it to only cost the Buds half the salary by him being in the minors - imagine that. Neil said that Bryan was only going to do this if a certain other player would too. Neil said to whoever was on the phone that the other player declined, but that Lindros was willing to and actually put his name to paper on it. From what I gathered is that even though Eric is signed to Dallas now, he signed earlier with us, only the team didn't file the contract. Neil said Lindros panicked.

- He mentioned Ferguson for the first time in days today. I don't know if he was speaking with Anselmi at the time, but he kept saying "just fuck him" over and over. He also said "Pat wouldn't either" and was let go for those reasons. They had a little argument and Neil said something like "he tended his resignation and pulled it back a minute later". Only Ferguson was mentioned after so I assume that is who they were arguing about. I almost laughed out loud when Neil reacted to something by saying "that's probably why he hired Snow". Way weird.

- Deon Sanders name came up. Neil said something I cannot connect with. Something stupid like Nike paid him to play for Dallas and not the Cowboys. If that is a known fact, what was ever done about it.

- Neil said something about Peter and Martin and their agents being willing only if others followed. I took this meaning Rucinski and Sykora as a pair. What Neil seemed to say was that they are waiting to see if anyone else wants to buy into the scheme. He used the word "perogative' seven times in a three minutes.

- At one point he had some document in his hand and was quoting from it. Wish I had a pocket recorder. It was a lot of legal lingo. Some terms I can recall are "player prohibition", "nuisance clause", and "option period". No idea why they were brought in to the context. I can't tie it in. Lawyers!

- When Jennifer came home she noticed Neil sweating like he often does and asked if the central air broke again. I was sitting on the sofa with my headphones turned down pretending like I was rocking out to something. She looked over at me and called my name. I pretended to be off somewhere. She said to Neil, "If you're nervous about all this I know just the cure!" When I came into the kitchen she asked if was taking Cin to the movies tonight. No wonder her divorce was pro bono.

- The names of Cross, Anson, Bondra, Daze, and Denny weren't brought up in any of the calls I heard today. I assume that is who the others are. Neil mentionned one agent "won't even go there with his client".

- One of the last things he said seemed to be about some high up at MLSE. He said he shouldn't " fear the flack because all this would make him look genius. It will be how things get done from now on for wealthy teams under this deal".

I received two really sarcastic comments Monday after the last post and deleted them. The "my Daddy works there too" one, and one from a guy naming himself after a Leafs player who was pretty brutal on me. I don't know how they got on here and I'll have to do something about it. This is only supposed to be between you guys and me. This isn't linked to another blog as far as know. All I can say is all this may or may not happen within the next week. Won't matter then I'll be at college getting ready. I'll surely that it down with me. Talk to you guys when I get there. That's all for now.