Scooter Chronicles

Hockeytown Is One Less
It appears that Mr. Bill Davidson, native Detroiter, is selling his hockey team, the Tampa Bay Lightning. After purchasing the team in 1999, he became the third native Detroiter at that time to own an NHL team (obviously the Illitch family owns the Red Wings, along with Peter Karmanos who owns the Carolina Hurricanes). There have been rumors swirling around that the NHL was going to grant two more expansion teams in the coming years, and one would be located in Las Vegas and owned by yet another native Detroiter (making four), famous movie director Jerry Bruckheimer. But that is just a rumor, and quite frankly I don’t think the NHL needs to add teams. There are plenty of teams that are in search of, or will be searching for new owners soon enough.

The ARTICLE from ESPN does not state the reason why Davidson is selling the team. I find it very interesting however who is leading the group to buy it; Doug MacLean, former coach of the Florida Panthers and former GM/VP of the Columbus Blue Jackets. I always thought of him as a good hockey guy. He helped build and coach the Panthers to the Stanley Cup Finals in only their fourth year. But then he did a really poor job with the Blue Jackets, being the only team of the recent expansion phase that hasn’t been in the playoffs yet, and they haven’t even gotten close. If the sale goes through, it will be very interesting to see what side of Doug MacLean shows up. The Lightning have a solid roster, and underachieved a bit (in my opinion) last year.

Darn Drivers!
I have been spoiled my six years plus here in Pennsylvania. I have never really had to deal with traffic when commuting back and forth to work, and I have usually had somewhat scenic two lane roads to use. The only time I had any issues was on my way home while working at FLSmidth. But that was peanuts compared to traffic around the Detroit area that I have dealt with.

And though now my commute doesn’t deal with a lot of traffic thankfully, I do have 90-95% of my drive on an Interstate (I-78 to be exact). And the one thing that drives me nuts, and which a Pennsylvania Law requires, drivers that won’t get out of the passing lane. It is common courtesy to leave one lane to your left open, unless passing. Is this so hard to remember? And is it so hard to speed up a couple of miles an hour to get around a slower car to let the line of traffic behind through instead of traveling at the same speed? Obviously not to the people traveling this stretch of road. And though I don’t want to sound prejudicial, but most of the people that do this have New York or New Jersey plates.

An Offer I Can’t Refuse
Marcia has become interested in watching the Godfather Trilogy. I saw the first one and had no qualms about watching it again, which we finished on Sunday night. It has been about 12 years since I seen it. It was good to see all the famous scenes again, especially those that have become part of our culture (“Bada bing …” / “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday …” / “It’s not personal, it’s business.” / “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.”).

The thing that I forgot was how well both Marlon Brando and Al Pacino were in this. I have never liked Brando. I always want to slap him on the back of the head while saying, “Get the damn marbles out of your mouth.” And over the years Pacino has become a larger-than-life presence on screen that at times almost seems to be a parody. However, both were great, especially Pacino. Michael’s calm exterior is classic as he finds his life moving into the family business almost by default then desire, yet excepting and successfully doing so.

We will be watching the next two movies (I have only seen bits and pieces of Part 2) in the next week or so thanks to Netflix.

Gwynn and Ripken Jr. Enshrined
Not that it’s terribly important, but I didn’t mention how great I thought it was to see Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken Jr. enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame recently. Could you have gotten two classier guys to go in at the same time? You might, but it would be quite a challenge. (Though the Class of 1999 was close with Nolan Ryan, George Brett, and Robin Yount.) They are both more then deserving for what they did on the field, and if judged by how they handled themselves off, they could have been inducted twice. I only wish Gwynn had won a World Series (he lost twice, in 1984 to the Tigers and in 1998 to the Yankees).

Bonds and Cheating
Last night Barry Bonds hit the shot that surpassed Hank Aaron on the all-time homerun list. I have mentioned that I don’t like Bonds, and there is a lot of evidence pointing to him taking steroids, but he has yet to fail a test and he should be seen as “innocent until proven guilty.” But I still wonder. My brother Brian brings up this SUBJECT on my family’s web site.

I will publicly though say that I hope that Alex Rodriguez continues to hit homeruns at his current pace. If he does, he should surpass Bonds in about 7 to 8 years.

Dinner With Ed
Last night I met a former co-worker for dinner, Ed, an engineer I worked with at CHL. It was good to catch-up with him. We became pretty good friends in the last two years I was there, and we worked together on quite a few projects. He’s a very good engineer, and handles all the hassles of projects very well. We had this originally planned quite a while ago, but one of the other had to keep canceling (once I canceled because of my Grandma’s funeral).

I appreciate Marcia watching Nigel for the night while I was out. She is always very receptive to me doing this. I just wish she had more opportunities to do the same.