And he and his agent are voicing all their displeasure on Twitter, of course! You see, as Eamonn wrote yesterday, the Hawks were toeing the line between re-signing Martin Havlat or going balls out and picking up back-to-back All-Star Marian Hossa from Detroit.

The Hawks went in the latter direction, signed Hossa to a 12-year deal, and Havlat was left out in the cold. He signed with the Wild yesterday instead — a deal worth $30 million over six years. The Minnesota fans showed him love, so he dropped this on his Twitter.

Excited to be in Minny where I was welcomed and appreciated by management. The real story about what happened in Chicago to come out.

The real story? Do tell.

There’s something to be said for loyalty and honor.

Have we entered into a Lord of the Rings novel?

Havlat’s agent, Allan Walsh, seems to have told that real story on Twitter:

Havlat received multi year offers from several teams…except Chicago. After 3 months of negotiating a long term contract, Chicago would …

Later:

After 3 months of negotiating a long term contract, Chicago would not offer anything more than a 1 year deal. So much for taking care of the team MVP

So yeah, according to Havlat’s agent, the Hawks were negotiating a longer-term deal with his client all along, but when actual free agency hit, the Hawks retreated, and put a hard sale on for Hossa. I suppose you can’t blame Havlat or his agent for their reactions.

Sports are a business, sure, and athletes have to keep that in mind. But when you expect one thing from a club you’ve worked hard for, and all of a sudden you’re swept under the rug, it’s never a good feeling.

NHL general managers are recommending that the league impose harsher penalties as a consequence of “staged fighting.”

“I’m kind of offended by the fact that it’s a staged fight,” said Minnesota Wild general manager Doug Risebrough, a 13-year NHL veteran. “The idea is that players have to be involved in the game.”

In staged fights, there is an unspoken understanding between teams allowing players to tangle with each other, usually during inconsequential parts of the game.

My knee-jerk response is disappointment. There are plenty of carpetbagger hockey fans like myself — the ones who enjoy hockey fights more than we enjoy hockey. We’re resented by many true hockey fans, and rightly so. Hockey is a fast-paced game of tactical wizardry that demands an almost superhuman display of skill. So whenever I’m tempted to get cute with tired hockey fight sentiment, I think of Chris.

Chris was a fifty-something guy I once worked with at Radio Shack. The guy didn’t really have much use for work. Three or four times per shift, he’d announce that he needed to go take his medicine, which meant he would go out to the parking lot, sit in his car, smoke some weed and blast some George Thorogood. A few minutes later he’d come back in the store, make a beeline toward the musical keyboard section, and bang away at the keys, as though he was trying to capture the brilliant symphony stuck in his head.

Keep reading →