The big news of the day will be this poll which purports to have some sort of scientific value but is really just a useless exercise in self-fellating by what I can only assume to be a Habs fan that is frustrated by HNiC's decision to try to make money rather than congratulate Montreal on their soon to be ended season.
The Globe even goes as far as to publish why this poll is so useless:
The survey of more than 1,000 people across the country began April 24, after the Ottawa Senators and Calgary Flames had been eliminated from playoff action, and ended April 28.
Toronto Mike, glove tap for the find, figures out why the Habs might have come out on top:
That left Montreal to attract the many "cheer for a Canadian team" fans and other bandwagon jumpers that make these polls worthless.
I wonder if the pointdexters that developed the poll thought of fans like itchit from this Mirtle post that calls himself a Leaf fan and says him and his Leaf fan friends are cheering on the Habs! I'll leave it to MF37 to explain how real fans feel.
Gah. I feel so dirty thinking that there are people parading around like Leaf fans cheering on the Habs. Know what else makes me feel dirty? Plagiarism. Thanks to Greener for pointing out the similarities (ie exact sameness) of Coach Willie's March 28th afternoon post and mine from that morning! Feel free to comment on the similarities on Willie's post.
Ok, morning grievances aside, here are some serious articles to read.
Greener points out that the Leafs might have drafted Sergei Fedorov.
Roy MacGregor calls Carey Price Cinderella. All fairy godmother jokes aside, midnight moves ever closer tonight...
These are all reactions to an interesting HBO piece from last night hosted by Bob Costas that featured Will Leith of Deadspin, Braylon Edwards, and some old guy that I have never met that was supposed to represent the dying medium that is the newspaper. This might only be of interest to me but it could be illuminating to the poor souls that still think ESPN is actually the World Wide Leader and not just the loudest voice.
Will gets ready to jump into the lion's den to meet Buzz Bissinger the aforementioned bitter old man.
Brian Steven Powell tries to explain, once again, why blogs exist. I am not sure most of those that echo Buzz's sentiments understand this simple fact.
Orson Swindle from one of the best college football blogs ever outlines just who a blogger could be and funny enough it's not someone that lives in their mom's basement. Take note MSM.
The Big Lead, who is actually a freelance journalist (eat it MSM!) does a good roundup of the event.
Ken Tremendous, aka Mose Shrute, has a much shorter recap. He also brings up one of the funniest (saddest?) misconceptions of MSM blog-haters: Blog comments are not the same as blog posts. I don't see how that's so difficult to understand but apparently if you don't know how to use the internet then it's a difficult distinction to make.
Will gets the last word about the appearance. Basically, he pities the old guard that either don't understand or refuse to believe that their medium is dying and that the new wave is coming whether he wants to acknowledge it or not.
Sorry for the off-topic links but sports media issues and their feelings towards bloggers is obviously an interest of mine. Hopefully, and you know who you are, some of you will take a look at Fire Joe Morgan or Deadspin and try to understand that just because a reporter or journalist is in the media or works at ESPN their thoughts and actions should not automatically be considered intelligent, true, or accurate.
CoxBloc shows this as often as they can for Toronto but taking a wider view of the issue would be worthwhile. It might also save me the hassle of trying to explain why sabermetrics are better than regular statistics, why the improvement of statistics in hockey is a good thing, why ESPN is actually run be Lucifer, or why quarterback rating is so flawed.