The Off-Season: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

This off season has been filled with news, both good, bad and ugly.


The Good:
Free Agent Signings and Trades!
July is always an exciting time, for fans anyways.  Watching where the top free agents will be lured to is about as exciting as riding a roller coaster without a seatbelt.  White knuckles.
Being a NY Rangers fan, I was excited to see the team bring two FA's to the team; Mike Rupp and Brad Richards.  Both bring several seasons of experience and depth to the team, also adding an excess of centers to the team. Should be interesting.

JML to Toronto.  This is old news, I know, but still a painful one to say.  Just about as painful as watching Komisarek go to Toronto.

Christian Ehrhoff going from Vancouver to the Islanders to Buffalo in the span of 2 days.

Ales Kotalik going back to the Sabres. 



The Bad:
May 13, 2011: We all were witness to the internet chatter of the death of a great 'enforcer', a great teammate, Derek "Boogeyman" Boogaard.  Standing 6'7" and 265lb, it's hard to imagine someone of that stature being vulnerable.  But he is.  We all are.  His death was ruled as accidental, resulting from a deadly mix of alcohol and oxycodone.  His family agreed to donate his brain to The Sports Legacy Institute.

August 15, 2011:  Rick Rypien.  Known for his grittiness on the ice, and also known for his antics of grabbing at a fan while being escorted off the ice.  Again, it's hard to imagine someone that 'tough' being vulnerable.  After his untimely death, it was then discovered, at least to the public, that he had been battling depression. 

and the most recent, August 31, 2011: Wade Belak.  Ending his career with the Nashville Predators, he was not known for his scoring presence on the ice. In his 549 NHL games he had 8 goals. 1263 Penalty minutes.  He, like Rypien, was also battling depression.

What does this say about the NHL?  Are they paying more attention to the physical health of their players moreso than the mental health?    I browse the staffing on NHL teams, splattered with coaches, trainers, physicians, medical consultants, cardiologists, dentists... Does any team staff a psychiatrists or psychologists?  Would doing so help to identify problems before resulting in more sad headlines?  Maybe this is something the NHLPA and NHL should look into.

And The Ugly
I debated on this one between two options... The first was the moving of the Atlanta Thrashers moving to Winnipeg.  This is mainly because I am a huge Mark Stuart fan and just moved to Atlanta.  But then I was browsing the internet today and found something even worse, making me proud that I have never ever been an Islanders fan.

This cracks me up.  With all the uncertainty of the Islanders, why in the world would one ever get a logo tattooed?  For the record, I do have tattoos, so I'm not anti-tattoo.  Even though I'm a die hard Rangers fan, I don't think I could ever get the logo tattooed on me. Much less get a tattoo at a home game.  But when you're a team struggling to fill the 'Mausoleum' I'd be offering tattoos too.