Random Thoughts IX

CBC Marketplace aired this story two weeks ago about "Lawless Loan Companies", and my response to that is: Those awful banks are partly to blame too. If not for the fact those banks rejected their customers, those customers wouldn't have to resort to seeking out those scammer online companies. Thus, blame in on the CIBCs, the RBCs, and the TDs of the world. Of course, just a couple weeks prior to this particular story, CBC Marketplace had also reported about banks (namely, RBC) and credit card companies that scammed customers of their own by charging extra credit card fees! Shame on those big bad banks.

People are talking about Brodeur vs. Roy because of the fact the Devils goaltender has surpassed St. Patrick's wins record. But hold on a second; Bob McCown has said let's put an asterix beside Brodeur's record (for now), as his win total includes 27 shootout wins... something that Roy never had a chance to get. (Shootouts were introduced after Roy had retired; back then, once overtime was over, the game was a tie and that was it.) But all this talk of "who's the greatest of all-time" crap is just pointless. Fans who grew up in this generation had never seen Jacques Plante or Terry Sawchuk play. (And I've seen numerous articles which laughed at people who claim Sawchuk as No. 1 all-time as being old, etc.) With different eras, different rules, and so on, what's the point of comparing different goalies (or any other position, for that matter)? Goalies before the expansion era played against tougher teams and players (since there were only six teams in the leagues), played under tougher travel conditions, played fewer games in a season, and so on. To suggest goalies of this era was better than ones in the past would be silly. A pointless discussion.

Did you hear about Chipper Jones' comments about Toronto? Jones left the WBC (a joke of a tournament, by the way) to return to the Braves' spring facility at the start of the week because of an injury, and then blamed the tournament format because they didn't play on a regular basis. He then suggested the city was boring. "I don't know if you ever stayed in Toronto, but it's not exactly Las Vegas," he told an Atlanta newspaper. It's one thing to knock the WBC, but then to take shots at the city of Toronto at the same time?

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