Are You Ready?

Are you ready Caniacs? The RBC Center is getting there. Late last week I mentioned to keep an eye out for the repainting of the surface as they prepared the ice. As you can see on the live RBC webcam, the new artwork is done and it looks pretty snappy. They painted the 10th anniversary logo on center ice! For a variety of close-ups and much better pictures, check out this Hurricanes photo galley. The boys will be out there skating around before you know it. You can bet that Donnie MacMillian is a busy guy these days. He usually wants that ice to be perfect. I wonder if he's planted any lucky coins under the ice on the middle of the "X"? Dollars to doughnuts something is under there!

The Staal brothers have been in Toronto promoting the release of the EA Sports new NHL 08 video game. According to reports, they have had multiple competitions against the Hanson brothers. Guess who has been winning? Apparently, not the Staals. Here's an interesting article about their "altercations". According to Eric, the Hanson's are quite the trash talkers. Jordan was laughing so hard he could barely compete. Take note other teams in the NHL. The Staal's have a weakness, they can't handle trashtalking! Now we know why the Sharks signed Jeremy Roenick. They have the "King of Trash Talk" under contract to get under the skin of the young players in the Western Conference. On a serious note, hopefully Eric will return to Raleigh soon and start to focus on real hockey. Fans are hoping that he's more mentally and physically prepared to start the new season than he was last year.

(picture from linked article, Canada media, canwest)

In news around the NHL, Brent Sopel is accepting a tryout with the Red Wings. Ouch! How can you go from making 2.5 million a year to not even getting a contract offer? The rumor mill said last week that David Tanabe was going there on a try out as well, but that turns out not to be the case. Tanabe is still unsigned and available. David is no all-star by any means, but he's better than many other defensemen who are under contract right now. It's a mystery to me why he is still unsigned. Will he be forced to accept a try-out offer somewhere as well? It's too bad the Hurricanes can't figure out some way to trade Trevor Letowski, (who will be sitting in the pressbox most nights anyway if all the forwards are healthy), and use his 800K in salary to sign Tanabe. Eight hundred large would probably look pretty good to DT right now and having Tanabe as insurance for an injury prone defense would look pretty good to Caniacs.

Creed