Thursday, September 16, 2010

The Belanger Brouhaha; Bradley and Varly Back to School

You've probably heard some of the rumblings coming from former Capitals' forward Eric Belanger (AKA The Dentist) concerning his "deal" with the team that never came to fruition. Despite widespread rumors that he had a done deal with the Caps pending a trade, he signed a one-year $750,000 contract with the Phoenix Coyotes this week and his agent has gone on the warpath against the Capitals, claiming they backed out of a "verbal" agreement. As of this morning, his agent Joe Tacopina has even threatened legal action against the team. As HM tells her boys when a subject has been broached to the point of exhaustion, "drop it already - you don't have a leg to stand on." Mike Vogel over at Dump'n'Chase has more on the Belanger brouhaha as does Ted Leonsis. It is unfortunate that this situation came to this point and I can understand how frustrating it must be for Belanger to have to uproot his family once again, but hey, this is professional hockey. My advice would be to get a new agent straightaway...

On a more upbeat subject, Matt Bradley and Semyon Varlamov had a blast with the kids yesterday at Kenmoor Elementary School. The kids showed their team spirit by donning red and had a blast learning how to shoot and stop pucks during the Capitals Hockey School session. Looks like some of the kids could have given Slapshot a goalie lesson or two - check it out:



On another note, many thanks to Storming the Crease for including Hockey Mom among the many other great writers in the Inside the Blogosphere series.

Finally, your wait for on-ice action ends today as the Capitals rookies take on those mcnasty youngsters from Philadelpia at 3 p.m. If you can't get down to Kettler Capitals Iceplex for all the fun, the game will be streamed live at WashingtonCaps.com. HM has no doubt that we'll see several dust ups between these two young clubs as there is never any love lost when these teams meet. Go Caps!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you're going to delete my comments and fix the spelling in your blog post to make it look like it was right in the first place, you really should take the time to correct ALL the misspellings.

*unfollow*

HOCKEY MOM said...

I do know how to spell Belanger but sometimes folks make errors and I appreciate you pointing it out and reminding me to double check my spelling...

Anonymous said...

"Sometimes folks make errors" yes, but you consistently misspelled it 3 different times AND in the title (and it's STILL misspelled in your post).

Everybody makes spelling mistakes, but this just highlights how little you know about this situation and how you utterly failed to do any research at all on it.

Barb said...

Dear Anonymous, you are infringing on my enjoyment of this blog. She's human. Move on. :)

Anonymous said...

It's one thing to be human and have a typo, we all do sometmies (see?). It's another thing to pass yourself off as some sort of "reporter" and misspell the last name of the very subject of your post (not just once, but in every mention of hisname). It shows how little she knows and/or cares about the subject - Belanger's contract brou.

What reinforces that is the fact that she compares his contract dealings with her kids' whinings. This guy relied on what he was told by the Caps management and as a result, lost $1.1 million in salary, had to pull his kids out of school, break a lease, move his family way across the country and start all over again. Yeah, that's comparable to her kids' complaints.

The point being - don't bother blogging about something if you aren't going to take the time to research it, and for f's sake, get to know the names of the players on your favorite team!

Hockey Mom said...

Anonymous - I am aware of all the names of the players on the team. Secondly, I am not a reporter - this is a blog. Third, I am not comparing my kids whinings to the contracts dealings. I was referring to his agent who is threatening to sue the team. I for one, was hoping that Eric would be back on the Caps roster and was disappointed when the Phoenix deal went down. He provided a much-needed veteran presence and nowhere was his dedication more apparent than in the playoffs. The point I was trying to make (based on the many posts and MSM pieces I have read on the issue) is that even though the deal did not go down in his favor and he took a significant paycut, all signs point to a verbal agreement between his camp and the Caps. Therefore, I am not a lawyer, but I don't think any legal action would result in much. And trust me, I can completely relate to what a pain in the rear it would be to relocate kids, move and everything else when plans change at the last minute.

It is water below the bridge at this point and all his fans can do is wish him the best in Phoenix...