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Name: James Mirtle
Location: Toronto
Contact: mirtle@gmail.com
A sports desk staffer at The Globe and Mail, James is a regular contributor to the newspaper and a senior editor with McKeen's Hockey. The original manager of SB Nation's NHL network, he is originally from Kamloops, B.C. — one of Canada's great hockey cities.
The Niedermayer stick fight
by James Mirtle on Nov 20, 2009 1:40 PM CST
3 comments
This one's making the rounds, but just in case you missed it:
Pretty sad. I feel bad for Scotty here, actually, as his good deed turns into something real ugly. Would love to know who the parties here are and what they thought was happening.
Wyshynski has more.
3 comments | 0 recs |
2009-10 NHL man games lost to injury
by James Mirtle on Nov 20, 2009 12:53 AM CST
36 comments
All right, all right, I cave. I've been asked for these figures so often that I pulled them together while watching the Leafs cough up a hairball against the 'Canes to gain the title of worst in the league.
These figures come from individual teams' game notes and are from prior to their latest game:
| Team | GP | MGLI | Proj. | |
| 1 | Vancouver | 20 | 109 | 447 |
| 2 | Edmonton | 21 | 105 | 410 |
| 3 | Colorado | 21 | 83 | 324 |
| 4 | Chicago | 18 | 66 | 301 |
| 5 | Pittsburgh | 20 | 73 | 299 |
| 6 | New Jersey | 18 | 63 | 287 |
| 7 | Columbus | 18 | 61 | 278 |
| 8 | St. Louis | 17 | 57 | 275 |
| 9 | Montreal | 20 | 64 | 262 |
| 10 | Carolina | 19 | 58 | 250 |
| 11 | Washington | 20 | 60 | 246 |
| 12 | Detroit | 18 | 52 | 237 |
| 13 | San Jose | 22 | 62 | 231 |
| 14 | Atlanta | 16 | 45 | 231 |
| 15 | Minnesota | 20 | 55 | 226 |
| 16 | Nashville | 18 | 48 | 219 |
| 17 | NY Islanders | 20 | 49 | 201 |
| 18 | Dallas | 19 | 46 | 199 |
| 19 | Florida | 18 | 42 | 191 |
| 20 | Philadelphia | 17 | 38 | 183 |
| 21 | Phoenix | 20 | 41 | 168 |
| 22 | Boston | 19 | 37 | 160 |
| 23 | Ottawa | 17 | 33 | 159 |
| 24 | Buffalo | 17 | 32 | 154 |
| 25 | Toronto | 18 | 33 | 150 |
| 26 | Los Angeles | 22 | 31 | 116 |
| 27 | Anaheim | 18 | 22 | 100 |
| 28 | NY Rangers | 20 | 21 | 86 |
| 29 | Calgary | 18 | 15 | 68 |
| 30 | Tampa Bay | 17 | 8 | 39 |
| Totals | 566 | 1,509 | 6,497 | |
| Per team | 18.9 | 50.3 | 217 |
So, how do these figures compare so far?
36 comments | 0 recs |
"I don’t expect that publicly reported loss numbers will have any impact whatsoever on our ability to sell the club," Daly said in an e-mail yesterday. The "losses in the short term don’t seem to be factoring into the interest of potential buyers. They have much bigger, longer-term vision of the investment."
Daly added the league has fielded a number of inquiries about the club. "Lots of calls and discussions [i.e., more than six]. Not sure I would classify them all as interested bidders."
"In this particular case, what would happen is we (in the League's video replay room in Toronto) would see the puck in the net and call the video goal judge and say, 'Please blow the horn and get the referee over here. We see a puck in the net that hasn't been ruled a goal.' At that point the referee would come over and we would have the discussion. Usually the referees know exactly what's happening and they would come to us and say, 'Listen, I blew the whistle or my intent to blow the whistle was there. I've got this play dead before the puck crosses the goal line.' No more need be said. Once we hear that, basically video review is now out of the process. We step aside and say it's a call made on the ice and it's a non-reviewable call. It's a whistle blown by the referee and it was blown or the intent to blow it was before the puck crossed the goal line."
1 day ago
James Mirtle
37 comments
0 recs
Babcock: 'It was as dumb as anything I've ever seen'
by James Mirtle on Nov 19, 2009 11:17 AM CST
33 comments
"It was not blown dead. It was a goal. The guy never meant to blow the whistle; it was a shot. The puck went in on a shot. It was as dumb as anything I've ever seen."
Boy, it's hard to fathom just how something like that even happens. How can Toronto call down during the game, talk to the referee and let that bogus decision stand and help decide the outcome?
Anytime there's an injustice against the Red Wings, you better believe Bill at Abel To Yzerman is the man to seek for your outrage, and he doesn't disappoint on this one:
...it’s almost impossible to believe Toronto missed it. If they didn’t, if they overturned it, could LaRue have simply ignored them out of sheer embarrassment? Not likely, but something idiotic happened.
And nothing will be done. Nothing. LaRue, of course, is one of Gary’s best. A ref in last year’s Stanley Cup Final, so you know he has to be good, right?
There should be some fallout from this, or at the very least an official statement from the league. It's about as bad a bungling as I've ever seen.
33 comments | 0 recs |
A change in the SBN front office
by James Mirtle on Nov 19, 2009 7:30 AM CST
21 comments
In cased you missed it, there's been a switch-up at SBN Hockey: We've got a new GM moving in as I'm stepping into a Silver Fox like advisory role to let Brandon Worley of Defending Big D take over.
Building up SB Nation's hockey wing the past 13 months has been a blast. We went from five or six blogs and a platform few NHL fans knew about to now having 33 sites and every team well represented. Some sites, like Japers' Rink, are huge communities, something that's a credit to the bloggers' hard work more than anything I ever did.
You look at the list of the top 30 hockey blogs over at BallHype and all but five are here at SB Nation.
I'm very proud of that, and very proud of all the progress we've made since last year. The network's on a steep curve upwards, and it's a bit disappointing that I'll be more of a passenger going forward. But the fact of the matter is that the NHL side of the network has grown so much and so fast that it really needs a caretaker who's plugged into everything SBN's working on, and as my responsibilities at The Globe have grown the past couple months, it became obvious I couldn't give Job No. 2 everything it needed.
Brandon, a rising star in the NHL blogging world, can — and he'll do great at it.
21 comments | 0 recs |
It appears the on-ice futility is finally starting to catch up with the Toronto Maple Leafs, cashbox kings of the NHL.
For the first time since moving into the Air Canada Centre 10 years ago, the NHL’s richest franchise confirms that it has been unable to lease an unspecified number of the facility’s 152 luxury suites for Leafs games this season.
1 day ago
James Mirtle
17 comments
0 recs
"Corny as it is and clichéd as it is, I enjoy playing hockey, and they always say you never know when your last shift is going to be," Ortmeyer said. "I wanted to go out on my terms and not be forced out by some medical issues."
2 days ago
kforbes
5 comments
0 recs
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Most Commented
Looking at what ails the Leafs
by James Mirtle 4 days ago
66 comments | 0 recs
"In this particular case, what would happen is we (in the League's video replay room in Toronto)...
by James Mirtle 1 day ago
37 comments | 0 recs
2009-10 NHL man games lost to injury
by James Mirtle about 14 hours ago
36 comments | 0 recs
Coyotes bankruptcy proceedings: No, they're not over
by James Mirtle 3 days ago
34 comments | 0 recs
Babcock: 'It was as dumb as anything I've ever seen'
by James Mirtle 1 day ago
33 comments | 0 recs