We just updated all the NHL rosters.

Most likely because of the lateness of the pick, quite often the winner of the Conn Smythe aware is not who it should be. Remember, they have to pick the winner in the 15 minutes following the game. I think if they waited a day, then you'd get a different winner almost half of the time. Here's my four disputes in recent history.

1. J.S. Giguere v. Scott Niedermeyer in 2007. Red Wings killed the Ducks in the semi-finals and only lost because of superior goaltending by Giguere.
2. Rod Brind'Amour v. Cam Ward in 2006. Rod led the Canes with 12 goals while taking almost every faceoff and playing almost half of every important game.
3. Steve Yzerman v. Nicklas Lidstrom in 2002. Yzerman was the person that scored the goals when they were most needed.
4. Mark Messier v. Brian Leetch in 1994. Leetch only won because he's American. This was an absolute joke. On the brink, Messier guaranteed a win and scored two goals in that game.

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Devastating hit! From Doug Weight? I'm amazed at people who are speaking anything bad of this hit. Anybody with hockey knowledge knows that this is a 100% clean hit. Who'd a thought we'd be talking about Doug Weight delivering one of the most fierce hits of the season? Wow!

Just a note. We are gonna implement some new pricing changes soon. Bronze will go from $10 the first month and $5 every other month to $9 the first month and $6 every other month. Gold will go from $30 the first month and $25 every other month to simply $29 every month. This will take affect in the next few weeks.

We are also considering a change to the silver membership from $15 the first month and $10 every other month to $19 the first month and $12 every other month.

Please tell us what you think!

Today we added forums for all the NCAA football bowl division players.  Check 'em out!

Hopefully any potential RotoHog.com advertisers will find this before they publish RotoHog ads. I entered into an advertising agreement where RotoHog paid me $200 up front, but would pay me an additional amount per conversion. When it came time for RotoHog to provide me with conversion stats, they simply ignored the emails (my contact was Ryan Mantor). They did try to renew the advertising, but I told them until they settled the first contract, that I would not be renewing them. Since they did want to renew, I'm sure they were happy with the number of conversions they got. I can only assume they received a lot more conversion than anticipated and don't want to pay me my share. If you do advertising for RotoHog, make sure you get paid up front or you may get screwed like me. Do not enter into a pay per conversion agreement with them.

Update: I just found out RotoHog laid off a large chunk of their company. I guess I know why they aren't paying their bills.

Assuming Sundin comes back in the next few weeks and only wants to play in the East, then he's either gonna play for less or the acquiring team is gonna have to off-load salary or he's gonna play for the Leafs or Sabres. Senators don't have enough salary room. Ranger/Flyers have none. Most of the teams with salary room aren't expected to compete for the Cup. Can you see Sundin in Sabres blue? Do the Sabres want him? They have nearly $6M of salary room and adding Sundin would make them a favorite to win the Cup. Leafs suck! They just broke a 5 game losing streak.

http://www.hockeybuzz.com/cap-central/

Almost everytime I play Texas-Holdem, somebody mentions that the jack-ten is one of the best starting hands. I make sure I play lot of hands with that person. While watching poker on TV at a bar today, the group next to me were applauding this guy for going near all-in preflop with a jack and ten. The other player had ace and ten. The flop was queen, ten, nine and both players quickly were all-in. "See, what did I tell you," said on of the bar dwellers. The turn was a king and the lesser ten-jay won. Brilliant!

The truth, AT (ace-ten) will beat JT (jack-ten) nearly 70% of the time. Even post flop, when the straight draw is near, the AT hand is still favored to win the hand. Don't believe me, check out the poker calculator.

http://www.cardplayer.com/poker_odds/texas_holdem

All that said, the last tournament I was in, I was knocked out by JT versus AQ (ace-queen) on a rivered straight.

I really hate, even it up reffing. Last night, the Calgary Flame's Rene Bourque got a deserved 9-minute penalty, leading to a 9-minute power play for the Washington Capitals. The next 8 penalties and 16 minutes were called against the Capitals in one of the most blatantly obvious attempts to even up the penalties that I've ever seen. The refs Chris Lee and Bill McCreary are official idiots, although we've long known Bill to be. BTW, I'd like to thank Bill once again for all the homer calls in international hockey. I can't believe he hasn't been fired yet. The announcers are just as stupid as they actually tried to justify the 8 penalties in-a-row. A great victory for the Flames, except that they needed massive help from the refs.

http://www.nhl.com/ice/boxscore.htm?id=2008020086

Check out this website dedicated entirely to NHL shootouts. All the stats. I found tonights stats were already included only a few hours after the game. They even have a database file with all the latest stats.

http://www.nhlshootouts.com/

Today, I won both the Nextel Chase for the Cup and the Daytona 500 on EASports' NASCAR 08. This game got horrible reviews, but it's the only video game to catch my fancy in the last decade. 

In the my first year of Earning Your Stripes, I started in Whelen, although I had qualified for Craftsman (the 2nd level). I wanted to experience the entire game, but after winning by first 7 Whelen races, I decided to move up. Although I missed a couple of early season Craftsman races, I still won the entire series in my first year. Moving up to NNS proved difficult and took me about a year. This allowed me to win my 2nd Craftsman Truck Series title running away. In my 3rd year, I started in NNS and again won this series running away. The game didn't allow me to qualify for Nextel until the last 12 races of the season. I easily and quickly qualified. My teammate was Mark Martin and I was able to share draft him into winning the last couple races of the season and qualify for the Chase. I then share drafted him to victory a few times in the Chase, while putting Kurt Busch into the wall a half dozen times as he was winning enough to compete with Martin. Martin won the Chase with me pushing him across the finish line. 

I was excited with the start of my 4th year with a chance to win the Nextel Cup and Daytona 500. I used my winnings to upgade my engine for the Daytona 500. Oops! The upgraded engine caused my tires to overheat and I had to pit earlier and more often than I had hoped. It took another race before I realized my mistake and corrected it by reducing my gear setup. I went on to win 23 of the 36 races. I then won the Daytona 500 in my 5th year and retired. I also won the NNS in my 4th year giving me 5 titles (2 Craftsman, 2 NNS and 1 Nextel).

Here's hoping NASCAR 09 is more challenging. NASCAR 08 is very intense and the career mode is awesome, but I found the game rather easy. The reviews of 09 seems to indicate I might get my wishes.

On November 1st, I'm going to the University of Notre Dame versus Pittsburgh game. Then on the 2nd, I'm going to the Indianapolis Colts versus the New England Patriots. Should be fun!

Online Casino Suite is a directory of the best Online Casinos, gaming software, videos and books. The reviews at this website have been compiled by real online players with 7 years of experience gambling online. The site only reviews online casinos that meet their fairness, payout, secure, payout, bonus, reward and customer service criteria.

They have pages reviewing UK Casinos, Slots, Poker, Video Poker, Blackjack, Baccarat, Roulette, Craps, Keno, Bingo, Sweepstakes, Books, Magazines, Movies, Software and much more.

Beyond their comprehensive reviews, they also have sections where they list casino bonuses and free games. I always check out the casino bonus sections of these gambling portals for bonuses that I wasn't already aware of. They had quite a selection. They als had a few free casinos listed, which I appreciate as I enjoy the game more than gambling.

Don't forget to check out their blog, casino news and subscribe to their RSS feed and newsletter. Their newsletter has over 1000 subscribers and growing.

The most original part of this site is their casino blacklist. They list the casino companies and all their properties for many reasons including nonpayment of player winnings, corrupt software resulting in fixed percentage payouts and non-random gaming, copyright and/or licensing violations, lack of security with private and financial information, shared databases, and non-response to inquiries. I really appreciated this section and dropped a lot of online casinos from my own rotation.

Every once in awhile, I get support emails related to Talk-Sports from a real quack. One of these real quacks is Tiffany Berryman.  I don't know who she is, but I think she's the person that runs the following sports gossip blog [http://ultimatebanter.blogspot.com/]. Whenever someone writes a comment about her, she threatens to sue me. Everytime, I tell her that she needs only click the report abuse link and it'll be deleted. Yet everytime, she send me another threatening email. The comments she wants deleted are often that she's a quack (or similar). I've decided that I won't delete any more comments about her being nuts, although it is somewhat abusive, it's mostly factual.

In a recent interview on ESPN Radio, the interviewer asked Sidney Crosby about his Talk-Sports girlfriend forum. Crosby denied knowledge of the website. It's pretty exciting to here that Talk-Sports is being referenced on ESPN radio, but it's disappointing to here Crosby deny knowledge of it, as I'm aware that the website was talked about considerably in the dress-room last season. It's entirely possible he didn't put two and two together, but I suspect he was simply lying :-(

You can listen to the interview at the following link. The reference is at 19:30 or thereabouts of the interview.

http://myespn.go.com/s/conversations/show/story/3632697

It's Saturday night, the Leafs are on TV and CBC is running a movie. I grew up watching the Leafs play hockey on CBC every Saturday night of the regular season. I'm 39. I'm confused. I watched a movie for 5 minutes on CBC before I figured out something was wrong. Actually, I didn't figure it out. It was my son. He told me that this was a movie and not hockey. I was waiting. I likely would've waited for an hour before I figured out that this movie wasn't a hockey game. All good things. The world has changed forever.

Update: I just realized, this game doesn't count, it's exhibition and that's why it's not on CBC. What thru me off is that the NHL season has started already for 4 teams today. Others are still playing pre-season games.