We just updated all the NASCAR racers on Talk-Sports for the top 3 series.

I just updated the Texas League player rosters.

If just updated the Southern League player rosters.

I just updated all the South Atlantic League player rosters.

I just updated all the Pacific Coast League player rosters.

I just updated all the Mexican League player rosters.

I just updated all the Midwest League player rosters.

I just updated the Internation League player rosters.

I just updated the Florida State League rosters.

I just updated all the Eastern League rosters.

I just updated all the Carolina League Rosters.

I updated all the California League rosters.

We just updated all the MLB 40-man rosters. We removed all the retired players and those no longer in the MLB. We will also update the minor league rosters in the near future. You should see your favorite rookies on the rosters.

1. Reduce game roster to 19 from 20. This will reduce the ability for teams to put goons who otherwise can't play on the 4th line. NHLPA might not like this as it could be suggested this may remove 30 players from the NHL. Since we haven't reduced the 23 man roster, this isn't exactly true. Either way, the next item will more than compensate.
2. Add more expansion teams; Quebec City, Kitchener/London, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Seattle. This will add new spots for the NHLPA. Kitchener is out of range for all of Buffalo, Toronto and Detroit and brings a new team to southern Ontario (sorry Hamilton). Quebec City should never have lost a team. Teams in Kansas City, Las Vegas and Seattle will increase US TV coverage.
3. As expansion teams are added, consider reducing game rosters to 18.
4. Every team plays every other team at home and away every 2 years. That's 29+ games accounted for. The rest of the games would be divisional or tournament (see tournaments below), no extra out of division conference games.
5. All divisional winners plus the next teams to 6 teams in each conference receive a 1st round buy. The next 4 teams play a two out of three playoff to advance. Teams are reseated every round with no account to divisional placement. Conference winners meet in the finals.
6. Refs call the same game in the playoffs as the regular season. The playoffs is not a testiment of your ability to play with a broken foot or torn ACL. Kunitz and Cooke were the real Conn Smythe winners this last playoff. Just ask the Red Wings defense who were afraid to go into the corner in game 7.
7. Follow up to Cooke and Kunitz, hitting a d-man on a shoot-in is called charging. No rule change required, just call it.
8. Investigate 4 on 4 hockey. Let's start with a handful of AHL games. I'm almost positive this will create a better game.
9. Suspend obvious dives one game to start. Repeat offenders get increasing larger suspensions.
10. Fighting major is an automatic misconduct. Repeat offenses are one game suspensions. Third offense are multi-game suspensions.
11. No touch icing when iced from behind the blueline.
12. Missed passes are not icing. It's already a rule that missed two line passes are not icing, it's just not called. Intentional misses remains an icing, as are difficult to hand passes. Defensive deflections do not obviate icings either.
13. Shooting the puck from the defensive zone over the boards in the offensive zone is not a penalty. This applies only when the player is shooting it from behind his blueline and the puck crosses out-of-play inside the other teams blueline.
14. On an icing shot from inside the blueline and not a missed pass, the defensive player centerman stands outside the faceoff circle.
15. Clearing the puck out of play and icing from inside the blueline should have the same rules. Either both are penalties (rather not) or both are uncontended faceoffs (see previous) and defensive team may not change players.
16. Any delay on a faceoff where the defensive team may not change is called a timeout on the defensive team. Subsequent delays are a penalty, even if legitimate. Absolute rules are required or refs will be complacent.
17. Examine breakaway situations instead of timed penalties. When a penalty occurs, the offended player is given the puck at centre ice and all other players must be behind the far blueline. Ref blows his whistle to resume play. Powerplays are so boring. On a major penalty, a player still sits for the duration of his timed penalty, but the team remains at full strength.
18. Assuming breakaway situations, the offending team is not aloud to change players. The offended player may not change either unless obviously injured, ref's discretion.
19. Start the NHL season AT LEAST one month earlier. I still like the June finish. NHLPA might not like this.
20. The NHL pre-season is reorganized into an elimination style tournament. Each team plays 5-7 games with winners playing winners and losers playing losers. The result of this tournament determines all tie-breakers in the regular season. These games do not count in the standings.
21. Mid-season elimination style tournament occurs between late November and early February. These games count in the standings. The location of the games are played in a neutral city.
22. Every team is required to play at least one neutral site game and specifically not in an existing NHL city. For example, the Flames and Oilers might play in Red Deer. This might start as an exhibition game, but the intent is to make this game count.
23. New NHL arenas should be required to have at least 20,000 seats.
24. Three stars of the game are formulized into an award.

Tonigh I watched Dale, the Movie. It's a documentary about Dale Earnhardt's quest to win the Daytona 500 and his death at the very same race. Dale's triumphant race in 1998 and death in 2001 combined to put NASCAR where it is today.

The movie doesn't quite explain the details that made these races great. Here's some details that weren't made obvious in the movie. Darrel Waltrip, the long-time rival of Earnhardt's and one of the greatest NASCAR drivers ever, was announcing his first NASCAR race. He's the guy who says "Boogidy, boogidy, boogidy, let's go racing boys" on TV at the start of many of the NASCAR races. Darrel's brother Michael was driving one of Earnhardt's cars along with Dale's son, Dale Jr.  Earnhardt was blocking the entire field in 3rd place with his two cars (Michael and Jr.) in 1st and 2nd, when his overly aggressive blocking sent him into the wall and his death. Darrel, the announcer, was in tears as he watched his brother win. That was also Michael's 1st win. Michael has since won a 2nd Daytona 500 and two other plate races (Daytona Pepsi 400 and Talladega). He has never won a non-plate race.  After spending his entire life trying to win the big race, Dale Earnhardt Inc. (his company) won 3 out of the 4 races following his death; Michael Waltrip in 2001 and 2003 and Dale Jr. in 2004. In 2007, Kevin Harvick, who took over Dale Sr's car, also won the Daytona 500, giving Dale and his cars 5 wins in 10 races.

The documentary itself was still awesome. When I chose this movie last night, the kids asked "Is this one of those boring documentaries?" I told them that if it was too boring that we'd put another movie on. We watched the entire movie. My wife even joined us for the death scene, which we rewinded over and over.

Next week, we'll park the RV in the middle of the same very track. Our spot is about 100 feet from the spot where Dale's car came to rest on the grass. We'll be watching this movie in the RV line of sight from where it all actually happened.

http://www.rumorstore.com/shopping.aspx/B000ZZUVRM

1.          Reduce the number of players dressed per game to 18. This effectively removes less skilled players.
2.          Reduce the number of teams to 20. This effectively removes less skilled players.
3.          Reduce the number of games played per week to 3. This effectively allows for better rested players, where games per week are currently 3.5.
4.          Reduce the number of regular season games. I’m flexible with regards to the exact number of games. A minimum of 50 games would certainly let the cream rise to the top without bumping those quality teams that go on a 3 week swoon. The number, however, should not become so high that the outcome becomes too predictable for the majority of the teams. That just might make 70 games the maximum.
5.          I prefer a balanced schedule, although I’m well aware that most enjoy playing local teams more often
6.          Reduce the number of teams that qualify for the playoff to 8, with 3 7 game rounds. 5 games might be sufficient; however I can not get my mind to think of a playoff round being other than 7.
7.          1st seed will play 8th seed, etc…
8.          I prefer that these 8 seeds are the top 8 teams in the NHL with no preference being offered to division and conference. I am well aware that some may lose interest if no one from their region was competing in the playoffs. Perhaps my opinion is one from the east end of our continent.
9.         I should be noted at this point that with a balanced schedule and no seeding preferences the concept of division and conference adds little to our world
10.          No playoff round is to begin before the previous round is complete
11.          Playoff games will be scheduled such that you are playing every 2nd day, where each team is to get at least 1 day off. This last point is important between rounds.
12.          3 week training camp seems sufficient
13.          Time off for Xmas, All-Star break, between regular season & playoffs, for Olympics & World Cup can easily be accommodated
14.          Shut down 11 franchises Atlanta, Phoenix, Nashville, Columbus, Florida, Carolina, Tampa Bay, San Jose, Anaheim, Washington & New Jersey
15.          Add a new and 2nd franchise in Toronto
16.          No expansion to Winnipeg, Québec, Halifax. In the new 20 team NHL teams such as Edmonton & Calgary will be considered weak in many respects. Although I did intend on staying away from any reasoning of this sort.
    •          West division
      •          Vancouver
      •          Calgary
      •          Edmonton
      •          Los Angeles
      •          Colorado
    •          Midwest division
      •          Detroit
      •          Chicago
      •          Minnesota
      •          Saint Louis
      •          Dallas
    •          Southeast division
      •         Boston
      •          New York Rangers
      •          New York Islanders
      •          Philadelphia
      •          Pittsburgh
    •          Northeast
      •          Montréal
      •          Ottawa
      •          Toronto Maple Leafs
      •          Toronto 2nd
      •          Buffalo

What undermines everyone’s effort when entertaining any conversation that puts forth anything resembling the above is the idea that you can sell it. Don’t! You can’t! It’s purely entertainment!

Someone emailed us the following exclusive pics from the Stanley Cup party at Mario Lemieux's house.

I find that a lot of games this season are being decided by players screwing up. Let's start with Luis Castillo's total blunder.

Not only does he miss the easy game ending popup, but then he doesn't have the presence to throw the ball home and instead softly tosses to 2nd allowing the run to score easily.

Then there's Milton Bradley of the Cubs.

This isn't just a mental error. This guy makes an easy catch and decided he's gonna showboat, like he's amazing for catching a routine fly ball. He stands there like an idiot trying posing to maximize his camera time before throwing the ball into the crowd.

Still not enough? Today, with less than 2 outs and the bases loaded, Alex Rios of the Jays forgets to tag up on a fly ball, forcing him to return to third on what would've been a uncontesting sacrifice fly. Worse, the completely unsound baseball team known also as the Jays scored ZERO runs on 7 consecutive bases loaded situations before finally scoring on the 8th occurence via a bases loaded walk. No video yet on this stupidity, but we've already got Alex making a fool of himself on YouTube.

The typical MLB player is so pompous. I'm amazed that fans continue to want to watch these guys. And I haven't even mentioned that Sammy Sosa was added to the list of ballplayers that did steroids and repeatedly lied about it, including to congress. 

MLB under Bud Selig has turned into a complete joke.

Are you upset about the stupid court ruling? Then tell the NHL teams. I bought tickets to a Dallas Stars home game versus St Louis this year. I'm telling the Dallas franchise that I'm never doing that again, because they won't put a team in Hamilton. Go to the following webpage and find someone to email with your own negative thoughts...

http://stars.nhl.com/team/app/?service=page&page=NHLPage&id=8501

Or send their ticket personel an email here...

mailto:starsindividualtickets@dallasstars.com

Here's the email I sent them...

I bought tickets to the Dallas v St Louis game this year. I will never buy tickets to another Dallas home game until there's an NHL team in Hamilton.

Thanks,

Randy Charles Morin
http://www.talk-sports.com
http://www.kbcafe.com

The Phoenix courts have admitted they are too slow to rule in a reasonable amount of time to allow the relocation of the Phoenix Coyotes. They, of course, present the argument as two months is not enough time to present all the argument. Truth is, they ajourn for several days at a time and don't move fast enough.

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/story/2009/06/15/sp-coyotes-balsillie.html

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Somebody created a MakeIt7 song an uploaded a video to YouTube.

Today, I had that pleasure. First, the guy told his friends that Jean Beliveau won 15 cups as a player and two as an executive. I told him, it was only ten as a player and Henri Richard had 11. Then, he bragged to his friends that the U.S. Miracle on Ice game was actually a semi-final game and not a finals. I told him it was neither, rather it was a round robin system. He looked at me stunned, he clearly thought I was stupid. He then wondered with his friends where Canada was at that Olympics, but I knew he wouldn't believe me when I told him the Olympics didn't allow professionals back then. Finally, they started talking about the overpriced TFC versus AC Milan game this summer. I told them I thought it was Real Madrid and excused myself from any further conversation. Honestly, the average sports fan knows next to nothing of which he speaks.

The funny part is that these guys were older then me and should remember Jean Beliveau and the Miracle on Ice better than I. In fact, I never saw Beliveau play.

Yesterday, NASCAR.com published an article where Denny Hamlin's crew chief, Mike Ford, disputes Denny Hamlins claim of bad luck. God himself disputed Mike Fords claim, as 24 hours later Hamlin's engine folded when he geared up on lap #1 at Pocono. He returned to the track a few laps into the race and his engine folded once again when he geared up. If Denny Hamlin isn't the unluckiest racer on NASCAR, then I don't know what luck is. BTW, Joe Gibbs, you might want to fire Mike Ford for created a rift on his team and looking like an idiot.

http://www.nascar.com/2009/news/headlines/cup/06/06/preview.cup.pocono.dhamlin/index.html

One of the NHL teams that is likely against Hamilton having an NHL team is the Buffalo Sabres. Let's stand up to them and tell them that we will not buy Sabres tickets until there's an NHL team in Hamilton. Simply go to there website contact form.

http://sabres.nhl.com/team/contactus.htm

Add your details in the comment form and tell them you refuse to buy Sabres tickets till there's an NHL team in Hamilton. My son is on the SabreKidz Club, so I'll add that tidbit as well. If we put enough pressure on the Sabres, then we can get them to help us bring a team to Hamilton. There's clearly enough fans in the golden horseshoe to support three teams and without us Canadians, the Sabres would have long been relocated (possibly to Hamilton).

This weekend, I was told that Jiri Hudler would be the number 1 centre on most of the NHL teams. That was a chuckle. I love people who think they know hockey, but admit they rarely ever watch it. Best comedy.