Posted on 06/27/2005 4:41:06 PM PDT by RWR8189
And so begins the NHL's marketing campaign to win back fans ...
Former Blackhawk Jeremy Roenick let shot after shot fly at a news conference for Mario Lemieux's charity golf tournament Saturday in a profanity-laced rant.
While Roenick did say the league needed to give the fans a victory after the long lockout, he didn't do much for the league's image when he lashed out at fans who criticized the players for their role in the cancellation of the season.
"If people are going to sit and chastise pro athletes for being cocky, they need to look at one thing and that's the deal we're going to be signing in about three weeks,'' he said. "Pro athletes are not cocky. Pro athletes care about the game. Everybody out there who calls us spoiled because we play a game, they can kiss my [butt].
"I will say personally, to everybody who calls us spoiled, you guys are just jealous. We're trying to get this thing back on the ice and make it better for the fans. If you don't realize that, then don't come. We don't want you in the rink, we don't want you in the stadium, we don't want you to watch hockey.''
Roenick also expressed frustration with the way the negotiations have gone. The league and the players union are expected to settle on a new collective-bargaining agreement soon, and it reportedly will include a salary cap of between $36 million and $38 million.
"If we would have signed that deal in February, in terms of what we're getting now, we would have looked like heroes,'' Roenick said. "Right now we look like a bunch of idiots. The deal in February beats the [expletive] out of the deal we're gonna sign in July.''
Roenick lamented that players such as himself did not have a loud enough voice when there was a chance of saving the season. Commissioner Gary Bettman canceled it Feb. 16.
"It's unfortunate we had to go through a whole year to realize the [expletive] that was going on,'' Roenick said. "We've hurt our league, we've hurt the reputation of our league and the integrity of our league by sticking up for something that might not have been the right thing to do.''
Big weekend for newest Yank
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say this was the best weekend of Kevin Reese's life.
On Friday, he proposed to Laura Le Gallo, and they plan to get married in September. On Saturday, he found out he would be joining the New York Yankees for a game on Sunday. The Yankees purchased his contract from Class AAA Columbus and put him in the lineup against the Mets.
"I've been waiting for this day since I started playing baseball when I was 6 or 7 years old,'' Reese, 27, said.
So, he has plenty to share with his friends.
"I'm getting married. By the way, I just got called up to the big leagues,'' he would say, occasionally reversing the order of the announcements.
So much for the dog days of summer.
Mets great wants to manage
Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter is willing to make minor adjustments before he earns a major promotion.
So he has started managing the rookie-level Gulf Coast Mets with the hopes of being a manager in the major leagues. Carter, 51, has been thinking about pursuing such a career for years but waited until his children had grown up. He inquired about the Mets' managerial job after Art Howe was fired last year, then volunteered for the Gulf Coast League opening when he was told he needed more experience.
''I'm not going to just do it this year and say, 'This is it. I'm not happy with the way things are going,''' Carter said. ''I want to keep doing this. If it takes a couple of years, it takes a couple of years.''
''Would I like it to be in this organization? Yes. But Willie Randolph's signed to a three-year deal. I'm hoping he wins three consecutive World Series. If that's the case, he's going to be there a long time, so there's 29 other teams.''
Celebrities stand out among faces in crowd
Sometimes a photographer's job is a spectator sport.
President Bush caused a stir when he showed up at a game between the Washington Nationals and the Toronto Blue Jays at RFK Stadium on Friday night. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, brother Marvin Bush and former U.S. ambassador to France Craig Stapleton -- a Bush cousin by marriage -- accompanied the president and sat in the front row of an open, mezzanine-level box along the third-base line.
There also were some celebrity sightings at Wimbledon this weekend. Actor Sean Connery and his wife, Micheline, bonded while watching some matches. Golfer Ernie Els and his wife, Liezl, also watched the tennis, presumably feeling good about not having to worry about the condition of the grass.
Slogan promotes world peace
China has decided the slogan for the 2008 Olympic Games will be ''One World, One Dream.'' The slogan is supposed to embody "the common aspiration of the 1.3 billion Chinese people in establishing a world of peace and better future,'' according to Liu Qi, president of Beijing's Olympics organizing committee.
The committee chose the slogan from 210,000 proposals and announced it at a party that was broadcast live on television.
I was never happier than when the Blackhawks traded him away, and I thought it was even greater that he was removed from a major media market.
ping
I think he needs to be traded to the deep Atlantic ridge league.
Jeremy Roenick = cowardly punk who got his clock cleaned (and jaw broken) by Darian Hatcher and has run from him ever since....LMAO
Tee shirts soon to be available at Walmart.
I didn't even know who Roenick was. Now all these years later I can proudly say again..."Who is Jeremy Roenick?"
I don't remember who it was that said it, but someone said almost a year ago when NHLPA players started signing contracts to play in Europe, "If these guys will sign in Europe for a couple hundred thousand, why can't they sign over here for a few lousy million?"
I never liked Roenick anyways.
Since you asked so nicely, JR, consider it done.
What an asshat (and I was a Flyers fan).
ping
The flippant remarks you just made will guarantee you that you will be intensely disliked even by Flyers fans when the NHL returns this fall.
Guess what? I'm not going to sit home. In the winter, I have fun going to the local college hockey games. It costs me $3 to get in. It costs me $2 each to bring my sister's 3 kids. If I buy us all snacks and drinks, it costs me less than $25 for a whole evening of hard-hitting hockey entertainment, which is less than just a ticket for myself in the nosebleed section of an NHL game. And the best thing is that I'm not paying your over-prices a**. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Roenick!
I loved it when Darien Hatcher jacked him. That'll teach him to put a cheap blind-side shot on somebody, then talk trash in the media afterwards. That moron was daring somebody to hit him and Darien stepped up.
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