Storms Brewing in Atlantic

The Atlantic Division race promises to be a very interesting and potentially very entertaining one this season. Lots of fascinating story lines will be played out in Philly, Pittsburgh, New Jersey and the New Yorks as the season unfolds. Although I don't think the preseason dust has completely settled yet on all the roster changes taking place it's nevertheless still fun to take a look at how things are shaping up in the Atlantic... So far.

Father Nordique

The NHL's Avalanche may be physically located in Denver, Colorado but spiritually the club's heart and soul is still to be found in...

Les Nordiques De Quebec

Sadly this past weekend saw the passing of a very influential and beloved figure in Quebec Hockey, Marius Fortier "The Father" of the Quebec Nordiques. He will be greatly missed by many a fan and player.

Jovial and always in good humour, his heart was broken in May 1995 with the sale of the Nordiques to Colorado.
"Damn money," he grumbled when asked what prompted the move.
He used the recent NHL lockout to pass along a last message to the decision-makers in the Quebec City region.
"Without a new Colisee, there will never again be NHL hockey here," he said.

Hopefully the decision-makers in the Quebec City region will remember his words and take appropriate action. I firmly believe that in this brave new hockey world brought about by a NHL Collective Bargaining Agreement designed to help small market teams succeed that a franchise in the historic hockey-crazed Province of Quebec could once again rise and prosper. Thus fulfilling the deeply held hopes and dreams of hockey fans everywhere.

In other Nordique/Avalanche news...

and then there was only one left. Man, I sure loved those uniforms. In my humble opinion they were some of the best ever seen in the NHL.

BC Beatdown

Hockey fights without a Hockey game. What's the point?

Well anyways after years of trying and failing Manitoba promoter Darryl Wolski finally pulled the event off this past Saturday night up in BC Canada. The fight card they ended up with was pretty freakin weak (bordering on lame), some washed up former NHLer's and the rest being mostly minor league has-beens or never-were's. They even threw in a local at last minute to fill out the card who to his credit won a fight. Oooooh yeah, the man, the myth, the legend, "The Missing link" also was there, his most recent escapade was being thrown off his team mid-season last year for going to the concession stand between periods of a game and chowing down. Alas, "The Link" didn't last long Saturday night. As you can probably guess it wasn't a very classy or top-notch lineup.

Fear and Loathing in Prince George

With an hour to kill before show time, Dwayne and Troy reached for the bottle that lay in the back of their red pickup truck and started in on the rye
The pair had driven 12 hours from Alberta to witness a world's first on Saturday night: Hockey Enforcers, a spectacle of hockey fights. Without the hockey. No sticks, no pucks. Just minor-league pluggers and has-beens on skates, beating one another stupid for cash..

>>> read more.

The winner Dean "The Machine" Mayrand plays in the infamous NALH fighting league of Quebec. A league where most of the teams play slap shot style hockey as a rule or just in order to survive. I guess it figures the champ of this event would come from that league. It's not surprising either that there seemed to be almost as much action in the stands as there was on the ice.

"By the time the semifinals came around, more than two hours into the event and with the beer flowing freely, security officials and police had to break up at least four punch-ups among the patrons."

With the Apocalypse fast approaching and the popularity of human cockfighting on the rise all over we'll probably be seeing more of these Hockey Enforcer Contests on Pay Per View in the future.
They ought to put the NALH de Quebec on PPV, at least there's a hockey game going on between all the fights.

For Tom Benjamin's excellent thoughts on all this go >>> here

Also checkout what the posters over at hockeyfights.com who attended the event had to say.