Busy Friday purge

A buncha thoughts on a busy busy Friday.

Let’s start with the NBA. This Chris Paul thing has the potential to get even more messy than it already is. Here’s the thing. The NBA, as does every other league, has to approve of all trades. Obviously, the timing of the veto–coming after news of the trade spread and whispers of other teams demanding the veto, and the leaked email from Cleveland’s owner Dan Gilbert–is very bad. In his email, Gilbert does have a point that the 29 owners of the New Orleans Hornets should have a say in such a trade. Yes, the Hornets’ GM should be able to negotiate trades with autonomy, but it still affects payroll, and every other GM in the league would need their owner’s approval to make this deal. So yeah, Gilbert has a point.

But he destroys his own credibility with his line about “25 Washington Generals” and when he talks about lost revenue-sharing dollars (which his team would more than likely be on the receiving end of). That makes the whole thing self-serving and frankly, idiotic…

The World Junior Championship is nearly upon us. Canada’s selection camp opens this weekend, and I’ll be lucky enough to get a little preview tonight, as Mark McNeill’s Prince Albert Raiders are visiting the Calgary Hitmen. The biggest news is two NHL teams have loaned WJC-eligible players to the Canadian squad. Tampa let Brett Connolly go, and Anaheim let Devante Smith-Pelly go. They’ll both be in camp. There’s always some worry the team will naturally tend to defer to the guys on load from the NHL when they join the team, but with Connolly and DSP having to go through the selection camp just like any other players, the deference seems less likely. The Florida Panthers didn’t loan Eric Gudbranson to the squad, but Canada has a very deep defense corps at the selection camp and Gudbranson won’t be as sorely-missed as Connolly and DSP will be greatly-welcomed…

As I wrote earlier today, I’m none too pleased with Montreal’s trade today. I joked on Twitter the Habs should go and get Bryan McCabe to reunite Toronto’s 2004 defense pair. The more I think about it, the more McCabe makes more sense than Kaberle does. McCabe at least shoots the puck, which would help Montreal’s power play. Kaberle doesn’t help anything.

In his mailbag column today, TSN’s Darren Dreger says Columbus turned down a trade offer from Carolina of Kaberle and a second-round pick for disgruntled former first-round pick Derick Brassard. When even Columbus knows enough to turn down a player, you know Montreal made a bad trade…

Elsewhere in Dreger’s mailbag, he suggests the NHL’s labour situation may not be as peaceful as it appears. He suggests the owners may try to shift the revenue split from 57-43 for the players to something closer to 50-50. I’ve always assumed this agreement was working well for owners, and I never imagined they’d do something so stupid and greedy. Maybe you’ll want to call a local CHL team about a deposit on season tickets for the 2012-13 season so you’re guaranteed you can watch hockey…

The biggest news today, even before most of the Eastern time zone was awake, was the announcement Bell and Rogers joined forced to buy a majority stake in MLSE. It’s fair to assume the on-ice impact would be minimal, but if you’re CBC, you should be worried. Bell and Rogers own TSN and Sportsnet. I can’t imagine they’ll want to give CBC the 20 or so Saturday night Leafs games Hockey Night in Canada has now (though there’s opportunity for CBC and HNIC to really spin this in a positive way). This sale gives Bell and Rogers the opportunity to give TSN and Sportsnet exclusive broadcast rights (and media access) for the Toronto Raptors (and by extension, the NBA) and Toronto FC (and by extension, MLS). Either way, this sale will have a very interesting impact on sports coverage by mainstream Canadian media outlets…

Going back to NHL realignment for one more thought. There’s been quite a bit of chatter about it being unfair that different percentages of teams from each of the new conferences make the playoffs. It’s a very slight advantage for the teams in the seven-team conferences. One thing I hadn’t thought of when I wrote about it, and I haven’t seen the league address, is how the draft rankings will work. At the time, I wrote it would be unfair for teams with dramatically-different schedules to battle for the same playoff spots, so it stands to reason it would also be unfair for the draft order to be determined using the same unbalanced schedules.

My proposal: Take the 14 non-playoff teams and use only their points earned in non-conference games to determine the lottery odds. This actually gives a slight edge at the draft to the teams in eight-team conferences: as they’ll play two fewer non-conference games than the teams in seven-team conferences do, they’ll have fewer chances to accumulate points that count for the lottery standings…