Mostly Moose. Some other stuff

I went to the Saturday night Manitoba Moose game. It was an entertaining, but low scoring game, with the good guys winning in the OT shootout after a 1 - 1 tie.

Thumbs up goes to:
- the Moose defense, for keeping the Toronto Marlies to around 20 shots on net, and to goalie Cory Schneider for only letting in one of those (and only one in the shootout.)
- the game programs. The free handouts are four pages, with one page devoted to the lineups, and another filled with various stats and analysis.
- the scalper who sold me a 3rd row center ice ticket for $20.

Thumbs down goes to:
- the MTS Centre cleaning staff. The seats where really dirty. General grime, dried beer, feathers ... it was kind of gross actually. Time to pull out the Bissell for a quarter-season cleaning I think.
- Santa Claus, for causing all of the streets downtown to be closed off. Although parking was a snap once I decided to drive around the barriers.
- The Moose offense. That's not really a fair assessment though, because they worked hard all night, got over 30 shots on net and plenty of scoring chances. It just comes down to a lack of scoring ability. For example, at one point Marco Rosa had an open third of the net and hit the post ... from six inches away. That's what happens when everybody on the team who is capable of scoring more than 10 goals a year (and isn't over 40) gets pulled up to the parent club.

Other notes:
- best fan comment: "Hey Deveaux. How do you explain to your friends that you aren't even good enough to make the Maple Leafs?"
- former PC party leader Stu Murray was handing out St.Boniface Hospital lottery leaflets. Good to see him out doing the nitty gritty promo stuff.

Summary / Jets rant:
The Moose are a good fit for Winnipeg. It's affordable, the team is relatively successful, and the entertainment isn't bad most nights. I can't really complain. Could I have bought a $20 3rd-row ticket for a Jets game? Not a chance, but I probably could have bought a $50 ticket for the top of the cramped balcony, and the calibre of play would have been better. I feel like a traitor saying this, but I can live without the Jets. It would be cool to have an NHL team again, but Winnipeg is about 300,000 people and 5 or 6 big head offices too small to have the economic base for a successful team. Our arena is also very very marginal. Rexall Place in Edmonton holds 16,800 and the owners there are saying that's too small, and are pushing hard for a new downtown arena. Having said that, I do think the NHL will come back to Winnipeg. Where there's smoke there's fire, and there's more smoke all the time. As not-profitable as the New Jets will be, they will still be far more successful than some of the struggling US teams, like the Old Jets for example. I think it's going to happen.

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Hey, since I have my thumbs all warmed up, a big thumbs up to Mary A Welch for her article about wind farms (or lack thereof), and to the Free Press editors for sticking it on the front page of the weekend edition. This is something that deserves more attention. And thumbs down to Minister Wowchuk (I'm having an "I Married an Axe Murderer flashback right now. Woooooo-Chuck! Anyhow ... back to the program ....) for idiotic comments:

it's not fair to compare Manitoba to Ontario, since our province already relies almost exclusively on renewable energy but Ontario is powered largely by dirty coal.

And that makes a difference how? Maybe in a world where exporting electricity was impossible ...

And, she said, Manitoba is blessed with cheap power, meaning ratepayers would take a hit if the province threw open its doors to wind power

Oh, you mean those artificially cheap rates that contribute to us being among the biggest consumers of electricity in the world, and to Hydro's massive debt, which will be much more of a problem when interest rates rise again? Those cheap rates? That is why we're not building more power even though we've potentially over-committed on power exports and may face blackouts according to an independent auditor?

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Also a thumbs up to Gordon Sinclair for a good column about the Bomber's management woes. How about that, eh? I said something nice about Gordon! Although he still had ... let's see ... 1..2 .... 34 one sentence paragraphs. You still need to work on that, Gordo.

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Still with the Freep ... to borrow a gambit from Kate at SDA: Now is the time when we juxtapose!

Mia Rabson

Aboriginal inmates in Canada make up too high a percentage of Canada's prison population and tend to get harsher sentences and less programming, a report from the country's prison watchdog said Friday.

Colleen Simard

Waywayseecappo Chief Murray Clearsky went to court for another drunk driving charge. It ended up with Clearsky getting a light sentence with no jail time. ... The worst part is this wasn't the first time Clearsky had been convicted of a drunken driving charge. He's been charged three times since 1983, and also has a dangerous weapon conviction.

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