Did Mattias Ohlund ever get his gold medal?

Remember oh, February of 2006 when Mattias Ohlund got injured and there was talk about whether or not he'd get his gold medal? What ever happened to that?

Oh, and saw this on google news of all places: CANUCKS DRESSING ROOM OPEN FOR VIEWING AUGUST 2, 4, 9, 11, 16, AND 18. Admission for adults is $10. Hmm.. I wouldn't mind seeing it again but I'd hate to put my hard earned money into the pockets of some people who deserve it less than me.

Another Corgi Photo

My Little Pot of Gold
Originally uploaded by mrjoro.

Isn't this a great shot? I love seeing texture in photographs and you can see it in the concrete and wet dog fur. Katie also has these same cute paws.

More Signings..

Latest signing is forward, Jan Bulis - FA from the Canadiens.

Earlier were some defencemen, Alexander Edler, Shaun Heshka and Joe Rullier, and a forward, Jannik Hansen.

Hee hee hee... Oops!

This photo reminds me of Kevin the Smarties commercial cartoon who'd say, "Hee hee hee.. Oops!" after he'd make something turn a different colour. Was that Smarties or Tollhouse cookies??

EDIT: Mr. Christie's cookies!!!!

Hearsay - Linden's gonna be back

Hmmm.. so this was a nice little bit from CKNW: "GM Dave Nonis says a roster spot awaits the unrestricted free agent, and they'll sit down next week to discuss a new deal."

Yay, Trevor needs a Stanley Cup! Out of everyone on the team, in GM Place, in Vancouver, Trevor Linden is the one man who should be raising that beautiful silver Stanley Cup in victory. Everyone loves Trevor Linden! Everyone loves Mattias Ohlund for that matter too but Trevor's the one I want to see holding the Stanley Cup.

Ahem, that being said, I'm not sure that this is the year that that's gonna happen. lol. Hell, Vancouver's never won the Cup. Ever. Gawd, if we won, there'd be pandemonium. We rioted in '94 when we lost. Imagine if we won. :| Yeah, you just think about that.

Latest news: Peca, Snow and some

Peca signed with the Leafs and took a $1.5 mill paycut to be back home. With Pronger and Spacek gone, and Laraque joining Jovo in Phoenix, like the Canucks, the Oilers will have a brand new team, despite making it to the Cup finals.

Oh! So ex-Canucks goalie, Garth Snow was named the new GM for the NY Islanders. Isn't that interesting.

In other news... some words from Marty Reasoner when he found out that he'd been traded:

"You're picking up from a place you kind of called home for a while. It's the relationships that you build, the people that you're with. You invest a lot of time and effort into it and to pick up and move can be hard. But when you sign up to be a professional athlete you know that that's the down side of it. You deal with it and you move on.

"I saw the guys. It's always a little difficult but I'm glad I got to say goodbye and sit down and talk for a little bit before I go."

I read the articles and apparently he was pretty choked about being traded. =( I think at least our guys knew there were gonna be changes with the team this year so at least they were a bit more prepared.

As Neo would say, "Whoa" :|

Well, the Mattias Ohlund Appreciation site is still fritzing. I think it might be at attack on the server so it becomes too busy to respond to legitimate inquiries.

At lunch I checked site related stuff and discovered that http://ohlund.atspace.com actually had a pagerank for Google. I was like, Whoa, you know? lol.

Pagerank of 2 baby! Mattias Ohlund's jersey number!

Ohlund.atspace.com down.. grr

Hmm.. well the uptime of the Mattias Ohlund Appreciation Page has been sketchy lately. I had visited the forum and many other atspace.com users were suffering from the same frustration... with no feedback from the Admin as to what the reason was or when things might return to normal.

Now the main Atspace.com site is unavailable. Not a good sign.

Soo.. considering that the site is my only source of decent Ohlund material, I'll post some pics of Mattias Ohlund here.

Going down IB memory lane

A mention of the old high school on the news started me looking up possible reunion type websites. I came across some fun stuff. Apparently, alumni include Mike Harcourt and John Shorthouse. Also found a lot of IB complaining. Haha! We all loved to complain.

Top 10 reasons to be an IB Diploma Candidate:

10) I want to conform to an international standard of educational excellence.
9) I want to be surrounded by other intelligent, dedicated students.
8) I want to work extremely hard.
7) I want to sacrifice almost all of my time to studying.
6) I want my class rank to be as low as it can possibly be.
5) I want to have an overwhelmingly high stress level.
4) I want to immerse myself in an environment of competition and mutual jealousy.
3) I want to burn away any vestiges of creativity or independent thought that I might have left after sophomore year.
2) I want to discover that all of the extra work I did to get the IB Diploma made absolutely no difference in my college admissions.
1) I feel masochistic.

Canuck fans are so fickle

I found this article while randomly surfing (as I usually find stuff). It's an artlice by Kevin Woodley back in 2003, "Hedberg, Linden shocked as Canucks fans boo Cloutier" Anyway, here is a bit on Hedberg's reaction when he first encountered the fickle nature of Canucks fans:

"Hedberg heard the horror stories before he arrived. He knew all about the 15 goaltenders that had come and gone in the last six seasons, about the city's reputation as a goalie graveyard. But he still couldn’t believe what he was hearing, not after the game’s first shot anyway.

“I think it was pretty low,” said Hedberg, adding he had nothing in a decade-long career to compare to Wednesday’s reaction. “I didn’t think it would be that bad.

“People have a right to an opinion, but it's in their own interest to have us be at our best. If you think it helps to boo your guys and make them feel bad, it’s up to you, but that’s not the way I look at it.”"

EXACTLY!!! Why don't people see this? Even corporations have realized that it's more productive to have happy employees than foul ones.

Nowhere else they'd rather play..

I had embedded the video but it was too annoying. I didn't like Mo's still shot there. Anyway, here's the link to a Canucks commercial posted on youtube.

This is sad. I completely believe them. Every single one of them. Sad to see Bertuzzi at the end of this video.

No news makes fans antsy

I'm a frequenter of the Canucks forum. I'm not on it 24/7 like some are but I do have it as a favourite link. There's been so much itching about trades and twitter about acquisition forecasting that some have bought membership into an "Insider's forum" to get the 411 5 minutes faster then Joe Blow.

Marc Chouinard to Vancouver for $2 mill

Who the heck is Marc Chouinard??!!

OK, another Wild defenceman. While the Wild are looking to get offensive defencemen, the Canucks are looking to acquire a more defensive defence. Haha! Well, I'm all for the Wild expanding their skills beyond the trap but I am NOT ok with seeing Vancouver becoming a 'trapping' team.

Why isn't anyone happy to come to Vancouver?

It's interesting. Both Luongo and Mitchell were publicly at odds with their former franchises. Mitchell, a "popular and affable former captain" signed with the Canucks for the money that he'd originally wanted but didn't get from the Wild. For Luongo, it wasn't about the money (he was offered the same contract by Florida) but more about signing with a franchise that he could trust.

So they've got the money and the trust (as much as you could expect..) so why don't they look happy in their press photos? Perhaps they don't like being in the Vancouver fishbowl that is Canucks hockey...?

Riker to Enterprise.. 3 to beam up

I had 2 Star Trek communicator pins: one that just pinned, and the other which chirped. Now the real life communicators are in production today...

BBC NEWS
Trekkie communicator ready to go
If you have ever wanted to emulate Star Trek and talk to colleagues via a lapel communicator, then now is your chance.

US firm Vocera has created a wireless voice communicator just like they use in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Similar to the TV series, all you do to contact someone is press the talk button on the lapel badge, say their name, and you will be put through.

The gadget is proving popular in hospitals to make it easier for nurses to find and get advice from doctors.

Talk time

The Vocera communications system channels voice calls via a wi-fi network to recognise who someone is trying to reach and then to connect them.

Servers do the job of decoding speech to recognise names, find out if the person is available and then a portion of the wireless network is reserved so the people can speak to each other.

"It's pretty futuristic," said Keerti Melkote, co-founder of Aruba Networks that is a partner of Vocera.

"It's very neat, smaller than a cell phone and very lightweight," he told BBC News Online.

Although the voice recognition system needs a bit of training to match names with the way people pronounce them, the system can be working well within a few days, said Mr Melkote.

Early customers for the Vocera communicator were hospitals who like the fact that it lets nurses talk directly to doctors.

"We're focussing on healthcare to help provide bedside patient care and replace pager type calls," he said.

He said pagers can just lead to people leaving endless numbers of messages for each other but never actually speaking.

Mr Melkote said the communicator was ideal for workplaces where staff move around a lot, are spread around large campuses or across several buildings.

The battery-powered gadget can either be clipped to a lapel or worn on a lanyard around the neck.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/3628517.stm

Published: 2004/04/17 07:30:01 GMT

© BBC MMVI

Todd Bertuzzi Pictures

I love these pictures of Todd Bertuzzi.

If I were the photographer, I'd have been pleased as punch to have captured these moments.

Johan Hedberg to Atlanta

I liked Hedberg. He's moved on from Dallas to Atlanta. Took a 2 year UFA deal with the Thrashers. The Thrashers. What an odd mascot..

On that note, I'd heard from a retail clerk that the NHL was planning on doing a revamp of the NHL logos in a couple of years as a marketing thing to get more of our money into their pockets. I tried to look into it, but as yet, have not seen or heard anything to substantiate it.

Baumy attributes numbers to Ohlund

Winnipeg Free Press Canada - 3 Jul 2006
... "It felt good (to finally put up those kinds of numbers)," Baumgartner said. "Playing with Mattias Ohlund sure didn't hurt."

Cloutier's a King

Well then, another Canuck veteran is no longer a Canuck. Dan Cloutier's been traded to LA to be reunited with Crawford in exchange for a 2nd round 2007 draft pick.

I went to GM the other night for a concert and it was sad passing by the huge posters of Bert and the Canucks. I'd skipped out at the intermission to see if Authentix was open. It was not. The sweat shops are probably out making Luongo #1 and Mitchell #8 jerseys now.

Ruutu's gone too??

Ruutu's signed with the Pittsburgh Penguins. I guess he'll play with Crosby now. Waaa!

Jovo, Baumy gone; Mitchell donning Canucks colours

It's not over folks!

Jovo's signed with Phoenix, not Florida (despite Bert's nudging). Perhaps Florida has a rep for treating their players badly, hmm? Canucks didn't offer him a deal which was to be expected with the cap but I'm sure there was some disappointment.

Baumgartner left with little fanfare to the Flyers. Like a lot of players, I think he got shafted during his time here and wish him the best. A two-year deal of $2.4 million is a heck of a lot better than the $450 K he got last season.

The newest Nonis acquisition is Willie Mitchell. Bye Bert, hello Mitchell? Sigh. 4 years at $14 mill. I'll reserve judgement on the newest Canucks for now. Hopefully they'll mesh with the team... or what's left of it.

Sedins In

Pretty much been boom boom boom with all of the news in the past few days, eh? First Bert, Auldy and Allen are gone, in comes Luongo, and then maybe we don't have Luongo. But really we do have Luongo.. for a long time (til 2009-2010 with no trade clause) in exchange for a lot of money ($27 mill) and now have the Sedins locked in for 3 years. I wonder if they have a no trade clause too. They'll be earning $3.575 million per season each.