It has been a crazy morning on the phones. Literally one of those days that my lunch appointment called me to tell me he would be late and I thought I still had at least an hour! So all these hours on the phone is pointless unless I report back to you...
Kyle Calder is an interesting player that ever since his great start in Chicago has been sort of struggling to really get back to the talents that he so obviously has. At his time in Chicago, Calder and Mark Bell were the future...
Calder is on a one year deal, a Lombardi special, the kind of guy that he signs for a year who can definitely have trade value for a team looking for a third line guy who can score and MAYBE jump onto a top line spot as an emergency fill-in. Essentially, see his recent work on the Red Wings.
Interestingly enough, The Hawks have been rumored to be interested, but today I am hearing alot on Dallas and Nashville. On
The NHL Trade Rumor Chart I also have the Sens with a "small" 10% interest.
Last year, I am 100% certain, that the Islanders had a deal for Jovanovski that he refused. At the time, I was also told that the Rangers were a team he would go to. Many of course will point out that Jovanoski is a big ticket item and the Rangers are right up against the cap. Well, as we all know the Rangers have already spent some time this year figuring out how to make some cap space work...so maybe they utilize it here.
Staying in Phoenix, Mr Doan has told people who have told me that he will not waive his no trade. No way, no how. There are players who say this to me and you never know, but on occasion, like Kaberle last year and Doan this year...you know. So I have taken Doan off of
The NHL Trade Rumor Chart.
Derek Morris however..... more on that later..
working on Jay Bo, Vinny, and Spezza, but I really wanted to thank all of you who became "Patrons of Hockeybuzz" (like that term, thank mr leo laporte) and paid $20 to become a
SEASON TICKET holder of hockeybuzz.com for a year. It sucks to have to ask for your help, but the advertising revenues on the net are truly shrinking right now due to the economy, and essentially we are dependent more and more on your kindness. We have seen a great increase of traffic this season, with 500k uniques in December accounting for 9 million pageviews...and December is a slow month around here. Last December we had 150k less visitors and 6 million pageviews.
The reason I bring this up is websites have to pay for all of that bandwidth...(the bandheight is free, jk) With your
SEASON TICKET we can look ahead with excitement instead of gripping fear! (too much?)
Anyway, this is the scoop....Last January we had 11 million pageviews and last February just shy of 18! So this season, with the increased traffic demands, increased server demans and decreased advertising rates we are going to get "hit from behind and to the head" all at once.
So if you can afford to help out with 20 bucks it will go a long way towards our site's survival...and we will make you this deal...The most common complaint we get is that the videos auto-play on the first page. Its all about survival, so give us your
$20 and we will take the autoplay videos away for you. Pllus of course you get
The NHL Trade Rumor Chart, Eklund Exclusive Chats (today at 3pm), Special edition podcasts, free entry and better prizes in the fantasy games, insider emails and more.
But mostly you get our thanks. And I can shut up and just get on the phones and make calls.
more to come shortly. need to meet my lunch appointment. He is a former Rangers team executive who is taking the train to DC, but I am meeting him at 30th St Station in Philly to catch up.
There will also be a Hockeybuzzcast at 4pm today.
Alex Ovechkin on Twitter apparently...http://twitter.com/ovi8 looking into my Caps sources to verify it is really him. Let's give him the "eklund bump." My Twitter feed is below, and your can follow it by clicking follow below or going to http://twitter.com/eklund. You can also follow Burt the Dog at http://twitter.com/burtthedog. (yes that's right, we just went from Ovechkin to Burt.)
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