New Nash-ville: Breaking!!!11OMG1!!1ONE!!! – Rick Nash has six teams he is willing to be traded to.  The 2011-12 LA Kings, the 2010-11 Bruins, and the 2010 Canadian Olympic team are the top three.  If those don’t work, he is willing to go to the NY Giants.  He has dropped the Lakers, as they already have a guy named Nash on their team.  He had the Predators on his list, but he saw their mascot’s name and got confused.

That said, if Nash wants out of Columbus, then get the hell out of Columbus.  Don’t tie the hands of your GM, who is asking for everything in the world, and will not get it.  If you go to that Puck Daddy post, you will see that Nash wants to go to teams with a good center to set him up.  Or, you know, Columbus could try to get a solid center, which they could use anyways.  Just saying.

Better Dead than Red: The Winter Classic Alumni Game rosters were partially unveiled today.  My guess is they did it this early in advance so they could get a count of walkers and wheelchairs needed for the players.  If I wanted to watch a bunch of old guys skating around in Red Wings jerseys, I would go to a regular season game.

Shane Doan Doobie Do Doan Doan, Comma Comma: What is with Shane Doan?  Thanks for showing loyalty or some strange version of it, but either get out of town or resign with the Coyotes.  He has to know what he wants by now, and should be willing to act on it.  If he doens’t, sign a one year deal (because he can dictate terms with the Phoenix at this point) and see what happens with ownership.  

Ownership issues didn’t derail the team going into the playoffs.  They lost to the eventual Stanley Cup Champion, after a solid run that turned into a loss of composure.  If you blame the ownership situation for that, you need to rethink what accountability is. 

But Doan’s value has to be going down with every passing day.  The big spending period of free agency is over.  Now it’s about making salary fit into a budget, and making chemistry work.  And if you still need to plug holes, doing it cheaply.  Doan, sign with Phoenix for a year.  Get it over with.

URLs Gone Wild: Ever since Parise and Suter signed with the Wild, I wanted to use that headline.  After seeing what the Wild spent on two players, I haven’t seen much anger or frustration from fans that their teams didn’t make similar offers.  Spending Kovalbucks on two players isn’t any kind of guarantee you will win a Cup, and handing out CBA protected bonuses like this isn’t the smartest spending.  Even Avs fans, who thought getting Parise would be the end-all, be-all solution to the team’s woes have been fairly quiet.  Perhaps going into the next season, less is more. 

The Ongoing Break: I’ve been taking a break from Twitter and Facebook lately, and I won’t lie, it’s been nice.  I feel like there is less drama in my life, and I don’t get invested in the silly arguments that used to waste my time.  Now I waste my time in other ways.  Social media can be great, but it can also get out of hand, and I would spend way too much time seeing what other people said.  And twitter kills my blogging.  It really does.  

Still, I’m happy to pop on and reply to @s and DMs, or messages on facebook.  I just have given up on the timeline for a while.  Try it, you might like it.

Housekeeping: A few things I wanted to mention here.  I know I’ve mentioned it on twitter, but I have officially moved back to Denver, after being on tour for the last several years.  I even got an apartment in Capitol Hill with a one year lease.  That means I will get to watch more Avalanche hockey, and might even write about them more often.  It’s been a weird transition, and I’m not sure how life will look by the time the season starts.

It also means that Jay and I will be able to do a few more episodes of the Avs Hockey Podcast next season, and most of them will be face to face, which is always a better podcast.  It’s one of the bright spots for me, and I’m honored that Jay wants me around for the show.  I don’t post about it here often, but that will change.

You probably didn’t notice, but I changed my byline here from Tapeleg to James.  Because that is my name.  Which isn’t really a secret or anything.  When I started hockey blogging, I was anonymous for reasons.  But when I started The Rink (which has languished to the point that I need to make a decision on it), I felt it was silly not to use my real name.  That was almost four years ago, and for some reason, I never got around to changing it here.  I still like the Tapeleg moniker (and if you ever wanted to know what the deal was with that, you can listen here), and will still be using it, but I did want to make the change, and so there you go.  Hi, I’m James.  I hope you like it here.