This crap just never ends.

I thought this would be a nice, quiet offseason.  The Hawks would tweak the roster a little bit and call it a summer, hoping that Kyle Beach and Akim Aliu would step in and fill in any holes left after re-signing everyone (except Havlat).  Instead, the team went out and signed Marian Hossa to a huge deal, botched their tender offers to their restricted free agents and fired the General Manager.  Oh, and we were also subjected to the Martin Havlat Twitter feed, and the team later announced that Hossa needed shoulder surgery and would be out until November.  But now things had finally settled down and we can look forward to training camp, right?

Wrong.

The NHL announced today that they are launching an investigation into Marian Hossa's contract.  Why?  Because the league office suspects the Blackhawks and Hossa may have discussed idea of Marian retiring prior to the expiration of his new deal.  I'm sure the investigation will be well under way as soon as the NHL's chief investigator arrives from Paris:


Seriously, while the NHL tries to frighten everyone with their talk of lost draft picks and $5 million fines, let's remember, this is an organization that couldn't find it's ass with both hands on a clear day.  It's a little annoying that these dumbasses are even bothering to investigate at all.  What are they going to find, that Blackhawks are trying to structure contracts in order to sign as man of their players as possible under the salary cap?  That's fucking brilliant.  The NHL Offices, which couldn't be bothered to keep tabs on Alan Eagleson while he robbed the players union blind, which couldn't drop $1,000.00 to do a proper background check on John Spanos is now going to look into whether it's teams are trying to structure contracts to circumvent the salary cap.  Well, that's a great idea.  This is a tremendous allocation of resources, since it's not like the League is involved in a legal dogfight over the sale of a bankrupt franchise.

Idiots.

Speaking of fights here's a whole series of them between the Flyers and Senators.