Don't hold your breath

Right up there with death and taxes, one other thing human beings can pretty much guarantee in life is this: inevitably, somewhere, somehow, we all mistake a bad idea as a good one. The singular sense, of course, is if we’re lucky.

An example: Pizza Pizza just bought out Pizza 73, a local-ish chain here in Calgary, which undoubtedly means we’ll soon be forced to much on their cardboa-- er, inferior “pizza.”

While Pizza Pizza is bad news for me, the sports world often brings good news in this department, and Wednesday-Thursday brought something of a jackpot.

In Jacksonville, both of the Jaguars’ quarterbacks have confirmed to media the team’s interest in soon-to-be-former Miami Dolphins quarterback Daunte Culpepper. That’s right. The Jags, with two young and effective quarterbacks David Gerrard and Byron Leftwich, both of whom figure to have brighter and longer futures in the NFL than Culpepper, are interested in the same Daunte Culpepper that’s had two separate knee surgeries end each of his last two seasons, limiting him to just 11 games. Culpepper’s career record is a less-than-tingly 38-42 as a starter, including a 1-3 record in four starts with Miami last season against opponents with a combine 1-11 record to that point. Somewhere in Jacksonville, someone within the organization must still be playing Madden 2002 (which Culpepper graced the cover of), and working with 2001 stats. While Culpepper brings a name, and has had some success in the NFL, most of that success involved throwing footballs to Randy Moss and Chris Carter. Since the end of his time with Moss, Culpepper’s touchdown-to-interception ratio is minus-seven, versus the plus-55 he had with Moss and Carter as primary targets. His completions for 20 yards or more are down by nearly one a game, and completions over 40 yards went from 0.73 a game to 0.27 a game. In plain numbers, Culpepper completed 55 such passes from 1999-2004, and three in the 11 games he’s played since. All in all, instead of getting some real receivers or some offensive line help for the two good quarterbacks they have, they’re going to bring in another ineffective quarterback, for more money, and hope the rest pans out.

Elsewhere, the Calgary Flames introduced their new head coach Thursday, and it’s Mike Keenan. You know Mike Keenan. He coached the Mark Messier-led New York Rangers to a Stanley Cup win in 1994, and never really accomplished anything else before or after. He rode Ron Hextall to the final in 1987 (Hextall became just the fourth playoff MVP to play for the losing team that year), and Ed Belfour to the Final in 1992. Since guiding the powerhouse Flyers, Blackhawks and Rangers to a combined 395-252-76 record from 1984-1994, Keenan has coached St. Louis, Vancouver, Boston and Florida to a combined 174-195-64-20 record from 1994-2004. In 1996, despite a lineup that included Wayne Gretzky, Brett Hull, Al MacInnis, rookie defenseman Chris Pronger, and Grant Fuhr playing arguably the best season of his career (which includes a couple Stanley Cups), Keenan’s Blues lost in the second round of the playoffs and it was the last time a Keenan-coached team ever made the playoffs. In 1997 he still had MacInnis and Hull, in 1998 he had Messier, Pavel Bure and Alex Mogilny, in 2001 Jason Allison and Sergei Samsonov posted career highs in points to lead Keenan’s Bruins nowhere. That team also included Joe Thornton and Brian Rolston, who posted career highs in points that year, and Bill Guerin who finished the season one point shy of a career high (all three of those players have since set new career highs). In 2002, with Bure in the fold in Florida, and Roberto Luongo in the early stages of his path to superstardom, the Panthers were terrible, and with many Keenan-era holdovers, remain terrible still. Now, coming off an under-achieving season, Flames general manager Darryl Sutter did something very much out of character: he’s over-reacted. Keenan is not the man to lead the Flames to the Stanley Cup, and Keenan may not even lead this team to the playoffs in 2008.

A double-whammy for the Flames. Their new farm team in Quad-Cities unveiled their logo Thursday. This logo is even worse than their Omaha-based farm team’s Ak-Sar-Ben (that’s Nebraska backwards for those scoring at home) Knights nickname was.

But let’s go out on a positive note, congratulating all of the NHL’s trophy winners. The NHL awards were handed out Thursday night, with my favourite player and yours, Sidney Crosby claiming his first Hart Memorial Trophy as league MVP; Rod Brind’Amour took home his second Frank J. Selke Trophy in as many years; Nik Lidstrom became just the fourth defenseman in league history to claim his fifth Norris Trophy as the league’s top defenseman; Martin Brodeur robbed Roberto Luongo of the Vezina Trophy as the NHL’s top goalie. Evgeni Malkin (top rookie), Pavel Datsyuk (sportsmanship), Alain Vigneault (top coach) and Saku Koivu (leadership and humanitarian efforts) took home the other major awards, while Boston’s Phil Kessel was awarded the Bill Masterton Trophy for perseverance and dedication to hockey. The 19-year old missed 12 games in his rookie season while being treated for testicular cancer.