im not on the "hockey is dumb and lame" bandwagon

but im certainly on the "some hockey writers are dumb and lame" bandwagon, if such a thing exists. check out some of the inane commentary damien cox offers on this piece:

http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/playoffs2007/columns/story?columnist=cox_damien&id=2882970&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab5pos1

cox's thesis is that its a bad thing that neither of the two teams playing for the stanley cup this year made any big trade deadline deals. why? because other teams, notably those who did make big deals but didnt manage to advance this far (red wings, sharks, predators, thrashers, islanders, others) will adopt the passive stance of the ducks and senators in the future. and this will make things boring. which i suppose is kind of, sort of an issue for a sport struggling to attract new fans. but still- what??? im not going to do the whole article but just read this pile of crap of logic:

...The most significant development (this year) might turn out to be that the playoffs delivered results that, ultimately, might kill the entire concept of the big trade-deadline deal.

Which is bad. Very bad.

But why, based on the events of the past week, would any team go out next winter and spend draft picks, players and prospects to acquire a big-name player at the March trade deadline based on the events of this season?

The Preds, Ducks and Sens, after all, are providing that such efforts might be nothing but a complete waste of time and resources, more hype than substance.
Did I mention that, if true, this would be bad? Very bad?

i cant decide which angle on this is dumber- either 1) cox is suggesting that its better for teams to be "exciting" and make big deals at the deadline than simply win or 2) hes implying that just because two teams that were already incredibly talented before the deadline made the finals without any big trades, other GMs will now stop making deadline trades because they assume thats how the senators and ducks won their conferences this year. put more simply: 1) as a fan he wants to see teams make risky trades, no matter how good their rosters already are or 2) thanks to this season's results people who run hockey teams will now assume correlation = causation. makes sense. this is like assuming that because (famous actor/rock star) treats women like crap but always has a beautiful one on his arm, i also can get beautiful women by treating them like crap. puh-lease.

also, theres this little juicy piece of WRONG:

The NHL trade deadline is arguably the most dramatic day of the entire season. In contrast to other leagues, whose comparable deadlines come and go with mostly a yawn or perhaps a minor deal or two, the NHL's deadline somehow snaps the league's 30 general managers to attention and gets them to think big, often really big.

the nfl rarely has any trades period except around the draft, so whatever. but the nba has had plenty of big deadline deals in its history. and mlb? are you kidding me? let me just toss out some names dealt at or near the deadline in the last 10 years: randy johnson, carlos beltran, bobby abreu, carlos lee, jermaine dye, aramis ramirez, and so on and so on and so on. i dont have any time to add more or find some notable nba ones. if any of our "readers" want to call me out ill look more. regardless- this is dumb.