See? I’m breathing deeply, sleeping well and eating full, balanced meals. I’m drinking delicious Canadian beer in reasonable quantities and am not under any circumstances swigging straight from the bottle of American whiskey and cursing at my television set for Todd Bertuzzi to hit one of these goddamn motherfuckers already.

Nope. Not me. I am the picture of serenity. You know why? Because this is the fucking preseason. I’m sorry, but it is.

I know that if you asked Mike Babcock if this was the preseason, he would first glare at you like you were too stupid to be drawing breath, then roll his eyes heavenward in the same manner he does when Jason Williams is attempting to utilize a hockey skill that Babcock has termed “backchecking”, and finally he would tell you in no uncertain terms that these games count for the same amount of points as games in March and that the Red Wings must approach every one of them with the same attitude.

And he’d be lying to you. And he’d know it, so you should know it.

Hockey is a physically demanding, emotionally taxing, psychologically gruelling sport. You have to psych yourself up to take the hit, then you have to take the hit to make the play, then you have to convince yourself that taking that hit to get the puck out of your zone in the first period of an October game against the Sabres was so definitely worth it that you’ll do it again 30 seconds later.

Then you have to do it again two nights later against the Kings. And then again and again and again until the playoffs finally start, at which point you have to do it some more, only with fewer mistakes and while taking harder hits.

And you’ve been doing this the maximum amount of times it is possible to do this for two years straight.

So yeah … you’re not as committed right now. Your teammates aren’t as committed right now and in all likelihood, with the Olympics looming, neither is the coach.

And I am relaxed, because this is a positive thing.

Last year, the Red Wings coasted through parts of the regular season, but only some of them — Osgood, Cleary, Filppula, Zetterberg (though he had injury issues) — were visibly not performing to the best of their ability. As well, some of them — Helm, Ericsson, Leino and Abdelkader in particular — weren’t even on the team most of the time. There were, however, a solid group of Winged Warriors who were determined to follow the coach’s mantra of giving it their all every single game and treating the October games as though they were just as important as the April ones.

Those guys? Datsyuk, Lidstrom, Holmstrom, Rafalski, Draper…

Hey, wait a sec. That sounds like a list of the guys who were either unavailable or less effective in the later rounds of the playoffs, costing the Wings an easy victory over a top-heavy Penguins squad and the glory of back-to-back championships.

And who were the surprisingly solid players involved in that playoff run? Well, I remember Osgood silencing doubters and Dan Cleary winning a few fans. I remember Helm and Ericsson opening eyes and Leino looking fairly dangerous everytime that hungry — and rested — dog was let out of his pen. Why do you think that could be?

Do you think that playing two full seasons and two full playoffs of all-out hockey with the pressure of carrying on the winning tradition of the Winged Wheel every single fucking night might have taken a small toll on some guys, and the more relaxed atmosphere of Grand Rapids or the lackadaisical work ethic of Osgood and Cleary might have left them with a little more gas in the tank?

Yeah. Probably.

So I don’t care. I’m good with it. This hockey — from now until, say, January 30 — is the preseason. Fuck everything else. Pavel’s stomach hurts? Sit him. Zetterberg’s groin is wonky? Tell him to stay home and have Emma work on it. Nick Lidstrom’s wife wants him to go to Disneyland with the kids for a week? Buy him a plane ticket and some sunscreen and tell him you’ll see him bright and early next Monday. Franzen needs surgery? Perfect. Let him work that shit back into shape sloooooowly. He should play his first game no earlier than March 15.

I know it’s not conventional wisdom, and many will tell you that it didn’t work last year. But it did work last year. The team just didn’t embrace this concept enough. They’ve already proven that they’re a veteran group capable of turning it on when the games count, so let them do that. Save their bodies and minds for when it matters. Let me sit back, drink beer and watch a .500 hockey team … at least until the season starts on Jan. 31.

Regardless, it was hockey. It was preseason hockey so it wouldn’t have mattered if the Red Wings lost. But they won, so it is absolutely a harbinger of victories yet to come. I can’t say I saw any of the game, and I can’t say I heard more than about 25 minutes of it, but regardless, the Wings emerged with a 3-1 triumph, a 1-0 record in the preseason and no new injured players, which when you’re playing a team that dresses Chris Pronger is like a victory all its own…

And we learned some things, not about the team, but about the nature of preseason hockey in general. Here’s how you know its an exhibition game:

• When Derek Meech has no goals and no assists but is named the game’s first star.  (Note: You can also file this fact under ‘how you know you couldn’t watch the game and had to listen to the opposing team’s radio announcers.)
• Andy Delmore touches the puck at a meaningful point in the game and Mike Babcock does not immediately leave the bench, grab him by the scruff of his neck and drag him back to where he can do no harm.
• An ex-Maple Leafs prospect scores!
• A Red Wings prospect fought somebody … and may even have won the fight. (Note: The last part is rumour, but it sounded like he got some good shots in. I’m just going to pretend it happened the way I saw it in my head.)
• Nicklas Lidstrom played nine minutes and 22 seconds of hockey. Meech played 18:49, Delmore played 12:03.
• Pavel Datsyuk played only eight seconds on the penalty kill.
• Someone, I don’t even want to know who, let Kris Newbury (another Leafs castoff) wear a Red Wings jersey and sit on the bench. A few times, Mike Babcock accidentally brushed his shoulder while walking by and he jumped on the ice. Babcock, being a polite Saskatchewan man, didn’t have the heart to burst his bubble so Kris Newbury played more than eight minutes of hockey with a Red Wings jersey on his back. THAT, my friends, is preseason hockey for you.

Next game: Tomorrow, against the New York Rangers at 7:30 p.m. I’m not promising anything, but since the game will be on the MSG network in New York, you might want to check your favourite streaming sites. Personally, I lean toward a-t-d-h-e.net (take the hyphens out of the name and don’t tell too many of your friends).

I haven’t written about politics on this blog in a fairly long time. There’s a reason for that. All it accomplishes is to piss off some readers who come here for the sports, and confirm all the beliefs of those who do come here for my liberal, commie-loving, viewpoints.

But mostly I haven’t written about politics because it’s too goddamn depressing.

I thought that might be ending. I figured that maybe this whole health-care business in the United States would settle down now that the dog days of August were over. I hoped that maybe the media would move on to portraying the more sane parts of the opposing sides of the debate and discussing the issues and that perhaps Americans would understand that, just because the guy in charge is a negro, there’s no reason to hate him for everything he does.

Nope. Didn’t happen. I still can’t bring myself to write about American politics because to do so would basically amount to a screed of several hundred words calling a large portion of American “Conservatives” and “Republicans” things like racist, disgusting, hate-filled, bile-spewing, vindictive, petty, simplistic, gullible, fear-mongering, willfully ignorant, borderline retarded, happily illiterate, mindbogglingly stupid, supremely disingenuous, rabidly nationalistic, proudly xenophobic, fallacy-loving, morally bankrupt, spiteful bullies who are developmentally disabled to the point where they might harm themselves were they to wrestle with any thought more complex than whatever fascistic pablum has most recently been spoon-fed into their mostly atrophied excuses for cranial lobes.

I honestly don’t understand how else to explain things like this. The very fact that these people below think they are accomplishing something for their nation, state, party, family or anybody anywhere in the world is a testament to how brainwashed an idiot can be if reared in an environment where dangerous levels of ignorance are accepted and even prized.

Enough babbling about these half-wit, off-brand, mentally retarded impersonators of politically-concerned citizens. Watch the damn video:

By the way, they claimed there were two million of them at this event, and started passing around pictures to prove it. But you know how this story goes.

Everyone aside from these idiots watched them lie and repeat the lie and believe the lie and take it to bed with them at night and shove it up that dirty little place where only disgusting gay people are supposed like it but that they secretly, desperately need to fill.

By the way, fire officials estimated off the record that about 60,000 people showed up. Which is more than enough to staff a small country dedicated to upholding the right to ignorance, hate and good ol’ fashioned xenophobic rhetoric as their own twisted, pathetic version of a declaration of independence.

This will be my last post on politics for a while, probably. Or maybe not. That felt pretty good. God I hate these retards.

Experts believe that red could make individuals and teams feel more confident as well as being perceived by others as more aggressive and dominant.

No kidding. Could that be because red is an ass-kicking colour? The colour of blood, and flame and sports cars purchased by near-impotent middle-aged men the world over?

Obviously, we here at DirtyGames, and at other sites written by Red Wing-friendly bloggers, believe this wholeheartedly. Red is bad ass. It intimidates. Teams wearing red are awesome and destined for success and glory.

But even the best uniform colour in the world cannot cover for tremendous suckage.

A good team wearing red can gain the upper hand and perhaps the other team is a little less likely to mount a challenge. Or they can throw their weight around and perhaps cow their opponent into submission. Or maybe they’re just so awesomely RED that the other team doesn’t even bother playing the damn game.

But what happens when a red team plays a red team? Does whichever team forced to wear the dreaded home whites lose? Of course not.

As much as I’d love to believe that choosing the jersey colours all those decades ago gave my favourite hockey squad a built-in advantage … c’mon. It’s subjective psychological bullshit.

From this study, I can conclude that red does indeed intimidate … judging officials. Which is the way the research for this study was done:

The study, by German sports psychologists at the University of Munster, was reported in New Scientist magazine. They showed video clips of taekwondo bouts to 42 experienced referees. One combatant wore blue, the other red.

They then showed them the same clips but digitally manipulated the clothing to swap the colours. The fighters wearing red were given an average of 13 per cent more points than when they were blue.

So yes, if the sport in question were one in which subjective judgement is used to determine a large percentage of the outcome, then I could believe that red offers a significant advantage. It’s not hard to imagine that sort of bias would make itself evident in this kind of study.

And I could even believe that a slight amount of that bias would translate to sports where the play is one-on-one, and the conflict is between two individuals in close proximity. In those cases, the psychology of red might gain a few more points on the intimidation scale.

Like, perhaps, in the case of this dude:

But when you move on to large teams, with a couple of dozen millionaires working together against the enemy, any kind of advantage offered by a colour is minuscule at best and — I would argue — nonexistent.

Not that I’d be disappointed to be in the wrong. I know that, personally, I would always buy the red Wings jersey over the white one. But that’s also because I enjoy wearing a hockey jersey in the few social situations in which it is acceptable. And most of those situations involve chicken wings, pizza and beer … and jerseys are too expensive to risk visible stain.

People’s faces were messed up, hundreds of beer bottles were broken and crooked, yellowing teeth littered the ground. None of these things had anything to do with the soccer riot. That’s just London on a Tuesday.

I could write, were I so inclined, about the emotional intensity of “big” games, and how it brings out the worst in fans. We could all pretend that this mayhem was the result of a hard-fought match that was decided by a controversial play in extra time and those passionate, crude-but-lovable fans just couldn’t accept the result.

But let’s be real. It’s soccer. These fans are poor and mostly unemployed; they’re drunk and disorderly and miserable and it’s probably raining — and all they want is an exciting sporting event to take their mind off their troubles. And somehow, instead of that, they ended up at a soccer match.

It’s long been a theory of mine — and this just solidifies my beliefs — that the amount of fan violence is inversely proportional to the excitement level of the sport they’re watching.

Fans don’t riot after hockey games. Even in Detroit. Because the game is so exciting they’re all too emotionally drained to burn cars and fight cops. And if you can’t burn cars and fight cops in Detroit, you know you’re exhausted.

Fans don’t riot during basketball games, unless they’re forced to watch the early 2000’s Detroit Pistons, which were possibly the most boring team to win a championship that wasn’t based out of New Jersey.

Fans don’t riot during baseball games, either. But I personally think that’s because barely anyone even goes to baseball games anymore.

This theory also goes a long way towards explaining how the Tiger Woods era finally brought an end to golf’s long history of bloody conflict.

Okay, so maybe not. But still, when the fights afterwards are more entertaining than the game itself … your sport has a problem.

This is why soccer should take a cue from hockey and allow the players to fight during the game — perhaps then the scores could be settled on the field and the fans could perhaps refrain from destroying the city after the match.

We are, of course, assuming that British soccer fans would not promptly find another reason to destroy the city.

You see, this is what happens when empires become impotent. They turn inward, looking for new frontiers to conquer … and find nothing but immigrants, police or fans of a rival sporting organization.

Now this is all in good fun, I admit. I know for a fact that there are some pleasant and sane sports fans in London. These fans gather together on a regular basis to watch the match, appreciate the excitement of a fine contest, well-played and down copious pints of some of the most delicious beers the world has to offer.

You can find them at the Maple Leaf pub in Covent Garden on Saturday night around midnight, drinking Sleeman’s and hoping fervently but futilely that the Canadiens can find a way to stop the Red Wings.

On a more serious and slightly profane note, these soccer ‘fans’ can lovingly cradle my nuts. Have some respect for the sport you profess to love and stop giving assholes like me excuses to spend 20 minutes ripping ‘the beautiful game’ to shreds. Every time someone convinces me to give soccer a chance, something like this happens and my scorn for everything about the game reasserts itself.

A soccer player just finished reading this article now, and he’s rolling around on the floor by his computer, looking for the ref to pull out a card.

First, Brett Favre, who never did anything illegal, is apparently ready to join the Minnesota Vikings. While Favre may have not committed any crimes, by the strict policework-based definition of the word, he has certainly used the last two-plus years to give a seminar on How To Destroy A Reputation in 24 months. If you asked Wisconsin residents who they hold in higher regard, the dude who tortured dogs or the dude who quit rather than share his job, then unquit, then signed to a different team, then quit again, then almost unquit, then decided to stay quit, then unquit again to sign with the Vikings (of all teams) … they’d probably lean toward the dude who just strangled and drowned puppies.

Second, Todd Bertuzzi, who very nearly did kill someone, signed with the Red Wings. Again. For a cheap contract because they were one of what was presumably a very, very small number of teams who demonstrated interest. Big Bert was not entirely useless last season, is a big semi-physical presence and can be an effective part of a winning team if he’s healthy. As a Red Wings fan who only wants to see the team succeed, I think this is a pretty good signing.

On a more personal level, however, as someone who wants to root for athletes who respect the metaphorical, way-too-idealized and often juvenile things that sports and the athletes who play them are supposed to represent … I hate all this crap. It’s very discouraging. I am disillusioned, which says a lot for a dude who likes to write about politics…

I don’t really care so much that these douchebags still have jobs. Hell, everyone who isn’t currently incarcerated, incapacitated or Sarah Palin should be allowed to earn a living. What Really Grinds My Gears is that I have to open ESPN or TSN on a sunny August morning and see approximately seven different stories and columns about these jerks.

Mike Vick can throw a ball a long distance and run really fast. Brett Favre can throw some touchdowns and some interceptions and provide some sort of cheesy do-it-for-the-really-old-dude aspect of leadership. Todd Bertuzzi can score and hit and force the other team to wonder if he will assault and batter them should they conduct themselves in a manner he deems unprofessional. They clearly, as athletes, have value. As human beings, however, specifically as human beings who receive reams of press coverage and whose last names adorn the backs of shirts worn by children … they’re dicks.

A little while ago, a bunch of men’s websites organized a No Meagan Fox Day. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, just for one week, the cabal of sports broadcasters, writers and webmasters did the same with all athletes who have a folder of press clippings thicker than their folder of professional boxscores. This includes Favre, Vick, Bertuzzi, Terrell Owens, Chad OchoCinco, Sean Avery, Stephon Marbury, David Beckham … I’m going to stop now because I feel dirty typing all those names in one go.

I am sure the Vikings will say all the right things to the media, and the team will welcome Brett The Saviour with open arms. But in the third quarter of Week One, how do you think they’ll feel when The Saviour throws up a deep ball that gets picked off and returned for a touchdown while Sage Rosenfels, the guy they practiced and played with all summer, wears a baseball hat on the bench.

It’s fine if Favre wants to come back, and if the Vikings want him. The same thing is fine for Vick and the Eagles and Bertuzzi and the Red Wings. It’s a business, after all. But how about if, now that they’re signed, we completely ignore them until the do something on a field of play somewhere that impacts the, you know, games.

Sometimes, I hate being a sports fan.

Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) today revealed that 20-year-old scoring phenom Patrick Kane of the Chicago Blackhawks will be the new face of the NHL® 10 videogame from EA SPORTS™.

An interesting choice. But so what? Little did we know at the time that Patrick Kane and the Chicago Blackhawks were about to take sports-related merchandising curses to a level never before seen by the SI Jinx or the Madden Curse, both of which usually require a game or two to be played before taking effect.

The EA release not only praised Kane, but the entire Chicago franchise:

Having emerged as one of the most skilled players in the NHL in just two seasons, Kane won the Calder Trophy as Rookie of the Year in 2008 and this year led the Blackhawks to the Western Conference Finals. He has scored more than 20 goals and registered more than 70 points in each of his first two seasons.
…

“At EA SPORTS we believe in identifying the most talented up-and-coming athletes in the world to help us develop the most authentic sports games,” said Jordan Edelstein, Vice-President of Marketing for EA SPORTS. “We believe Kane is one of the next great American hockey stars.

And he may well yet go down as the greatest American player to ever strap on skates. In the meantime though, in the seven weeks since this release was issued, this is what has happened to Patrick Kane and the Chicago Blackhawks:

• July 1: Blackhawks sign Marian Hossa to a 12-year, $62.8-million contract, raising questions about how they will afford to pay Kane, Jonathan Toews and Duncan Keith, three star players who will all need new contracts after this season.
• July 3: News breaks that the Blackhawks likely neglected to submit offer sheets to six restricted free agents on time and may have to forfeit their exclusive rights to negotiate with them.
• July 6: While they managed to maintain the rights to those players, they did so by signing them all very quickly after the news broke, paying what many would consider too much, particularly given their cap situation after signing Hossa on July 1.
• July 14: Ostensibly because of the free agent snafu, but perhaps moreso due to competing priorities among a fractured management, the Hawks fired GM Dale Tallon — a man who had played a big role in resurrecting a franchise once among the worst in the league — a week later.
• July 15: Martin Havlat, one of the Hawks top scoring threats in 08/09 opened his mouth shortly after signing with the Minnesota Wild and ripped Team President John McDonough a new one over the way the Tallon situation was handled. “The players loved Dale and they are with him,” Havlat said. “Every single player on that team is with Dale. I still talk to the guys all the time, hockey players know a phony when they see one.” Ouch.
• July 23: Out of the blue, seemingly — though Red Wings fans will tell you after watching him in the Stanley Cup Finals that it had to be something — Marian Hossa reveals that he’s hurt and needs shoulder surgery. The Hawks new GM, Stan Bowman, calls the injury minor. It’s not known how much of the first season under his new contract he will miss.
• July 25: Perhaps not so minor, after all. The injury is expected to sideline the Hawks new star for up to four months.
• July 31: Maybe it won’t matter too much though, as the NHL reveals that they are now investigating Marian Hossa’s contract, as it seems the low numbers tacked onto the final years of his deal are just a little too low for a player expecting to, you know, actually honour them.
• August 6: This doesn’t really count, but the face of the Blackhawks of the early 1990s, Jeremy Roenick, retires after 20 seasons in the NHL. It is noted, however, that Roenick never won a championship with the Hawks and that stench of failure remained rank on his jersey throughout his playing days. (Okay, fine, maybe that was a cheap shot.) A sad moment, nonetheless.
• August 9: In the early morning hours, Patrick Kane, the man who’s picture on the cover of a video game began this horrid string of luck, allegedly snaps after a long night of partying and, with some help from his cousin, beats the heck out of a cab driver because he didn’t have $1.20 in change for a $13.80 fare. He is arrested and charged with second degree robbery, criminal mischief and theft of services. He pleads not guilty and so continues a cursed summer for the once-upon-a-time “newly resurgent” Chicago Blackhawks.

Now … is that a curse or what? And nobody even touched a skate. A good thing too, because at this point I’m waiting for Jonathan Toews to pull a Dan Boyle.

(Please don’t do it, Jon. You’re the best thing about a team I otherwise don’t much care for. Stay away from ladders and black cats. Please. We need you for the Olympics.)

Today, however, I’ll make a brief, 300-word exception to that rule:

Jason Williams?!?!?!

Was the need to replace Mikael Samuelsson really that great? How badly, really, would the Red Wings have missed having a forward who enjoys shooting the puck, though not necessarily in the direction of the net? How desperately, all things considered, do we need someone who is not a defenceman to act like one at the point on the power-play?

How badly does Mike Babcock need a new whipping boy?

Pretty badly, I guess:

“I’m excited to get back,” Williams said in a phone interview today from London, Ont. “I always enjoyed my time in Detroit, met some great people there and to be able to re-sign is nice. Not many people get traded away and brought back.”

Do you know why not many people get traded away and brought back? Because usually they are traded for a reason.

Williams’ best season as a pro was with the Wings in 2005-06, when he scored 21 goals, 37 assists and 58 points.

Indeed. And I would be prepared to bet that if he sees enough ice time this season, he will come close to those numbers again. It’s not exceedingly difficult to put up 58 points when you refuse to enter the defensive zone and end up being used predominantly with the man advantage.

As I said above, I try to make it a rule to trust Ken Holland. I started doing it in 1994, and it’s worked out okay, give or take a few first-round bumps along the way.

So perhaps this is part of a master plan. Perhaps Babcock really does need someone inconsequential he can yell at and scream at and (pretty please!) beat over the head with blunt objects when things don’t go so well.

But did it have to be this guy? Was there no other player with a modicum of offensive talent, a penchant for wanting far more credit than he deserves and a complete lack of anything else to be found on that free agent garbage pile?

If Jason Williams is considered a last-minute addition for another run at a Stanley Cup … then somewhere Dallas Drake is shaking his head and wondering why he retired.

Sigh. Maybe we can play him with Datsyuk for 30 games, get him on pace for a 70-point season and then deal him for … something.

I’m not just talking about the reclamation projects, though that’s the impetus for this post, but about roughly 75% of the team.

When speaking of successful organizations, obnoxious pundits — yours truly included — will talk about the “culture of winning” and how “success breeds success” and all sorts of bullshit. While probably true on some level, that bullshit doesn’t really explain anything of substance when it comes to late-round draft picks panning out with a frequency bordering on startling and former busts turning their careers around as soon as they pull that red and white sweater over their heads.

It’s pretty simple, I think: Athletes crave structure. They feed off it, even if they dislike it. They remember it fondly, when it’s disappeared. They excel in structured environments when a firm hand is on their shoulder and their role is clearly defined by an authority figure.

Bill Belichick, whatever you think of the New England Patriots, is a master at this. It’s the same reason that both the Detroit Pistons, as a team, and Allen Iverson, as an individual, reached heights they’d never before achieved under the strict guidance of Larry Brown. It’s why Michael Jordan would pay homage to Dean Smith every single chance he got, why Dennis Rodman listened to Phil Jackson and why every player who ever cursed Scotty Bowman’s name knows — deep down inside — that they were never better than when he was their coach.

Structure is the basis for everything the Red Wings have achieved in the past 20 years. It’s the force behind Darren Helm’s, Jonathan Ericsson’s and (eventually) Justin Abdelkader’s seamless transition to the NHL.

It’s the reason Mikael Samuelsson went from unsigned pre-Wings to a healthy payday post-Wings. It’s why Daniel Cleary brought a big shiny trophy back to Newfoundland and why Larry Murphy was wonderful in Pittsburgh, terrible in Toronto, and then wonderful again in Detroit.

And — you all knew where this was headed — it’s the reason Patrick Eaves is scoring 20 goals this season, provided he doesn’t suffer an injury.

Your newest Red Wings Reclamation Project, before it all went off the rails for him.

I’ve always thought Eaves was headed for big things. He was great all through his amateur career … because of structure. Brought up by his father who played in the NHL, and attending Shattock-St. Mary’s a high school known for a strict system of both education and developing young hockey talent. From there he played two years at Boston College, another hockey-centric institution with a long-established program for moving talented kids along in their careers.

Then? Drafted by the Senators. Brought up way too quickly from Binghampton to the big club that was, though stocked with talented players at the time, never exactly known for discipline, tradition or, wait for it … structure.

He managed to pot 20 goals in his rookie season, but then — with the rumours of cocaine abuse and constant playoff failure that became a hallmark of that now-doomed Sens team — he slacked off and fell to just 14 goals the next season. Next came the lack of conditioning and the injuries and the team crumbling around him. Before he knew it, he was in Carolina, playing for a team that didn’t really have a role for him.

Then he was dealt, and unceremoniously cut. Now he’s a Red Wing.

Now, I promise you, there will be structure. I would wager whatever you care to put up that either today or tomorrow there will be a phone conversation between Patrick Eaves and Mike Babcock. The discussion won’t take long, but Patrick Eaves will hang up the phone feeling more comfortable about his career as a hockey player than he has since his rookie season, when his ceiling was as high as his Senators teammates were getting in the dressing room.

“He’s just really entering what should be his prime years,” Ken Holland told the Windsor Star yesterday. “He was the elite of the elite in his age group.

“It’s not a big gamble. We know there’s a good hockey player in there.”

Ken Holland knows what turns talented, directionless players into hard-working, effective ones.

“I think Patrick is one of those guys like we’ve had that just needs a fresh start,” Holland said. “He’s scored 20 goals in this league before and we feel we play a style he’ll fit into.”

“I think we’ve had success with guys like this because of the leadership and talent in our dressing room. It’s an easy room to get comfy in.

“It’s filled with good people, a winning tradition, it’s team first and guys make sacrifices. Because of our stability, players coming in get to feed off that.”

Patrick Eaves will have structure, and he’ll thrive because of it. If he plays every day and can’t score at least 20 … then he’s not worth the minimum wage he’s making. In the meantime, I’ll just be happy thinking about him playing alongside Cleary and Darren Helm on what would most likely be the fastest line in hockey.

Oh, yeah. He came right out and said it, too:

Naturally, this provoked outrage among … all the folks Glenn Beck provokes outrage among every day. And a bunch of other people, too. So FOX pretty much had to say something about it.

Had Beck finally crossed the line? Would this incendiary remark bring about his long-deserved comeuppance?

If you cried ’surely!’ or even dared to hope that discipline would be necessary … you must not watch much FOX News.

Here is their statement:

“During Fox & Friends this morning, Glenn Beck expressed a personal opinion which represented his own views, not those of the Fox News Channel. And as with all commentators in the cable news arena, he is given the freedom to express his opinions.”

This comment is not only devoid of any sort of apology, criticism or half-assed slap on the wrist for the most insane horse of their stable of retarded television stallions, it  amounts to tacit approval of the way Beck has conducted himself towards the Obama administration.

They don’t care if Beck lies, manipulates, misrepresents or date-rapes the truth, nor do they care if he widens America’s racial divide with comments designed to place Barack Obama next to the Black Panthers in the ideological spectrum.

(And let’s face it, for a certain percentage of Americans, Obama never got far from his designated white-hating place in that line.)

But the response by FOX is worse than Beck’s comments, because it does nothing to assert authority when it is clearly called for or inject truth where it is badly needed.

CNN had a similar problem a few weeks ago, when Lou Dobbs went out of his mind and began sounding like a conspiracy theorist on his radio show by talking about Obama’s birth certificate.

Even though CNN has no ownership of Dobb’s radio show, they apparently told him and his staffers to cool it, an used a segment of his show to discuss how ridiculous the story is:

Cooler heads at CNN put some distance between themselves and their once star host, with fill-in Kitty Pilgrim using a segment of “Lou Dobbs Tonight” on Friday to provide a substantially more skeptical look at the Obama-made-in-Africa claims.

Pilgrim introduced the topic of Obama’s alleged foreign birth as she sat in for Dobbs that night, calling it “the discredited rumor that won’t go away.”

“CNN has fully investigated the issue,” the substitute said, and “found no basis for the questions about the president’s birthplace.”

So, yeah. Not to defend CNN or anything, because lord knows they have contextual issues and partisan hackery as well, but at least they know when someone affiliated with their brand is driving the wrong way on the talking head highway.

FOX … well, as I said above, you should have expected nothing more.