Save Your $$$

Yet again the Sporting News came up way short on their NHL season preview issue. It is an utter and complete waste of eight bucks with outright mistakes and insane rankings. As you can imagine, I read as many season previews as I can get my hands on and this rag is by far the worst. A few examples:

*Even though the issue mentions that Alexei Zhitnik was bought out in their Atlanta Thrashers preview, the Rankings By Position on page 12 has him ranked as the 25th best defenseman in the NHL, ahead of Michal Rozsival (37th), Lubomir Visnovsky (44th) and Brent Burns (47th). Luckily he is behind No. 11 Keith Duncan (it's Duncan Keith morons) and No. 15, Florida's Keith Ballard (what??). Ballard, who by the way, is ranked one better than Chris Pronger.

*Also notable/curious in those Rankings is Atlanta's Kari Lehtonen at 16th among goaltenders, ahead of Carey Price (22), Ilya Bryzgalov (25th), Tim Thomas (26th) and Cristobal Huet (30th).

*The Rankings were all sorts of screwed up as they put Alex Kovalev ranked 31st among wingers, 28 positions behind Dany Heatley. Now, I don't think Kovalev is nearly as good as Heatley but seven pages later Kovalev was selected over the Sen as the All-Northeast left winger.

*The two-page spread on the Swedish influence to the Detroit Red Wings has eight Swedes in the picture, yet the article talks about the nine on the team and the seven who played a big part of the Wings Cup run. Pick one or the other you clowns.

*After being disgusted by all that, I jumped right to the Rangers page but couldn't get past the opening paragraphs:

"When three of your five leading scorers vanish into the thin air of unrestricted free agency, the general manager better have a backup play he believe in."

Really? I recall that all of the Ranger free agents were waiting on Glen Sather to make his move, not vice versa. Shanny still hasn't gone anywhere as he waits for an offer to come back, and both Jagr and Straka wanted to return but Sather didn't give them what they wanted ... so they didn't vanish by any means.

I am sure I can find many more faults and fallacies in this joke of issue but let's just get to the point, DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON IT!!!

Let's face it, all of these preview magazines are out of date by the time you get them so you are better off sticking to the world wide interweb. The Hockey News issues are both rushed to the newstand so they hit the street in early August - two months before the season starts. Also, their fantasy guide neglects to include shorthanded points, which is a make-'em-or-break'em category in many leagues. For all of the gloss, FaceOff's is bland and boring while McKeens does a pretty good job but they are almost impossible to find (click on the link to order it). The internet is a big place with a lot of sites that you can turn to for good, up-to-date info and, with thousands of obsessive armchair GMs like me around to call bulls--t, there are a lot fewer inaccuracies.

You would think I would have learned by now ...