5 Thoughts – late for work, $100M (categorically?), and JoPa’s garbage… I mean, statue (Bartl’s Blog)

Forgive me, Condorstown… it has been 2 weeks since i stepped into the Condors Blog Confessional… This morning while eating my Crunch Berries, i had an epiphany. And so began my 5 Things blog for this week…..

5. I don’t want to hear another excuse about being late from work from someone who doesn’t have children. My wife and kid were out of town this morning. Result: I had the most leisurely morning of my life today. No child to feed. No diaper to change. I laid in bed reading twitter for 30 minutes, took a really long shower, sat at the kitchen table and had two bowls of Cap’n Crunch without getting up, fed the animals, cleaned my ghetto pool and got to work 40 minutes early. When there’s a child in the mix, you never know what’s going to happen to your morning. The real question is, why was I EVER late for work before?

4. How many employees have the Condors had in their 14 years? More than I can count. A preliminary collection of names from memory (mine and other long-tenured staff members), media guides, programs and old staff photos have yielded over 140 so far… although that included interns, of which there have been a great many. It’s fun to think of all the names that have come through here.

3. What about new players? Word on the street is that the coaches are close to landing some new names to go along with the returning ones that have already been added. We are hoping to announce a couple more players next week, pending the submission/approval of their contracts. We’ll see if it’s a new guy or a familiar face.

2. In 10 years, the JoPa statue will go back up. That’s my prediction. But until then, and maybe forever, who knows, it deserves to come down. Forget it, Penn State folks. It’s over. You’re all through the looking glass now; you’re on the other side of the Valley – the side that exists in reality. You should be more disgusted than the rest of us. Your hero is dead. You know who else is dead? Those kids that he allowed to get raped in the showers in the locker room of his football team. They’re all dead, and a broken down and defeated adult who never had a childhood is in their place. Take the statue down, and leave it down. Better yet, but the statue in prison. Good riddance, JoPa.

1. Someone forgot to tell the Stanley Cup engraver that the Nashville Predators had two $100-million d-men on their roster. I’m no expert on the Suter/Weber combo, having really only seen a lot of them in playoff action, but I’m inclined to think that outstanding defensemen in the NHL are few and far between if those two guys are getting $100 million contracts this summer. I mean, you have to be an elite player to get $100M. And throw in an All-Star Goalie and you would think you’d have the Cup in the bag. What would the Devils’ Stevens/Niedermayer get on the open market these days? How about Suter’s dad (who was a better player) and Al MacInnis from Calgary? Lidstrom and Konstantinov in Detroit? Murphy and Coffey in Pittsburgh? These are all Stanley Cup winning pairings. If Ryan Suter is worth $98M, what would Ray Bourque be worth today? $200M?? Get real.

Kevin Bartl is the VP of Communications and part of the Condors broadcast team, entering his 10th season with the organization. His blog is supposed to come out ever Tuesday… for not-always-about-hockey tweets, follow him @KevinBartl.