“Gulls Good Season-San Diego Good Hockey Town”

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Hockey pucks and palm trees, a strange combination. Hockey in the sunshine, not with snow falling outside, a pretty good combination.

Hockey’s return to San Diego, a big hit.

The American Hockey League San Diego Gulls are in the final push to lockdown a key postseason playoff spot, and secure some home ice advantage. Tomorrow night they host the San Jose Barracudas as the Gulls play five of their last seven games on home ice.

It has been some season. And opening night that was nearly cancelled by horrible ice conditions and heat and humidity in the Valley View Casino Center, the San Diego Sports Arena, to old-timers.

A wild (9-2) start right out of the gate, led by a 19-year old first round draft pick Nick Ritchie, out of the Ontario Hockey League. First weeks as a pro, no problem, 9-goals in 9-games.

But it’s never easy being the top affiliate of an NHL team. When the phone rings, and if caller ID reads (949) area code, it’s probably the parent Anaheim Ducks calling up one of your top players. And it happened here, time and again, but that is the blueprint of a minor league affiliate. Get them ready to go when the call comes.

The early season start was nearly eradicated when the Ducks got hit with injuries, and played poorly out of the gate. Gone within the first month of the season, never to be seen here again, was 22-year old goalie John Gibson. He had 4-shutouts in 2-weeks up top, and wound up getting named to the All Star Game.

Then Richie went up, came back, and went up again, totaling 31-games, scoring just one goal. He got lots of ice time, and now knows what the NHL level of play is like. He just returned, hopefully for the playoff run.

Top defenseman Shea Theodore, a lst round pick too, has gone back up, and just scored his 4th goal in limited ice time. He’s been brought up 5-times this season. We might not see him back either.

New York Rangers farmhand Chris Mueller has been steady all season, young defenseman Brandon Montour is a star in the making, and there could be talent surfacing in another young foreigner Ondrej Kase, beset by injuries.

It’s not easy being in the AHL. You’re either a young player learning the hard way about bus rides, playing against veteran players, being on your own for the first time. It’s not like playing at Dartmouth, where the bulk of your schedule is Friday-Saturday, the travel isn’t brutal, and you can excel. Young guys can get overwhelmed by the speed, physicality and wear and tear..

It’s not easy being in the AHL if you are a veteran. Some guys come in pissed-off that they are at the end of the road. Some guys come down energized to get back up. Most guys wonder if the parent club knows what they’re doing, and if anyone is watching. Goalie Anton Khudobin got moved from Carolina to Anaheim, and then shipped here to the Ducks. He has carried this team with rock solid performances all year. You need great goaltending on a team where young guys don’t score a lot. At the end of the road for Khudobin, knowledge, NHL expansion might be just around the corner, and another chance at going up to the show.

GM-Bob Ferguson, a Ducks employee, has seen it all, from being a coach and GM in the United State Hockey League in Iowa, to being a player who road buses in the lower minor leagues. He knows what it takes to survive and to improve.

Dallas Eakins, who was a journeyman player, has experienced it all too. A highly regarded minor league coach, he went thru the painful experience of lasting just a year and a half with the Edmonton Oilers, where they gave him lost of lst round picks, no goaltending, a leaky defense, and told him to win with 20-year old players. He’s a better coach now for what happened a year and a half ago. The job he has done holding the roster together has been something.

The Gulls have gone thru 45-players this season. The Ducks have called up 51-players. 13-Gulls players have been called up at one time or another this season. Anaheim also traded off one of his top young players Max Friberg early in the year.

The fans have responded, from the first day in February, when at the Fan Fest, 8500 showed up wearing old Gulls jerseys to wearing the crest of their favorite NHL club. It was amazing to see Leafs-Wings-Sabres fans show up in their gear. More amazing to see fans wearing old Mariners jerseys and the colors of the Quebec Nordiques, rest in peace.

Team VP of Business Ops Ari Segal has gone thru an eye-opening experience, dealing with the arena issues, the business of being a minor league team in a major league city, and with limited media exposure and interest.

I told the Ducks people they were sitting on a ‘gold mine’ and they really are. They have packed crowds of over 11,000 in there for weekend dates, and rank in the top three in attendance for the entire season.

San Diego fans may not know much of the heritage of the AHL, the Hershey Bears and Rochester Amerks. They may not look at the standings and see the Toronto Marlies have 45-wins. But they do know hockey, they do like end to end action, and they like the fights. And they know to hate the LA Kings farm club, the Ontario Reign.

As we turn to April, it will be fun to see the AHL playoff matchups, and see teams who have not played here in San Diego. If this roster stays intact, we might be seeing hockey here into late April or early May.

This has been a good year, next year could be better, for the Ducks and GM-Bob Murray have done a masterful job of drafting and layering in players of different age levels. That plus a young Gulls front office learning on the job too..

In the memory of the old Western Hockey League Gulls, which was pretty good, to the brief tenure of the WHA Mariners, pretty popular, to the raging success of the IHL-ECHL-Gulls, this is better hockey. It’s rekindled the passion of the old fans, and brought tons of new families and fans to the games.

Hockey pucks and palm trees. Slapshots in the sunshine. Gulls hockey taking flight in America’s finest city.

“Questions-Questions-Everyone Has Questions”

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The Chargers Stadium initiative has been released. Lots of questions now need to be answered.

JMI….They were supposed to be a partner in this deal, but the 110-page document talks about the Chargers, financing plan, and the use of the hotel tax and its disbursement of money. Is JMI no longer part of the equation?

Stadium design….Fred Maas and his lawyers got alot accomplished in six weeks, but there is no stadium design right now, and as we know, no architect hiring has been finalized. Does it matter who designs it and what it looks like, as long as we know the cost?

If getting a consenus from key people was so very important, why is the Mayor and City Hall not yet on board with the plan?

If the key decision makers in the city are the hoteliers, why have they not signed off on the packaging of this deal, considering they will get money thru the initiitive to continue their marketing work on behalf of the city and will likely have more events coming to San Diego?

If the big players are not yet in line to support this, why would Dean Spanos and Mark Fabiani spend time meeting with fans groups, like ‘Save our Bolts’, when they don’t carry much clout beyond their yes vote if they live in the city?

Did the Chargers meet face to face with the Convention Center executives to try and find a middle ground between the Bayfront expansion vs the Convadium idea?

The Coastal Commission says it is supporting the Bayfront idea, and Comic.con has echoed that theory. Did the Chargers meet with them?

If JMI is no longer part of the Tailgate Park project does that open the door for John Moores and his firm to be the catalyst to work with the city and county on a new project at the Qualcomm sight, that might involve the Riverwalk project, campus expansion at San Diego State, and even a Sports Arena and or an Aztecs-MLS Stadium?

If the Kevin Faulconer-Ron Roberts 350M donation to the Q-sight is no longer part of a Chargers Stadium, can it become the seed money for Q-expansion in projects that JMI wants to create at the Q-sight?

The Chargers for years said selling PSL’s was not possible in a market like San Diego, now they expect fans to help fund a portion of the Spanos contribution to the downtown project. Why would you think fans now want to fork over 2,500 -to-10,000 per ticket for a seat license in 2016?

If the Chargers are planning on using Stadium Naming rights money for the downtown stadum, coupled with PSL money from the fans, is the Spanos family going to put any of their own money into the project?

Why were a number of working media, television and radio and print-websites, excluded when invitations were handed out for a private screening on Wednesday night infront of Spanos-Fabiani-Mass? 12-different media organizations were not invited. Selective discriminaiton of the media taking place, when you want across the board media support?

Questions worth asking about the why’s and wherefore’s of this proposal.

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“Aztecs Basketball-Disappointments”

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It began with a disappointing December, it ends with a disappointing March. In between it was alot of fun, but it’s over now.

San Diego State’s roller coaster of a ride of a basketball season came to a crashing conclusion last night at Madison Square Garden, the (65-46) beating by George Washington.

Whomever was wearing Red & Black last night, did not look like the Aztecs team we saw go (16-2) in the conference and then storm thru the first three games of the NIT schedule.

Maybe it was the cross country trip to New York; maybe SDSU was too hyped up to play their game early on before the game got away; or maybe they just were really not the equal of GWU.

The poor 40-minutes of play in New York was a flashback to how badly Steve Fisher’s team played in an ugly loss to a bad USD team, or a disappointing loss to Little Rock. It resembled a blowout loss they suffered to Kansas.

Maybe it’s the end result of a good team tearing apart a bad Mountain West Conference, but not being equal to the task of playing other really good people. There was just 1-win against a Top 50-team all year.

They looked tight, out of sync, and outworked. They got beat on 50-50 balls, got shoved aside trying to get defensive rebounds, got pounded in the paint, their 3’s didn’t fall, and the interior of their defense down under just disappeared.

George Washington is tough and diverse and can play lots of different styles of ball. This is a team that beat highly ranked Virginia and took out 28-win Monmouth too.

It was hard to believe what we were seeing on ESPN. State did not score a basket on their first 13-possessions. They had only 6-baskets the entire first half. They wound up shooting (3-for-22) on 3-pointers. They kept driving to the basket, only to get bodied and miss close up shots. They shot 28% from the floor for the entire game.

Ty Cavanaugh and Kevin Larson, their two gifted big men, made all kinds of shots, and dished the ball to everyone else, who converted too.

State was out-scrapped, out-hustled, out-performed all night long.

They come home (28-10). It was tough to see the final minutes of the careers of Winston Shepard, Angelo Chol, Matt Shrigley and Skylar Spencer end this way.

But in tournament time, someone wins and goes on, someone loses and has to go home. This will leave a bad sour apple taste in your mouth coming out of the Big Apple.

Good season, bad ending, wished those kids could have gotten to the finals.

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“Going to Get Worse-Not Getting Better”

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Hope you are enjoying your day today. You can’t enjoy breakfast when your baseball team has won just 8-of-29-games in the Cactus League.

Padres fans can’t. Padres ownership can’t. Padres pitchers can’t.

Here we are the final week of spring training, with opening day coming up next Monday against the Dodgers, and those are not mistaken numbers you see on your computer screen when you look at the Padres pitching staff…

So much for hope springs eternal in the spring. Maybe other places, but not in San Diego.

General Manager AJ Preller has put his team in line to have a catastrophic season, a 90-loss season, a season in which we are celebrating the All Star Game here in July.

There is no other way to describe the mess San Diego’s pitching staff has become. As they enter play today, the final couple of days over in Arizona, they have a team ERA that is nearly 7.00.

This after bringing in 32-pitchers to camp, hoping to fill spots in the rotation. This after two years of wheeling and dealing by the rogue General Manager. This after last summer’s terribly disappointing season.

Tyson Ross, the opening day starter, has been plagued by walks and home-runs and with one start left, has an ERA of (9.00). Can he gather it all in with opening day just around the corner? Sure, but we haven’t seen any signs of dominance yet.

James Shields, and his 21M-contract had a 6.19-ERA, not the kind of numbers an ace would put up. He dismisses the spring training stat as nothing more than getting ready. But somewhere along the line, you need to string together good starts. You cannot flip a switch opening day and say all is okay.

Andrew Cashner is headed to a contract year, coming off a (6-16) season, now followed with a near 5.00-ERA this month, though he has had more consistent outings than the other two.

Crafty lefty Robbie Erlin has had a good spring (2.25) ERA, but there is no resume of dominance from him in parts of two seasons in the majors.

Colin Rea is the only thing coming out of the farm system, and his starts (5.82) are alot like the others, getting banged around.

Drew Pomeranz, found lacking by Cleveland, Colorado and Oakland, got lit up yesterday and went to the showers with an (8.36-ERA).

Brandon Morrow and his courageous battles, diabetes, forearm, then shoulder surgery, is months away if he has no setbacks.

In the bullpen, Fernando Rodney is supposed to be the replacement for Craig Kimbrel, and time will tell. But the opening bell finds him with a (3.60-ERA).

Brandon Mauer gave up 15-runs in 7-innings as a starter, and is back in the pen, and will stabilize things. Maybe there is hope for some kids Ryan Bucther or Jon Edwards, but they are prospects-suspects, till they prove they can do it up here.

Kevin Quackenbush (3.86), Nick Vincent (6.14), Frank Garces (1.93), and Leonal Campos (5.86) round out a very shaky bullpen.

There was hope some plug-in guys could win jobs. Carlos Villanueva (7.27), Matt Thornton (12.00), Johnny Hellweg (6.87) have not impressed anyone.

Even the young arms, Luis Perdomo (14.63) and Josh Martin (11.25) aren’t ready for major league action after taking live fire hits in exhibition games. Blake Smith, another Rule 5-guy is gone, back to the White Sox.

Everyone else has been found lacking, has been sent out, or will be sent out this week.

PCL-Pitcher of the Year Carlos Pimental is back in AAA (62.00-ERA). Jose Domingez, the ex-Dodgers-Tampa Bay reliever is headed out (4.70). Journeymen Daniel McCutcheon (3.48) and Phil Humber (4:35) did not impress.

Gone is former closer Casey Janssen (5.14) who retired after just four weeks in camp. Dumped for a second year in a row is solid AAA-pitcher Clay Mazzoni, who has yet to show he can pitch up here.

Look across the street. You see Clayton Kershaw and the Dodgers, Zack Greinke and the Diamondbacks, and a host of arms wearing Giants uniforms led by Madison Bumgarner.

And here in San Diego, 162-games about to be played, with this pitching staff. A long hot summer coming? Possibly.

If this turns out to be a disaster, then there should be some big time heat directed at Padres ownership, the Padres President, and this General Manager, who has delivered us this catastrophic pitching mess.

Enjoying your day. Don’t know if you will enjoy this Padres baseball season.

“March Madness….Driving You Crazy?”

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Has your heart stopped racing?. Does the punch in the gut you got in the final seconds feel better now?. Can you believe what just happened this weekend?
Are you emotionally spent as your go back to work today?

I don’t think we’ve seen this very often, but why should the NCAA postseason be any different than the regular season?

You remember November thru March don’t you. Six different teams were ranked number 1-in th nation at one time or another. There didn’t seem to be much different between any of the top teams. Nobody dominant, but everybody dangerous.

Oh of course there were some disappointments. Kentucky, its history of using one and done playes, didn’t get it done this year. LSU, with the NBA’s likely first pick, forward Ben Simmons, faltered, and never really came together when it counted most.

Very good was not quite good enough come tournament time. A darling like Gonzaga got dumped in the final seconds of its game. Duke was just never the Duke of decades gone by. Oregon was real good out here, but the PAC 12 is not equal to those guys back there.

No lead ever seems safe. Ask Virginia, heading home to Charlottesville. Kansas had it all, lost it all at the end. Ask Gonzaga and how it ended with Syracuse.

This all started the first day with a 2nd seed like Michigan State going home early. We had 12-lower seeds win against higher seeds the first weekend.

There are teams playing possessed right now, maybe playing over their head, but like the given years that George Mason or Butler got to the Final 4, Villanova, Oklahoma and Syracuse are not apologizing for playing next weekend.

Maybe the 1-and-done rule has caught up with college basketball. So many of the young stud players have left to go the NBA, that we are now left a bunch of really good young players, no superstars, and that raw talent of shooters and leapers, are spread all over the road map.

Hard to believe only 1-number one seed is left in the field, North Carolina. Villanova seems on a mission. Syracuse is playing with its Orange hair on fire. Take that NCAA sanctions.

How are your brackets?. Bet no one had all these guys getting thru to next weekends party in Houston.

Post season, just like regular season, just crazy. March madness driving you crazy?.

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