The View From Wisconsin

So I finally get a good solid chunk of sleep after doing some biking this morning. When I wake up, my mouth feels like it's all dry - but like it's coated with gunk.

I go into the bathroom just to brush my tongue off. When I spit, it comes out red.

Turns out that I had a blister on my tongue. I'd apparently burned it last night when my Dinty Moore Beef Stew got overcooked, and my first bite had done a number on it. The brushing broke the blister.

Now I'm on lidocaine for the pain. Joy, joy.

Something I've managed to mess around with a bit: I call it "Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Wrap Bites".

Ingredients:

• 1 Flatbread wrap (like Flat-Out Wraps)
• 2 tbsp. creamy peanut butter
• 1 tbsp. semi-sweet chocolate chip morsels

Using butter spray or a canola oil spray like Pam, coat the chocolate chip morsels in a small container. Microwave on 50% power for two minutes.
Spread the peanut butter on the wrap, then pour the softened morsels on the peanut butter. Spread the mixture evenly over the wrap, then roll up the wrap.
Lightly flatten the wrap, being careful not to make the peanut butter-chocolate mix ooze out the open ends.
Microwave on high power for about 20-30 seconds, or place in a toaster oven on low setting.
Refrigerate in a small snack back or other covered container for about 10-15 minutes until cool.
Remove from fridge and cut into four pieces.

One serving is approximately 153 calories, 9.1 g fat, no cholesterol and 15.5 g carbohydrates; approximately 1 starch exchange and 1 fat exchange.

(I know - a recipe on a blog about sports? Well, I'm a renaissance man, myself.)

Finally got around to doing the AHL stats, and here's the results:

Because the AHL does not track Minutes Played, players' HART points (called Cunningham Points in the AHL) were adjusted based on position: 18 minutes/game for centers, 17 for right wingers, 16 for left wingers, 12 for forwards and 22 for defensemen.

Goaltenders CNG points were tallied as usual; the Vezina Trophy Point totals are renamed the Bastien.

The league-wide PPG/PIM constant for 2007-08 was 0.046376.

• Center: Jason Krog, Chicago (126.6 GC, 84.6 CNG; AHL Cunningham Award winner)
• Left Wing: Pascal Pelletier, Providence (91.9 GC, 57.7 CNG)
• Right Wing: Pierre-Alex Parenteau, Hartford (92.2 GC, 63.0 CNG)
• Defenseman: Andrew Hutchinson, Hartford (88.9 GC, 77.1 CNG; AHL Shore Award winner)
• Defenseman: Joel Kwiatkowski, Chicago (67.5 GC, 63.2 CNG)
• Goaltender: Pekka Rinne, Milwaukee (1.6 GC, 215.5 BAST, 77.2 CNG)
• Goaltender: Wade Flaherty, Rockford (3.0 GC, 103.7 BAST, 14.7 CNG)
• Rookie of the Year: Teddy Purcell, RW, Manchester (81.4 GC, 54.4 CNG)
  

I was at Miller Park yesterday - an off day for the Brewers - and went into the Fan Zone to look around at a few things. I walked out with a Cerveceros cap (Spanish for "Brewers"), a Media Guide for 2008 and the Topps team baseball card set.

As I was buying the set, one of the guys behind the counter said, "Uh, you do know that there's an error in this set, right?" I looked at him quizzically and he told me the problem - the card shown at left.

Now, I'll bet that the photo checker for Topps just saw the "2" and didn't think anything about the card being right or wrong. However, that is NOT Bill Hall on the card - and just about any Brewers fan worth their salt would be able to tell you right away that it's Rickie Weeks.

The key factor is that he's standing on second base; Hall hasn't played a game at second or shortstop since 2006. However, if you look closely at the card, you can see the top of the 3 just to the right of the 2 on the jersey.


As if the whole Kazuo "First of April" Uzuki card bit wasn't bad enough...

It's that time of year again: time for the Goals Created/Hart Trophy Points All-Star Team.

Goals Created are simply points, plus Plus/Minus rating, minus Penalty minutes times the league constant for power-play goals per PIM. In 2007-08, that total was 0.054499. Hart Trophy Points uses that total and another formula (known basically as "Fantasy Points"), and multiplies it by Average Time on Ice, divided by 60.

Goaltenders have a different set of ratings known as Vezina Points and two sets of Hart Trophy Points (one offensive, one for goaltending).

EASTERN CONFERENCE

C – Evgeni Malkin, PIT (82 gp, 137.5 GC, 105.5 HART)

LW – Alex Ovechkin, WAS (82 gp, 138.8 GC, 128.2 HART) [HART POINT WINNER]

RW – Daniel Alfredsson, OTT (70 gp, 103.5 GC, 86.9 HART)

D – Sergei Gonchar, PIT (82 gp, 77.6 GC, 81.3 HART)

D – Zdeno Chara, BOS (78 gp, 64.5 GC, 78.9 HART)

G – Martin Brodeur (77 gp, 4.0 GC, 9.5 OHART, 89.92 GTR, 162.2 VZNA, 55.9 HART)

G – Rick DiPietro (63 gp, 6.0 GC, 16.2 OHART, 78.73 GTR, 91.9 VZNA, 33.6 HART)

WESTERN CONFERENCE

C – Pavel Datsyuk, DET (82 gp, 137.5 GC, 107.1 HART)

LW – Henrik Zetterberg, DET (75 gp, 121.1 GC, 104.4 HART)

RW – Jarome Iginla, CGY (82 gp, 124.2 GC, 107.2 HART)

D – Nicklas Lidstrom, DET (76 gp, 109.7 GC, 106.8 HART) [NORRIS POINT WINNER]

D – Dion Phaneuf, CGY (82 gp, 71.5 GC, 92.2 HART)

G – Evgeni Nabokov, SAN (77 gp, 2.0 GC, 6.9 OHART, 91.22 GTR, 131.4 VZNA, 56.3 HART) [VEZINA POINT WINNER]

G – Marty Turco, DAL (77 gp, 3.0 GC, 9.8 OHART, 85.63 GTR, 100.4 VZNA, 34.7 HART)

HONORABLE MENTION

C – Jason Spezza, OTT (76 gp, 117.4 GC, 94.4 HART)

LW – Dany Heatly, OTT (71 gp, 114.3 GC, 99.4 HART)

RW – Alexei Kovalev, MON (82 gp, 101.1 GC, 83.0 HART)

D – Brian Rafalski, DET (73 gp, 81.5 GC, 77.0 HART)

D – Brian Campbell, SAN (83 gp, 69.7 GC, 64.8 HART)

G – Henrik Lundqvist, NYR (72 gp, 0.0 GC, 0.5 OHART, 87.68 GTR, 128.2 VZNA, 51.1 HART)

G – Tomas Vokoun, FLA (69 gp, 6.0 GC, 12.7 OHART, 80.64 GTR, 106.8 VZNA, 42.1 HART)

C - Nicklas Backstrom, WAS (82 gp, 81.8 GC, 55.7 HART) [CALDER POINT WINNER]

NO-STARS (Min. 40 gp/20 gp in goal)

C – Marcel Goc, SAN (51 gp, -7.0 GC, -2.0 HART)

LW – Brad Larsen, ATL (62 gp, -13.0 GC, -3.5 HART)

RW – Sami Kapanen, PHI (74 gp, -4.0 GC, -0.9 HART)

D – Steve McCarthy, ATL (55 gp, -16.0 GC, -5.2 HART)

D – Matt Jones, PHX (45 gp, -11.0 GC, -4.7 HART)

G – Hannu Toivonen, STL (23 gp, 0.0 GC, 0.4 OHART, 63.60 GTR, 37.4 VZNA, 4.2 HART)

G – Fredrik Norrena, CLB (37 gp, 1.0 GC, 1.8 OHART, 64.42 GTR, 44.9 VZNA, 8.3 HART)

DISHONORABLE MENTIONS:

D – Rory Fitzpatrick, PHI (19 gp, -11.0 GC, -4.1 HART)

D – Garnet Exelby, ATL (79 gp, -14.0 GC, -2.1 HART)

This has been a "perfect storm" of a weekend for me - literally and figuratively.

There was a huge snowstorm on Friday, which was coupled by the holiday weekend and staffing issues going into the weekend at work. There was a combination of high-seniority staff off for the weekend on vacation, and a lot of other staff out sick with the flu bug. This led to three straight mornings of ordering - and two of those saw the same three people get ordered twice in a row.

As if that weren't enough, the general road conditions around here this weekend were crappy. The county road crews have pretty much given up on trying to clear anything but the Interstates and the
other state trunk highways, due to a lack of salt/sand and under-staffing issues.

Meanwhile, the cold has done a number on me, both mentally and physically. Three days of warmer weather and then you get dumped on by another snowstorm - with my dear father then calling me to tell me how hot it was out in Arizona, and how he suffered with a sunburn while watching a baseball game.

On a different note: I was close enough to completing the 2008 Topps Baseball Series One set that I decided to order the rest of the singles online from Beckett.com. The cards arrived today - and I came to the sickening realization that I had missed two of the cards. I place the blame on how Beckett's Marketplace sorts entries: card number 1 is followed by card 10, then 100, then 101... and if you have a really high number card and/or a really low number card, it gets lost in the shuffle.

That's what happened to the two cards I didn't order - card 6 and card 291. I've gone back to Beckett and ordered the cards I'd missed from another dealer. I also ordered a couple of cards that I was short because of the "gold foil" variation.

Looking back through the set to find those gold foil variations isn't an easy task; you essentially have to look at each card and see if the "TOPPS" logo is silver or gold. Then, there's another version: I've found two cards that have no foil on the TOPPS logo on the top of the card. I'm not sure that these are as much "error cards" as they are "misprints". I suspect the latter, of course.

As to the cards themselves: I think I mentioned in a previous post about card 176, Troy Patton, a rookie pitcher for the Houston Astros. The photo on his card looks like it was taken outside his apartment door in Kissimmee or something. And I won't even go into the third variant of the Red Sox celebration (a different color print on the Giuliani photoshopped-card).

Other things:

• One fourth of my bracket got busted when USC tanked to Xavier. Should have known better than to go against a team whose mascot is named for my favorite brand of candy.
  
• The Admirals had their winning streak snapped on Saturday at Rockford - without Pekka Rinne in net. Dov Grummet-Morris did his best but was on the losing end of the 3-1 score. Unfortunately, as I type this they Ads are losing in the tail end of the home-and-home series with the IceHogs, 3-0.
• Nashville is still two points out of the 8AFPOS, but the Avalanche are having issues trying to win hockey games - especially without their expensive rent-a-player Foppa on the ice.