too dumb to play with themselves part two

0. "piece of shit. walk away."
OR
a lesson Chris Collision can not--will not--learn

If you had access to my email, you'd see that I write a lot of emails to ESPN, emails haranguing and begging in equal measure, special pleas for them to just hire a goddamned proofreader already. Today's brilliant moment was:

Scott Burnside and Pierre LeBrun look at two teams -- the New York Rangers and Los Angeles Kings -- that are

While I do applaud ESPN's vault into the existentialist zen mode of sports writing, I do have to insist that that sentence actually feature some ending punctuation.

A little later, LeBrun spews the following:

I spoke with someone this week who figured Gaborik has never been the same player since his hip surgery; or maybe it's just going to take longer to get it all back?

Okay. You talked to a guy. Cool.

But his hip surgery was the one he had in January of 2009. Which, last I checked, was before October of 2009, when the 2009-10 NHL season began...a season when Gaborik tied his career high for goals, and beat his career highs for assists and points (42-44-86).

Again we see LeBrun abdicating even the most basic elements of journalism in favor of blurting out whatever some moron inexplicably in a privileged position happens to spout platitudiously on the fucking phone. Your job--your actual, literal job--is explicitly to say:

"I talked to someone today who figured [absurd idiotic claim goes here], but that claim is false and here is why."

Has Gaborik been good this year? No. But it can't be because he's recovering from a surgery that preceded the best year he ever had in the NHL.

And then, on a different page, LeBrun continues to fondle his drum.

GM Doug Wilson told me point-blank this past weekend that McLellan isn't going anywhere, which is the right decision. This is not a coaching issue; this is about players underperforming.

GUH? Still waiting for that explanation about what exactly coaches do, if not get players to perform...

Collison, rehabbing

1. Who's reading this shit, anyway?