Nearly everyone was surprised to see the name Tanner Glass on the Vancouver Canucks’ regular-season roster.
Everyone, that is, but Glass himself.
“I knew my ability and I think I’m an NHL player,” Glass said Tuesday. “I’m happy to be here.”
Glass, whose NHL resume consists of 44 games with the Florida Panthers, will start the season as Vancouver’s 13th forward. For this, he can thank Jannik Hansen.
Hansen broke three right-hand fingers in a third-period fight in Edmonton on Sunday night and will be lost to the team for six to eight weeks. That created an opportunity for Glass, a 25-year-old Regina native who the Canucks signed as a free agent on July 2. (more…)
The most surprising thing that happened in the NHL last season wasn’t the Pittsburgh Penguins winning the Stanley Cup.
It wasn’t Gary Bettman lecturing about the good health of the Phoenix Coyotes or Barry Melrose’s coaching comeback lasting 16 games, and it wasn’t Mats Sundin skating like Dana Murzyn or Martin Brodeur turning into Martin Brochu as the New Jersey Devils were eliminated.
The most astonishing development, thought impossible until it occurred, was Calgary Flames’ general manager Darryl Sutter transforming maniacal Mike Keenan into a victim worthy of our sympathy. (more…)
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Ray Nettles, a former Englewood High middle linebacker who went on to stardom in the Canadian Football League and became the first native Floridian inducted into the CFL Hall of Fame, died Tuesday afternoon at a Southside Hospice after a prolonged battle with liver and lung cancer. He was 60.
“Ray is in heaven on his mother’s birthday,” Nettles’ wife, Bonnie, said. “I praise God for his life and the time I had with him. It was a gift to be with the true love of my life.”
Nettles, an All-Southeastern Conference linebacker at Tennessee in 1971, played nine seasons with five different CFL teams. He played over half of his pro career (1972-76) with the B.C. Lions in Vancouver, where he won the Schenley Award as the league’s top lineman/linebacker and was a three-time CFL all-star. He went on to become the defensive MVP with both the Toronto Argonauts and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, then played his last two CFL seasons with the Ottawa Roughriders and Calgary Stampeders. (more…)
Sergei Shirokov just didn’t crack the Vancouver Canuck lineup, the young Russian kicked in the dressing room door.
Shirokov, one of the pleasant surprises of the Canucks’ pre-season, not only has earned himself a spot on the team’s second line, but he will also be a member of the first power-play unit when the Canucks open the regular season Thursday night in Calgary.
The Canucks set their opening-night roster Tuesday when they put three players on waivers — defencemen Brad Lukowich, Lawrence Nycholat and Michael Funk — and returned 2008 first-round pick Cody Hodgson to his junior team in Brantford, Ont. (more…)
Sergei Shirokov just didn’t crack the Vancouver Canuck lineup, the young Russian kicked in the dressing room door.
Shirokov, one of the pleasant surprises of the Canucks’ pre-season, not only has earned himself a spot on the team’s second line, but he will also be a member of the first power-play unit when the Canucks open the regular season Thursday night in Calgary.
The Canucks set their opening-night roster Tuesday when they put three players on waivers — defencemen Brad Lukowich, Lawrence Nycholat and Michael Funk — and returned 2008 first-round pick Cody Hodgson to his junior team in Brantford, Ont. (more…)
Vodafone has confirmed it will be selling Apple’s iPhone in the UK and Ireland from early next year, joining Orange as notches on Jobs’s bedstead.
Vodafone will be selling the iPhone from “early 2010″, and while we don’t have details of tariffs and contracts, consumer groups are already falling over themselves to herald a new era of customer choice and competition-driven reductions in price. Unfortunately, Vodafone’s enthusiasm to sell the iPhone has almost certainly locked the operator into a deal that puts Cupertino firmly in control.
Apple has been hawking the iPhone around operators for the last year or so, though rumours indicated that the 3GS was to be excluded from any deal. T-Mobile has been selling iPhones to its best UK customers for the last few months, and unlocked iPhones have been legitimately available for ages. However, subsidised handsets with network support have been restricted to O2, despite strong demand for the handset elsewhere. (more…)
AT A time when the International Air Transport Association expects the global airline industry to report a combined loss of 11bn this year, it comes as somewhat of a surprise that South African Airways (SAA) posted a profit of R398m in the year to March.
This was the airline that reported three successive losses of close to R1bn and requested billions from the government for its recapitalisation .
“No one is more surprised than us,” acting CEO Chris Smyth said at the results announcement yesterday. “The airline industry has been one of the hardest-hit sectors in the global economy.”
How did management achieve this turnaround and is it sustainable?
Smyth points out that the recently completed restructuring programme could not have been better timed. The programme saved the airline R2,5bn in costs, keeping the rise in operating cost to an overall 10% despite a sharp rise in the fuel price. (more…)
Gordon Brown will relaunch Labour’s crusade against anti-social behaviour today against the backdrop of public fury at the fate of a mother driven by a teenaged gang to kill herself and her disabled daughter.
An inquest jury yesterday blamed both the police and a borough council in Leicestershire for failing to protect Fiona Pilkington from a 10-year campaign of abuse.
Ms Pilkington, 38, killed herself and her daughter, Francecca, by setting alight to her Austin Metro at a lay-by near their home in Barwell.
Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, said today that there could be “no excuses” for the case. He told GMTV: “We need to work closely together to ensure the tragedy of Fiona Pilkington doesn’t happen again.” (more…)
The government of Philippines has appealed for international help to deal with the aftermath of the devastating floods that have killed 240 and left hundreds of thousands of people homeless.
The homes of nearly 1.9 million people in the capital, Manila, and surrounding areas were inundated by flood water unleashed by tropical storm Ketsana over the weekend.
With two new storms brewing in the Pacific, the defence secretary, Gilberto Teodoro, pleaded for help on national television. One of the storms could hit the northern Philippines this week and the other early next week.
“We are appealing for international humanitarian assistance,” said the minister, who is chair of the National Disaster Co-ordinating Council. (more…)
HANOI, Vietnam — Typhoon Ketsana roared into central Vietnam on Tuesday, killing at least 23 people as it brought flooding and winds of up to 90 mph (144 kph), disaster officials said. Some 170,000 were evacuated from its path.
Ketsana left more than 200 dead across the northern Philippines as a weaker tropical storm.
After gathering strength over the South China Sea, the typhoon made landfall in midafternoon, about 37 miles (60 kilometers) south of Danang, according to the National Weather Center.
Two people in Quang Nam province were killed by falling trees, and another died when struck by a power line, said Nguyen Minh Tuan, a provincial disaster official. (more…)
