Sunday's Handy Pocket Guide: Oren Koules is Slowly Turning Into Mark Cuban

Every Sunday, Wednesday and Friday this season we'll take a look around the NHL with BMR's Handy Pocket Guide. We screwed up last week but from now on it will be posted three times a week. Promise.

[ Tampa Bay TV Producers Heart Oren Koules ]

What's better than watching a shootout? Why, it's watching Tampa Bay Lightning owner Oren Koules' reaction to every save and goal during the shootout! Judging by the video to your left, it seems like the producers at Sun Sports really are drinking the Koules-Aid (hahahahahah GET IT?!?!). Either that or they get paid for every time they put him on camera.

Ladies and gentlemen, the NHL now has it's own version of Mark Cuban. Now it's time to place bets on how long it will be until Koules has his day working at a Dairy Queen. I'm giving it two weeks, at which point he'll make a comment about his team being softer than the soft serve at DQ. The folks at DQ then get agitated because they insist that, no, their soft serve is in fact softer.

Here's what I imagine it could look like:

[ San Jose Will Not Let You Get Political ]

Kudos (not Koules) go out to the Sharks today. Last night, the Flyers were in San Jose and even though the team did not bring [Name Censored] to town with them, the Sharks chose to leave politics at the door - literally.

One blogger's sign (pictured right) was not allowed into the arena due to it's political implications.

Upon entering the HP Pavilion, I was stopped by an usher in purple.

"Sir, you can't bring in the sign," the young man said.

"I've brought in signs before - why not tonight?!?"

"Sir, your sign is of a political nature, and we can't allow you to bring it inside."

While the Blogger was rightfully pissed, the Sharks did the right thing. All we heard after [Name Censored] dropped the puck in Philly was how politics should not be mixed with sports. The Sharks are only carrying out that sentiment and for that, I salute them. Even if the sign was in good fun, a policy of abstinence from political statements of any kind is a good one. Keep that stuff in the political arena, where it belongs. And this rant is not intended to trash on this fan's sign, it's more to high five the Sharks.

[ Beer: Now More Valuable than American Banks ]

I don't mean to give you a double dose of political socio-economic analysis, but this one just has to be mentioned. Unbelievably, beer is now a more valuable commodity than certain American Banks. But of course there's a catch -- you have to live in a state that will give you a refund for you old beer cans.

From GuestofAGuest.com:

If you had purchased $1,000.00 of AIG stock one year ago you would have $44.34 left.

With Wachovia, you would have had $54.74 left of the original $1,000.00.

With Lehman, you would have had $0.00 left.

But, if you had purchased $1,000.00 worth of beer one year ago…drank all of the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling REFUND, you would have $214.00 cash.

So there you have it, beer is officially a safer retirement fund than owning stock in a bank. How about that.

[ Wall-to-Wall Coverage of Oilblogo-gate ]

Just in case you were a little confused about this post from Friday, here's a little further explanation. The Oilers do not understand how to deal with bloggers. At all. And they're being dicks about it. Due to all of that, a lot of people are getting upset because of how a certain blogger was treated. If you would like to read more on the subject, please check out the following links (grabbed from EMac at FanHouse because I'm lazy). Thank you, have a good day.

Neate Sager
Battle of Alberta
Deadspin
The NHL Arena
Battle of California
On Frozen Blog
Sports Snipe
The Pens Blog
Going Five Hole
Can't Stop the Bleeding
Boston Blue Line
Cycle Like the Sedins
The Cult of Hockey
HF Boards
Hot Oil
Oilblobosphere!
SNN Sports
Empty Netters
Wrap Around Curl
Five Hole Fanatics
Strange Deadfellows
The Big Lead
Scarlett Ice
Puck Daddy