KINCH'S CORNER

Brought to you by Lasse Kinch

Date:9/6-02


I'm Back!


Hi All, I've just gotten back to the office after a weeks suspension. I must say it feels great to be back. During my suspension I visited heaven on earth. I've spent this last week on a tropical island in the middle of the pasific. My thanks to MMB for taking care of the bill.

League Polls
Well, I really don't know what to think of this weeks poll. It asks which GM or press secretary should be commited to a sanitorum for the criminal insane first. I was of course one of the possible alternatives, frankly I don't find that a bit strange after my ramblings last week. What I do find disturbing however, is that Jimmy "the Camel" Waite wasn't a valid name to vote on.

New GM's ?
New York and Berlin are still being run from the league office. Will we ever get a full set of GM's ?

Trades
Woho! There has been some action this past week. The biggest deal is probably the one involving L A and London. This trade involved a couple of rookie GM's and went to the trades board. It got accepted 5-0 after a massive search for the 5th and final vote. Did we really have to search for that 5th and final vote when we already had 4 votes to pass the trade ?

To London:
Joe Nieuwendyk RW 2 8 8 7 2 8 8 6 9 6 9 73
Steve Thomas LW 7 9 7 7 5 9 9 6 7 6 7 79
Curtis Leschyshyn D 4 7 9 9 8 7 6 4 6 9 3 72

To Los Angeles:
Tomas Kaberle D 4 7 6 6 7 9 8 9 7 7 5 75
Andrei Zyuzin D 5 8 5 7 7 6 9 7 6 5 6 71
Jason Podollan RW 4 6 6 7 7 8 7 5 4 6 5 65
Grant Marshall RW 5 7 5 6 5 6 5 6 5 6 5 61


Now lets take a closer look at the trade. London, trying to improve their struggling offense, might have found a solution in Joe Nieuwendyk. L A gets younger and gains some depth in their farm system. Grant Marshall has already proven that he belongs in the TWHL and had been promoted to L A's pro team.

Havana traded for Roman Turek earlier this week, something they might be wishing they hadn't now that Kevin Hodson has come out of retirment. Reports coming out of Havana are saying that Hodson looks really sharp and may very well become the team's starter again.

The Divisions




ALI
Vancouver is totally dominating the Ali this year. Nikolishin, Stefan, Lalonde and Niedermayer are the stars of this team and they put up the numbers to prove it aswell. Khabibulin has played good as usual. Toronto is in second place, 12 points behind the Greenpeace. GM Herrington should be upset over the way his team is performing right now. Toronto has the players to be higher than .500. L A is in third place as they've been most of the season so far, and probably will for the reminder of the season aswell. Montreal and New York both have 21 points, but Montreal has two games in hand and should be able to score a point in atleast one of those games. Chicago is struggling in 6th place. Sittler hasn't been himself so far this season.

PELE
Mexico has now climed passed Rio in the standings. Mexico lost Bondra to injury in the beginning of last week but that hasn't effected them much. Rio got off to a great start to the season but is now playing according to their normal standard. Center Brett Lysak and retiring defenseman Dan Trebil is leading the team in points. Cape Town is in third with a .500 record. Rookie Cory Stillman leads Cape Town in scoring and is an early candidate for the Calder trophy. It's only Pele and Lee that have three teams at .500 or above. Santiago is in 4th place after having played 6-4-0 the last ten games. The Sol's played great during the preseason but got of to a terrible start of the season, hopefully they are on their way up now. We find another rookie on top of Santiagos team scoring. No 1 pick Nagy has 14 goals and 24 points so far. Cairo and Havana are currently without a playoff spot. Cairo would probably had been better off if they had kept Forsberg on their team. Reports from Havana say that Josh Green wants out and that the Ratz are willing to pay the price to get him.

BORG
The Rome Gladiator has by its two recent wins over the Stockholm Ratz taken over the lead in the division. Neither of the two teams are having an acceptable season so far. Rome has been having problems scoring but their defense is good. Stockholm on the other hand is struggling like they did in the beginning of THWL1. Coaches Neely and Linseman must come up with something fast if they want to keep their jobs. Prague and Moscow have been losing lately and London has been able to slip past them in the standings. London's Magnus Arvedsson now has 8 goals and 16 points in 27 games, that isn't good enough for a player of his calibre. Jean Beliveau, Brett Clark and Dan Boyle have played very well for the Russian team. If theses three players continue to perform like they have, moscow might actually make it to the playoffs from a very weak Borg division. Mike Modano is doing well in Prague but Mr Hockey really needs to improve his game. Berlin is in sixth place and there isn't much speaking for them improving their position. Guy Lafleur and Scott Hannan are doing well for Berlin.

LEE
Taipei. I don't kno what to say about this team other than that they are playing great right now and has been doing so for the entire season. Only three losses so far and two of them are against Moscow and London. Forsberg is leading the team in scoring as expected. Coaches Gradin and Yakushev have as always tried a lot of different players. Tokyo, or the TWHL travelling all stars as one of my colleagues call them, are also playing good. Not as good as Taipei, but 140 goals in 25 games must be considered as very good. Centers Pavel Bure and Patrick Marleau are leading the league in scoring and I would be very surprised if one of these two doesn't win the Art Ross this season. The current champions, Singapore are in third place with a .596 record. The champs are not playing well right now though, they've lost 5 games in a row, including two games against Tokyo. Hong Kong isn't far behind Singapore right now. I'm sad to report that Eric Lindros is playing well for the Hurricanes this season. Calcutta is in 5th place with a .500 record. I guess the Lee is even stronger this year. Melbourne is in 6th place but has been playing well lately and has racked up four wins in a row. Reports say that GM Tim has gone on vacation and left coach Salming on his own. So if any of you guys think you're hearing strange noices from the bushes, don't worry, it's probably only GM Tim wathcin birds or something..

So thats it for this week. Dr Crane can get back to his usual job and leve the witing to a acknowledged professional, me! I'm inspector Clu.. errr Lasse Kinch.