The Offer Sheet Wars Continue

The new Madman of Alberta, aka Edmonton Oilers GM Kevin Lowe, has tried to spice things up once again this summer. After failing to obtain restricted free agent Tomas Vanek from Buffalo with a $7 million/year deal, he has now extended an offer sheet to Dustin Penner of the Anaheim Ducks for more than $4 million per season for five years! Yes, he's giving that much to a guy coming off a rookie year on a Stanley Cup championship squad. Granted, he scored 29 goals (against a Shot Quality-based Expected Goals value of 28.8, so its not like he was just a lucky shooter), but this would appear to be another case of a GM falling in love with a big guy and projecting only the positives going forward, a la Chris Gratton.

It will be interesting to see the reaction in Anaheim, where GM Brian Burke has never been shy of showing his feelings in the media. Buffalo GM Darcy Regeir whined pathetically about retaliation down the road when the Vanek offer came through, but I'm guessing Burke's response will be a bit more direct.

Celebrating a milestone month

I've been remiss in providing regular updates on my quest to turn this whole sports-blogging hobby into at least something of a significant side income, if not a career, but good news has a way of prompting action. That, and I've been heads-down busy working on a few different fronts to push things forward...

Social Media, Internet Marketing, and Real, Paying Customers - it really works!

Applying the basic tenets of internet marketing (SEO best practices and social media network building) have helped me grow the readership and engagement over at On The Forecheck tremendously in recent years, but lately I've been wondering if those same techniques could be applied to small- or medium-sized local businesses, to help them drive real, tangible business results. I'm talking about not just drawing idle hockey fans looking to a blog so they can muse over line combinations, but helping businesses connect with potential customers in ways that otherwise wouldn't occur. Recently, I was able to help make just such a thing happen, and it shows just how great the opportunities are for small, local businesses which may not have the resources or skills available to extend their brand effectively on the internet.

NHL Fake Trades, an idea worth pursuing further in 2013

As I wrote about a month ago , I decided to jump upon a short-term opportunity and set up a "hot topic" website for the 2012 NHL Trade Deadline. NHLFakeTrades.com was inspired by a column by Eric Duhatschek of the Globe & Mail, who looked at the frenzy with which hockey fans jump on even the sketchiest of information about potential hockey trades, and wondered if some cash could be made by simply and forthrightly writing about fictitious trade scenarios. This meshed nicely with an exercise I went through a few years ago to create a Random Trade Generator, so in the course of a few hours I went ahead and registered the domain, set up a WordPress site using ( as I do at Hockey Gear HQ ) the wonderful Genesis framework with the News theme , and freshened up the Trade Generator for 2012. So how did it do, in terms of traffic, revenue, and accuracy of the trade projections? Let's take a look...

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