Puck Junk

First of, a belated Happy New Year to all. A computer problem has kept me away from the internets the past few days, but I’m back online.

Anyway, with the first of the year now come and gone, my girlfriend Shellie and I decided to purchase calendars at a local bookstore. The best time to buy a calendar is right after New Year’s Day–they become more and more obsolete as the days go by, and you can usually find them marked down at least 50%.

But calendar selections are pretty lame; it’s mostly puppies or flowers or puppies frolicking in flowers. You have your dogs, kittens, horses, Camp Rock, farm equipment, Playboy Playmates, muscle cars, etc. etc. Stuff that I normally don’t like enough to want to hang on my wall (with the exception of a Playboy calendar–but only single guys hang up “naked lady pictures” in their place).

In Chicago, you will find sports calendars of the Cubs, the White Sox, the Bulls (even though they suck), the Bears (ditto), NASCAR, Notre Dame Football, college basketball…and if you are lucky, a hockey calendar. I found this Blackhawks calendar and purchased it, which brings me to the first reason why calendars suck:

1. They are overpriced.

Who in their right mind pays $14.99 for a calendar? The answer is no one. We all just wait and wait until January 2 and then get one at half price. I think the bookstores and calendar-making companies have finally figured this out, and inflated their prices accordingly. Before we know it, calendars will cost $29.99, and get “marked down” to $15. I’m sure some person who knows all about publishing and/or distribution channels can prove me wrong on this, but I don’t care. I have my suspicions.

Paging through the calendar, I notice that Mr. January is Robert Lang. Lang was traded to Montreal before training camp. This brings me to my second reason why calendars suck:

2. The player selection is lame.

Lang was traded on September 12, 2008. Even worse, Rene Bourque–who graces the month of August 2009–was traded to Calgary on July 1, 2008. Which makes me wonder who picked these players? Most of the players in the calendar (Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews, Patrick Sharp) make sense. But these two? Why not also include Jim Vandermeer and Patrick Lalime as long as we’re at it?

I know that, like everything else that is published, there are deadlines. But there’s no flipping way that these stupid calendars were printed before Bourque’s trade on July 1. Didn’t someone at Turner Licensing–the fine folks who made this calendar–realize or even care that Lang and Bourque were gone?

Why aren’t our two big free agent acquisitions–Brian Campbell and Cristobal Huet–somewhere in this calendar? What is this, an old Topps hockey card set? Do they have to play a full season in Chicago before appearing in a lousy, overpriced calendar?

Sigh.

Other questionable inclusions are Nikolai Khabibulin (March) and Martin Havlat (May). Most likely, those two guys will be long gone by the time their months roll around.

Maybe I’m just bitter because I didn’t get a free calendar at a ‘Hawks game this year, or my local gas station didn’t give me a crappy “gas station calendar”. My favorite Chinese restaurant gave me a wall scroll-type calendar, but you can’t really write on those.

Oh well. I guess I can’t expect too much, considering that this cost me around $8 and will get the job done. And it still beats that “puppies frolicking in flowers” calendar.