RANDOMIZATION: 01/24/08

So how does this work? I get up at 2:40am today, because my wife woke me, having realized (correctly) that there were some items I had to take on the Lowell trip that were sitting in my office. My work office, that is. We had forgotten to run there and pick them up Wednesday night.

(So how lucky am I? Not only is my wife a huge hockey fan, but she is also perceptive enough to figure out the things I'm forgetting for my trip.)

Good thing we got up early. I got dressed, went to put my shoes on, and snapped the lace of my black dress shoes in half. That necessitated a quick run to Walgreens on the way to the airport.

(When you start wondering why stores are open 24/7, think about this one. The idiot who snaps his shoelace while getting dressed at 3am to go to the airport and catch a 5:15am flight needs to be able to get a new shoelace somewhere.)

So, yeah. Why can't I get to sleep? Ugh. And I've already seen Inside the NFL tonight.

Okposo follow-up. Original ranting here. The question I had originally was whether Okposo bolted or the Islanders "persuaded" him to sign somehow.

That question has been answered, and it takes some of the sting off what Okposo did. Some.

Word from two extremely reliable sources is that Okposo was given a deadline to sign a contract with the Islanders. Not signing would have meant Okposo was running the risk of not being offered a deal this summer. This has surely made a few laps around message boards, but I'm a little bit more confident in it now than I was when I read it on a message board.

I called Garth Snow's move "bush-league" in my original post on the matter. I feel very strongly now that my use of "bush-league" was an insult to other "bush-league" stunts that have been pulled over time.

One can only hope that the NHL and the NCAA can come to some sort of accord over this ridiculous behavior. There's a really good reason why this isn't allowed in any other sport, and it's time for hockey to close the loophole.

Take all the kids you want in the summer. But once they've started a season, leave them alone.

More ref stuff. Original ranting/reporting here. And here. You know what happened there. I have two more updates, both courtesy of UMD media colleague Kevin Pates.

First, it appears that Denver/Wisconsin referee Randy Schmidt has been bumped from at least one weekend assignment. The league confirmed that Schmidt has been taken off the series he was scheduled to work this weekend (he wasn't scheduled for any games last weekend). No further comment from the WCHA, so this is going to be week-to-week speculation until either we find out he has been suspended for a longer period or fired, or he turns up officiating a WCHA series.

Also, WCHA referee Todd Anderson got yelled at after he grabbed UMD's Michael Gergen by the jersey Friday night at the DECC. Anderson was run into by Gergen during a UMD rush (unintentionally). The two exchanged words, and then Anderson was seen by 5,000-plus people to be grabbing Gergen by the jersey to make sure the conversation continued.

Even if Gergen told Anderson to "get the (bleep) out of the way, (bleep)", Anderson was out of line. I don't know exactly what happened, though Gergen told both Pates and me that he didn't say any such thing. Frankly, I don't care what he said. He didn't run into Anderson on purpose. You could argue that Anderson shouldn't have been where he was on the ice (I don't know the protocol on this, but it just seemed like an odd place for a ref to hang out), and Gergen was trying to make an offensive play.

That said, I thought Anderson called a pretty darned good weekend in that UMD-Minnesota series. It's the second straight time I've seen him get run over by a UMD player while trying to work at the DECC. Perhaps he should request that he only see the Bulldogs on Olympic ice. Dude's tough as nails, because he bounced up both times and kept on going. Good for him.