What do Scotland and California have in common?

Very bad weather and weather related deaths.

While the rain and snow in California is causing a lot of problems, it is good news for Arizona and states that were experiencing drought.

NHL
This has been a wierd winter. Most Canadians will tell you hockey is a significant part of our lives. With the NHL out, no Hockey Night in Canada, hockey fans have been heading to Junior A games.
Hey, I’m not a big fan, but I understand. There is something to be said about sitting in the stands on a hard plank, seeing your breath and wrapping your hands around a hot chocolate. I know it’s far more comfy in the big stadiums, but most of us have been to the local arena.

The owner of the Carolina Hurricanes says the season is gone. Yeah, well, even none fans had that one figured out.

My gut feeling is that this season’s gone,” Peter Karmanos Jr. told the Canadian Press yesterday.

And NHL hockey may be sidelined for longer than that. Karmanos believes the league will be out of action as long as it takes to get “cost certainty” — the NHL’s euphemism for a salary cap.

“I know personally that I’d be willing to risk another season,” he said from Detroit, where his company Compuware is based. “I’m enough of a hockey fan to realize that once we got it straightened out, the fans would come back.

“But there’s the risk they wouldn’t. Even with that in mind, I feel very, very strongly that if we don’t get it straightened out, we don’t have to worry about the NHL existing anyways.”

Los Angeles Kings president Tim Leiweke said he’s not optimistic the season can be saved either.

“From last summer on, unfortunately, we thought this was the most realistic of the possibilities,” Leiweke said. “We budgeted zero revenue for the Kings and zero revenue for the L.A. Arena Company.

“If the season gets cancelled, it will have no impact on our budget. We already took that hit. I guess the good news is, we saw this coming.”

Since he is on the bargaining committe, this may be a pr campaign. Either way, fans lose. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is no season next year either. The hockey night in Canada theme is running through my head. (I lost a lot of interest when expansion was going on and teams headed south) Even if it was a cue to change the channel, it’s weird not having hockey.