Attila Umbrus

Jasper and Banff are Parks Canada and are federally regulated. So Alberta and BC government can’t do squat other than make recommendations to Ottawa. My wife and I love Jasper so it’s tough to watch.

Sprong probably seen a big opening in the top 6 and went for it on a show me deal. Plus he gets a chance to rebuild himself with some excellent coaches. Maybe round out his D game a bit. This guy is gonna come in hungry. Love the competition for next year!

Do we still stay under the cap for accrual with this move HKSR?

Good to have another Dane on the team if this is true! Apparently Sprong isn't an analytics darling, but I watched him quite a bit in Seattle the year before last and I really liked his game. In the right system he will thrive. He's more defensively sound than Kuz was. At least Toc can talk one on one with Sprong on what he wants from him. I always got the impression that part of the issue with Kuz was just straight up language barrier issues.

Good lord all I think of is this... Idiocracy is coming true in so many ways...

It’s an impressive operation the Panama Canal. The lake however is drying up and they aren’t able to fill the canal to full capacity to move the volume of ships they normally are used to. With the low waters they can only move so many ships at one time right now. Which is causing a massive back up in the supply chain. Indeed Mexico is already pushing forward and expecting to be completing the rail line is quick fashion…although I always worry about something built too quickly. It will come at a much needed time as Panama Canal is for the foreseeable future going to continue to fall behind. They are toying with ideas of using ocean water to move ships thru the canal. But they will need massive water pipelines and pumping stations to get the ships up and over the highest point of the canal. Lots of work to do to get it done if they want to do it.

It's possible at the narrow part at the south. Could see that for sure

Good point to bring up. Supply chain issues have been massive since Covid. For us to get parts it's a ridiculous wait time. We started housing a critical spare parts inventory at all our facilities. Spent millions on it just to make sure we are ok. Some things are 3-4 month wait time and we can't afford to be shut down that long. This may indeed be a saving grace to build locally. Mexicans are building a rail net work over land to compete with Panama Canal and that could squash things. But time will tell on all that. Reliability wise that is if they can keep up to demand when the rail line is built.

Honestly, it's one thing I hate to admit. But if Canada could afford to keep it's business a little more in house and still maintain decent profits that still would attract outside investment, they would have done it by now. As much as I wish for the opposite, the reality is, it would probably be more expensive than we're willing to pay to produce goods locally in Canada. Which is why things are outsourced as they are. Local economy just can't compete with low labour costs from over seas. And I doubt anyone would be willing to pay more for locally produced goods if it costs more than things already are...even if you throw in the argument that it would be a major carbon emission reduction if we made more Canadian products. I do agree we need to beef up our international trades, get our raw products to more locations than just China and US. I know natural gas wise we were looking at getting LNG over to Europe to assist in helping them transition away from Russian fed natural gas...but that could take a while.

The trade back in the day was sold as swapping 2 players who were troubles to deal with. Gillis stated he spent more time dealing with Hodgsons dad than any other player in the past he's dealt with. We didn't hear much about Kassians issues though, which apparently were an issue even back then. At least this is how I remember it going down.

Clusterfuck would be awesome on the 4th line!

Kassian is a good example too, flamed out in Buffalo, Vancouver, and Montreal before sobering up and becoming something for Edmonton. Substance abuse is a bitch, I hope Zadina's out of the woods. But who knows he may not be. There will be some interesting PTO's handed out this year. Zadina is probably looking at that route right now. Could be a decent reclamation

Ain't that the sad truth

I love that you posted the other day about US robbing us of our natural resources only to sell them at premium costs world wide so they make all the profits... Maybe if they hard ball on NAFTA we will be forced to finally beef up our own industries and sell products world wide instead of just to one country. Having US control our economy as such has always bugged me. We should be more independent from them. The current strategy we have with them is a very familiar scenario in my world...in the natural gas industry there are lots of stories where single source energy providers use their leverage to force the hands of other companies. In example lots of natural gas facilities i've operated have multiple contracts with several natural gas providers to keep our facility full production wise and creates healthy competition. We also then get to dictate the gas contracts coming into our facility and not the other way around. Then you have other places that have only ONE source of gas supplier and those sites are always struggling to maintain their finances because they are always having to drop their rates to ensure the only gas supply they have stays on to run their facility...not a healthy model. Eventually those plants get choked out and then bought up by the gas supplier who was playing hard ball with them. We are resource rich country, with vast land and commodities, we should be much better off than we currently are. But unfortunately we have decided that selling our raw goods is the better way to go. To me that leaves our country empty of "final/end products" to use at our own will if times get tough...If we manufactured more goods we'd have more for ourselves as well. I still can't wrap my head around the fact it's cheaper to ship raw goods across the ocean to China, Taiwan, etc have them manufacture the goods, ship them back across the ocean, then sell the final products in our stores. That is cheaper than doing the full manufacturing circle locally in our own country...so maybe this will never change but it would be nice to see if it did become a reality.

“Feel the hate flow through you”… very fitting and kinda disturbing. Dark times