Do the tour, by all means. I know you can be counted on not to spew treacle about how those events are what sport is really all about, King—even though those events are what sport is all about.

P.S. Don't forget the Grey Cup. It's what sport is really all about.

It seems that fairly often in hockey, goals come due to a lucky bounce or some other kind of fluke accident. I've had plenty of the hockey-elite explain to me about how you make these sorts of breaks, but I've watched games and sometimes I just don't see it. It seems that often times the better team doesn't always win; the team that got lucky or had a hot goalie did.

Last night's game was actually a good example of a strategy overcoming a hot goalie. The Oilers more or less dominated the entire game, often employing the fairly common strategy of dumping the puck in deep into the offensive zone and forechecking hard to cause turnovers as the defensemen went back to gather the puck. (San Jose employed the same strategy very effectively the previous two games.)

Problem was, every time the Oilers got a good chance, Vesa Toskala would save it (he faced an eye-popping 57 shots). San Jose could have ended the game a few times on either a rare chance or a lucky play, it's true. This almost happened, but didn't. Then a few minutes into the third overtime, the Oilers' strategy paid off. One of San Jose's defensemen tried to get the puck out of the Sharks' zone, but an Oiler kept the puck in at the blueline and got it low to one of the forecheckers, Ales Hemsky, who cycled the puck in deep along the boards, to Ryan Smyth, who tried a wraparound shot that failed but skittered off his stick to Shawn Horcoff, who won the game on a snap shot as he charged toward the net.

Even the "lucky bounce" there—that Smyth's failed shot went to Horcoff, was actually something they'd planned for. In a post-game interview, Horcoff said that he and Smyth had talked about going hard to the net to get rebounds off wraparound shots. And the guy who kept the puck in, Matt Greene, a rookie, was in the lineup only because the Oilers' coach decided after game one of the series that he wanted to ice a bigger, younger defensive corps.

Like any sport, I think it's a matter of percentages. It's true that having a goalie who is playing out of his mind is the single greatest way of stacking the odds in your favour, and perhaps a greater deck-stacker than you can have in any other sport. But a number of small, well-executed strategic maneuvers can still make a huge difference.

This story reflects an unfortunate dearth of critical thought on the part of Salon's editors.

How can they take us on this voyage of discovery without also celebrating the astrological implications of the arrival of Ceres, Charon, and Xena on the celestial-body-classification scene? To just focus on Pluto's departure is not only unscientific, it's downright pessimistic.

Having just stroked several of my most potent crystals, I prophesy that these new minor bodies will favourably govern routine aspects of our existence:

"With Charon sitting in an auspicious position, on the fourth cusp of the Martian apogee, you will no doubt make it to the gym today for a change."

Should she evoke Murrow?

"Good night, and good episode of Surivivor, tonight at 8."

Cronkite?

"And that's the way it wasn't."

Garroway?

"Peace. Or not. Whatever."

Olbermann, minus the irony?

"It's been [#] days since we accomplished our mission in Iraq."

Rather?

"TomKat."

Wait, I've got it. Fisher.

"Narm."

Anyone else find it suspicious that Buster's coin picks so many overwhelming favourites? Admit it, King: you're using this whole "Buster's coin" thing to cover your secret plot to smuggle Jimmy the Greek back into football.

Sorry King, but you're off-base in calling the decision not to switch to a more balanced schedule in the NHL a wise move. One of the main reasons for the vote is that the rivalries the league was hoping to establish (or rather re-establish—teams played eight games against one another back in the days of the Smythe, Norris, Patrick, and Adams divisions) haven't really panned out. As an Edmonton Oilers fan, I can tell you that there's nothing worse than suffering through our eight games against the Minnesota Mild a year. Even the once-fierce Battle of Alberta has become a ponderous affair.

You're correct in saying that in the long run, the number of star attractions in each conference will balance out. But that is equally an argument for more inter-conference games in a league where NHL attendance is down in 2/3 of arenas this year. I realize that baseball's not-especially-successful experiment with interleague play stands as a cautionary tale against relying too heavily on novelty to draw fans, but I hardly think one home game against out-of-conference opponents a year would be enough to dull the sense of specialness, especially when the alternative is Columbus–Chicago, round 7.

Finally, as you allude to, but don't really explore, Western teams log far more travel miles during the season because their home cities are spread apart. The result of this is that by the time we get to the Stanley Cup Finals, the Western team has logged far more miles than their Eastern opponent, creating a competitive imbalance akin to AL pitchers being forced to hit in NL parks in the World Series.