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Dear Darryl;

You decided somehow that loosening up the purse strings to keep Number Thirteen in Calgary for the 2009/2010 season wasn't in the best interests of the Flames hockey club ...

... But you saw fit to mortgage the present and the future on some guy named Olli (how'd that work out for you, anyway?), and then waited too long to pull the trigger on getting rid of a guy every other player in the Flames dressing room wouldn't even spit in the general direction of. That guy, the surly former "phenom" (who seems to have Toronto collectively confused as to the difference between "leadership" and "extreme arrogance bordering on meglomania"), you at least got a pretty decent guy in return for (Ian White). But ... while we're talking about 'value' here - signing Matt Stajan to that contract extension was nothing short of head-scratchingly confusing ... What was up with that?

Oh, yeah. That's the money you saved by not offering it to Number Thirteen. You let Todd Bertuzzi go - that was expected, no-one seems to be losing a lof of sleep over it - but not even making an effort to give it to Mike Cammalleri seems, well ... ludicrously incompetent. It's been whispered that you snarled and grumbled (when don't you snarl and grumble, for that matter?) that "we didn't like him enough for those kinds of numbers". I might remind you, it's Number Thirteen - playing for the supposedly-inferior Montreal Canadians - who currently leads all players in the playoffs in goal scoring, and is playing very much like a man on the way to a Conn Smythe Playoff MVP performance: outside, at least, of anyone who doesn't spell their last name "H-A-L-A-K".

How do you like Number Thirteen now, Darryl? Wouldn't he look sweet beside Jarome and Craig right now? Oh, almost forgot ... your team would have had to have actually made the playoffs this year, first ...

... Something we're pretty sure would have happened if you'd actually made more of an effort to sign Number Thirteen when you had the chance last summer.

Oh well. At least the Leafs (for now) and the Oilers (for now) are worse ... I guess that's something positive, n'est-ce pas?