These are the Days of Mats Sundin…

...the soap opera continues.

At this point, does anyone even care any more?

Posted by redbacon from Kelowna, BC on 08/17/08 at 05:12 PM ET

This has been a media driven story all along and will continue to be.

If people would only listen to both Sundin and Barry and just wait for Mats to make up his mind, well, we would all be better off.

Posted by Paul from Motown Area on 08/17/08 at 05:15 PM ET

One of these days he’ll to announce that he’s retiring just to stop being pestered by the media.  Unlike Favre, I don’t get the impression that he really enjoys the attention.

Posted by PRC. on 08/17/08 at 06:22 PM ET

Who’s to say it’s not Barry, himself, who’s starting these rumours to keep the Sundin interest high?

Posted by JBytes from Heart of Space on 08/17/08 at 06:54 PM ET

These “reports” tend to tell you more about the policies of the people who relay them than the truth the vast majority of the time. 

Tell the “report’s” source?  Sometimes.  Tell the “reporter’s” name?  Very rarely.  Actually contemplate whether the story makes sense?  Almost never.

Even if you hadn’t read the report, per se, you could use a “smell test” to determine whether it was accurate, given that it’s about the Rangers and a high-profile player, using a few simple steps:

1. Does it make salary cap sense, as Spector might say?

2. Does it make personnel sense?

3. Did Larry Brooks write it?  Because Larry Brooks is like the Toronto media--no matter how crazy it sounds, he’s convinced that everybody wants to be a Ranger, just like the Toronto media believes that everyone born in the province of Ontario would give their right leg and four first round draft picks to be a Maple Leaf.

Even if the answers to #1 and #2 are, “Yes,” if the answer to #3 is, “Yes,” proceed to step #4:

4. Call agent, because, you know, you can like, ask, so even if you’re being lied to, you can at least say, “Well, I asked X about the report, and he said Y.”

Why are steps 1-3, never mind step 4, so hard to do, in August, no less, after relaying the report on your website as if it were fact as opposed to stating that a random, author-less “report” might be truthful? 

Or, if you’re not in the mood, why not just say, “Larry Brooks of the New York Post reported this, it doesn’t make sense, and it’s Larry Brooks” and be done with it? 

I don’t get it.  The truth isn’t hard to discern when you don’t mail it in.

Posted by George James Malik from South Lyon, MI on 08/18/08 at 02:40 AM ET

As a Wings fan who lives in Toronto and supports the Leafs as well, may I simply say, I don’t care… not now, not since Aug 1 (the anticipated decision day).

With the hype (and hyperbole) reaching biblical levels of B/S, I would like to annoint Mats Sundin with a new nickname… The Messiah.

His return will be the second coming and he will lead his flock to certain glory… at least the media has FAITH that will happen, and faith beats brains every time at the hockey altar.

With everyone wondering IF he will return, and whose side he will be on if he does return, I am expecting The Messiah to walk on water en route to the press conference announcing his decision.

After his announcement, and some water-to-wine parlour tricks for the kids in the crowd, The Messiah will ascend to the heavens where he has a lunch date with The Almighty and Harold Ballard (who has really helped The Almighty with heaven’s over-population burdens implementing a “No Europeans Allowed” policy at the Pearly Gates).

All hail The Messiah!  May his return be epic, I mean biblical, no MIRACULOUS!

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This type of crap is why I am an agnostic skeptic.  I worship at the altar of Polka-roo, because that is how I roll, bitches.

Posted by VooX from Behind the Bar in the Hasek Club Car on 08/18/08 at 07:34 AM ET