Another August day, another soft day for news.
- Wyshynski surmises that recently signed free agent Brad Richards will take over Captain duties from recently released Chris Drury next season. Other possibilities include Ryan Callahan and Marc Staal. What are your thoughts on a player who has never played a game for the team being named captain? What about in Florida where it seems likely that Ed Jovanovski, recently signed for his second tenure with the team, will be named captain? [Puck Daddy]
- Helene St. James has the next player preview up. Today it is Johan Franzen and St. James believes that he must return to his old dominant self, especially with his salary putting him in second-tier forward status in the league. [Detroit Free Press]
- Dan Rosen of NHL.com has his 30 Teams in 30 Days preview up for the Red Wings. [NHL.com]
- The Los Angeles city council has approved financing for a $1.2 billion NFL stadium. While it is irrelevant to hockey (especially since current plans have it being an open air stadium), it’s a slow news day and that is one expensive building. The Burj Khalifa, the epitome of Dubai construction, cost only $300 million more, to put this into perspective, and the city does not even have a team (yet). [SB Nation]
UPDATE: Via Robocop and CoreyMichaelDC, this report was inaccurate. The city of Los Angeles voted yesterday to approve funds to move part of their convention center to accommodate Farmers Field. No public money will be used at all for this stadium and it will be paid entirely out of pocket by AEG (who will be compensated over the next 30 years with $700 million by Farmers Insurance for the naming rights). Here are some pretty renders of the proposed arena [Contra Costa Times]:
