09.02.2011
Bruins C Savard done for season with concussion
BOSTON – Marc Savard will miss the rest of the season after he was placed on long-term injured reserve on Monday with his second concussion in less than a year.
"I have a lot of feelings going on. I think I'm frustrated, mostly," he said. "It's tough to understand why this happened. It will take time and patience, those two things I don't feel like I have much of."
Savard was injured in the Bruins' Jan. 22 game against Colorado, when he was checked into the end boards' glass by former teammate Matt Hunwick. Savard also sustained a concussion against Pittsburgh on March 7, 2010. He did not return until the second round of the playoffs and missed the first 23 games of this season.
Bruins doctor Peter Asnis said it's not clear what effect the previous concussion had on this injury.
"As far as this hit goes, he sustained a concussion, and he likely would have whether or not he sustained a concussion last year," Asnis said. "Certainly we worry about players who have multiple concussions, going forward."
Savard has two goals and eight assists in 25 games, and 207 goals and 499 assists in a 13-year career that also includes stops with the New York Rangers, Calgary Flames and Atlanta Thrashers. He signed with Boston as a free agent in 2006 and was re-signed in 2009 to a seven-year extension that takes him through the 2016-17 season.
Savard said it was too early to decide whether he will be able to return.
"I'm not going to make any decision about my future until I get some more medical stuff done. I've just got to be patient going forward," he said. "My agent talked to me a lot, and he gave me time to think about a lot of things. It's going to be tough, especially watching them play."
Savard's first concussion was the result of a check by Penguins forward Matt Cooke that led the NHL to outlaw blindside hits to the head. Savard missed the last 18 games of the regular season but returned for Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals against Philadelphia.
Bruins general manager Peter Chiarelli said the blindside hit rule has helped, but he also thought the league should look at other ways to keep players safe, like making the pads softer.
"I think we have to be careful with the integrity of the game," he said. "But I do think we have to look at that."
The Bruins are more familiar than most with the effects of concussions. In 2008, forward Patrice Bergeron went out with a concussion and did not return for almost a full year.
Savard described many of the same symptoms as Bergeron: The way he is sleepy all the time, and how things seem to move slower.
"Sometimes you just have situations where you just don't feel right," Savard said. "It's just an uncomfortable state. People see you on the outside and you just look normal. You don't have a cast on or anything like that. But it's tough on the inside."
Savard scored the winner in overtime on his first night back in the playoffs last year. But he did little in the rest of the series and was a contributor to a crucial too-many-men-on-the-ice penalty late in Game 7 that led the series-winning goal as Philadelphia overcame a 3-0 deficit to eliminate the Bruins.
Over the offseason, his post-concussion syndrome returned — including a bout with depression — and he missed 23 more games at the start of 2010-11. When he did play, he did not appear to be the same playmaker who led Boston in scoring in his only three healthy seasons with the team.
Also Monday, the Bruins recalled forward Jordan Caron from Providence of the AHL. Caron has appeared in 20 NHL games this season for Boston, scoring three goals with four assists.
Chiarelli said he will be have to be more active as the trade deadline approaches.
"We're not going to be able to replace Marc," Chiarelli said. "So we're going to have to be a little more diligent."
The Bruins play Montreal in Boston on Wednesday.
23:07 Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Envoyer cette note | Tags : viroflay, velizy, confidentielles, rocquencourt, photographie
Donald Rumsfeld: Its possible more troops would have been useful in Iraq
More than four years after leaving office, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is arguing the war in Iraq was worthwhile, and says he’s not sorry sorry about the decisions he made there and in Afghanistan,ABC News.
“I think the world’s a better place with Saddam Hussein gone and with the Taliban gone and the al-Qaida out of Afghanistan,” Rumsfeld said.
Rumsfeld added that it was “interesting” that former President George W. Bush wrote that cutting troop levels in Iraq was “the most important failure in the execution of the war.”
“I don’t have enough confidence to say that that’s right. I think that it’s possible,” Rumsfeld said in his first television interview since 2006. “We had [an] enormous number of troops ready to go in. They had — we had off-ramps, if they weren’t needed.”
“It’s hard to know,” Rumsfeld said. “You know, the path you didn’t take is always smoother.”
Rumsfeld wasn’t in total accordance with the orchestration of the Iraq war decision-making process. Rumsfeld told ABC’s Diane Sawyer that “it’s possible” the war’s biggest mistake surrounds the decision on how many troops to send to Iraq.
Sawyer cited a line in Rumsfeld’s, “Known and Unknown,” in which he says, “more troops could have been useful [in Iraq].”
“It’s possible,” Rumsfeld responded. “In a war, many things cost lives.”
Rumsfeld had some harsh words for former Secretary of State Colin Powell under Bush Jr., who initially opposed the Iraq invasion.
“He did not in my view do a good job of managing the people under him,” Rumsfeld said. “And there was a lot of leaking out of the State Department, and the president knew it … and it was unhelpful. Most of it ended up making the State Department look good. We didn’t do that in the Pentagon, I insisted we not do it.”
When Sawyer asked if Rumsfeld learned any lessons about himself from the war, he answered that the war was not about him.
“I don’t really think that way, I wasn’t worried about me, I was worried about the country,” Rumsfeld said.
Sawyer referenced another defense secretary, Robert Mcmara, who famously said of the Vietnam war years after it ended that “we were wrong, terribly wrong.”
“That’s not the case with Iraq,” Rumsfeld said.
Rumsfeld’s interview is tied to this week’s release of his memoir.
[WATCH: Donald Rumsfeld talk about the Iraq war]
Read more stories from The Daily Caller
22:57 Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Envoyer cette note | Tags : hosting, communisme, tv, ashis, gay
Cowell courts groups, maybe Abdul for `X Factor'
LOS ANGELES – Simon Cowell wants his new Fox talent series "The X Factor" to include controversy, vocal groups and, maybe, Paula Abdul on the judging panel.
"We've spoken to her, she knows I'm a big fan," Cowell said of his former fellow "American Idol" judge. "I've always said at some point we are going to be working together."
But, he added, "I have to take everyone's opinions into account," including the show's other producers and the network.
A decision about who will join Cowell on the four-member panel has yet to be made and won't be announced for another month or so, he said during an interview and teleconference about "The X Factor."
The show debuts this fall. Cowell exited Fox's "American Idol" last season in part to focus on the new series, which has been a successful format in several countries since its debut in Britain in 2004. Abdul quit "Idol" in 2009 over a salary dispute.
The winner of the U.S. version of "X Factor" will nab a $5 million recording contract with Syco, a joint venture between Cowell and Sony Music. Cowell said that's not a "dressed up" sum: It represents $1 million a year payment for five years, separate from the costs of recording and promotion.
Cowell, known for his sharp-tongued critiques, unsurprisingly said he favors shows on which "anything can happen."
"I rip up the rule that everybody pretends to be friends and they're all going to be pen pals for the rest of their lives, which is complete and utter nonsense," he said. "I like people who are ambitious, and with that comes controversy."
One unwelcome flap last season on the U.K. version of "X Factor" involved the revelation that the pitch-correcting software Auto-Tune was used on at least one contestant's taped audition. Cowell said Monday it was the work of sound technicians and done without his knowledge.
"Once we found out what was going on it was stopped immediately. ... The most important part was once the show went live and (viewers) could see that everyone was singing live and it was a proper, fair competition."
The "X Factor" contest is open to those 12 and older, including groups. Cowell is eager to find breakout talent such as the Black Eyed Peas or Destiny's Child.
"I'm genuinely staggered this hasn't happened. All the signs are out there, from `Glee' to `High School Musical,'" he said, advising "any group of guys, girls, family group members, get it together now. There's a massive, massive opportunity here because you don't have a lot of competition."
The hefty top prize puts pressure on Cowell as well as the winner.
"If they don't sell a single record they still get to keep the money," he said. "It is pressure, because if the wrong person wins, I'm in trouble. ... We've got to find somebody fantastic to get the money back" through record sales.
To do that, he needs to find a talented performer who has a sound work ethic, which he said is something he wants to "instill" in the competition.
"The big, big stars are the people prepared to work at it. You look at somebody like Beyonce: She is the best example of somebody who works it every hour of the day," he said.
Cowell, as "American Idol" viewers know, doesn't lack for confidence: "I believe I can find a star," he said.
He has seen only a few minutes of this season's "American Idol" and its reconstituted panel with Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez and Randy Jackson, he said. But he's been reassured by its ratings stability that viewers still have an appetite for talent shows — a good sign for "X Factor."
Fox said Monday that auditions for contestants begin March 27 in Los Angeles, with other sessions following in the Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Seattle and New York areas.
___
Fox is a unit of News Corp.
___
Online:
22:07 Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Envoyer cette note | Tags : audio, classe, art, follainville, design