Put me down for $1 on "I Don't Care"!
I am puzzled that this or any other story pertaining to this is even a news story. I could see if they were betting on hockey like Pete Rose was betting on Baseball, than it may be a news story. But they weren't, and unless they discover they were I could personally care less.
You wanna bet? here's a bet... I bet Gretzky brings home the gold with Team Canada... and I'd feel even more confident if he threw down a couple million of his own on Team Canada bringing home the gold. Janet can place the bet.
posted by Danson @ Thursday, February 09, 2006
2 comments
2 Comments:
The big hoopla is because the name "Gretzky" was involved. If this was any other team which had an assistant coach to anyone else, it would not have been as big a story, but because it was Wayne Gretzky's assistant, the story has bigger legs.
Its like, if someone lost their dog, and Wayne Gretzky was involved, then you can bet that the dog would be found right away.
There have been stories about how Gretzky should no longer go to Italy for the Olympics, to how he should step down from the Coyotes position. A good story has an average shelf life of 3 days, this is day 2. We'll see what else the media can create to make this story go on longer.
This is a huge deal and it’s silly to simply toss it aside and say the bets were only on football. The bets over the course of the investigation, 6 weeks, were being primarily attributed to football but further investigation might lead to an increase on hockey betting because the Super Bowl dwarfs all wagering during this time of the year. People do make bets on sports all the time except most of them do them through legal means and don’t use illegal booking operations with ties to organized crime.
Insiders were running this ring, Tocchet and he has relationships with other coaches, GMs and players, and this means that information (injuries, starting goaltenders, etc) only available to hockey insiders could be used to affect gambling lines both in the legal and illegal methods of gambling. The integrity of hockey is in question and people should be concerned. This not about Wayne or Tocchet having overdue parking tickets, it is much more serious and warrants the attention it is getting. Hockey players are not immune from being morons. Martha Stewart went to jail because she did insider trading to prevent herself from losing $51,000 in loss of stock value. She's a shrewd businesswoman and Gretzky didn't finish high school. It's not a reach to see how Wayne is capable of doign something illegal and stupid.
If Wayne’s involvement was zero he should have told it like that from the start. Instead, Wayne chose to lie to the entire world in his interview on Tuesday about having no prior knowledge of any illegal gambling ring involving Tocchet and his wife. The very next day it was revealed that wire taps show that Wayne was discussing the gambling ring with Tocchet before his pathetic interview on Tuesday.
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