Segacs's World I Know

Archive for February, 2010

Bob Gainey has announced his resignation as Habs’ GM:

“I’ve done my best and now it’s time for me to pass the torch,” Gainey said on Monday. “I believe that the general manager position requires a long-term vision and a long-term commitment. At this point, I’m not prepared to make a commitment of four or five or six more years in this position.

Assistant GM Pierre Gauthier has been promoted as the new GM.

Gainey took over the role in 2003 to great fanfare greater expectations. At first, he battled the naysayers and started the long process of rebuilding the team, achieving first place in the East two seasons ago.

But many of his decisions have been very questionable of late, and the trust was gone, namely, ill-timed overconfidence in Carey Price, the failure to secure big-name free agents despite public efforts, firing of Guy Carbonneau and hiring Jacques Martin in his place, and of course the great shake-up during last off-season.

I think a lot of people were fed up with Gainey. He won’t go down in history as the Habs’ worst GM (I’d say that role belongs permanently to Rejean Houle). He had an overall winning record, and he did do a lot of good things for the team, which was in shambles when he took the reins. But his legacy is mixed, at best. And of course, nobody ever remembers what you do best; they only remember what you do last.

Bye bye, Bob. Best of luck to you.

Habs are 3-0 since Cammalleri went down. And not against any slouch teams, either. Vancouver, the freefalling Boston, and Pittsburgh are our latest victims. And what’s more, we’ve looked really great in all three games.

Can we keep it up? Let’s hope so. Go Habs!

The study that had initially claimed a link between childhood vaccination and autism and had long since been essentially debunked as having no supporting evidence, has been formally retracted by the Lancet:

The Lancet published the controversial paper by Andrew Wakefield and colleagues in 1998. British parents abandoned the vaccine in droves, leading to a resurgence of measles. Subsequent studies found no proof the vaccine is connected to autism.

Ten of the study’s 13 authors renounced the study’s conclusions, and The Lancet has previously said it should never have published the research. “We fully retract this paper from the published record,” its editors said in a statement on Tuesday.

Predictably, the Jenny McCarthy conspiracy theorists are dismissing this as a… you guessed it… conspiracy theory.

But, crackpots aside, hopefully this will finally parents who just want what’s best for their kids that getting them vaccinated against disease is the responsible thing to do.