Bits: DiPietro, Martinek, Gillies, Kovalchuk

Above: Management discuss the Cupcake Initiative.

Some quick headlines and reaction to stir your inner urges for training camp to just get here and get here right quick:

• If you are on Twitter (as with this blog, you can sign up and just lurk, even without participating), you can send questions for Radek Martinek by 11 a.m. EDT today...
• ...The previous one with Rick DiPietro was worthwhile if still cagey. Said his leg "feels great," still working on strength, goal is to have a "normal Training Camp." As always, we'll see. But the Isles chose wisely by featuring two players coming off major injuries -- more relevant questions that way.
  
• Sticking with the Isles official site: Clark Gillies explaining why he ever picked #9. Which only served to remind me that Kirk Muller actually wore that number during his glass of whine with the Isles. {spits}
  
• Linked at Puck Daddy yesterday: On Frozen Blog shares a TV special on how those crap composite sticks that break all the time are made. All that technology for a few more mph and a crappier game. /#curmudgeon-rant
• Kovalchuk Links: Here is the arbitrator's 20-page decision along with a great synopsis of how and why. However, I should repeat that Quisp at Jewels from the Crown has been knocking this out of the park for weeks. Seriously, he essentially wrote what would be in the ruling weeks ago. A run-down of how his arguments mesh here and here. (Not to be a jerk, but anyone sincerely shocked by the decision either didn't read the CBA, or didn't read it objectively.)
• Off topic but funny and satisfying: A bike was stolen in Brooklyn last week. It was retrieved with police help by noon the next day. ("Leads? Yeah, sure. I'll just check with the boys down at the crime lab, they've got four more detectives working on the case. They got us working in shifts!")