A one-man jinx

It may start getting tough to cover the Buffalo Bandits in the future. No one is going to want to talk to me.

No, my hard-hitting prose hasn't made any enemies in the locker room, at least that I know about. I'm on a great run this year of single-handedly slowing down careers.

It started in the opening week. Frank Resetarits had been acquired from Washington in the offseason. He's from Hamburg, coming home to play before friends and family for the first time. What a great story for the season opener!

I wrote up his story, which appeared the day of the first game in Rochester. Then, I covered the opener in Rochester. When the lineup for that game was announced, Frank was nowhere to be found. He was scratched. I sighed, heavily.

This started a disturbing trend, at least for me. The next week, I talked with Kevin Dostie. He was scratched. I spoke with Chris Driscoll. He wasn't just out of the lineup soon after that, but he got traded to Rochester. A.J. Shannon? Released. Chris White? Injured. Last week, I did a story on Kyle Clancy, the Bandits rookie forward who had worked his way on to the roster. Whoops, dropped for the Philadelphia game.

I think that the problem is that the Bandits have been losing, and coach Darris Kilgour has been quick to shuffle the lineup in an effort to find a winning combination. He can't be reading the paper and then making decisions from there. Can he?

In case he is, I've come up with a new approach. This week, I'm writing about Kilgour himself.

If he gets fired next week, at least I know who will get the blame. The Sports Illustrated cover jinx has nothing on me.