Hi All,

Any hockey fans out there? Ones with a favorite team? I ask this because they will better understand the difference between winning and losing. On the win side, two points is two points regardless of how the team came about to achieve those two points. Most fans are happy with the two points, even if the win was ugly.

If a team loses, the eyes of the critics take a much closer look. There are a variety of reasons a team loses. Sometimes a lack of motivation or effort, a lack of skill compared to the opponents, bad bounces, a bad game plan, or sometimes just the home ice advantage and not having the last line change as the visiting team.

When a team loses, they do not get points, but can learn from a loss and make an effort to improve. If the game is close and the team played well, then the fans may be disappointed in the outcome, but may still leave satisfied that it was an entertaining game and a bounce here and there could have led to a different results. The next game will be better is the general sentiment.

But there is another way to lose and it is often times referred to as a blowout.

You know the ones where the game ends 10-3 or 9-1. Where nothing can go right. Where the team falls behind and nothing they try will even get them close to even tying the game. I am not an Oilers fan though I live in Edmonton but I remember hearing about a game earlier this year when a team had scored nine goals against them. At that point in the game, the local fans in the Edmonton arena starting chanting TEN!, TEN!, TEN! In other words, they were so disgusted with their team that they collectively wanted to let the team know that this was so embarrassing, why not go all the way and make it double digits.

Reading the news release today totally shocked me. It felt that I had been watching a close game with the score 3-2 for Cliffs with a period remaining. Then I fell asleep on the couch to find out the game had ended and the final score was 10-2 for the other team. In other words, a total blowout!!

Receiving only 4.5% of shares in a tender bid is like a 9-2 game. It is a blowout. An embarrassment. And it has many fans chanting TEN, TEN, TEN. Or should I say, $1.50, $1.50, $1.50.

It may be we will never know what the game plan of the coach was going in. I do know that while Noront may not play at the same level of Cliffs, similar to the Leafs not playing at the same level as let's say the Sharks, Noront had enough good players on their team in the form of institutions to have made the score a little closer. As they say in hockey, it looks like none of them came out to play.

At this point I really cannot say why the score was so lopsided. Did our players have bets against themselves and did they throw the game? It almost looks like it. We will likely never know. I agree with the posters who say that this is not a normal company. It is a company run by hedge funds who will look after themselves first, long before the retail investor. My fear is that Wes is just their puppet. If it were not for the vast resources in the ground, I would have walked away from this gong show for good after the proxy battle.

I believe Wes as the coach believed he had a good game plan and gave this his best try. I still do not know why he took a shot at FWR without the full support of the institutions who stood to gain long term with a merger, as they held both Noront and FreeWest shares. He did make some bad line changes in the wording of NRs, the inaccuracy of dates in the retraction that was issued after Noront was halted last Thursday, and most likely underestimating the motivation of his own players, the institutions.

In order to win this game we needed institional support. We need our top line to score. We needed a share price that exceeded the market value of the offer we had presented in comparison to the value that Cliffs was offering. We did not get that.

The worst part of this game was that our star player was injured. In the case of Noront, this was the release of a lot of good news releases that was overshadowed by doubt caused by the bidding war. Like a player scoring a hat trick in a losing cause with the score 12-4, noboby really pays attention like they would if that player's team had won 4 to 3.

That is how I feel about the NRs that were released. They were a hattrick in a game that was over before it started.

At this point the game film needs to be reviewed and players held accountable and possibly traded. The two misteps with the NRs being the the inclusion of the mine life info (the same mistake they did in an NR years earlier with the first Eagle resource estimate BTW) and of course the retraction concerning the news release from December 9, 2008 ( the date that was posted in the official NR in SEDAR) is the equivalent of handing over the puck twice to allow the other team a breakaway chance. This sloppiness needs to be corrected, or a better player brought in from the farm.

Should the coach be fired? Not at this point. This blowout was a total team effort or lack of and though the fans are extremely upset, this is not a time for hasty decisions, even though it is unlikley the owners would make a change anyway as the coach is likely a pawn to ensure that the bets they are placing everyday on the games make them money.

At the end of the day, the only thing that gives me hope in all this is that despite the lack of experience, the bad game plan, and the poor execution, that which is in the ground cannot be silenced. Though we may have a losing record at the moment, it does not mean that the team will not make a lot of money this year. Just look at the Maple Leafs. They make the most money in hockey year after year, sell out every game, and have a huge and loyal fan base. Noront is much like the leafs.

FWR is more like the Phoenix Coyotes. Talented yet unproven, a better record at the moment, and a crazy billionaire that wanted to pay twice as much for them than what the league even believed they were worth, just so they can be relocated to a new market. The fact that they are in the league was all that was required to make for a high offer. Same analogy goes for any company with property in the ROF.

Noront still has a good chance to make the playoffs this year. And we keep drafting and signing new talent (drill results) at every turn.

Let's learn from this blowout and focus less on what the other teams are doing and more on what it is going to take to win games (get the shareprice up) and win the Stanley Cup (have a major buy us out for a dream amount).

Game on,

M1.