TruffleShuffle

i could also take on the giants, but i have to warn you that their first pick would be anthony morelli

and predictably we completely melt down when we face the devils. incredible assortment of idiotic penalties in the offensive zone; devils go 5-5 on the power play (oh by the way their power play is 3rd from the basement) and are up 5-3 in the game. of course a-hole coach stevens keeps running jim vandermeer and randy jones out there because God forbid you play the smart Finn who knows where he's supposed to be on the ice.... nah instead let's keep throwing out canadians who run around like they have no idea what to do. and next game what's gonna happen? kukkonen will sit up in the press box again, watching vandermeer and jones eff up all night. no way we're winning a thing under this moron. ken hitchcock knew how to coach; john stevens doesn't.

my one and only game at shea stadium.... oh the horror ](*,) ](*,)

He'll play. and win super bowl mvp I hope not, I don't really want anyone sharing Montana's trifecta as Montana's probably my all time favorite NFL player. nope, brady will win his third and joe will fade into obscurity as a cook at that diner

how about "hopefully this year we won't completely forget how to play baseball when we reach the playoffs"

hahaha nobody wants the giants

Trading away Marquis might be the best part of any Roberts deal if it happened. marquis was pretty lucky last year. if we could somehow pawn him off on someone who actually thinks he has value, please for the love of God get rid of him. His ERA was under 5 last season. The Orioles don't have many guys like that. yeah unfortunately for them, marquis' era won't be below 5 this year.

Trading away Marquis might be the best part of any Roberts deal if it happened. marquis was pretty lucky last year. if we could somehow pawn him off on someone who actually thinks he has value, please for the love of God get rid of him.

if you had to sit through years with those two as your top receivers, you'd make up nicknames for them too.

Right now they have the most offensive firepower of any team in the league. They're right at the top of goals/game and that's with missing Gagne and Lupul for long stretches. Add to that Scottie Upshall looks like he's starting to figure things out, I see them taking their division and probably the two spot in the East. How do you feel about the Carter for Sundin rumors? this team doesn't have incredible top-end offensive talent (like lindros/leclair 10 years ago, or ovechkin, iginla or kovalchuk now) but they do have more depth than any flyers team i can remember. they've done a lot better at manufacturing home-grown talent (richards, carter, umberger, downie) and also have made some great trades: -forsberg for upshall, ryan parent (future top 4 defenseman, playing in the AHL this year) and 1st round pick -pitkanen and geoff sanderson for jason smith and lupul - this one i'm still deathly afraid that pitkanen turns into brian leetch, but there's no question that in the short term it makes us a lot better. smith is a good defensive defenseman and a good leader; lupul needed to get out of edmonton and was almost a PPG player before his injury) -calder for kukkonen (unfortunately our coach is an idiot and keeps dressing inferior players like vandermeer, jones and hatcher while making kukkonen the healthy scratch) -zhitnik for coburn (highway robbery, coburn is good and zhitnik hasn't done a thing in ATL) if lupul gets healthy we can start rolling out the following lineup: lupul - briere -gagne hartnell - richards - downie upshall - carter - knuble kapanen - umberger - dowd/cote which is pretty crazy, to have a player like umberger on the 4th line. i have to admit, i thought paul holmgren would be a bad choice as GM. he was not a very good coach and IIRC he had a drinking problem too. but he has made a whole lot of good trades and his most recent draft is already looking strong - james van riemsdyk was the leading scorer at the WJC, and a 6th round pick - a fat kid from st. louis - has gotten himself in shape and is 8th in scoring in the OHL this year, leading his team by more than 20 points. the future is bright. anyway, sundin for carter... i'm torn on this. sundin is a great player, can play either #1 or #2 center, can kill penalties (though doesn't do it much), would be our best faceoff man, good leader too. but i'm not sure that we really need him that much. he's definitely a center, and what do you do with briere and richards? briere is clearly a top-line player, and richards has been the flyers' best player all year. at this stage of his career, carter is a better fit at 3rd line center. plus, carter has been solid this year for us - he's on pace to score 30 goals this year and has played his best hockey over the past month. i'm not sure that sundin is a huge upgrade over carter; you're only getting him for a third of a season and then the playoffs. the only reason that i'd consider it, and the flyers might as well, is that they have a salary cap crunch on the horizon. umberger and carter hit RFA after this season; upshall, lupul and downie hit it after next season. we've also got randy jones hitting RFA after this season and jim vandermeer and jason smith hit UFA. a lot of guys are tied up in long deals, and even though knuble and hatcher come off the books after next year, the flyers are not going to be able to retain all of the young talent that they've built up over the past year. my guess is that either umberger or carter will get signed to an offer sheet this offseason and be allowed to walk. either that or homer will pre-emptively trade one. i think carter is more likely to stay in town, but that's just a guess. still, if you're dealing carter, i'd like to get more back than 1/3 of a season from mats sundin. the guy i'd really like to get from toronto is tomas kaberle, but toronto doesn't have much else to build around, and his $4.25M cap hit through 2010-11 is pretty team-friendly for a puck-moving defenseman of his caliber. if kaberle were coming to philly then i'd be willing to part with carter.

Doesn't help that his team led the NFL in dropped passes (around 47, IIRC). yeah, as i said he needs better receivers. plexiglass is actually fine as a #1, but tumor is getting old at the #2, and beyond that it's been a wasteland of bums (sinorice moss, tim carter, steve smith - who may not end up as a bum, but he's not good right now, david tyree, etc.) but i'm not going to feel too bad for him. donovan mcnabb has a career rating of 85.8, and that's throwing to the likes of todd stinkston and james trash. he's had far less to work with most years than burress, tumor and shockey.

this trade rumor needs to be taken out back and put down

buffalo doing a solid job of living up to their reputation as a bunch of whiny a-holes... http://www.buffalonews.com/sports/sabresnhl/story/256160.html

I don't think so. I think he's finally coming into his own. He's a GOOD QB. The guy got the Ole Miss Rebels into the top 15 for gods sake! That's a Herculean feat in and of itself. Obviously he isn't his brother and never will be, but he's physically more gifted than Peyton is and that's been known for a long, long time. I don't think he's playing that much above his head. He's only 26 years old let's not forget. Look at what Peyton did when he was in his 4th year in the league: 26 TD - 23 INT, 84.1 passer rating. Eli this year: 23 TD - 20 INT, 73.9 passer rating. I'm rooting for him big time not just because he's an Ole Miss guy, but because I want people to get off his ass. Hell, he's only taken his team to the playoffs every year he's been a starter, and has now taken his team to the Super Bowl at 26. he's not particularly good. but he could use better receivers. he doesn't hold up well in a comparison with his brother: peyton's first 4 years: 111 TD/81 INT, 61% completions, averaged 4100 yards/season, QB ratings of 71.2, 90.7, 94.7, 84.1 elisha's first 4 years: 77 TD/64 INT, 55% completions, averaged 3450 yards/season in his three full seasons, QB ratings of 55.4, 75.9, 77.0, 73.9 eli was 25th out of 33 in qb rating among all eligible QBs. Just behind such shining stars as Joey Harrington, Brian Griese, Damon Huard and Kyle Boller. he was 29th in completion percentage. he's not terrible, but he turns it over too much (27 TO in 16 regular season games) and his completion percentage has consistently ranked in the bottom third of the league.

wait eli manning's real first name is elisha?!?!? how did i not know this until now?

i'm getting good at finishing 2nd or 3rd in these contests

yes its almost funny looking Every time they showed Tom last night, my wife would pipe up with "Just looking at that guy make me look cold!! Look at him!" This while numerous other guys were in giant thermal coats and ski masks. Anyone else get the comedy of announcers constantly preaching that this is a quarterback's league and you can't make any noise without a good QB, but the last 2 NFC QB's are Eli Manning and Rex Grossman? I'm just sayin... I wonder how Tiki Barber feels right about now. Wasn't he the guy who said Eli doesn't "have it" and blah blah blah?? Oh man, excellent point. I hope he's choking on his words right now. I really liked him better when he was playing football and not talking. It goes to show us -- just because a player was in the same locker room with a guy doesn't mean he has a clue how his career will turn out. This must be sweet vindication for Eli... because he played three error-free games in a row? case of good timing more than anything. fact is, he still pisses the ball away too much for a guy who's in his fourth year now. he's not as bad as everyone thought he was coming into this year, but he's also not as good as he's being made out to be now.

The Patriots were also under a lot of pressure in week 17 against the Giants, and the last two weeks in the playoffs. they won all those games. they've now been to the super bowl 4 times in the last 7 seasons. i'm pretty sure that "pressure" will have absolutely no effect on how the patriots play in the super bowl. by the way, your recollection of super bowl XL is incorrect. the steelers were favored by about 4 points in that game, with people assuming that by winning road games against the top three seeds in the stronger conference, the steelers were the better team.

wait what happened to playing kosuke in cf every now and then?

i liked tennessee a lot coming into this year; looks like they're as good as i thought they could be. if the tourney started tomorrow, i'd have them winning it all.

Amen. The weight given to various projections around here is a little baffling. i think it's good to look at projections, and unless you have a reason to doubt them, they're probably the best thing we have to go on. but cedeno has already massively underperformed his projections once, and it wasn't a sample size of 50 ABs - he had about 550 PAs in 2006. given his inability to adjust to mlb-caliber pitching that season, i think it's very likely that he won't be as good a hitter as the various projections would suggest.

there was no reason for him to be in the minors in 2006, yet there he was, while we're rolling out bums like rusch, aardsma, novoa, ryu and walrond.

they only beat psu by 15 and were actually trailing by a point about midway through the second half. plus penn state's best player blew out his knee in the last game. i'm not really seeing how it was an impressive win for iu.

another 12 bite the dust...