biittner77

Counterpoint: Anything that keeps Canadia from winning a gold medal in hockey is good and wonderful and their tears are like a magic elixir that cleanses men's souls.

There's a t shirt that runners wear that says "My sport is your sport's punishment". Cross country skiers must look at that and laugh since making someone cross country ski would be cruel and unusual punishment.

Yet here we are and people still inexplicably care whether Tebow sucking at baseball will keep someone else from sucking at baseball.

Hot take: Anyone in the Mets system that can't outshine Tim Tebow was probably not terribly interesting as a prospect anyway.

That's pretty much been the focus during the time they've been together. I'm not really concerned about winning games so much as developing as players. I'm woefully unqualified to teach skills but I have 2 people helping that hopefully can cover that part. I think there are some general principles that will always be true such as "forward" isn't always the direction that the ball needs to move, pass the ball then move to a danger spot for the return pass, trusting your teammate to play his/ her position but putting yourself in a good place to support in case they lose possession. I expect all of these concepts will help them down the road whether it's 5 v 5, 7 v 7 or whatever. Having seen them play for the last 4 months, I think I have a pretty good handle on their strengths and weaknesses.

Did the league not provide you with any of that? I've only assistant coached...so I'm little more than ball retrieval and hollering at kids to pay attention on gameday, but the head coach definitely got some resources from the league. I haven't asked yet. The team I'll have has been together from outdoor through indoor and have gotten to the point where they understand where they should be position wise but aren't always disciplined enough to hold their shape. They're 10, they're starting to get it but the next step as I see it is to trust that their teammates are going to be where they should be so they can make great passes that lead to goals. The league itself has built in instruction time outside of what happens at team practices that will hopefully focus on skills.

That's not one of the cheap ones. Kane, Toews, Keith, or Crawford all showing NHL.com shop discounts, particularly on home uniforms. Toews is obviously the safe pick. Current skill level aside, he's accomplished enough that I expect to see his jersey at the UC for the rest of my life. As a Kane jersey guy...don't do it. For me it'd definitely be Crawford...given the way this season has gone, if he's healthy going into next year it's probably fair to say he's our best player. And that's before his two Cups. Also, it's hard to see Crawford or Toews playing for someone else or ever being remembered for anything but being Hawks. That's why I bought a Hossa jersey right before they traded Saad. Turns out I would have been fine either way but that Hossa jersey will always be great.

So I got talked into coaching my son's U10 spring team. The coach from last fall and indoor was awesome but has travel baseball and can only help in the spring. They're going to play 5 v 5 on a short field so as to emphasize skill development. Anybody have any sources for good skills drills before I start wading through Youtube?

Hawks dump Kempney for a 3rd round pick. Not too bad since he probably was going to walk in the off season anyway. Please trade Wingels and Bouma next. Unless there's some sort of "integrity of the game" issue where they want to pretend to not tank, they ought to get rid of these guys and play somebody that has a future.

Didn't Jose Canseco say that steroids gave him "eagle vision" or something like that? I guess that would help maybe in curling.

No need to rush him back but if he got to the point where he felt ready and wanted to play, I wouldn't mind them letting him play in a meaningless game so that he can go into the off season without having doubts about the future.

Tonight they play the lowly Vegas Golden Knights an expansion team with a record of 36-15-4 The way this season has gone, The Hawks might win or lose 5-0 and neither would surprise me all that much. Their last win came against a very good Predators team.

The draft lottery is still fixed, isn't it? It seems like the league will try to have the Bulls win since the Bulls being good helps ratings a lot.

But the biggest hole they have is at center. I agree that Frogger (Kruger) has taken a beating and those are hard miles. But he took so much defensive pressure off of Toews' line that it has really affected scoring.

Skeleton Luge is a guy going face first at 60 MPH and if he messes up he could die or be seriously hurt.

I see what you're saying and don't necessarily disagree. Kruger basically replaces Wingels who has been better than expected but isn't much of a loss in the long run. They also might be able to get a 5th round pick for Wingels as he's a decent depth piece for a contending team.

Haha, guessing you read the same Faxes From Uncle Dale that I did. Was going to post it, but it's behind a soft paywall. The cap staying relatively flat the last few years hurt a lot. They just weren't anticipating the Kane/Toews deals to be taking up such a large percentage. Seabrook deal, I get it. He was a hero in 2015, and I don't know what the market was back then, but I'm guessing it was around what we signed him for. Bickell deal was obviously terrible, but as good as he is, Teuvo isn't bringing this team to the top of the standings. Same thing with giving up Johns with Sharp. Danault would be a nice piece, but you can't fault them too much for making a deadline trade in 2016 after how well it worked in 2015 (though i guess you could blame the disconnect between Q and Stan on who they were acquiring, as neither player contributed much of anything). At the end of the day what you're seeing is a dynasty ten years in. The current team is nowhere near a top team, but with Crawford I'd say they would have comfortably been a playoff team (Crawford: 16-9-2, Others: 8-12-6). Over an 82 game grind, it's tough to rely on Keith/Seabrook/Toews. In the playoffs, I wouldn't have counted them out. At this point, it's not worth rushing Crawford back for a, best case scenario, sprint to a 7 or 8 seed. Hope the kids keep developing...DeBrincat/Toews/Duclair has looked good, Saad/Schmaltz/Kane can be really good, figure out a Kruger-esque line around Kampf, and then find more scoring to fill out that last line. Hopefully whatever Crawford is dealing with, it clears up by the start of next season, and give it one more good run. Got to Love the timing of taking FFUD behind a paywall just as interest in the team is about to hit a 10 year low. I saw today that Kruger was put on waivers by Carolina. I wonder if they'll put in a claim.

Seabrook's deal was bad when he signed it but, at the time they didn't really have much of a choice. I still think they could trade him for some salary relief but it will still suck paying a once great player a lot of money to go away. Perhaps it was unrealistic to expect the kids to develop quickly enough to not miss a beat but there's plenty of reasons for optimism past this season. DeBrincat is good. Forsling made progress. Oesterle was a nice surprise. Kampf will be a pretty serviceable guy and Schmaltz has star potential.

I didn't really want the Eagles to win but seeing how much Redskins and Cowboys fans are pissing and moaning about them winning makes it a lot more palatable.

I thought I read where they sort of design the categories around the strengths of the contestants in order to make them look smarter. IIRC, there was talk of "dumbing down" Jeopardy a few years ago and that was part of it.

What do they do with Kemp? Cut him or try and get someone to take him and pay a few million each year of the deal It seems like they do this all the time in the NBA but it's harder to pull off in baseball since the rosters are so much bigger.

On PTI the other day they suggested that he'll need to play a lot more than he used to in order to sharpen his game enough to win. Might be the worst advice anyone can give him considering his injuries.

Make it a league for players that don't want to go to college and pretend to be a student but instead want to get paid something like $50k a season to play football in the hopes of later playing in the NFL. Something like this is interesting as a thing that could work, especially because the NCAA sucks but I think the minor league football concept only ultimately works because of the tradition engraned into college football What would happen is that a lot of the mid majors would drop football while all the players that wanted the college experience will play Division III and actually be scholar athletes or play for the BCS conferences which will still have teams. It would be a great excuse for all the schools that have been looking for an excuse to drop perennially terrible football programs. Whether anyone would care to watch this league is hard to say. People seem to like going to minor league baseball games since they're more affordable ticket wise and develop some level of local spirit.

I'm very confused by this post. Are you talking about movies or TV shows? Either way, there's been tons of great comedies from both. And what does Farley have to do with either? The guy was hilarious, but TV-wise he was only on SNL, and movie-wise he starred in Tommy Boy and then a bunch of crap. I mean, unless there's more Black Sheep fans than I would have thought existed.... Maybe some people think he pulls Billy Madison together? Don't forget Airheads. He pretty much destroyed Brendan Frazier's career by stealing that movie from him.

Didn't the Cubs bring back Duenseng?