biittner77

There's a Stetson University? Shouldn't they play in the Sombrero Conference?

It's funny, a friend of mine who's a Rangers fan and I were talking about the game Sunday. He was really impressed with the Hawks. Same story with the Pens fans around here too. Perhaps were suffering from a proximity bias. I don't see any meaningful help coming from Rock Vegas this season. Svedberg is too slow. Polkka is interesting but too young/ inexperienced. Seabrook usually plays better in the playoffs. The 3rd pair is better than it was last year with the three headed beast that is Roszy, TVR and Ehrhoff. The X factor will be Gustafson. At times, he's looked really good. Maybe he hit a little bit of a rookie wall there and his play fell off a bit. TCI did an article about the contenders in the west and everyone has their issues, especially on the blue line.

Austin Beirdos

Ehrhoff only has to be better than TVR to be valuable. That's not a very high bar. He also means one less year of Scuderi so that makes the trade worthwhile. Considering people like Roman Polak were commanding 2nd round picks, I could see where there just wasn't a clear upgrade out there. Barring injury, the 3rd pairing will be ok which will take some of the pressure off the 2nd pair. I think we've been kind of spoiled in recent years by having a lot of defensive depth.

Ladd is a nice addition. They still need another top 4 defenseman though. Gustafson looked better last night than he had recently. I wonder if the Hawks would include TVR in a detail for a defenseman that was more than a rental. TVR is young and on a rebuilding team could still help and they could sell their fan base on his potential to improve. Not sure who that might be but if the Canucks want a young D man I'd rather they gave them TVR, a forward prospect and a pick than a package including Polkka.

Haystacks. Hash browns, hamburger patty, sausage gravy (egg optional). I was explaining this to people that don't know but were genuinely intrigued. Do they exist outside of Champaign?

I'm still hoping that Stanbo can pull off another surprise, undervalued defenseman from somewhere ala Johnny Oduya a few years ago. Nobody saw that trade coming but it really paid off.

In his defense, OPS does require adding 2 numbers together and math is hard.

wow, he's still only 33 wow, he pitched in 2013!

Get off your phone, Darling. Yes dear

Even more amazing, with all the bonuses he'll make about $4 mil this season. He's worth twice that.

The league is 7-9. My son just turned 7. That kid was 9 when the league started. My son looks like he's 3 compared to the other kids. It's insane but it happens pretty much all the time in small town rec leagues. It sucks too since it almost always works out that there's 4 teams: One is full of ringers and wins every game by 10 goals; one team is full of the youngest and or worst kids and loses every game by 10 goals; the other 2 teams are either about evenly matched or one always beats the other. No matter which team your kid is on it basically sucks.

A couple weeks ago, I was filling in as coach for my 7 yo son's soccer coach. The other team looked like they were all 7 year olds. This kid on our team, Zach, who's probably already turned 10 scored about 6 goals to make the score 8-0. I took him out and said something to the effect that we didn't need to score any more goals. He said something to the effect that "I can't slow my roll." and when I put him back out there he scored 4 more goals. I felt bad about running up the score on them.

I agree with all of this but I get the sense that the NHL will never go back to ending games in a tie. Your second suggestion seems fair and logical. Therefore the NHL will never do that either. I like the tie instead of the shootout. I'd like to see 3 points for a regulation win, 2 for an OT win, 1 for an OT loss, and one each for a tie if nobody scores in the 3 on 3 OT. That way teams that play for the tie are sacrificing points, not gaining them. I don't like the idea of loser points. I've heard people theorize that the reason they don't go with the 3-2-1 system is that they don't want to inflate the number of points a team can win in a season. It would be interesting to see how that would affect the standings.

I agree with all of this but I get the sense that the NHL will never go back to ending games in a tie. Your second suggestion seems fair and logical. Therefore the NHL will never do that either.

shouldn't that be 240 for 30? This seems pretty unnecessary. Unless they actually interview OJ. Not sure if it was A & E but somebody already made a pretty good documentary about OJ as well as the civil trial. I think it's called OJ: The lost tapes or something like that.

Compromise: call him coom Baez Someone's hitting Lord, Coom Baez Oh Lord, Coom Baez I'll see myself out

One of my favorite things about DirectTV is going through the guide and reading the titles and descriptions of the pay per view porn.

that is not the least bit true Ok, so the West Coast offense was invented earlier. It became popular though because Walsh had success with it as coach of the 49ers. The point is that the post 85 Bears were up against teams that had multiple HOF players. Buddy Ryan leaving wasn't the problem.

Big time. Or "Pony Excess"-like, that really charts the downfall. Basically if the point of it was to argue they were the best team ever, it failed. If the point was to figure out why they didn't go on to further greatness, it failed. It was just this muddled bunch of kinda fan-service basically just designed for the participating players and Ditka to talk themselves up. And it was weird how they didn't touch on the problems the Fridge has gone through at all. Watching it, I felt like Ditka wasn't painted in a positive light at all. Like I felt like minimizing him and making him look like a dummy was a major, if not completely overt, theme...between all the players directly criticizing him, McMahon talking about how he always called the wrong play, Wilson (IIRC) basically calling him an idiot for playing Flutie, the comments from Mongo (I think) about how they told the other guys to lift Ditka up at the end of the SB just so that he wouldn't whine about them raising Buddy up. Maybe that was my bias going in, but I came away thinking Ditka looked more along for the ride and less responsible for any success than ever, and I already didn't have a high opinion of him. I didn't see the 30 for 30 so the following is based on what I remember from that era. I think it's an over simplification to say that the Bears didn't win more because Ryan left. The West Coast offense was invented specifically as a means of defeating the 46 defense. Once SF had success others started to copy it the short pass to set up the run attack which the 46 couldn't consistently stop without otherworldly performances from the pass rushers. A certain amount of "blame" for the lack of continued success has to go to the other teams in the NFC that had good players too. The Bears had a 4 year window and they won one super bowl.

Toronto didn't have to pay any of Phaneuf's salary to make him go away.

I've always wanted to wear clothes that required engineering.

I see this game as more of an offensive struggle because both offenses sucked. I guess I'm a little biased since this is the same Denver Defense that nearly lost to the Bears who I wouldn't rate as one of the better offenses in the NFL this year. I also have a hard time accepting the "Wade Phillips is a defensive genius" meme. I would have preferred a blow out because I could have turned it off in the 3rd quarter.

Have defensive metrics really improved that much or is it just a matter of not seeing as much overwhelming offense from somewhat marginal defenders?

Would 7 on 7 with normal football rules be better than getting the ball on the 20?