kujay

Damn 95% of your fans want to face the Hawks? :lol: Yeah the Coyotes are ripe for a first round upset.

Maybe Sori will do his little hop in the first inning and pull a hammy Ahhh, we can dream.

I've been resisting being scared of a first-round matchup with Detroit, but there is no doubt they are the one team that is clearly better right now than the seed they are going to get. Either way, I'm just pumped that playoff hockey is back next week.

SJ leading Calgary 2-0 in 2nd. Could use an SJ loss.

Wow what a pass by Burish. Things are lookin' up.

Plenty more 4th line magic tonight. Good to see. Mr. Invisible tonight = Kris Versteeg

I can't believe Z didn't throw that ball into LF going for the double play.

Time to go see if that dude is still on waivers in my league.

Haven't seen anything in the media about this possibility -- just seems so obvious.

Amazing.

I get Byrd playing Chipper deep, but he didn't even seem close there.

That chant never gets old at being [expletive].

Sorry looked awfully slow on that one. Game is blacked out for some reason on ESPN for me, but getting it on an "alternate" ESPN channel on Directv. But it's not in HD. But okay, Braves feed is in HD on the EI package. Just wonder why I'm blacked out here. EDIT: But, now that they are back from commercial, I hear the sweet voice of Chippy. [expletive].

BYRD!

I think the Hawks would be on the hook for 2/3s of the contract. Also believe that will be the salary cap hit, but am not sure. edit: Salary Cap is reportedly going up about 1 million next season. You take his remaining salary, pay him 2/3rds of it, but spread the cap hit on that 2/3rds over twice the number of years as he had remaining. So, it's a pretty good idea then if they can't trade him and Rocky is willing to shell out the cash.

He can go back to it after the next two games.

With the way things have played out for Huet in the last few weeks, I don't see a scenario in which he comes back to this team next year. Does anyone know the particulars of the salary cap rules with respect to what would happen if they bought him out?

No doubt. The silver lining in this for Campbell is that I think we'll all appreciate him a little more. Even if his contract is still a nightmare and will be for years. It seems to me that whoever is developing defensemen in the organization is doing a hell of a job. Matt Walker was no rookie, but he flourished last year. And Hjalmarsson is getting pretty universally recognized as a rising star. And that's not to mention Keith and Seabrook. And now Hendry is playing very well. He got walked pretty badly once yesterday, but overall he was very solid and is starting to make some great plays getting the puck out of the zone. I have no doubt he has solidified himself as one of the top six defensemen going into next year. With that, 5/6 spots are nailed down and they only have one to fill. Not too bad.

I like to think that every good game Niemi plays increases his confidence such that it will reduce the incidence of awful games. Of course I have no way of knowing if that is actually true, but it makes me feel better about this team. But it's not all goaltending.

Same here. I basically took last year off from being emotionally invested in the Cubs, but like the battered spouse, I know the Cubs only hurt me because they love me and I'm back and ready for more. Let's do this.

The Avs ended up winning in OT so SJ gets 1 point. How do the Hawks control their destiny? We are 2 points behind them but with a game in hand. I assume that we hold the tiebreaker, but I'm not sure what the tiebreaker is. Is it H2H? Tiebreaker is wins, which the Hawks can no longer lose at this point. Yep, if they win out and SJ wins out they will be tied but the Hawks will have one more win. I expect both will lose one of their remaining games and the Hawks will take it.

And St. Louis County has rednecks falling out of their jorts. The redneck @ Black Thorn Pub who told me about burying his mom in her nylon Cards jacket was a city resident. It's not like there's a designated neighborhood where all the rednecks reside, but have no doubt, they're highly adaptable to/can thrive in urban settings. St. Louis isn't an exception. As a south city resident, I know this to be 100% true. Basically Carondelet = Festus.

No kidding. I wouldn't call today's win "emphatic" or otherwise dominant, but they did what they had to do. Great goaltending, shutdown defense when they needed it and they cut off the second chances. The breakouts were just weak, and I put that on being shorthanded on defense. Sure would be nice to sneak up and grab that #1 seed.

I haven't spent a ton of time in Chicago, but from my memory those types of shirts aren't so widespread that you can find them in malls. That's the case in St. Louis. Right, and not only are the vendors selling them, the "fan base" is wearing them.

This sounds dubious. Any Cardinals fans I've ran into in St. Louis were not rednecks. Alcoholics, maybe, but you have to go west until you find redneck Cardinals fans. And I highly doubt those people have the money to just jet off to Wrigley. They have to hold up signs calling people "morans." have you never been to south county? Bingo. Perhaps the rednecks don't travel north much, but they are in full display here. I don't even like to go to games here anymore because it's just full of dumbasses. TBBFIA my ass. In my experience, Cards fans care much more about the rivalry than we do. It goes hand-in-hand with the general inferiority complex they have about Chicago, similar to what KC has with St. Louis. I was driving through Soulard the other day (a neighborhood in St. Louis) and saw a "Cubs suck" sticker on a stop sign. Really? Come on. You can go to any Cards game here, regardless of the opponent, and you'll see vendors selling shirts with billy goats on them and various other "Cubs suck" shirts. I'm not saying it's not a rivalry for us too, cuz it is. But I guess because there is less going on here or because it's something that makes them feel good about themselves, they dwell on the Cubs an awful lot. But to be that wrapped up with a team that hasn't won [expletive] in forever, it's stupid.