UMFan83

Byrd is going to come up in a huge spot isn't he? I can't watch. Edit: Sweet, it looks like we might have an always fun White Sox-Cubs matchup

stupid? you know, i could have easily called the stuff you said stupid, but i didn't. HUET IS BEING SENT DOWN AND WONT BE OUR GOALIE NEXT YEAR. seriously, go on capgeek and take 2 minutes to look at the roster and it's completely obvious he's being sent down. this is njot an issue. oh, and Niemi didn't have the 4th best save percentage in the NHL. he wasn't even close. he was tied for 19th, right behind MARTY TURCO http://espn.go.com/nhl/statistics/player/_/stat/goaltending/sort/savePct/year/2010/seasontype/2 edit: and btw, hjalmarsson is not our 4th best d-man. he's third, and would be second on most teams. I meant goals against average. So if you don't care for Niemi, who is the Hawks goalie next year? Any way you cut it, getting rid of Niemi because of your fourth best defenseman is hockey stupid when you don't have a better option. The Hawks had one player in the top 10 in the NHL in points (8th with Kane) last year. He is a star, not a superstar. So is Toews. Very good players, not superstars. But there is a very good chance that I am hockey stupid too. Again, see my post. GAA is very misleading when you consider the fact that Niemi's save percentage was 19th in the league. His GAA was low because the defense allowed the least SOG in the NHL. Points aren't the only defining trait of a good offensive player. Look at Hossa in the playoffs. Was struggling to get points but clearly looked like the best player on the ice, and greatly contributed in goals that he didn't get an assist for. Plus you have Hossa who missed a third of the season and has had 100 and 92 point seasons within the last 4 years. Hammer is much more important than resigning Niemi. There is a FA that no one wants right now named Marty Turco that actually had a higher save percentage than Niemi. A goalie of Niemi's caliber can be replaced. 23 year old defensemen with Hammer's ability to prevent SOG and move the puck up the ice offensively can't be replaced very easily.

By 4th you mean 19th right? You are probably referring to 4th in GAA, which is true. But you know who was also in the top 10 until the very end of the season? Huet, who finished 11th in the league in GAA but 42nd in save percentage. Now why would the Hawks goalies have such good GAA numbers but such mediocre (Niemi) to bad (Huet) save %. Hmm...could it be that they play behind a defense that allowed the last number of SOG in the NHL last year? Yeah I think that's it. The defense made it possible for a mediocre goalie like Niemi to thrive. In order to have a great defense, you need to have 2 solid defensive lines. Which by keeping Hammer, you have. If you start removing players from the top 2 D lines, then you start allowing more SOG, and if you allow more SOG, then statistically based on the numbers I showed above, the goalies will allow more goals than the average goalie. Make sense? I can't believe the person who thinks the Hawks don't have one superstar on offense (you're right they have 3), is laughing at others because of his perceived superior knowledge of hockey.

Was that the first time Ryan Braun has ever dove? He'd better be careful, he might get some errors if he goes all out for balls.

I really can't think of one move that ever turned out well for MJ as an owner/GM. He just isn't very good at working the front office in basketball. Concerning Reddick, why sign him when you have a very similar player in Korver? Get Barnes who is a little more athletic and guards the 2's significantly better? I am tired of the Bulls trotting out their 6'3" 2 guards. From what I've read, the only similarities between Redick and Korver are that they are white and can shoot 3's. First of all Korver is 6'7'' and is primarily a SF. He is more of your 3 point specialist guy. Redick is 6'5'' and is a more traditional SG. He's not overly athletic, and isn't going to be driving to the hole and getting to the FT line or anything, but he'll space the floor for Rose, he is a pretty decent passer, and he can apparently create his own shot around the perimeter. On defense Korver is awful. One of the worst in the game: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4139/4786791356_a9de85bfaf_b.jpg Redick is said to be underrated defensively. Not going to confuse you with Kirk Hinrich, but plays good man to man defense and is still improving. Basically the Magic want to keep Redick because they think he can be their starting SG as soon as next year, pushing Carter to more of a role player. If a 55+ win team is thinking of doing that, he's ok as my SG. Personally, the player thats available that i want the most at SG is actually Raja Bell.

I can't see that happening...especially with the cap that low. If the cap was that low, I'd expect to see a grandfather clause or a scale down period where you have to trim that payroll down in a 3 or 5 year period. Otherwise, half the league is going to be released after next season. But if this did have a chance of happening, I'd really like the Bulls to stop spending, or sign players to 1 year deals, mostly tank this season and then pick up some of these FAs from 25 cents on the dollar. Luckily however this situation turns out, the Bulls are in good position with only 2 high priced players on the books after this season (Boozer and Deng). Rose and Noah are escalating in salaries, but everything should be in place, including the new contract structure by the time we need to resign them. Honestly, I don't want to see a hard cap with the NBA. What I'd like to see is a harder cap than what we have now. Here is my proposal: -I like the idea about limiting contracts to a maximum of 4 years, and I do like the idea that contracts are only guaranteed for 3 of those seasons. It's gonna be really hard for the players association to agree to that. Perhaps you could do something like, after 3 years you can release the player, but his salary is still guaranteed, but it doesn't fall under your salary cap. -Institute a salary cap like we do now, but give teams and additional amount on top of the cap only to resign their own players. So if the cap is $58 million, the most you can spend on your team is $78 million. If your payroll is $78 million and you want to resign Derrick Rose to a $3 million raise, you can't unless you cut someone. I have no idea if this is really feasible, but it makes sense to me after 3 seconds of thought.

I'd be very satisfied making the playoffs between a 4 and 6 seed and bowing out in the 2nd round to most likely the 1 seed. I really hope that 1 seed isn't Vancouver or Detroit though. I can live with losing to San Jose.

Wait, is sulley saying that the Hawks would flirt with missing the playoffs, and NewUserName is saying that the Hawks will probably finish with over 100 points? Line 1: Brouwer - Toews - Kaner Line 2: Kopecky- Sharpie - Hossa DLine 1: Keith - Seabs DLine 2: Hjalmarsson - Campbell Those are still 2 extremely solid lines. And you have Bolland leading the 3rd offensive line. You figure those 1st two lines probably spend 2/3rds of the game on the ice, so the bottom 2 lines spend 1/3rd. Big chunk of time but I'm not exactly depressed with the names that are on there. Might be some growing pains, but I think by the middle of the year, we will have developed a competent 3rd line that will at least be on par with a large part of the league, especially with Bolland leading it. And the 4th line is generally considered the checking line and is mostly out there to keep the score where it's at while the first 2 lines rest. The fact that we could score on our 4th line last year was considered a huge bonus. Remember last year, the very good and supposedly deep Sharks were being praised during the playoffs for having Pavelski make their 2nd line dangerous to take the scoring load off the first line. They rely so much on their top 3 to score. The Hawks didn't. I just ran the numbers...last season the Sharks relied on their top 3 to score 40% of the team's goals and 34% of their assists. This includes all 4 lines, their defensemen, etc. The Hawks relied on their top line for only 29% of their goals and 26% of their assists. Now part of this is negative because we lost a lot of that scoring depth that made us not have to rely on only our top line. But we still have a 2nd line that includes Sharp and Hossa, with Hossa being one of the best players in hockey. I'm rambling a bit but I think we'll be fine. We won't be as great. There will be days where we'll be exhausted as a team, and won't get much from our 1st line where last year we'd benefit from getting a couple goals from our 3rd and 4th lines where this year we might not as much. But overall the top end talent is there, and you should even expect Kane and Toews to get better than last year, seeing as its only their 4th full seasons in the league.

Nothing lifts the spirits like acquiring some high priced talent. Expect to see an All Star or two go the Yankees way within the next 2 weeks

First thing I thought when I saw this thread was that the heart attack was probably caused by too many calzones.

I'm taking a shot in the dark that the Cubs weren't one of those 15 teams watching him throw.

No....not likely bottom of the West unless there are a lot of injuries or the West gets all bunched up and separated by a few points and the Hawks are on the short end of that. This team is still bringing back pretty much their top 2 offensive and defensive lines. The depth will keep us from contending for the top seed, but the top end talent should keep us in the Central Division hunt and a top 4 seed. Don't forget, between Toews, Keith, Kane and Hossa, you are looking at probably 4 of the top 25 players in hockey (feel free to argue, I didnt put much thought to it). Not many teams can match that type of front end talent (Washington, Detroit, San Jose are the only 3 I can think of, Pittsburgh is borderline in terms of having 3-4 of the top 30)

There is just too much talent from the top 3 to really let things like interior defense stop them. Plus, IIRC Haslem is a decent interior defender. And I'm sure whatever center they pull off the scrap heap will be defensive minded. As far as being able to play together without detracting, they both, especially James have the ability to be great distributors when needed. I don't think they would have accepted less money to play together and then fight about who is doing the scoring and who is doing the distributing. Not saying role players aren't important because they are in most situations, but bottom line is that superstars are the difference, especially in the playoffs. I think you'll see the Heat have a mediocre regular season record (by mediocre I mean 50-55 wins) as they figure out how to play with each other as well as conserve themselves for the playoffs. Then they will pick up steam come playoff time and run over the East. I think the Lakers have too many weapons to lose to Miami though. At least this year. In 2-3 years when the Heat have 2-3 MLE's used up there will be no stopping them.

Admit it; deep down that's what you want. It doesn't bother me as much as it probably should. I don't think the Bulls can win the East even if the Heat weren't formed. Not saying they won't be better but I think it's a year or two away.

I can't believe the Heat have enough money to sign Haslem and Miller to multi million dollar deals. The Heat are going to be scary good. Chalmers Wade James Bosh ???? Miller Haslem The rest can be scrubs, they will dominate.

I don't think they had any 1st round picks, and 2nd round picks aren't guaranteed. But if they did have a first round pick, they would have had a cap hold that goes against their salary cap so they wouldn't be able to spend all their cap space and then try to sign their draft picks.

I don't know, I seem to remember nothing but praise for him for the most part. He's probably almost overrated in the minds of many Hawks fans. I'm almost stunned he got blame, but almost no criticism when his miscues led to two goals scored in one of the SCFs games we lost to Philly. He has a lot of positive credit built up to Hawks fans. But I think his skillset is a must. Since we've taken such a hit to our forwards this summer, along with losing another dman in Sopel, I think we need defensemen that can help initiate offense by getting the puck up the ice, something that hammer does well. In my mind, the difference between him and the average defensemen is much larger than Niemi and the average goalie (which Niemi may or may not be exactly that). Obviously 1 goalie is greatly more important than 1 defensemen but keeping that those top 4 defensemen in tact greatly lessens the job the goalie needs to do. Personally, I think Niemi is gone. In a situation where we have almost no cap space, there are at least a few goalies out there for cheaper and Niemi's value has never been and will probably never be higher, it's hard to justify keeping him if him and his agent play hardball for more money (or if the arbitrator sets his price at more than we can afford)

Chris Young? Seriously? Is he gonna ask Ted Lilly to be his pitcher? Uhhh, he's my darkhorse, I think. He has awesome power. Speaking of, Where is Mark Reynolds? I was more or less referring to his .753 career ops to go along with his .400 SLG last year as the reason its a random selection. But then again Hee Seop Choi once participated in the HR derby so whatever.

Chris Young? Seriously? Is he gonna ask Ted Lilly to be his pitcher?

I've seen some really insane homer proposals in this thread.

Didn't Yanr did that wayyyy back in the day? DaveMason10k from the old ESPN.com board was banned for that trick about a week after I joined. He was under another name and had several thousand posts before revealing himself and was immediately banned. ah yes davemason. He made the trolls on this board look like Bruce miles on comparison. His schtick worked though since it's been 7 years since i've posted there and I still clearly remember him.

No one has ever run out the brother/friend excuse before.

Didn't Yanr did that wayyyy back in the day?

So we're all pretty much in agreement that Brazil is going to take the next World Cup with ease right?

The best part is when he created a second account in order to make fun of himself so that other people wouldn't think it's him.