UMFan83

I agree about the blowout win. Maybe it never comes but I just see a game where the D holds and too many pucks find the net. Kind of like Game 2 in SJ, or the road games against Vancouver. You can't tell me we can blow those two teams out but cant blow out Philly?

Just curious to see what people's thoughts were. I am not sure why I am so apathetic about this team, but for whatever reason it just doesn't interest me in the least. The only thing that interests me is how Castro and now Cashner do. Anyways, to the question at hand: If the Cubs could have a Marlins like firesale, trading away basically every asset on the team, throw away a couple of seasons, lower payroll dramatically, would you accept that? Obviously you aren't going to get great value for a ton of them. Soriano you'd have to eat a lot of money and take back almost nothing, whatever. It's impossible to do a true Marlins freestyle, because unlike the Marlins, we don't have good young players that don't make a ridiculous amount of money. But the concept of stripping the team bare, and starting all over building it again intregues me. Assume that all NTC clauses were waived, because it'd be impossilbe to do this otherwise since half the team has them. Also, you can't assume that Hendry won't be the one rebuilding this team, otherwise it would just make your choice too easy. So basically the team is stripped bare, the payroll goes down to around $60 million (probably about as low as it can go with all the crazy money eating we'd have to do), build the team around prospects and cheap stopgaps. And then once most of those big contracts slowly come off and we figure out which prospects are here to stay (lets say after 2012), Ricketts then allows the payroll to slowly (or quickly, whatever) build back up to $130 million range. I dunno, is that completely crazy? I know it would never ever happen with this team because of a number of reasons, but it would make us so much more exciting to follow IMO. For the past 2 years we've been stuck with no room to make any trades, both monetarily and on the field with almost every position locked in by a big contract with NTC. I would love to have the excitement of throwing a bunch of new pieces together and seeing if they mesh. If anyone has any suggestions about how an imaginary firesale would look, I'd love to see that too, in terms of how the team would look after it is done.

Lost somewhere in this thread, I made a throwaway comment just before the San Jose series, in my nervous state, joking that the Hawks can just go 8-0 if they want to and finish this off, never for a second thinking they would even come close to sweeping the Sharks, much less them and the Flyers for 8 in a row. Well they've started out 6-0 since then... Another random thing to point out. For the Hawks to lose this series, they'd have to lose as many games out of the next 5, as they have all postseason in 18 games so far. They'd have to lose 4 times as many games as they have in the last 11 games. It's not impossible, but it's getting less likely with each win. Don't want to sound too cocky though.

Hawks are 7-1 on the road in the playoffs, Flyers are 7-1 at home in the playoffs...something has to give.

But the thing is the minitron at Wrigley has all those things except OPS. They have those weird trivia things like I remember once seeing something like "Mark DeRosa has the highest BA in MLB at home in month of May (.389)." The only difference is it can't show that, and the triple crown stats, and the linescore, and both team's lineups at the same time on that board. It doesn't bother me though.

They won't beat Philly twice in a row in their building. This series is definitely coming back to Chicago. The Blackhawks haven't lost a road playoff game since Game 3 vs. Nashville. I would say at least 5 of their top 6 or 7 games these playoffs have been on the road. . I think he was trying to reverse jinx the Hawks. But your point about the road games is spot on. I feel a lot more relaxed going into game 3. Not that we're guaranteed to win it, but the pressure is all on the Flyers to win these 2 games.

I didn't even realize/read that Pronger was having an animated discussion with the refs after last night's game. What could he possibly be bitching about? Hey we need a bigger penalty disparity than 8-4 after 2 games. You need to keep missing our blatent penalties and call even more on them.

I'm not sure what happened in the actual game, but regarding the incident at the end of the game, I don't think he was picking on Eager specifically. I think he was trying to annoy the Hawks and Eager was the one that came over and challenged him. Pronger is such a prick, but it's all by design. I almost respect him for that, but that doesn't mean I like him.

I LOVE the batting helmet three-card monte thing. I don't know why but it keeps me so very entertained. And if I'm not distracted, I'm always right on where it is. Jumbotron for all! I'm pretty sure the Cubs have the exact same thing on their little LED board below the scoreboard in CF. They also have the "Paint the scoreboard" race.

Also, I read somewhere that this is only the 2nd time this year that Toews and Kane were held off the scoresheet for 2 straight games.

The general consensus around the blogs and news articles I've read (mostly neutral observers) is that the Flyers dominated the Hawks last night. And I did see a lot of that. I also saw a great defensive performance from the Hawks when the puck got into the Hawks zone, much more like the Hawks we've seen this year. I'm just a bit worried that we didn't come out and take control of the game and series like everyone expected them to. We should be able to destroy these guys but we aren't. Strangely lately we've been winning but winning differently than we did in the regular season. We've routinely allowed a ton of shots to the opponent, who has outshot us frequently. I don't know if its by design or what but it's a bit odd to see. That said, like I've said it doesn't matter how you win at this point of the year. I'd rather see this than 2 well played losses with a couple bad bounces. I just want to make sure we can finish this off. I guess I should just be satisfied that we won 2 games where we didn't play our best and hope/assume we take control in Philly.

even though it probably wasn't true at the time, i've felt this way since we went up 2-0 on the sharks coming back home. it was at that point it actually hit me that "holy crap, this is really happening". that was when i was all in... meaning anything less than a cup would be devastating. i remember a specific moment when my feelings changed from "we have as good a chance as anybody" to "OH MY GOD, we actually should win a championship this year" if the blackhawks win one of the next 2, they guArantee themselves 3 shots at winning the cup... with 2 of the 3 games at home. just win one in philly. that's all you gotta do I remember that moment too. It was somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd goals in Game 2 against SJ

The only thing that would make sense is if he said "The Hawks played the worst out of any team to go up 2-0 in the SCF." The Hawks didn't play their best hockey in either game. If they don't tighten some things up, they will be tied 2-2 going back to Chicago. That said, a win is a win, and a sweep is still in the picture. I won't truly complain about anything until the Hawks lose a game. If the Hawks lose a game. The atmosphere was amazing tonight. I'm so fortunate to get to go to a Stanley Cup Final game, even if I had to pay out the ass to go.

Just took my spot atop the 300 level. SRO was packed by 545 as expected. Got a decent spot though as long as no tall people sit in front of me. The atmosphere outside the UC is awesome. Definitely felt different than any other sporting event I've ever been to at the UC. If the series comes back to Chicago I might soak up the scene again and watch in the West Loop. I saw a group of 8 people all wearing Hendry jerseys in the players parking lot. I didn't have the heart to tell them I hoped their relative/friend sees as little ice time as possible tonight. Go Hawks!

What the hell is Ricketts going to do? Also just so you know, Ricketts didn't have to choose between fixing the bathrooms or spending more money on the team. He is the owner, so he has to worry about all areas of the team even if winning is his #1 priority. When there are so many problems with the product on the field, he looks like an idiot constantly worrying about the ballpark and the "fan experience." Winning cures all. Cub fans need to treat this organization like the Blackhawk fans treated it...quit going to games, quit buying merchandise and quit watching/listening. As a fan, I am sick of hearing Ricketts talk about winning yet nothing changes in relation to the baseball operations. Piniella should be fired today. You can't fire 25 players, but Lou can go. Again, one run in 4 of the last 5 games and he basically does nothing to shake things up. Ricketts has been the owner for 6 months, what do you expect to happen in 6 months? He's never run a baseball team before, and he is just getting his feet wet here. He needs time to evaluate everything in the organization before going around firing people and making radical changes. After such a short amount of time, there is no way any of us fans really know how Ricketts is going to run the team long term. By the end of this offseason, it will begin to look clear, and by the next offseason we'll have a pretty good idea of how this team will be run and at that point we can judge how much he wants to win or how capable that is in his hands. I know losing is frustrating, but if you honestly thought we had a good shot of winning the WS this year no matter what we did, unless a lot of pieces fell perfectly into place, then you need to lower your expectations a bit. I completely agree we should be contending every year with our resources, but the blame is not on Ricketts, its on the general manager of this club.

So we went over .500 against our impossible schedule, and then get a series against the Pirates and it's back to sucking it up.

I am looking at the team stats, and I have no idea why this team is so poor offensively. Slightly worse than average sure, but this team looks awful out there at times. 3 hit by the Pirates?

What the hell is Ricketts going to do? Also just so you know, Ricketts didn't have to choose between fixing the bathrooms or spending more money on the team. He is the owner, so he has to worry about all areas of the team even if winning is his #1 priority.

You could always phantom DL him and that could buy us a couple of weeks.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=5234751

Or: Because of the ability to have the other boards and people being able to look things up on their phones, a new scoreboard is unnecessary. Wrigley is gonna have to update their cell phone coverage if that is going to be what we rely on. I can't even send a text at the game, let alone look up stats. Wrigley isn't your service provider. Really? They have cell phone towers attached to the stadium or so I've read. They claimed pigeons were getting in the way of AT&T's last year and this year should have been improved, but I haven't noticed any difference. If the Cubs will point to technology as a reason to not get a modern scoreboard, they should be able to ensure the fans can use their cell phones in the ballpark.

Or: Because of the ability to have the other boards and people being able to look things up on their phones, a new scoreboard is unnecessary. Wrigley is gonna have to update their cell phone coverage if that is going to be what we rely on. I can't even send a text at the game, let alone look up stats.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/ct-spt-0531-around-town--20100530,0,7082393.column Guess we can cross Pujols off our 2011 FA acquisition list.

Flyers coach said Leighton is starting game 2. In other news, we're up 2-0!

He's gonna have to get some outs if he wants to keep it around there...