Hairyducked Idiot

Ooops, I see the mistake. I was glancing at pro-football-reference and only looked at the "passing" column and skipped the rushing touchdowns.

"Every play" meaning the 13 minutes out of the 180 you are sitting there that they are actually playing?

The average NFL football game in 2009 had 2.8 touchdowns and 3 field goals per game. That's 6 scoring plays in about 3 hours. The average NHL game is about 2.5 hours and has 5.7 goals. Nobody ever complains that the NFL is low-scoring. But for the amount of time you are sitting there, you don't see that many scores.

Is someone holding a gun to your head and forcing you to watch? I sympathize with your plight. can you imagine a scenario in which truffle actually enjoys something? i cant. Cubbiebum posts. The man loves him some bum posts.

That is....less than correct. By what measure? 27 million people watched the gold medal Olympic hockey game. 4.9 million watched USA vs England soccer. Granted, that's a finale vs opening round... 13 million people watched the USA v. England soccer game inside the U.S.

On pace for 98 goals. Lowest in a 64-game format (granted, short history, I think that started in 1998) is 147.

I thought they only zoned things like March Madness covers, and season previews. They have plenty of singular covers. I'm not at all surprised that the Blackhawks aren't the primary cover. They won it last Wednesday night. I get my SI (why I still do I don't know) on Wednesday and figured a week later it would be old news. Glancing back at 2010, they zoned in a Rondo cover last month while most people got the World Cup preview. They did one in the middle of May where some people got Shaq and some people got Braden's perfect game, not sure which was the primary one or if it was a West Coast/East Coast thing. They did the six different March Madness covers, like you said. In February, Canada got Sidney Crosby and the U.S. got Lindsey Vonn. Going back to November, they did a split between Iowa football and the World Series, and they did all different ones for the college basketball preview issue. They don't zone it every week, but they do it often enough that it dilutes the idea of "the" cover and I suspect as time goes on they'll be doing it more and more.

There hasn't been a "the" cover for Sports Illustrated for awhile now. They zone everything anytime there's multiple stuff going on.

The most fascinating part of the NK match will be how they spin it.

I've heard something like $2.5 million thrown around, plus he's an RFA. So basically, about the same as Niemi. I'd rather have him than Niemi, but I don't think we can afford either.

If you go to capgeek.com and hit "calc" by the Blackhawks, you can start fiddling around and trying to make a roster. It's *hard*. The Blackhawks cap should be around $54.5 or so next season, not the $56.8 it will tell you, because it hasn't accounted for the cap increase or the bonus hit. AUTO-GENERATED CAPGEEK.COM LINES FORWARDS Jonathan Toews ($6.300m) / Patrick Kane ($6.300m) / Marian Hossa ($5.275m) Patrick Sharp ($3.900m) / Dave Bolland ($3.375m) / Kyle Beach ($1.200m) Tomas Kopecky ($1.200m) / Troy Brouwer ($1.025m) / * Cheap C ($0.650m) * Bryan Bickell ($0.600m) / Jake Dowell ($0.525m) DEFENSEMEN Brian Campbell ($7.143m) / Duncan Keith ($5.538m) * Niklas Hjalmarsson ($3.500m) / Brent Seabrook ($3.500m) * Jordan Hendry ($0.750m) / * Cheap D ($0.650m) * Cheap W ($0.650m) GOALTENDERS * Cheap vet goalie ($1.500m) / Corey Crawford ($0.800m) CAPGEEK.COM TOTALS (these totals are compiled using the bonus cushion) ROSTER: 20; PAYROLL: $54.381m; BONUSES: $0.325m

I honestly don't know. The bonus cap hit really threw the amateur GMs for a loop because it means that some salary must be moved immediately and some can wait until later in the offseason. Who knows how that effects teams' opinions.

You never know in the NHL. It just takes one GM. But I suspect it's not the cap hit immediately, but the six more years that makes Campbell unmovable. I could be wrong. Plus, he has a partial No Move Clause which says he can stipulate 10 teams he'd be willing to traded to. I doubt those 10 teams are the ones with a lot of cap space.

capgeek.com to do the math for yourself and you'll see it. The cap was $56.8 million this year. It's expected to go up about $2 million (unless the players decide not to use their escalator to keep the escrow down, which I'd say is about a 25% chance of happening, and would make things even worse), and the Blackhawks will lose $4.2 million in cap space due to the bonuses of Toews and Kane (this has been reported in a couple of newspapers now). So our cap is effectively about $54.6 million next year. Note that the bonuses reduce our cap, not count against our cap, which will be important later. Under contract for next year: Toews, Kane, Hossa, Sharp, Byfuglien, Bolland, Versteeg, Kopecky, Brouwer Keith, Seabrook, Campbell, Sopel Huet 14 players under contract for next year: Combined cap hit of $57.598 million dollars. We are six players short of a basic roster and $2.1 million over our cap for next season already. From right now until training camp, you can exceed the cap by 10%. So our offseason cap is right around $60 million, so we are $2.4 million under that. But we need to qualify our restricted free agents, and the ones who spent time in the NHL last year count against the cap. That's Ladd, Eager, Fraser, Niemi, Hjalmarsson, Skille and Hendry. The combined cost of qualifying those guys will be about $4 million, so we need to shave $1 million to $2 million by July 1 just to make your basic qualifying offers to keep your rights to your RFAs. Huet can't be waived and sent to the minors until the season actually starts, so that provides no immediately relief. Basically, he takes up our 10% offseason buffer all summer. We must move a player to qualify our RFAs. If we waive Huet, let all of our RFAs go for nothing and fill the remaining six roster spots with cheap players, we're *still* a little over the cap (and only going with 20 players, most teams will want 21 or 22). You'd need to drop Sopel and replace him with a nobody in order to make that work. So at that point, we've lost Ladd, Sopel, Niemi, Hjalmarsson, Eager, Fraser, Madden and Burish. IMO, the first priority has to be keeping Hjalmarsson. He's going to get at *least* $3 million, maybe even $4 or more, and we have to clear the cap space almost immediately if he signs an offer sheet early in free agency, which I think begins July 1. So in order to afford that, you have to lose Versteeg, Byfuglien or Sharp. They aren't going to go with Crawford/Tuovenen (sp?) at goalie, so either we pony up for Niemi or we sign a cheap veteran FA for a $2 million or so. Either way, we have to lose another player to do that. Say goodbye to another of Versteeg, Byfuglien or Sharp, with enough to spare to let us fill two more bargain-basement roster spots for a 13th forward and 7th D to fill out the roster. And this isn't even considering a guy like Kyle Beach, who costs $1.2 million, or about $600k more than the theoretical "bargain basement" guys we were talking about. Things seemed manageable until the Toews/Kane cap hit came down. That made this a total capocalypse. We'll still be a contender next year with our top-end players, but we'll have to spend the season with absolutely no depth at all.

I think if there is anything we've learned over the last few years it's that this is probably not the best place to sink $4-5M. I agree that the team isn't in "salary cap hell" as many are suggesting. They just need to be smart, and I think Bowman will be. At a bare minimum, they are losing Sopel, Ladd, Madden, Versteeg, Byfuglien or Sharp, and Niemi or Hjalmarsson. (Maybe losing Campbell and keeping a couple of those guys, but I think that's even worse). And they have to move some of those guys almost immediately, putting a lot of pressure on them to make a deal quickly and costing them some leverage. That may not be hell, but it's definitely a stay in purgatory.

I wish they could call that goal back and replay for like eight offsetting fouls on both sides. That had more shirt-grabbing than a junior-high fistfight.

Interestingly, the Blackhawks may be in a position to be buyers next offseason. They'll clear out a bunch of these mid-20s, semi-expensive wingers like Versteeg and Byfuglien. If you've done this offseason right, your top four defensemen are still intact, and so are your top-6 forwards (Hossa/Kane/Toews/Bolland/Beach/whichever expendable winger you don't trade this offseason) will all still be under contract, with guys like Skille taking a step toward being experienced back-6ers. I'd estimate maybe $7.5 million in cap space to work with between the cap going up and the bonus hits dead space going away. Seabrook's raise shouldn't cost more than $1.5 million or so above what he makes now, and there's a few other RFAs that need small raises, but there should be a few million or so left over for one good upgrade. Maybe a premier goalie? (I think the CBA expires after this coming season, so this all assumes the new one looks something like the current one)

There's no chance of losing Seabrook for nothing. He's a $3.5 million cap hit this season and then an RFA next season. There's plenty of cap room to resign him next year, with $4.5 million in bonus cap hit off the books, plus I expect the cap to go up a solid amount the next few years as league revenues are on the uptick. There's plenty of room to sign him to a $5-6 million extension that he deserves. If anyone wants to sign him to an offer sheet of more than that, they are getting into four first-round pick compensation territory. Incidentally, the Blackhawks have signed Norwegian Mathis Olimb to a contract. It's a cheap, two-way deal to get him into the NHL, but he has a chance to be a decent third-line winger right away from what I've read. Cheap replacement for a guy like Versteeg: http://www.eliteprospects.com/player.php?player=4225&lang=en

People say that, I just assume that's their code for saying "I don't know anything about hockey but I like reading box scores and jocking defensemen." Toews was a beast all playoffs. Besides finishing second in points, he took more faceoffs than any other forwards in the league by a wide margin and won them at the highest rate (excluding a few guys who got eliminated early and didn't take that many). He led all forwards in takeaways (32) and takeaway/turnover differential (+23). He blocked shots, he killed penalties, he won board battles. He completely dominated the flow of play every time he stepped on the ice. Duncan Keith is disqualified on the basis of his turnover 20 seconds into OT of game 6 alone.

That means we need to clear around $7 million in cap space in the next 13 days in order to give qualifying offers to our RFAs, or else Ladd, Eager, Niemi, Hjalmarsson and Hendry all become UFAs instead of RFAs. And we can't send Huet to the minors yet, right? Correct, not until the season starts. Until then, he basically is using up the whole 10% buffer we get for the offseason.

That means we need to clear around $7 million in cap space in the next 13 days in order to give qualifying offers to our RFAs, or else Ladd, Eager, Niemi, Hjalmarsson and Hendry all become UFAs instead of RFAs.

Just saw Denmark put a wicked own goal into their net to benefit Netherlands. 1) Aren't those the same country? IDK 2) There's been an awful lot of shoddy goals in this first round of games. It's fun to watch.

It may all be over with by the time your honeymoon period is overwith. The Blackhawks have to clear serious space by July 1 if they want to give qualifying offers to their RFAs, and the draft is in 11 days, so any trades involving draft picks will have to be done before then.