Bmwolf21

In my best LSI: . I'm a Magic fan as well, and I am already sick of the Pistons. Didn't like them back when they were the "bad boys," still pissed about how the Grant Hill thing worked out (you know, since he came from Motown) and disturbed by both the weird bald spot on the back of 'Sheed's head and Rip Hamilton's weird face shield. More disgusted with the NBA on that 3-pointer that shouldn't have counted, but really puzzled and disgusted by Hedo's spastic shot ate in the game where he flung the ball off the backboard from beyond the arc with 23 left on the shot clock...

Read that the other day, and I couldn't believe what the coaching fraternity, especially Coach K, have done in blackballing this guy when the guy was simply standing up for the name and honor of one of his dead players. If his former boss was truly sorry he would stop trying to rationalize the assistant coach's "fault" in this situation and find a way to address the NABC. There he should fall on his own sword for a guy who was doing the right thing, and beg the coaching fraternity to give this guy a break.

I bought a Dodge Dakota Quad Cab (right before the gas prices surged around the time of Hurricane Katrina) and so far I haven't had any major problems, but I have only put about 10,000 miles on it over the last 2 1/2 years. The lack of problems thus far is a huge departure from my previous Dodge vehicles - those vehicles spent so much time in the shop I considered using the dealership's address on the vehicle registration. My wife's Honda CRV is approaching 90,000 miles and *knocking on wood* hasn't had any major problems outside of a couple blown sensors (one which completely paid for the Honda Care warranty.) With the gas prices and the Dodge's thirsty engine I will likely be trading that in soon, and will likely be going with either another Honda or a Toyota/Hyundai.

12/20 with a bunch of guesses.

Little more on the signing: LINK "As of yesterday, we really weren't sure which way it was going to go," said Jordan Neumann, Gerbe's agent. "We really had a flurry in the late afternoon." The 20-year-old Gerbe told The News last week he was "50-50" on whether to turn pro or finish school. But he held his own during his first stint with NHL-level talent, and that may have convinced him to make the jump. He trained with the United States' world championship team, and he had a goal and an assist during an exhibition against Sweden. "Toward the end of the year [with Boston College] and during his time with the World Championship team he really felt he was ready to go," Neumann added.

Sabres Sign Gerbe The Buffalo Sabres have signed Defenseman Nathan Gerbe. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Gerbe helped Boston College win the NCAA Championship over Notre Dame this season. The Junior was the runner-up for the Hobey Baker award for best Collegiate player. Gerbe had 5 goals and 3 assists in the Frozen Four.

Where's the fun in that?

1. 2. Agreed. Signing Tbo, when it happened, was not a bad move. He was coming off a pretty good year for a backup and has substantial experience as both a starter and backup. In hindsight the move looks more like a bad one, as Tbo struggled more often than not and quickly fell out of favor with the coaching staff, being relegated to mop-up duty after the ASB until the team was eliminated from playoff contention. 3. There was absolutely no way anyone could know that Conklin, given his record and play the previous two years, would play the way he did when Fleury went down. My surprise was that the Sabres (and goaltending coach Jim Corsi) seemed pretty eager to work with Conklin and indicated they thought he could be a serviceable backup. That being said, I'm sure the Sabres saw Thibault hit the FA market and saw him as an immediate upgrade to Conklin, whereas Ty was more of a hit-or-miss work-in-progress. Trading Biron was unavoidable - they simply did not have the cap space to keep a $2M backup on the bench, especially going into a playoff run and they knew Marty wanted to be a starter, so they did what they could to reward a loyal player. Conklin (as noted above) could still be here, but it's understandable that they tried to upgrade the position. It just backfired on them.

What a fantastic, well-thought-out, intelligent and coherent contribution to the discussion. Thanks for proving that you are nothing more than another hysterical Monday-morning QB who would rather tell everyone who screwed up and how badly rather than discuss and debate why things happened. I can get behind rooting for Biron, but couldn't care less about Briere. In the words of Scrubs' Dr. Cox - I don't hate Danny, I nothing him. I cheered for him when he was a Sabre but now he is just another faceless douchebag wearing the orange and black.

The "two-run single" was the part that really threw up the red flag in my eyes. But in all my time playing and coaching I never saw a player get so seriously hurt rounding the bases on a home run that the rule interpretation never came up.

Sorry, wasn't trying to steal your point or anything, just wanted to find the relevant passage in the NCAA rulebook to see if there was some ambiguity or some other reason to think the umps might have been right. I was more surprised that the umps didn't know that or didn't take the time to check it out before ruling. I honestly didn't know the rule, but I would expect that if the umps didn't know they'd at least check it out first.

It does seem clear, according to the NCAA Rulebook: c. Injured-player substitutions. The following regulations govern substitutions for an injured player: 1. Substitutes for an injured player must be allowed adequate time to warm-up. Play shall be suspended during this time. 2. If an injury to a batter-runner or runner prevents her from proceeding to an awarded base, the ball is dead and substitution may be made. The substitute must legally touch all awarded or missed bases not previously touched. So shouldn't a sub have been able to substitute in at first base (the only one she touched) and finish rounding the rest of the bases?

I don't know about TV ratings, but attendance figures point to baseball's growth, not decline. With the exception of two recession years in '02 and '03 attendance has been steadily climbing from the 90s to today(see chart halfway down page); they set an attendance record last year and are on pace to break that record again this year. Minor league baseball has set attendance records in each of the last four years.

Disagree somewhat about poor technique. His technique was fine last year and the year before when he racked up regular-season and playoff wins -- when he was able to get a few nights off and was able to work on his game in practice. Lindy and Ryan both admitted that as the season wore on Ryan was unable to put in the kind of practice time he feels he needs to maintain his game, simply because he was physically and mentally fatigued. So yes, the workload affected his technique at different times, and there were some games where he was overplaying initial shots or swimming in his crease to get back in position, but there were a lot of games where he was very good. And it is true that Miller wanted the heavier workload, but I don't think he envisioned 33 straight starts after the break, with no nights off until the team was eliminated. He wanted to prove he could handle that kind of workload, and management wanted to see if he could handle it. So in that sense his overuse was a good thing - they learned that he is not one of the very rare physical freaks who can handle 75+ games and still have a lot left in the tank for the postseason. Not a big deal, because most no.1 goalies are 60-65 game players and need nights off. I was glad to hear Lindy say that he doesn't want to play Ryan 70+ games again if possible. But Tbo's disappointing season cannot be understated. He sucked this year well before they hit the post-ASB stretch run, and the staff clearly lost faith in him. There were a few opportunities over the last few months where they could have started Tbo but elected not to, and it hurt Ryan and then team in the long run.

Shhh, that's crazy talk. It's all coming from hysterical Bucky Eklund. You know, he's just a whiner who is mad that the Sabres won't return his calls.

We already did find someone to replace Soupy (Sekera) and IMO Weber could be up full-time to replace Dmitri. It's going to be hard to send Weber back to the AHL after the way he played down the stretch. If Weber stays up and Tallinder/Lydman's play improves and gets back closer to what they showed in 06-07 the Sabres would be in much better shape. You would have a top-4 of Spacek-Sekera and Tallinder-Lydman. They also have Paetsch under contract (who is a 6/7 guy) , so they need to find 1-2 guys, preferably one PP QB and one stay-at-home gritty defenseman. They could also bring back Pratt and/or Numminen, and I think a healthy Teppo would really help settle things down a lot.

Marty vs. Buffalo this year: 4 GP, 1-2-1, 4.11 ERA, .855 SV%. For sake of reference - Ryan was 3-0-1 in 4 GP vs. Philly this year; 2.89 GAA and .895 SV %. But Luongo is elite! I've heard of him! Does this mean the Canucks traded for the wrong guy two years ago? Maybe Calgary should have traded Kirpusoff for Biron. Or NJ should have swapped Brodeur for Biron. Hey, they are both Marty's, right? Philly did a great job of reshaping their roster in one offseason. They cut their goals against by an unheard-of 70 goals in one year (06-07 297 GA; 07-08 227 GA.) That sure as hell didn't happen just by plugging in Biron - while he brought some stability to the position, the Flyers also upgraded their defense by getting rid of two horrible defensive defensemen - Pitkanen (-25 last year) and Andrew Picard (-19 LY) and brought in Kimo Timonen and Jason Smith for starters. Our defense was horrible this year (Tallinder and Lydman were mere shadows of their previous-year's play and Kalinin was awful for the better part of the year) our offense struggled to score goals consistently (the goals-for stat is horribly misleading here - I've doen the research and we certainly padded our GF number by running up the score in about 15 games) and the coaching staff lost faith in Ryan's backup somewhere around February 1st and the staff felt it was better to roll out Miller night in and night out than put a game in Thibault's hands. Miller struggled both as a result of the bad defense/inconsistent offense/bad backup-overuse factors and independently of those factors - he struggled early in the year when family issues impacted his focus (the death of his young cousin) and he struggled to handle the increased workload. He'll know better how to handle extra games next year, the FO will (hopefully) find a competent backup to take the heat off for 15-20 games, and the defense should be improved (addition by subtraction - Kalinin shouldn't be back next year, and Tallinder/Lydman couldn't play much worse.)

Just got back from the 930 show. Awesome - just awesome. Well worth the wait, and definitely worth the ticket price.

She's a senior and it happened with less than two weeks remaining in the season. Since she's playing for D-II Western Oregon it's doubtful she'll be playing anywhere - professionally, at least - after graduation.

Another thing that grinds my gears is when I can't find the droids I'm looking for.

Not bringing back Conklin is somewhat understandable - he wasn't going to get that many starts here unless Ryan went down. I think he could have been a very serviceable backup to Ryan, and Jim Corsi has a lot of good things to say about Conks before (and after) they traded for him. But with Thibault coming off a pretty good year for a backup (7-8-2, 2.83, .909, 1 SO) it wasn't surprising they thought they were getting an upgrade. Who knew he would struggle even than Ryan behind our porous defense?

I think I have a new signature quote. Good stuff, LA...

Thank you. /thread

First thing I thought of when I saw the word Sandals in the thread title...

For Representative Louise M. Slaughter, a Buffalo-area Democrat, safety was a worry, given her sprawling district. Ms. Slaughter used to drive her personal car to get around, she said. Then, in 2002, her political rivals in the Legislature in Albany redrew her district, in what she viewed as a deliberate effort to force her from office. The new map, she said, resulted in a vast swath of western New York that is treacherous to travel in winter. She turned to a 2007 Buick Lucerne, which she leases for $808.29 a month. “For the longest time, I didn’t do it at all,” she said of leasing. But the Lucerne, she said, had good traction and, perhaps more important, came equipped with a satellite tracking system. “I figured if I got stuck in a snow bank people could find me,” she said. “If I’m in an accident, they might be able to find me and not have to wait until the thaw.” Ahhh....politics as usual in New York State... I hope her comment about waiting for the thaw was in jest.