Taro T

True to the bolded. But the NFL will still possibly move games from Sunday to Thursday on a 2-3 week whim this year and even if the Gints owner wins the fight this year about not allowing that; it's coming. This is a TV driven league - they don't care about the people in the stands nearly as much as they used to do.

Mildly surprised by the Jones choice, but the job of team presidient is different than that of GM. He's more in charge of building the relationships of the team with outside parties. What better choice for that role than someone that is generally viewed as being likeable (even though he's a former Phlyer) and has many powerful friends/contacts within and outside of the NHL? Pretty sure the size of his contacts list is more important for his new role than how well he can identify which 17 year old is going to become the next Gagne or Giroux. (Briere needs to have that latter skill (and because of who he works for, hopefully he doesn't have that one down particularly well).)

Grier too.

But that is ONLY the enforcers that have died to date. There are 310 that are still alive, MANY of which are well above that 47.5 year "life expectancy." It is true that of those that died, the average age of death was 47.5 (presuming that is true, haven't looked at the individual ages at the time of their death personally) but it is NOT true that the life expectancy of an NHL enforcer is 47.5 years. They also don't look at whether there is a causation within the 11 enforcer deaths that they consider correlated to head trauma. For example, look at the drug usage, for the less than a handful that had drug related deaths, did those players that had a propensity to become enforcers have a propensity towards developing an addiction to drugs and did that lead them to be more likely to become enforcers? The ones that died in auto accidents, did the personalities that allowed them to become enforcers also have a tendency to lead those players to be "risk takers?" If it was within the personality to be risk takers, they'd be expected to have more and more severe automobile accidents than the average person. Also, am having a hard time understanding (and or finding what the meaning is) that of the players from the enforcer group and from the non-enforcer control group that the control group had SIGNIFICANTLY more deaths that couldn't be associated with head trauma (by the criteria established by the researchers to be proxies for head trauma) than the enforcer group had. 23 deaths out of 330 is double that of 10 out of 320. The study doesn't even seem to acknowledge that as they are ONLY trying to see if they can correlate additional deaths to the head trauma. It would seem that in their attempt to "match" the fighters to non-fighters that they have done a poor job of that as the deathrates from non-head trauma related causes are significantly different between the 2 groups. And they are significantly higher for the non-enforcer control group. And the authors would seem to be implying that the players that died from head trauma would've died anyway but about 10 years later without the head trauma. (That does appear to be the result they are presenting.) But from a cursory review of the study there doesn't seem to be any reason to believe those same players would have died anyway (just as there's no reason to assume they wouldn't have died). On the surface, and without referring to this study, it would seem quite plausible that people that routinely suffer head trauma would have lowered life expectancies than those that don't routinely suffer head trauma. And this study supports that presumption. But, and again only took a cursory look at the study, it doesn't seem that the study as constructed actually lends much if any useful data to answering that question.

Auto-de-fe, what's an auto-de-fe? It's what you aughtn't to do, but you do anyway.

Yep. And the fact that they did trim out so much data leads to the question of WHY? Were they just lazy or were they needing to do that to get the results they wanted or did they actually have a truly legit reason for doing so? REALLY doubt it's that 3rd option.

And at least one of those enforcers (Kordic) that killed himself was definitely one known to suffer from "'roid rage." And doubt that Brian Spencer was considered 1 of those enforcers but he likely wasn't in the control group either as his death was definitely of unnatural causes and due to being a drug dealer in later life. It seems like it's a very interesting study, but not sure just how much reliable info will be coming out of it based upon the way the study was set up. (Again, this is only after a VERY cursory review of the study's methodology. The methodology may be more rigorous than it appears at 1st blush (then again, it may be even less useful too).)

Personally would like to see the Sabres keep that 13th pick and make a trade with Olofsson and 1 of the 2nds (plus an A-/B grade prospect if necessary) to land either 1 of the 2 D they should be looking to obtain or a goalie that's expected to be more consistent than either Comrie or UPL. And then grab the other D they should be bringing in via FA.

Only looked very briefly (obviously) at the study but a few things stood out on a cursory review. The items that stood out IMHO were that they had 331 fighters identified out of all the players that had played in the NHL over the past 55 years. They then tried to match up characteristics of non-fighters as well as they could to the fighters they identified, so they only looked at 662 players (and they went similarly with their other study group - players with at least 3 PIM/G) of the full set of NHL players. So, those "life expectancies" aren't actually life expectancies. Those are the average ages at death of the 6% of enforcers looked at that have died and the 7% of non-enforcers that have died. And after they handpicked their "control" group, that group actually has had a greater percentage die than of the enforcers group. They also acknowdedge that they ended up with almost identical numbers of dead players from both smaller pools (21 dead enforcers and 24 dead non-enforcers) though the enforcers had 3 suicides, 2 ODs, 2 neurodegenerative disease induced deaths, and 4 vehicular deaths; the "control group" only had 1 death by any of those causes in their 24 deaths. So, 52 percent of the enforcers died from non-natural causes and only 4 percent of the non-enforcers died from non-natural causes. That right there can explain a large chunk of their results. They are trying to say that the head trauma from fights is the primary cause of this disparity, but they don't really control to any degree whatsoever for other items which could account for these results such as the possibility that enforcers may have taken performance enhancing drugs at higher rates than their peers nor how significantly the control group of ALL non-enforcers would've compared to the enforcers. There very well may be a bias injected into this study by the criteria used to reduce the control group from nearly 6,000 down to 331. Intentionally only looking at 5% of the available data seems questionable at a minimum. And, if you take out what they consider to be CTE related deaths then the enforcers are much more likely to still be alive (97% of the remaining 320 enforcers were still alive when the study was conducted compared with only 93% of the remaining 330 non-enforcers). Also, the average life expectancy of the players seems to be artificially low for both groups as less than 7% of the players studied have actually died by the time the study was conducted and there have been far more NHLers that have been playing in the past 30 or so years than there were in the 1st 30 years covered by the study as the league has gone from 12 teams to 32. Will try to take a deeper dive into this study, but have more questions right now about the methodologies than the results.

Well, 1 more. They only have 2 drawings now. But if this is how it's done, they might have the lottery determine the top 5 teams. But for drawings 4-5, it's a holographic Rip Taylor throwing the confetti because the person dressed up as him is exhausted.

Personally, would like to keep Girgensons and bring in a true 4C. But not expecting that and hoping that Okposo isn't brought back. But not expecting that either. While it would make a ton of sense to bring in a Frederic (not a 4C, but still brings something the team lacks), not expecting it. Feel fairly confident that Adams will bring in a couple of NHL caliber D and will trade Olofsson away. Am leaning towards expecting an older goalie is brought in to tandem with Levi but figure that one happening is a coin flip.

What if they had somebody like that weenie that NBC brought out on FNiA late in the season to run through every team's chances of making the playoffs and how they change with each other win/loss earlier in the day? They could have the weenie talking about how x ball getting popped affects each team's chances as now a proverbial truck ton of tickets can no longer be winners. And then do it again after the next ball and again after that one. Then interview the GMs that still have a chance after 3 have popped. Talk to the Arizona GM about how much it stinks that once again they won't be winning the lottery as all their 200 different number combinations somehow didn't have all 3 balls already grabbed included in their mix. And then after the final number is drawn have a large flashing logo of the winning team overhead with some Rip Taylor wannabe running around throwing confetti at the GM of that team like he was the winner of the $1.98 Beauty Contest. It could be so horrific and kitschy you wouldn't be able to look away. A ratings triumph.

Or steer into it. Either would be better and honestly an over the top ####show might actually be entertaining in a warped way.

Love Okposo as a person and for what he's meant to this team. But see him as being the corpse of Pominville next year if he comes back. Would rather have a 4th line of Kulich/Krebs/Rousek if they aren't bringing any other forwards in from the outside. (Place Girgensons in in place of Kulich initially if that is making that line too young.) And could very well expect to see both Girgensons and Okposo gone based on Adams comments about the team being even younger next year than they were this year. Simply knocking Anderson off the roster doesn't make it younger than it was last October especially if the 4D that comes in is in the 27-28 yo range.

Didn't believe he was saying Granato isn't good at developing talent. He is. But he was saying we don't know if Granato is capable of being more well rounded than that. If he can be more well rounded (and he very well may be) it would be a snub to simply label him a development guy.

And it might go a long way towards preventing the next lynch mob from forming if not only the lawyer that brought this so impactfully into the public eye faced consequences but those leading the lynch mob as well also faced consequences for their role in the matter. Can think of at least one, and probably several, media personalities that were all in before having even gotten to the end of the lawyer's press release and leading the frenzy. Were that (those) person(s) to lose their job(s) perhaps the next time accusations such as this arise again (and they'll arise again) they could be actually discussed in a rational way before the target of the indignation receives the tar and feathering prior to anybody outside those that were there in the moment actually having a clue as to what actually happened. Sometimes the tar and feathering is deserved; but often and seemingly in this case it wasn't and isn't. Pretty sure it's way too much to ask for though.

In order to get there, FLA will have vanquished Boston, Toronto, likely Carolina, and then likely either Vegas or Edmonton and possibly Dallas. Considering who will have to get left in their wake, let's go Swamp Cats! And that will make not finding 2 more points somewhere within 82 games all that much harder to take. (Even though the 2 points would've flipped them into Carolina's bracket and not Boston's)

In an ideal world, yes. But, don't forget they were getting absolutely pilloried for having had the audacity to have drafted him. EVERYTHING about the team was only about the punter. That their own due dilligence resulted in the same conclusion that the prosecutor's came to didn't matter. They made a decision based on the hellstorm that was being rained down upon them. As @Eleven said, they were never going to stop being asked about him as long as he was on the team. It isn't right, but until there are repercussions for wildly unfounded accusations, there will be future wildly unfounded accusations. (Not saying her & her lawyer's accusations were unfounded, but they sure seem to be if the yahoo article is even close to accurate.) And the team bowed to the public pressure because the distraction very likely could've cost them wins.

Good point. Added an edit warning of such in the original post. Thanks.

Probably should put this in the 2022 Bills thread because it isn't likely that Araiza ends up a Bill again, but apparently the prosecutors in SD have dropped all charges against him and the others that were accused of sexual crimes last year by the same girl. EDIT: The article cited in the tweet includes some explicit language of a depiction of the events of that evening.

The only draft since the Sabres decided to tank that would've been better to get 1st overall in '18 with Dahlin was the '15 draft where McDavid went 1st overall. Am not complaining about winning that one. (Not complaining about winning Power's lottery either, but there likely were better 1st overalls than in his year.) Hopefully the next time the Sabres end up in the top 3 of the draft is when they trade a stud that no longer fits into the big picture for a couple of #1's and one of them pops.

You'd need to hope for another Loaf goalie getting injured. Matt Murray is on TO's playoff roster.

IF the Sabres won the lottery and moved up to 3 (or if any of the teams between 12 and 16 won) presumably they'd stay at 3 (or their new draft position were it one of the other longshots that won) when the winner of the 2nd lottery gets chosen, right? So, the team that had been 2nd overall would then fall to 4 if neither of the bottom 2 teams wins that second lottery, right? One additional Q, if that team that wins the 2nd lottery is close enough to the 1st overall pick to get there would they get the 1st overall or just 2nd overall. Expecting it's just 2nd overall but don't know that for certain.

The Bills were bad and they had some absolute head scratchingly bad picks like Maybin. But a lot of their draft picks during the drought did pan out but they refused to pay market rate for them after their initial contracts so they either traded them for a pittance or simply let them walk. Not keeping any of your good players beyond their 1st contract is a great way to always have to refill the same holes you filled 3 years prior.

Interesting. Always figured it referred to the number of 40-ish divorcees in the area.