shrader

There's nothing fantastic about this Friday. In a follow up to my Thursday post, my dad fell again today and fractured his hip. 69 is way too young for this crap. Sorry for threadjacking but I have to say it somewhere and it's not Thursday anymore.

Congratulations Josie, you have now qualified to be drafted by the Calgary Flames.

The aging expert has spoken. Listen to the man, derrico. He learned all of this directly from Socrates himself.

Happy birthday. Did you get the walker I sent you?

Come one, everyone has dabbled in liquid chromatography and mass spec at some point in their lives. I was into that stuff right up through 7th grade until I discovered nuclear particle physics.

Does Babcock like donuts? If so, there's no way he'll go to Toronto where Phil Kessel will constantly be stealing them.

You think most teams are sneaking in after the balls have been measured to alter them? Sure they all play games of some sort, but I doubt many go that far. Of course, since every QB likes them a little different, there's going to be that guy who likes the PSI right in the middle of the range and don't have to mess around at all. The real issue though begins when you go that extra yard to get what you want, get caught, deny it, then blame the league for it. That's where things start to look really bad.

Let us know when you get to the argument over what exactly a magic number is. That was riveting stuff.

Saying anything about Babcock right now would be considered tampering.

On that note, I can't remember the last time I actually saw that called.

If you want psychological, why don't you just tell Brady you deflated the balls as opposed to actually doing it?

I've been starting to get emails lately from recruiters, stuff about how they have my resume on file. I haven't posted anything online for at least 5 years, so it's funny when these things periodically pop up out of nowhere. It's not insurance stuff, but they do typically take one word from the resume and tie the oddest positions into it, mostly project coordinator stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with anything I've ever done.

Calgary and Minnesota are the only teams that can improve our Islander draft pick by winning this round, right? It's looking like that is pretty much locked in at this point.

Intimidation by calf. Your kid will rule the playground.

Exactly, if there isn't something to be gained from it, the rule wouldn't exist and this guy wouldn't have gone all mission impossible to lower the PSI.

Token fine for Belichick too? I don't think he had much of a role at all in this, but ultimately he's the guy who is responsible for what goes on within that organization.

Thanks to last year, the league is at a point where they are going to do as much as they can to appeal to the public opinion. That's pretty obvious already with the much larger suspensions they've been handing out lately. No matter how full of themselves the people of Boston are, the majority of the public is going to want a suspension here. Just look at how they've handled this one already. They released the report and are sitting back to see how people respond. Haven't they usually released the punishment concurrently with these type of report in the past?

Parkinson's is a bitch. My dad face planted on his driveway yesterday while outside with my niece. The aftermath of that is not the kind of stuff a 3 year old needs to see. My brother has to be sick of the hospital because this was his third trip there in three weeks (granted the first was the birth of his daughter). I'm pretty sure they gave him the Norm Peterson treatment when we walked into the lobby.

I think it might actually draw even more eyes to that game if he is suspended. But let's not kid ourselves. The league is such a cash cow and people are going to watch regardless of what happens with Brady. Didn't ratings actually go up after all the issues of last summer?

Especially since the whole thing makes it very clear that this wasn't just a one time thing. I don't know if they ever got to that point with spygate (thanks in part to the league not being very open about it). Tom's been messing with balls for quite a while and these texts make that very clear.

The text messages are gold Jerry, gold. Plenty of laughs to go around there.

Ok, a different kind of contract. He probably gets a per appearance contract of some sort as opposed to one for daily work. So what I'm talking about is the typical front office staff, coaches, GMs, hockey ops people, etc...

I'd imagine "anthem singer" is not a contracted position.

The name sucks though. I'm not sure that will ever be one that pops into my mind when I want to look for salary cap stuff. It's far too generic.

July 1 is new year's day on the NHL calendar. I'd imagine that anyone under a contract with the organization would have the same expiration date.