Eleven

Yessir but not for me. Too much to do tomorrow. Goodnight all!

Hmmmm on that goal. If only it were a Cup winning goal...

Right? It's weird. Now that Las Vegas is up in the third, maybe we'll see some urgency.

I don't think I ever have seen two teams skate more slowly and play with less urgency in a semi-final before. It's like they're both treating it like a game in November. Maybe the third will be different, but this is NOT NHL semi-final playoff hockey.

Yes but no one waxes nostalgic about McDonalds the way people do about Mighty Taco.

DIdn't they also deal w/ injuries during the regular season--in other words, they may have been seeded higher?

I've been saying it, too. For some reason, goaltending became fungible in a lot of fans' minds right before the Miller trade. Like it didn't matter anymore. Good playoff teams always have great goaltending. It might be a good goaltender who gets hot, or it might be the greatest of all time like Hasek, or a simply excellent one like Miller, but a good playoff team needs it. On the blueline, the Sabres are fortunate to need only a couple of pieces because there are two HOF possibilities back there already. GO GET THE D MEN AND G. As for Shanadubas, well, they didn't come up with anything on the back end that is meaningful except for an injured goaltender and a defenseman who can't spell his own last name correctly. And McCabe, whom I always will love.

Is it him, though? Or Shanahan? This is the problem when one adds unnecessary levels of management. Who does the buck stop with?

Steve, no offense, but a jazz festival hosted by the whitest people on the planet isn't, umm, inspiring me to international travel. There are other reasons to go to Scotland--and I'm thinking about northern England for August, which would put me just a short ride away--but jazz?

Why Pittsburgh? From what I see, he'd be a good GM if there wasn't a president overriding him.

Of course.

It should be wine or cocktails, not beer, for jazz.

I don't know what those are and I think I'm going to keep it that way.

Who does THAT?! I won't even hit the showers without wearing slides.

Not much of an issue now the TV audience sees virtual ads.

I'd have zero interest in watching Sabres players compete and get hurt in a meaningless mid-season tournament. The Olympics would be nice. That means something. Your idea, while creative, is not something in which I would want NHL players involved.

France, Norway, and every other country I mentioned above, have the opportunity to grow the game. They choose not to, because they prioritize other sports (France, soccer and rugby, and maybe even basketball, for example) and that's ok. They have regular tournaments where the winners ascend to the IIHF tournament, and where the losers play to move up the next time. It's not a question of opportunity. It is a question of how many.

They do have such a tournament--or at least used to. It seems that the gate is wider than it had been.

I just noticed how large the tournament field is...16?! That's too many teams. @matter2003 has a point here. They must play 7 group games before playoffs! There are MUCH more prestigious tournaments in sports (the World Cup, Olympic hockey, etc.) with much less preliminary action. If they're doing 16 teams, there should be 4 groups. Ideally it would be 12 teams (groups of 4) or 10 (groups of 5) with wild cards. Even the winners of Wimbledon have to play only 7 matches; the NCAA tournament, 6 or 7, etc. Out of Austria, Denmark, Kazakhstan, Switzerland, Hungary, Latvia, Norway, and France, only 4 should be in this tournament.

I've seen plenty of people with paper signs that they hold up, though. They just don't hold them up during play. Seems they usually allow that stuff in, which is why I'm wondering if it was about the stick.

Yeah that's not cool. I rarely care about the Amerks. To me, they're here to serve the Sabres and for little else (until this time of year). I'm about as bandwagon as it gets. I'll bet there are a lot of Buffalo-based Sabres fans (not necessarily on this board) who are the same way. Meanwhile, there are a lot of Rochester fans who are Amerks fans in their own right and who deserve to have the game close to them.

What was the reason? Someone could take the stick and use it as a weapon?

So it's on to "Series T"? https://theahl.com/stats/playoffs/80

Three, not even counting the baseball stuff.

If Hannah is in it, I'll watch it.