5th line wingnutt

Thought about this myself. The 2013 draft is supposed to be good, too. We could trade most of the current core at the deadline (peak value) for draft picks and start over with a new core.

$3M to Ennis or thereabouts. $1M and change to Kaleta. Something to Brennan who cannot be sent down w/o waivers. Something for wiggle room, call up, trades.

Over 35 contracts can become problems. Anything over a 3 year deal can turn into an albatross. Girgerenko, assuming he signs, will have training camp to earn a tryout. Armia is not subject to the 9 game rule. My post notes that Armia looks like a next year kind of guy.

The draft has come and gone and I still do not believe the Sabres acquired anyone who will play for them this year (Grigorenko playing a few and getting sent back to juniors does not count). I hope Grigorenko proves me not just wrong but spectacularly wrong. Lines: 2a. Foligno-Ennis-Stafford 2b. Vanek-Hodgson-Evil and mysterious Right winger 2c. Leino-Roy-Ppoommiinnvviilleee (the spelling is for you LPF) 4. Gerbe- Adam-Tropp Ellis, Kaleta, and McCormick for injury fill in. Defense: Ehrhoff-Sulzer Myers-Sekera Regehr-Leopold Weber 7th, McNabb first call up. Goal: Miller and Enroth. Cap: After signing Kaleta and Ennis there is about $5 million to sign the mystery winger and leave a little breathing space for later maneuvering. The big question in this scenario is who should be the mystery winger? Here are some to consider. UFAs: Shane Doan being 35 does not thrill me, otherwise I like. P A Parenteau is intriguing, only 29, 67 points, -8 on a bad team, enough penalty minutes to qualify as feisty. Don’t know much about him, though. RFAs: (an RFA in the $5 million range costs 1 first, 1 second, and 1 third rounder). Next year’s draft is supposed to be very good so I could not really find one I liked enough to pay the price for. Kris Versteeg is interesting but maybe too small/not feisty enough. Jakub Voracek, is worth looking at. Prospects: Can we pry Joel Armia out of the Finnish elite league? He is not my ideal for the mystery winger (not sure he is physical enough), but if he is NHL ready he would be a salary cap bargoon on his entry level contract. He may have enough offense to take some heat off Vanek and create a true #1 line. (Evidently this is resolved and the answer is “wait ‘til next year”). Trades: Not interested because trading for a really good player will just create holes elsewhere. I will get much more interested if we do not get a good winger in free agency. Bottom Line: Stick with the first 3 lines until injury forces a change. Try the 3 different lines as units in different situations to see what works. Screw with the 4th line and the extras until the best combination emerges. Screw with the defense pairings until the best combinations emerge. Commit to playing Enroth in 25-30 games. The downside of this roster is still not enough grit, although getting the correct mystery winger could help a good bit.

Brennan has already been passed on the depth chart by McNabb. As a 4th year pro I think he must go through waivers to be sent down, and recall waivers coming back. Would they have signed Sulzer if they had any real faith in Brennan? Kaleta has never really developed. The referees are on to him. He probably gets more penalties than he draws. He is hurt a lot. I would rather have the roster space and $1M cap room. If Darcy can trade one or both more power to him, and I wish him luck.

Well...yeah, but "do the math" often means "think about it".

On current players/prospects… On Miller: Miller probably suffered a letdown after the Olympic year. It was clearly important to him. Last year he had a concussion. When he came back he was not the same. One cause of bad goals is lack of concentration. One symptom of concussions is lack of concentration. Do the math. On trading Miller: Well, OK, but Enroth is not a #1 guy, so where do we get one? On Stafford: Signed a big contract and suffered from fat-and-happy syndrome. He got it together at the end of the season. He needs a creative center, and he found one. He is capable of a 30-35 goal season with line mates like Ennis and Foligno. On trading Stafford: He just found line mates he can work with, and started scoring regularly, and you want to trade him? For what? On Roy: A marginal first line center, a good second line center, a great third line center. Roy was a second round pick, never expected to be great, and he is what he is. He was a third line guy until the infamous day we lost Drury and Briere. He was a consistent 60-70 point guy until 2010-2011 when he was our best player until he got hurt. He was on pace for an 82 point season. He suffered one of the worst injuries an ice skater can get, a torn muscle/tendon in his leg. Hellooo! Surgery, leg, torn muscle? Injuries like this often take a year to get completely better. He started playing a lot better towards the end of the year. Again, do the math. On trading Roy: Roy is a good value at $4M cap hit. He is healthy and in a contract year. Can we reasonably expect to trade him for someone with better cap value? On Meyers: Had his first serious injuries as a professional and suffered his first suspension. He needs to forget about this and start hurting opposing forwards. Tallinder definitely helped him his rookie year. He needs to be paired with a stay-at-home type. On trading Meyers: Meyers is our best overall defenseman. He still has upside. Even if he never reaches his upside he is still pretty good. Who can we trade him for that is better cap value? On the draft: Woo-Hoo! A potential elite center, another big center (a super Gaustad? [super Goose?]), and some other goodies. But none will make a big contribution this season. Better to let them develop slow and sure because this season is not our year to win the cup. I do not do a lot of trade fantasizing so I am assuming no big trades. Like everyone else I want an elite center, but I do not see us getting one this year and Grigorenko is in the pipeline. It is more realistic to build some really good depth and wear other teams down. UFAs not resigned: Kotalik, Morrisonn, Boyes, and Hecht. RFAs Kaleta and Brennan will get qualifying offers, a mistake IMO. I assume they will both accept. RFAs resigned: Ennis. Other RFAs in Rochester I do not much care.

Recently read Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi. It is a reworking of Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper, a Hugo nominated novel from 1962. It is an ecological/noble savage morality play with some characters being complicated and others a bit too good or evil. None the less it is a fun read as Scalzi is a good story teller. Scalzi also wrote the “Old Man’s War” trilogy which I liked a lot and would recommend to any sci-fi fan.

What you wrote is correct. None the less, there are a large group of people who self identify as either liberal or conservative. These books are about the differences between those two groups.

That is funny. I hope you "threw them off your porch." Not literally of course. Tell them not to come back, if they do, it is tresspass.

Yes it is, but it does not apply to privately owned discussion forums. Chz recently banned FireLindyRuffNow, did she violate his freedom of speech?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/hockey/nhl-salary-cap-to-be-temporarily-set-at-703-million/article2449267/?utm_medium=Feeds%3A%20RSS%2FAtom&utm_source=Home&utm_content=2449267 this will have an effect on our roster, and most other teams as well.

Saw Tom Wopat in the title role at the NC theatre's production of "The Music Man". He was surprisingly good with one glaring exception. He cannot dance. Even in scenes where his character is supposed to be one of the principal dancers he was hidden in the back. He can sing and act more than well enough for broadway musicals. I was disappointed that in the production he came to River City by train instead of using the General Lee.

With all due respect, your numbers are less than fully-assed. $2.5 trillion is part spending and part CBO WAG. $1.3 trillion covers both the Bush and Obama years. Where did the 40-45% come from? What do tax cuts and budgets have to do with spending?

OK, I am against most wars. Obama has had 3 years to end them. Mabbe he shoulda.

Bush has not been in office for more than 3 years. This is his fault? How?

My complaint is that the sabre space editor does not speeellll check. Or am I missing somethingggg.

"Conservative...but that conservative". What I was trying to get at is... How conservative is "too conservative"? etc., etc. Labels are easy to throw around.

But is the key word here.

How conservative is that conservative? And you admit you do not know. And why is any amount of conservative bad?

I agree about arguing past each other. It was one of the reasons for my two posts. You are correct that the sides disagree on the definition of things like equality. Sowell's book explores this at length. If both sides say they are for equality, but do not mean the same thing by "equality" do they really have the same values? Words are words, meanings are more elusive. Tell us more about "Policy Paradox".

I have been interested in the difference between liberals and conservatives since the mid 1970s. Up thread I recommended A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell. This book was very on-point about this very subject. Some folks understand that liberals and conservatives often argue past each other, they both just do not where the other guy is coming from. I think a careful reading of Sowell’s book would help in bridging the gap. Sowell’s thesis is that there are basically two visions of human nature, a constrained view, and an unconstrained view, and conservatives believe in the constrained vision and liberals in the unconstrained view. This is an oversimplification; there is a whole lot more here. The unconstrained view is sometimes called the blank slate theory. There is another book I came across lately that throws some light on this subject. The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. Haidt is a moral psychologist and his thesis is that different folks have different moral matrices (aka moral foundations) that lead them to different conclusions. His ideas are not inconsistent with Sowell. He and some others have a very interesting web site at www.yourmorals.org. There are many “tests” that measure your moral foundations.

Is being conservative bad? I know little about Flynn's politics, but I seem to remember that he did have an axe to grind. I read this book a long time ago and he does rake FDR over the coals. If you are really interested in something you owe it to yourself to get both sides of the story. I have read a good bit about FDR starting with the typical grade school and high school history texts that had FDR on a very tall pedestal. Reading something you disagree with builds character. Is it really off topic (in an 'off topic' thread no less) to suggest a book on a subject you expressed interest in? Anyhow, what is Stars Fell on Alabama about?

What changes would you like to see?

Bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn died the other day while on tour in Tokyo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3BEr19_LcY