LTS

His defense was terrible in Game 4. Not sure any goalie was bailing them out.

I think using the phrase percentages was the easiest way to convey that the relative expense and revenues should align. For example, the Beauts don't play in KBC so their operating cost for the Arena is lower. They play at HarborCenter where the seating is proportionate to the number of fans they bring in. That of course is one of those major differences that drives the overall revenue. Each ownership situation is different, but if you look at the Beauts, the owners own the rink. There are costs associated with that rink that will be incurred regardless of who uses it. The question is can the Pegulas use the HarborCenter rink for another purpose that drives more revenue than the Beauts? This isn't the same for all owners, but it does change how the costs need to be allocated. There is the additional cost of "producing" the Beauts game (staffing concessions, ticket takers, etc.). There's no way you are going to pull in enough money from playing 8 games at HarborCenter to pay the women playing enough money. But at the same time, they are only playing 8 games there. Your first sentence is factually incorrect. There are people who care. As such, you are incorrect in saying "nobody cares". You probably mean, not enough people care, and that's absolutely true. The teams also have "real leagues" in that they play "real schedules" officiated by "real official" watched by "real fans" and played by "real players". As others have pointed out, if you are only there to watch the fastest, quickest, most athletic people on the planet, then you must only watch the top tier leagues. You must never watch high school, college, semi-pro, or minor league games of sport. Of course MLS is the top tier soccer league in the United States and it is barely successful despite it having male athletes. Sports is about watching people compete, at the levels they are supposed to compete. I appreciate sports for that. However, it's not about men or women, it's about whether that version of the sport can draw enough interest to support the salary level desired. It may be that at some point in time these sports do begin to draw enough, but it isn't today. Even the top professional sports had to grow their game. The problem that women's hockey will face specifically is that they are now competing against a far more complex field than the NHL, NFL, MLB, or NBA ever did. Today's viewership is drawn between not only sports, but other television programming, streaming video, streaming gamers, video games, etc. The amount of competition for money and eyeball time has increased exponentially and the amount of time or money to spend has not. It might even be said that the major sports could see a snap downturn in revenues in the near future as e-sports continues to rise. People already speak of major league sports basically becoming a corporate venue.

If you take a step back and really examine the situation, do you continue to believe that there is "the coach" out there based solely on either being the up and comer, or the re-tread, or the guy from another league? People talk about the "great coaches". Who are those "great coaches?" Every "great coach" has failed and continues to fail. I would argue that the "great coach" is not really a great coach but the right coach at the right time. I would define a great coach as a coach who can take ANY mediocre team and make them better. A great coach is one who can join a team and bring improvements to them immediately and then continue to keep them at a high level despite adversity in the roster. Great coaches should last longer than 10 years with a team. There are coaches who are bad. But there are a lot of coaches who are good enough to be the right coach at the right time. I'm not sure how many coaches are truly "great". A few years ago people were so upset about missing out on Babcock. He was the answer for the Sabres. Now, a few years later, people are waiting to see if he sticks in Toronto. Is he a great coach? Is a coach who wins 3 Cups with a single, very talented team, a great coach? They were probably the right coach at the right time. Because that coach, as soon as the roster stopped producing, was fired. He hadn't seen the Cup before that... will he this year in Florida? The up and comer might be the next great coach. Housley was widely lauded as an up and coming coach as well. The praise was higher than the criticism, to be certain. He flamed out here. The Sabres need the right coach. It probably won't be a "great coach".

It should be easy enough to look at both games and the percentages of how things break out and see if anything is out of line and fix that. But, if the percentages are in line or they are brought in line and the revenue is still not there then it's not a problem that boycotting would help. It's simply a need to market the game and grow it in its popularity so that more people want to see it more of the time. If the percentages are messed up then you can say it's not being equal for women and I think it's right to fix it. Otherwise, you have to play and pave the way for the next generation to benefit. The path of sports is such that the early trailblazers usually don't make the money that others in the future would make (even relatively speaking). It's the pain of being first. I'll be curious to follow this situation.

For those lamenting the Sabres game.. Keep in mind that the teams in the playoffs never played this way during the regular season, at least not on a routine basis. The level of intensity that goes into the game during the playoffs changes every team, every year. It's what makes the playoffs so much fun and the regular season, well, not as much fun.

You should enjoy it. You said "questioning" which is the act of raising the question, which implies that my action of questioning is silly. As such, you are implying that my actions are silly. You didn't say "it's a silly question" which would be different. But yeah, I made it personal. Use sunscreen, you are already a little orange.

You could rebut the point without telling me that I am silly for questioning it. I know you don't care, but it's what sets people off about you. I'm glad after all I wrote that's the point you wanted to debate. Congrats, I'll concede it and move on. Hooray for you.

Ahhh, where to start. There were a lot of "jokes" that just didn't need to be in there. No one needs commentary on Captain America's ass. We didn't need a FortNite reference. We don't need Lebowski Thor (although Stark's reference to him as Lebowski was classic). Thor was tiring in the movie and irrelevant. But, I think that's the point here. The movie had 3 main focus points. The closing of the story with Captain America, Iron-Man, and Black Widow. As such, the movie, overall, was going to focus on those three. It did so with what appeared to be pointless scenes. Captain America's therapy session - underscores his entire struggle. He's always telling people they need to move past things but as he said, he never could. In the end, he moved past it. Iron-Man/Tony Stark - always needed to make sure he left the world a better/safer place. His struggle was always "how" to do it. The scenes with his daughter set the path for his end. The conversation with his father sealed the deal. His father lamenting he was too wrapped up in things other than his family. In the end, Pepper tells him everyone will be okay and Tony can finally end his internal conflict. Black Widow is a tough one. Truthfully, if Barton is that which she loved most then what was with the whole Hulk romance angle? If Barton truly loved Natasha then how does he live his life out with his wife and kids when he's overburdened with the love of his life being dead? Perhaps we are to believe it was a different kind of love for each other? That aside, her moments on basically taking over for Fury were what set up her end. She's uncomfortable with being in that role and she's realized she's no path forward. When she dies, she dies. She can't have children. She's had no family other than the Avengers/SHIELD. The battle is outpacing her with the onslaught of other world creatures. So, yes, Captain Marvel was an afterthought, but she'll be a core component of the 4th phase of the MCU. Thor and Hulk will be the ones who carry the link between the two just as Iron-Man and Captain America did from 2 to 3. The next movies will likely really challenge people's loyalties because they will stop being about Earth and be more about the Universe. I'm sure there will be Earth angles thrown into the mix, but it's Asgardians, Guardians of the Galaxy, Hulk, and Captain Marvel. I'm sure you'll get some Earth stories with Hulk, Spider-Man, the new Captain America (Falcon), etc. I won't touch on the time travel aspects. I think there are some nuances that are not fully played out yet. My guess is that the movies may deal with repairing of the fractures in the time continuum. Keep in mind that Loki from 2004 used the tesseract to disappear. So, while he was killed in Infinity War, he prior self has forked the timeline at the Battle of New York. The tesseract that Captain America and Stark retrieve is from 1970. So, in theory, that's where Captain America returned the tesseract they stole. So, there's a timeline fork (according to their time travel rules) that occurred with Loki. One comment on the Time Stone. The time stone allows travel forward and backward along a given time thread. Sort of like a DVR. It clearly allows the person who knows how to wield it to basically see all the options along any number of "choose your own adventure" paths, but there is no indication that it allows people to jump between them. Just that they can see how time plays out. So, it's not necessarily possible to use the time zone to simply jump around in time. Keep in mind in Dr. Strange he uses the time stone like a DVR to replay the same moments over and over again to get a different outcome. He basically stops time on that timeline and repeats it. This would be different then moving back in the timeline while time continues to move forward still creating new events. Overall, I think the value of the movie will hopefully be increased with what comes next. It was still entertaining, but there were some humor parts that I felt detracted from the film.

Your backup career choice was librarian, wasn't it? ?

The Blues did two things. They fired Mike Yeo and they brought in Binnington. Binnington proceeded to lead the league in GAA at 1.89 and was 4th in SV% at .927. His record was 24-5-0-1. They were expected to be a good team who wasn't. If Binnington doesn't play like he does, they don't sniff the playoffs. He provided the spark and the fuel that powered them to the playoffs. I'm not sure why the credit would go anywhere but to him. For all the talent in the world, they were sitting 30th in the league when Binnington came in.

At this point, the Sabres have an offer on the table. They've basically agreed that Skinner can go out and see if he can get something better. I'm sure he'll bring that deal back to the Sabres for right of first refusal, so to speak. If it's too rich, he'll walk and that's the right call. Congratulations on Skinner getting the good deal then. If no one wants to pony up the dollars, then he'll take the deal the Sabres want. I am sure this all happens before the signing period is even started.

And be that as it may.. Binnington is almost the sole reason the Blues succeeded this year. That kind of impact can't go unrewarded. Dahlin, for all his talent, didn't get the Sabres into the playoffs or even close sadly. Good to get in the final 3. All deserving players.

Ahhh.. thanks.

I'll bet heavily that the league looks to allow video review on any incident that results in an injury so the officials can properly assess the incident and make the right call. It actually makes more sense than having a video review for offsides. When injuries occur as a result of an infraction I think it's important that the game be slowed down to see if it was intentional or not. In my view it would have taken one review of this incident to assess a 2 min cross check and move on.

It's easier to say that Curtisp5286, that's for sure. ? Why?

Relax. UPL will be OKKKKKK

He certainly seems to have a heckuva personality. I'm not much of a football guy, but his walk up seemed to demonstrate that he's not too full of himself.

Oh.. I need to find a video of that.

They made a huge mistake with that signing. He could have easily been flipped for some help on the blue line and they'd likely still be playing right now. Instead they are saddled with his contract while trying to fit in Marner and others. His lack of production makes it a hard trade. They'd likely have to bundle something else in just to get him gone (or accept a lot less than they would have received had they traded him last fall).

Agreed. Like I said, without it being close you just start tossing everyone. The message gets sent real quick. Refs can lock a game down fast if they want to.

Well, they could call a major without a match, but you can't call a match without a major. Since they ejected him I was going straight to that and it had to be the criteria they were using as they did eject him. It's plausible. I'm part of an ice hockey referee group and this call was debated from a lot of angles. All in all, the general consensus is that there's no way you get to major penalty, let alone a match. They debated the optics of the bleeding and the potential ensuing escalation as well. The benches would each get a talking to after the penalty call was made and everyone would understand their view. If the Sharks persisted to seek out "justice" the officials would definitely start calling things tight in which case San Jose spend a lot of time short handed. If the game gets close and the escalation occurs then you usually just utter the phrase "The next time I'm sending one of you." In fact, I think I heard that mentioned on a broadcast recently. It's a common thing to say. In a tight game no one wants to be the guy who gives the opponent the power play. If you take both then they know it's a wash so it doesn't deter. ------------------------------- The Canes showed some serious fight. The Caps were just not "on" enough. And.. Justin Williams. Seriously.

Isn't Sullivan the HC here?

How are they not comparable? Both are related 100% to actions of officials blowing a call that lead to an extremely favorable outcome for the opposing team. And if the call were a minor penalty there would have been 1 PP goal scored and that would be that. There's no reasonable excuse for the refs call last night except that someone was thinking "Jesus christ, the captain is bleeding from the head on the ice and we missed something so we better call something." They didn't think there was a cross-check at all (let alone one to the face) as was indicated by no referee signalling a penalty. It stinks to high hell of 100% immediate revisionist history once the OUTCOME of the play was realized. Regardless of all of that. It's a blown call by an official that leads to an extremely favorable outcome for the opposing team. They are comparable. I've coached hockey. I've called timeout before and watched as nothing changed whatsoever. Keep in mind, you call the timeout and you've given the other team carte blanche to squeeze that blue line or interfere with the goaltender. One missed call by an official and a goal is scored and there's no chance for Vegas to review it. It's not like there wasn't some precedent for these officials to screw up a call, right? ?

Really too good not to share this.

I'd rather have Laviolette... and I don't want Laviolette at all. I'd rather keep Housley. If they hire Martin all I will be able to think is, "Well, it wasn't Mike Yeo."