LTS

So you only get 2 games with the Sabres commentators unless you choose to only listen to the game and the game against Boston you have to suffer the biggest jackwad in hockey announcing... Only 1 MSG produced game and we wonder why MSG sucks so bad at broadcasting hockey.

I'd put him on the team.. just for that photo.

Going to see Peter Gabriel tonight in Buffalo. Wanted to head in early but had meetings. All meetings have now been canceled (not of my own doing). Yep. This is my kind of Friday.

Well... great. This is going to get confusing. 🙂 Glad you came back.

My expectations for the team are to make the playoffs or it's a failed season. Now, if they don't am I going to get up on a soapbox and complain about how much they suck and infer I will not longer be a fan? Not a chance. In the end it's still hockey and just a sport. However, as a fan, I have expectations. They will be met or not be met. Bottom line, any sports is merely entertainment and while it can add value to my life when things go well I don't let it take value from my life if they don't. I might not get as much value but in no way am I letting a sports team make my life miserable. I have enough other things going on in life attempting to do so... things that have far more immediate impact that a W/L record.

I think this just speaks to an issue that many forums face. The balance of new topics versus combined conversations. As was mentioned up the thread. The new topic projecting each players 2023-24 output works in much the same way. There are a variety of topics that tend to proliferate out into new threads. Overall, I don't think it's much of an issue but I still maintain a function to "Ignore topic" would be fantastic to have. This makes it easier to flag those conversations you are not interested in. Even cooler could be the ability to ignore topic with <flag>, so that you could just say I don't want to see threads flagged "prospects" for example. A lot of administrative overhead.. and certainly takes governance.. until then I think it's just BAU.

I would imagine it would really depend on how the question was asked, etc. right? If I explained what I was doing and allowed people to volunteer to share photos it would be different then demanding it. And frankly.. I said it early on. If anyone was to demand I share my phone I would tell them to F off. Feel free to fire me and let's see where that goes in the courts. As I said above.. "Turn on Airplay and share your phone" the answer is No.. we're done here. Every person needs to have that willpower. As for the bolded, this isn't so much a Babcock thing.. but I would advise people that if there is information you are not comfortable sharing with the public your phone is one of the last places it should be. I know people view them as "personal" devices.. but they aren't.. not even close.

I definitely read the whole thing. I think anyone who puts that much effort and thought into something should be rewarded with people reading it. I was wondering how many on here would not read the whole thing. Today's TL;DR society is painful. I'm not implicating you, although you willingly admit to tapping out. But as a culture we tend to not want to read longer commentary and just want things distilled down. Unfortunately that often leads to incomplete pictures and understanding. My bottom line on Trotter? Nothing to do with his lawsuit, but if you think working for the league will allow you to report freely on the league (his employer) he really needed a wake up call. His efforts would be far better rewarded being outside of that control.

This is an excellent point. The Sabres forwards and in many cases were out of position in the defensive zone. Many times I watched Tuch or Thompson overcommit. I watched Cozens not recognizing the changing coverage of the ice. Ideally you don't want players out of position (duh?) but a player who has a tendency to play out of position will cause other players to try and compensate and they won't always agree in how that should be done... thus you get 1,2, or 3 additional players out of position.. and open ice.. and goals scored against you. The Sabres have to tighten up the coverage and discipline in their zone.. no single player can resolve that.

Was it though? I think people can choose to believe it might be true or might not be true.. but did they it was not true or just unlikely? It didn't read that way to me. I think questioning the validity of the claim it was said should be allowed just as claiming it was said is allowed. The only thing that matters is the truth. But, you've associated their questioning with political ideology. I'm not entirely certain how that fits unless you are insinuating that people of a certain political party are racist, by definition. I'm quite certain it's not true because I know members of multiple political parties who are not (not high ranking, but it means it's not an absolute). So, if you are casting allegations of political leanings and therefore implying associated racism, are you not also engaging in the same behavior your chastising others for? This is some good information. This is a good clarification. If it's a meeting of 40 NFL employees, and the NFL is in the lawsuit, then anyone who wants to keep their job is not going to speak up publicly at this time. Employees can answer to the investigators, but speaking out on a corporate lawsuit to the public while you are an employee is most assuredly going to end up in you being fired. And yet both statements are absolutely ignorant. Hopefully they hire the people who investigate Gruden. That seemed to unearth all kinds of stuff. If the reports are credible or if they are true? Credible is a subjective measure. Just curious more than anything. If the statements are true I'd 100% remove myself from involvement with all things Pegula until he was removed. If the statements are proven true I would hope that players would 100% refuse to play until he was gone.. and that's from ALL his sports franchises. If I worked for the organizations and it were proven true I would provide just enough time for him to announce he's leaving and that replacement ownership will be sought after. If it didn't happen soon enough, I would leave. No way in hell I would work for a known racist. Overall, the best bet in this thread is to not opine on the validity or lackthereof regarding the complaint. Racism is an emotional topic (as it should be) and speculation on what is true or not will more often than not lead to regrettable interactions. It's one thing to get fired up over facts, quite another to begin casting aspersions over speculation. I think we all agree that we don't know the truth, but we want to know. That's the key here. I want to know.

I am not familiar with this Trotter complaint against the NFL. Never heard of it. Disgusting comments without a doubt. Naturally need to determine if they were actually said.

How does a player not tell him to F off?

But why? Did I miss something?

Yep. Although I would highly recommend subbing to F1 TV. $80 a year.. all races. You miss out on the SkySports pre-race/qualifying shows but you can use their broadcast during races and qualifying. Best value in sports streaming in my opinion.

In the loosely written way, it could be construed that one team offered more term, less money.. and another offered more money, less term. So, the Sabres hit the sweet spot. Now, if he was offered more money and more term and still came to Buffalo for the reasons mentioned (up and coming team, Granato) then excellent! He's not a rookie. We've had the luxury of seeing him play against the Sabres numerous times. I think there's a reasonable expectation to be made. Contract to the Ristolainen situation. Did any of us ignore his play on the Sabres in predicting that he would suck for the Flyers? Nope.. we all knew.

What color blue? 😉 Love the black and reds... just like the Sabres are lucky enough to have had two Hall of Fame broadcasters in their short tenure in hockey... they've also managed to have two of the best uniforms..

ESPN content can be streamed from ESPN+ but it does not mean it will not ask you to authenticate that your credentials from an existing live TV ESPN enabled account (ie. Spectrum, Fubo, DirecTV, etc.) They also talk about the games being on the ABC app, still it could require authentication. Overall Spectrum appears to be following through with the line in the sand they alluded to a few years ago. Spectrum has been preparing to not offer television services and instead focus on delivering Internet only. ESPN/Disney are preparing for the inevitable shift as well. The NFL will push Disney to air its games because it is contractually obligated to do so. They will not allow Disney to use a carriage agreement as an excuse. This is what I suspect is causing the alternate broadcast channels and methods to be deployed. I am very happy Spectrum is taking this stance. I sincerely hope they stick to their plan and don't cave. The market needs a shake up and this certainly has all the potential to do it.

https://13wham.com/sports/buffalo-bills/bills-vs-jets-game-on-13wham-abc-monday-night#

Yes, 48 hours later. But to me the purpose of something being live is to watch it when it happens. Once I know the score and see 84 social media updates, etc. the purpose of watching is gone. You really won't save money. In the end time based services all work on contracts with the content producers and those contracts aren't going to be much different from one service provider to another. The service provider differentiators all boil down to the packages of channels they carry. For Sling they broke it up into two packages and NONE of them have local channels. For Fubo they do not carry Turner networks. It's all about finding the provider that has the right package. Of course the days of service providers are coming to an end with ESPN launching their standalone service soon. I am sure they are negotiating a very short contract with Spectrum or more expensive for longer term. ESPN is rumored to be launching standalone in 2024 I believe.

Many beers are... But so is bourbon... sooo

It most assuredly was not unlocked when I jumped in here around 11am yesterday to complain about uncovering a yellow jackets nest while I was working on my deck. Fantastic getting one inside my shirt and getting bit 3 times... Also.. refrigerator shopping.. I'd like to find one refrigerator where there weren't so many reviews stating massive failures. It's like the technology that we've had forever is suddenly hard to figure out. (I know, cheap materials, over engineering, etc.) So.. at least I got to complain on Friday...

The antenna.. forgot about that. Although that may soon be a thing of the past as well.. with ATSC 3.0. That said, for us "in town" folks.. we are screwed. ESPN+ is not a viable option for most games. I didn't think they were ever free. I suppose I could go convert my TVs to Roku.. or at least one of them. That said, I've heard nasty things about Spectrum streaming quality. Welcome to the programming fee wars! These are always done to coincide with the start of something important (college football) and all done to put the pressure on the carriers to accept higher carriage fees. This all comes down to you, the consumer, paying more for television. A minor point though is that no one is blacking anyone out. The carriage agreement expired and so Spectrum is no longer licensed to carry the channels.

The event was relevant enough for you to post about it, even if you wanted to throw shade. I find it pretty cool that they put a volleyball court on the football field, held a match, and got 92,003 people to attend to set the world record for attendance at a women's sporting event. People were partying in the lots before the match, I am sure it was a cool atmosphere. I can only imagine the energy during the event. https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/38294591/nebraska-volleyball-sets-world-record-attendance-women-sporting-event https://journalstar.com/sports/huskers/volleyball/nebraska-volleyball-players-enter-stadium-via-tunnel-walk/video_ce11fabe-5243-5b96-8a7e-d52af526ff9d.html What an amazing opportunity for those women to experience an intro like football players get. 92,003 fans, regardless of whether they were only there to say they were there were exposed to a women's sport that routinely gets little fanfare. I don't see a negative in any of this... whether the corn fields were cleared or not. Oh.. and I'll add that my teenage daughter who plays volleyball found it pretty inspiring.

Using Google Maps measure distance.. Rough perimeter of United Center is 1724 feet, KBC is 1458. I can't find height measurements for KBC. United Center is 140' tall. Many people love the big, obnoxious scoreboards. It's the trend, that's for sure. KBC size.. let's see. Google perimeter checks below. Nothing scientific. TD Garden: 1575' Bridgestone: 2283' Amelie: 1664' Little Caesar's: 1778' Canadian Tier Centre: 1381' (a smaller arena!) Bell Centre: 1650' The building just is not that big. Which is what causes cramped walkways and seating.

Who are unplugged people? Are the complaints without merit? It seems fair to complain about the NHL breaking up coverage the way they do. Pretty sure last year the TNT games that were broadcast on MSG in the local Buffalo market excluded Rochester. No problem, I'll get ESPN+! Oh.. for ESPN+, Rochester is in the local Buffalo market. A quick run through in my head.. a Spectrum intro plan would be my best plan to get ALL the games. That would be $59.99 for MSG/TNT/ESPN (12 mos. intro) + $20 local broadcast surcharge (ABC) + whatever ESPN+ costs (I have Disney + Bundle so I pay $16.99. That puts me at $96.99 plus whatever other hidden fees Spectrum wants to lump in. Oh.. and their app is not on FIrestick, so I have to hope my TV can get the Spectrum app or I have to shell out for cable box. All other courses of action are easily over $100 per month. Basically we're talking $700+ to see all Sabres games... the pain of living in market. But the out of market won't be that much cheaper. I'm only going to see the MSG+ and ESPN+/Hulu games I presume. That's most of the games for $47 per month or so. Basically half the cost to get the vast majority of the games. Meanwhile I pay $80/year and I get every F1/F2/F3 race and more. Interesting...