qwksndmonster

Damn! I was third behind SDS.

Happy new year! I call second post of the new year behind Robviously.

Not the hockey related stuff, the message board war stuff.

Drinking with some friends because I got stood up by my brother. Happy 2016 everybody! Don't end up like Wildcard, Josie, or Blue. Be smart instead. Unlike them (dummies). They're dumb.

Watching Eichel and Samson is indeed reaping what we sow. Sew. Sowed. The team wasn't going to be ultra competitive this year but you can't act like coaching has nothing to do with us not being better. As for your observation on the tank supporters, I haven't seen that pattern at all. Plenty of people are upset about where the Sabres are, leave the tank in the past.

Larsson, Kane, and whoever got good zone time on their shift with 3 mins left. Too bad they never once passed it back to Risto at the point. I think that's a problem with our offense in general 5 on 5: It doesn't incorporate the d-men at all. The Islanders forwards regularly drop it to their defense after gaining the zone and it buys them heaps of space to set up the offense. We just dump it in and our forwards play a 3 man game. Frustrating loss. Getting robbed in the 1st period was brutal. The power play goal was gorgeous. I celebrated harder for that one than any goal in the last 3 years. Happy 2016 y'all.

Was anybody expecting Foligno to score there? Me neither.

I'm glad somebody mentioned it. He's been good in the #6 role lately.

On that play where Eichel passed it back to Kane on the point, WTF was Kane doing? No offensive instincts whatsoever.

That's not what it looks like to me at all. I see a structured team that isn't optimized.

Girgensons looked so much better on Eichel's wing. His game wasn't much different, except that his possession was being fed to Eichel instead of Larsson. Eich and Zemgus created space for one another incredibly well. Why did it take so long for HD to try this? Reinhart has been in a little slump these past 3 games. He's still positionally sound, but he's not asserting himself or finishing. Kane has been consistently meh to my eye. His vision is average at best, and his shot isn't good enough to make up for it. Maybe it is, but he doesn't shoot from the dangerous areas often enough to know. McCabe and Bogosian have been mostly good. They're still good for a couple brainfarts per game, but I'm hopeful that those will go away as they play together longer. As for last night's game, we played well. The Caps are incredibly dangerous and we came close plenty of times.

Bylsma pros: We match up well on the road, and we're tough to play against. The goalie rotation has been handled very well. Cons: Last change at home doesn't seem to gain us any tactical advantage. Eichel was leaned on too hard consistently despite playing terribly for an extended stretch. Line combinations have been subjected to similar inflexibility. Like Blue, my instinct seems to be Bylsma's last resort. The bottom line is that Bylsma is a pretty good coach, but hasn't displayed any high end awareness or tactics.

I'm going up to Boston on Saturday to see some old friends. On NYE, my brother and I are going to play a bunch of Shadows of The Empire. I've been jonesing to play this old N64 game ever since I saw the new Star Wars. Happy New Years, all.

I saw a couple people mentioning Rian Johnson up-thread. Dude is a fantastic director. He made Brick and The Brothers Bloom, two excellent movies. He also made Looper which I haven't seen. He directed Ozymandias and Fly, two of my top 5 Breaking Bad episodes. (Also directed season 5 episode 4 "Fifty One") He's much more visually interesting than JJ, to my eye.

Instead of being (upper body), Latta's injury should be (punchisized face).

I'm watching the Caps-Habs game from a couple days ago. Justin Williams and TJ Oshie are good additions, but Kuznetzov is the guy that makes me think their forward corps can do more damage in the playoffs than they ever have with Ovi. (Since Ovi came into the league, I should say) Can you imagine what that roster would look like if they hadn't traded Forsberg for Erat? Yikes what a bad trade.

Wings, beers, and old friends in town while I watch the game tonight. :beer:

Last of us is another game that really wants to be a movie. The difference between LoU and the many failures that came before it is that the developers actually knew how to make a good movie. The gameplay was okay, but the story and setting were the fun parts.

Seabrook has been playing almost equal time with Svedberg, Van Riemsdyk, and Hjalmarsson this year. I don't remember the pairings during the playoffs last year, I just remember seeing a lot of Hjalmarsson, Keith, and Seabrook.

Good call. I am only familiar with Niskanen and Carlson, so I'm very interested in watching their D corps tonight.

Tom Wilson is hard to play against and is a real prick. Never been too impressed with his game outside of that, though.

Some GMs have no vision. I think I'll be watching this one live tonight, so that's fun. I hope we get another strong game from Eichel.

Starkiller is the name of Vader's (elsewise nonexistant) apprentice from the Force Unleashed video game. It was already a dumbname that got re-used in the movie. Laaaame.

Capitals lines: 8-Alex Ovechkin 19-Nicklas Backstrom 77-TJ Oshie 90-Marcus Johansson 92-Evgeny Kuznetsov 14-Justin Williams 25-Jason Chimera 83-Jason Beagle 43-Tom Wilson 21-Brooks Laich 46-Michael Latta 65-Andre Burakovsky D pairings: 88-Nate Schmidt 74-John Carlson 27-Karl Alzner 2-Matt Niskanen 9-Dmitri Orlov 4-Taylor Chorney Elephant people: 70-Braden Holtby 31-Philip Grubauer

Oh what the flying .