That Aud Smell

this is correct. whoever kick started it seems to have covered their tracks, or never left any to begin with. When the tennis match was unhelpfully announced as “canceled,” that did momentarily add fuel to the fire.

Better to blame the brokenness of human nature. Adam and Eve?

first class. thanks. the piece quoted above is especially helpful to my understanding of the moving parts.

Appreciate that. I will allow: The suddenness and ambiguity of the initial announcement, combined with what appeared to be credible information regarding the ICU being involved, followed by no reports or information** for a couple weeks, made this sort of thing inevitable. **There's some talk on that upthread; perhaps you could weigh in on the journalism ethics question I posed.

Jessica Pegula's match won't happen today. Most reports on Twitter say the match has been canceled without further explanation. Ugh. A 30-second look seems to reveal that (1) Jessica's was the last match of the day on her assigned court and (2) another match is also being canceled for the day. So this is presumably because the matches before them went long, and they ran out of time/daylight.

Let’s just hope that the Twitter rumours are untrue. 🙏

Twitter awash with rumours of the worst outcome imaginable.

Best of luck to Jessica Pegula in her opening match at Wimbledon today. I wasn't aware that she's become a top-10 ranked player in the world (for now) -- full marks to her. There's no doubting her work ethic in light of that. Insofar as her mother is concerned, I'd like to take it as a good sign that Jessica is in England competing rather than keeping a vigil back in the U.S. But who knows.

Mmm. There are several ways to skin a cat. The Drury/MacKinnon model isn’t the only way to lead, to demand and get people’s best. Pominville was never a leader, was never going to be a leader. He did well being led. No shame in that. Okposo is definitely a leader of men right now. He may not always have been. I think his health scare may have helped bring it out of him more. But I do get the kinder/gentler view of Okposo. Still: He’s transitional leadership. I’ll stay tuned to see who emerges as the next captain(s).

Sounds like MacKinnon led his team to a Cup with a style of leadership that harkens to Drury's days as a Sabre in 05-07. (Spoiler alert: By being an a*sshole -- but an a*shole with a purpose -- a singular purpose.) https://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/34143958/how-nathan-mackinnon-molded-colorado-avalanche-stanley-cup-champions

Housekeeping question: Do we usually establish an "offseason" thread?

i look forward to this kind of energy being part of the Sabres. (i think that's quinn and peterka.)

One of my main takeaways is that, if you have enough really really (really) good skaters, you can win the whole thing with goaltending that's just okay.

I wonder if the bad Tampa ice was harder on and worse for the old, worn down team than it was for the young fresher team.

Sometimes MacKinnon looks too fast (??). Then again, he got that puck right between the wickets. Leaky as hell.

Such an interesting case study. And I wonder if Tage would resist a push to get him signed for 6 or 7 years. Maybe he wants the Reinhart route - sign a short(er) deal for potentially a small discount on his AAV. Bet on himself. If he's open to a longer-term deal, I think an annual number in a ~$6.5M range would be fair for both sides.

I’m well aware. Hence the “double quotation marks.”

I dunno. Based on the look of Matt Pegula's "ice" hats ... it may be better to "stand back."

It reminded me of Kane's SC-winning goal - except Kane knew exactly where it was. Which in turn reminds me of this classic send-up.

The what now? I had been wondering if you'd drop in. I didn't necessarily expect you to drop an iconoclastic bomb when you did.

Sorry - I didn't mean to damn with faint praise. It's a perfectly decent pop (pop punk) song. My point was just that analyzing goal songs, etc. to death when the team stinks is futile. When the team is good, there will be songs sung and those songs will live forever.

Go, Avs. This tradition they have there now is proof positive that -- the quality of the song doesn't really matter -- if the team is successful, practically any good song can become the crowd's hype anthem.

if the sabres were to trade VO as part of the deal, kane would block nobody. who else is there on RW? tuch. he'd be aces on the 2nd line. perfect fit, imo. jack quinn can be sheltered on the "third" line. okposo can keep plugging away. anyone else i'm missing? this makes sense, generally. the more jazzed i become about this idea, the more i'm in favour of the sabres throwing the 16th pick in there. why the eff not. let's go. playoffs or bust.