That Aud Smell

And that play was audacious.

That play wasn’t lazy; it was ambitious.

Echoing what was said upthread: Can’t recall the Sabres looking this good in a long (long) time.

And now 40 bails them out, a bit.

Holy sh1tballs

"Sh1t happens, life's tough, get used to it" has its place when someone is dealing with the arbitrary nature of the universe. A rough diagnosis. A job is lost through a merger. A hot water tank goes right before family's coming to visit. It has no place when the issue at hand arises from active bigotry or affirmative acts borne of hate.

I don't think the fall-out from being made the object of your parents' bigoted rejection is the place to learn lessons about how life is filled with tough choices. I would also dispute the idea that a college athlete's desire to maintain NCAA eligibility, and have a place to live and food to eat, is "having it all." Fortunately, the NCAA saw its way clear to figuring out a way to make this work.

I am well familiar with it - yes. That often holds true in small(er) sample sizes.

I know. I KNOW.

I peeked at our basic advanced metrics. We’re hovering around 20th in the league on Corsi/Fenwick. Our PDO’s pretty high - top 10, iirc. So, we’re a developing team that’s had some good luck of late, yeah? I mean, I’m good with that. I just want to have a fair understanding of who and what the team is.

And the article details the regrettable odyssey with the NCAA and its member institution in some detail. Including: “Yet now the NCAA may force her to choose between accepting that financial help and maintaining her eligibility to participate in the sport she loves.” The article also appears to have been updated. It didn’t have a rosy ending when I first read it. Also, the article, even as updated (maybe just the headline?), concludes as follows: “Whether she will be abandoned in the end by her school and the NCAA remains to be seen.”

The Tweet states: “So far they have told her to choose donations or eligibility.”

Easy, Grace. (I didn’t even hit you with an ambiguous .gif!) I’m legitimately confused. I’d heard and read that the NCAA was initially like “too bad, so sad” about her situation. I inferred that they’d changed course.

What. A. Game.

That pass from Dahlin was *filthy*.

Sometimes a picture’s worth a thousand words, bruh. It sounds to me as though her participation with that cross country team is hugely important. To her. Right now. You quoted what came out very recently. Prior to that, there were weeks and months when they were saying something else.

/spit take. (Um, that’s maybe not quite what I meant.)

These guys are ... good? For sure: I am drunk.

Having the college honour the scholarship would not address one of her most pressing concerns: Her need to be eligible for cross country. It sounds like that team is her principal support network. I won't pretend to know the machinations of NCAA enforcement. I know enough to know that their rules and regs are cumbersome and Byzantine, and those who enforce them often come at issues in the same spirit. There's a creative solution to be had there. I hope they find it.

Between being a Domer and spurning the Sabres, sure -- fook that guy.

I heard about that story a little while ago -- I actually gave to her Go Fund Me before it was shut down (by which time it'd raised over $25,000). The NCAA stuff is so discouraging, but not really that surprising given how ... complicated NCAA regulations are and how tone deaf the enforcement people can be. It's the stuff with the young lady's parents that just kills me. I think that's probably the issue. I wonder if there's some way in which the money could be transferred and re-papered such that it could be in compliance and non-precedential.

Bylsma sighting. Huh.

The going gets no easier, but I think that's just how this team likes it. Maybe. ... We'll see! Let's go, Buffalo!

He was a very incomplete player, but, as far as I recall, he always played like a runaway freight train.