That Aud Smell

on a privately operated message board dedicated to a pro sports team. lulz.

Or append “Deadline Day” to the title of this one.

I never wholly discount the role of race, but Kane also gives off vibes as a self-centered narcissistic brooding doosh. He’s definitely not standard issue hockey material. Did GMs similarly avoid Sean Avery?

Yeah - it's maddening to hear that as a Sabres fan, but, given that it's trade deadline day, there is NO WAY that isn't "information" planted from another GM. OTOH, I do think JBOTS' alleged opening asking price for Kane is going to be shown to have been foolishly over-pegged.

What a weirdly hostile post, qwk. I’ve encountered some apparent POS’s here — none of them have been mods. Makes me glad all over that I stayed out of the politics thread.

Duly noted. Buffalo’s proven more than capable of good and great atmosphere. I mean, we ain’t Vegas, but ... . I look forward to the return of such days and nights.

^ Yep. I’ve come to the conclusion that his is SDS’s fiefdom. There is no due process. The rules may be arbitrarily set and enforced. That’s how it is. Btw - Jer White at WGR has gone full-bore “not sticking to sports” on Twitter. I wonder how that’ll go. I also wonder if he may be charting a career path to AM talk radio more generally - a la Sandy Beach.

Hmmm.

HBD, broseph. Slainte’!

Jeeeebus.

Good stuff - especially this. I know it's not a good comparison, but I sometimes call to mind some lessons you can learn from watching top flight soccer from England, Europe (they're distinguished for the purposes of footy in a way I don't fully understand). Anyway -- there are games between really good clubs when one team will out-possess the other team like a mother. But sorta by design. And then the team that is conceding possession will plan to counter-attack in waves when opportunities are presented.

You're right that Corsi and Fenwick are proxies. Eventually, or maybe even already, they will have a means of measuring actual time of possession. There's an app for smart phones that SDS put me onto many moons ago. We used it for a month or two for one of my kid's soccer teams. It was simple, if also somewhat labor intensive to use. You just clicked one side of the screen or the other every time one team touched the ball. Or something like that. There were also rules for how to count balls out of bounds, etc. It was just U14 soccer (at a pretty decent level), but the app gave very clear views on how the team was doing with regard to possession, passing, etc. I'm not sure why a similar protocol can't be applied to ice hockey. I know it would be tricky because the game is so fast and fluid, but I think it could be done.

if they improved at any point, it wasn't enough or for long enough to get them out of the basement of the league's basic possession stats.

It’s not just you, no.

How’re the 5v5 stats comparatively?

Um, yeah. That's often always how risk works.

So good.

Missed th​at one. I definitely take the view that the only people truly deceiving themselves with regard to racism are those who deny that they are. It's like a 12-step program, man.

holy jesus. i need to schedule a poop and print the page to read that.

^ How does Lamar Jackson project, then, in terms of upside? At the risk of being ray-cess: Cam Newton? Cam Newton Lite? I say that because Jackson looks like he'll be a big fella who can chuck it from the pocket, isn't terribly accurate maybe, and can run like a mofo.

What risks? Well, the risks associated with falling flat on your face when you take off the training wheels and try to run with the big dogs. It's a pretty simple risk/benefit analysis: Do we play it safe® so that maybe we squeak out 93 points and sneak into the playoffs, or do we work to play a style that the top teams play and risk being exposed as a talent-poor and/or insufficiently-professional team?

There's something to this, though. The idea that Bylsma's vision/system had a high(er) floor and low ceiling of wins, success. The idea that Housley's vision/system has a low(er) floor and higher ceiling of wins, success. Now, mind you: I'm not sure whether Housley is capable of delivering on anything. But that was the idea, I think. It's not unlike a Bills fan saying they want to move on from 8 or 9 win teams and Tyrod Taylor, and see the team take a shot at becoming a team capable of hanging 11 or 12 wins. There are more risks associated with the latter path -- but more upside as well.

Then, like, what's even the point of a coach?

In theory: Bylsma’s ceiling may have been ~90 points. A better, more modern system would have no such ceiling. That’s the theory anyway.

What is life, even.