IKnowPhysics

Among many reasons I'm keeping an eye on opportunities to return home. The decision today marks a significantly right decision by city leadership, a welcome sign of continued improvement after so many decades of significantly wrong decisions. I look forward to playing and watching games, and eating and drinking at the restaurants there.

I'll throw a bone to the RuffHataz. If Buffalo lands Doan, but fails to make the playoffs again, we might end up in a good position to release Lindy and attract Dave Tippett, whose contract expires after this season. Tippett, of course, won the Jack Adams in 2010 and has gotten his teams to the playoffs 11 out of the 12 seasons he's been a head coach (Los Angeles, Dallas, Phoenix). The realistic counterargument is that Pegula/Black pushed the reset button on evaluating Ruff's performance when they signed on, and they may want to evaluate him for more than two years before firing him. Ruff's contract length is still largely unknown.

Yes, but if he does take the offer, we clearly overpaid and management will be denounced as fools.

I probably wouldn't have put it that way maybe for the last two seasons, but you correctly point out that statements like that are ubiquitous and somewhat meaningless in hockey analysis. The emphasis of this particular statement lies on our developing high draft picks this time around, instead of yesteryear's touts of our now-middle-aged Derek Roys.

If I'm John Tavares (in some future where the CBA resembles the current one), I can't sign an offer sheet, because my idiot management will match it no matter how ludicrous it is. I have to wait for unrestricted free agency to get off of Loony Island. And if the NHL pounds the UFA part of its proposal through, I wouldn't be a UFA until 2019, as opposed to 2016. Faced with that, the KHL becomes a little more intriguing to me.

Terrible idea. We have a better than average GM that drafts really well. We have a better than average coach that other teams covet. We finished a mere 3 points out of a playoff spot resulting from a string of crucial injuries. We have a young, talented group that will grow and take this team farther. Now is not the time to do a Full Charles Wang.

I suppose there's some relief knowing that we're not in the Columbus/NYI loser tax bracket.

A cap shrink is a very real possibility with the new CBA, but I'd find it hard to believe that it wouldn't be accompanied by a similar across-the-board reduction in salaries and cap hits. The owners can't make the salary cap significantly lower without addressing existing contracts.

Doans Of Our Lives. From the same source above: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/hockey/nhl/coyotes/story/2012-08-24/shane-doan-deadline/57278546/1 IF Drano is right about the referendum (post links!), then writing's on the wall: Doan likely won't be a Coyote and our standing offer puts us in a very competitive position to acquire his services. I'm all for it. Shane Doan is the Chris Drury you always wanted, with the exception is that he doesn't play center. You should be happy to pay $7.5M for Doan when we were trying to throw $7M at Drury back in 2007 (when the cap was $50M, $20M less than last season's $70M). You're getting Doan at possibly less than 10.7% of your cap space, compared to 14.0% for Drury. Shane Doan is a player you want on your team.

Keep an eye on the fine print, but if you decide to trade in, negotiate the price of the new car first and get it in writing, then tell them you're using the trade in offer and bonus voucher.

The mathematician also forgot that Ted Nolan coached two years for NYI, making it 1 in 4 years.

Next week's shitfest thread for Ruff haters: or

I was holding out to see how the Droid RAZR HD specs were shaping up, but now they're looking worse than the S3. Verizon F'ed all of its unlimited customers starting June 28th.

Verizon Wireless. I have a grandfathered unlimited data plan, but if I want to keep the plan and get a new phone, I have to pay full price for the new phone. If I switch to one of their new plans, it'll cost me more over two years than the full cost of the new phone. AT&T isn't cheaper, Sprint's network is dogshit, Virgin doesn't carry phones that are desirable to me. I think I might stick with the phone and plan I have until I bury it, like my last phone. #firstworldproblems

Underrated: Swiston's.

Lockout "deadline" countdown started: September 15th. 35 days.

I lol'd. But seriously, dogs are Korean food, cats are Chinese food.

Like I said, I won't/can't defend this stuff because there's no way for me to verify any of it. I don't think I've ever posted "insider" anything, but feel free to prove differently by quoting a post. I fully realize how Eklund that post sounded, but it's the middle of august.

Like I said, I'm not defending any of this. I've never posted "insider" anything before. This isn't a regular occurance. The source was a roommate of an nhl player with no other middlemen. He makes his living in hockey, but not at the nhl level, and is around nhl players often. Some of it I believe and some of it I don't. I tried to trim out as much of the speculative and opinionated fat as possible.

Warning: none of these are substantiated, but they come from a roommate of an NHL player. I won't defend them, but he insists that these bits are true: 1a) Shane Doan is the leader everyone thinks he is. Dave Tippet would do anything to keep him because he admits that without him, there's no way they would have made the playoffs. 1b) Doan called Tippet sometime in the past two weeks to inform him that he won't be returning to Phoenix. 1c) The Buffalo Sabres have offered Shane Doan a 10 year $60 million contract. It's believed that he doesn't want to play for Buffalo because he doesn't want to move his family there (where ever he goes is likely to be where he stays for a long time). 2) The reason Jeff Carter was traded was because he ###### Scott Hartnell's wife. Lockerroom atmosphere is everything to nhl players, so while carter was a better player than hartnell, carter was moved because he made the mistake (although many agree hartnell married the wrong woman) 3) Pittsburgh led in the money race for Ryan Suter much of the way, but Suter really wanted to play in the Midwest. Suter went to Minnesota because his wife's family is from there and because his family is 4 hours away in Madison.

Because U-Stream isn't very well labeled, here's the Paladino proposal: http://www.ustream.t...corded/24279433 Opinion: hate it. The stated goal of the Paladino proposal is to NOT build an attraction, but a "service" building for existing events. If there's a definition of more-of-the-same and not bringing in new money to the area, this building is it. It's like they understand the importance of the block as a keystone between the Canalside, Main Street, and the future of Perry Street, but they refuse to stop themselves from thinking small in its purpose. They think they're merely building, as they said, "when you boil it down, a large parking facility." Meanwhile, Cliff Benson's offering everything Paladino's offering, but he forgets the private luxury office space and apartments in favor of community-oriented purpose and a regional attraction. They come away as really believing they're building a gift for the city. Edit: LOL, and the first question out of the gate at Paladino is why aren't they building an attraction. His answer: too much congestion. WTF! You WANT congestion downtown! Build the attractions and then engineer the streets correctly, fool! Sabres should be a slam dunk.

No. This isn't kindergarten, I'm not holding your hand. Your major Business (sic) publication is an out-of-date blog that doesn't cite any sources. The videos are recent one+ hour presentations from the first hand parties giving detailed explanations of the concepts and methods in their plans in a necessary and official step in the city's proposal process. Couple those presentations with the slides linked earlier in the thread (those links work, by the way), and you get a pretty clear picture of what's going on. If you want to piss and moan about civics and government, take the time to inform yourself instead of waving around your incorrect ######. See you in 3 hours.

Watch the proposal. http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/24280948