Robviously

About 100x worse, give or take. It's basically the OHL but without hitting or defense.

Just from a practical standpoint, if Murray is trying to pull off 3 big trades (Miller, Ott, Moulson) plus anything else he thinks he can do, he probably doesn't want to try to cram that all into one day. He only has so much bandwidth. If he can get something done early, I think he'll go for it so that he can concentrate on his next moves.

What if I won PowerBall? What if I discovered the fountain of youth? What if Norwood had made that FG?

Last summer Collier was saying he wouldn't trade Girgensons for the 1st overall pick (MacKinnon). He gets a little nuts watching these guys in Rochester.

Nice to see the Sabres' annual de-tanking is underway. Sixth overall pick, here we come!

Wasn't someone on this board trying to say that not too long ago? It's completely insane, of course, but I'm sure someone has argued that.

In all these cases, goaltending was not the most important factor in these teams winning the Stanley Cup. So you don't have to build from the net out. The 90s are over.

So it helps to have arguably the best ever at that position. Cool. If the strategy is to get one of the best goaltenders of all time, and then go from there, that's going to be tough to implement. It's also not what most teams do.

Or the Penguins, Blackhawks, and Red Wings. Which contender is built around a star goalie?

Still can't believe the Capitals were offering Filip Forsberg and the Sabres didn't jump on that. It's not like we have an abundance of guys with first line potential in our system. And I know we could have offered more than Erat.

Wow, two shows in one. All the Rick/Carl/Michonne stuff was great. Rick's escape from the 2nd floor while the house filled up with gang members was really well done, and the pink room with the dead family that Michonne found was incredibly eerie. If it needed a grade, it'd be a solid A. Then there was the other plot line -- where Glen and that girl were hanging out with a bunch of cartoon characters: hillbilly army guy, swimsuit model "army girl" in hot pants and a tank top, and sling blade guy who is "smarter than you" but was apparently not smart enough to bother to learn how to use weapons in the 2+ years since the zombie apocalypse started. Sure, why not? This wasn't just bad, it was SyFy channel movie bad. Sharknado bad. Chris Hardwick said these are important characters from the comics so maybe this will suck a little less moving forward. BTW, is it wrong that I'm sorta jealous of Daryl? Like a zombie apocalypse wouldn't be that bad if it meant running around the woods with Beth?

If all you knew about Drew Stafford were his career stats from HockeyDB, you'd want to take a chance on him for a year and a half. And if he's on a team where he doesn't have to be super important, he'll probably do just fine.

I hope we trade everyone. What do I mean "everyone"? EVERYONNNNNNNNNNNE!

Oh, and in honor of Finland's win, here's Teemu Selanne's greatest interview moment:

Well, on the bright side, Miller didn't get hurt or hurt his trade value during the Olympics. So there's that. Onward to March 5th. Do you believe in Miracles?

"Boooo!! He hasn't done anything yet!! BOOOOOOOO!!!!!1!" Good luck, Mr. LF. You've got your work cut out for you. This uniform sucks. Where's all the gray? Where are the armpit blobs? Why is there no unnecessary vertical piping? And why can I tell that our primary color is blue and not black? Hopefully everyone responsible for this was fired and/or is in jail.

Unless it's some consensus Top 5 pick type of player, I basically have no interest in that league.

The last QMJHL prospect to pan out for us was Pominville, drafted in 2001. Brutal.

There's a big difference between buying into a show with a far-fetched concept and that show being wildly inconsistent about the world/story it's portraying. The Matrix is a movie about humans logging into computer simulation to fight evil robots using kung fu. Sounds pretty silly, right? And yet it's a really satisfying movie because it builds this entire universe, establishes its rules, and sticks to them over all three acts. In The Walking Dead, the zombies are as fast or slow, or as strong or weak, as they need to be in any particular scene. The pilot episode had a concept where the father/son that Rick meets didn't want to fire a gun because the noise would attract more zombies from all directions; I don't think this ever came up again. Half the conflict comes from the characters making obviously poor decisions.

I'm not a doctor, but I play one on the internet.... MCL injuries aren't as severe as ACL injuries. A torn MCL keeps him out for the rest of this season but he's probably fine by October. So start speculating on how the Islanders would respond to that scenario.

It's worth pointing out that in this scenario, Thomas Vanek would have captained the Sabres closer to a Stanley Cup than they have ever been in their entire history. As a big Vanek fan, I hate this story because it's not what you want from a mature leader. OTOH, pro athletes party pretty hard and it just comes with the territory. (Weren't the 2004 Red Sox drinking during games when they broke the curse?) I'm not convinced this actually affected the outcome or even slowed the Austrians down. Sometimes taking things too seriously can hurt you just as much as not taking them seriously enough. I doubt the Austrians hit the sweet spot here but I'm not opposed to them partying after a win either.

If Tavares is out next year *and* if they have a new GM that can accept a "let it burn" approach to his first season, I guess I could see it happening. I mean, they might defer even without the Tavares injury being a factor. I don't know what they're thinking. But it seems like you'd want to use that option to avoid giving up a super high draft pick if you can at all.

I assume they'll defer because that's what I would do. If you have a chance to avoid giving away a top 5 pick, you have to take it and hope you can get better next year.

I think I'd be fine with Demko late in the first round if we had a pick there, but it would still matter who else was available. He's already playing well at a high level for Boston College this year so he's more intriguing to me than a CHL goalie the same age.

No, it's not a minor point. it's actually why last night was an awful hour of television. This is the type of stuff that drove me away from the show in the first couple seasons. Nothing these people do makes sense in the universe that they live in. - Beth (the pretty blonde girl -- is that her name?) thinks she hears a zombie coming. Instead of moving to the open space right in front of her (i.e. the road), she stands with her back turned to the woods behind her and stops looking around. She turns her back on the only direction a zombie could surprise her. - General complain but similar to the Beth thing -- none of the characters really look around much when they're walking. If you're living in a world filled with ghouls for miles in all directions, you'd sorta have your head on a swivel, right? You'd be looking around constantly. No one is ever worried about zombies except for when they're going into a new building -- and even then there's always a no-name character willing to turn his back to a doorway with a zombie ready to pop out. I'm not a professional actor, but if I was I'd concentrate more on acting like I was worried about the terrifying world I live in versus just trying to look hot in a tank top while I strut around. (Or maybe just trying to look cool sells more action figures.) - Glen is surrounded by zombies at the prison. He dons prison riot gear and pretty much just pushes his way through four dozen of them and then strolls out. How the F did these things take over the world again? Like the entire United States Military couldn't figure out the "wear body armor and push" strategy? - Based on the Glen thing, why is anyone still going sleeveless in this show? Throw a leather jacket on so that they can't bite you. It's hard to get into this show when nothing makes sense and the main characters are only marginally smarter than the zombies. The bit with the guy trying to escape with two little girls and a baby was really good/tense but they couldn't really come up with a resolution beyond "Carol saved everyone off-screen."