shrader

I won't call it a favorite, but I do like to joke with the wife that "Legs" is her theme song because she's only 5 feet tall.

Did anyone even care about that song before all the uproar? Hell, it's not even a christmas song.

One away from the “I suck at names” hat trick.

I need to see consecutive wins. I bet we could find at least one stretch last year post-streak where they went 3-1-2.

That damn 3PO clip makes me hate him even more.

I randomly check this throughout the year. I'd say the numbers are right around where I'd expect them to be. It seems like they're stuck right in the heart of the "bad team or bad market" section of the listing. While not exactly surprising, the Ottawa numbers are an eye opener. The one thing I'm not sure about is if the Sweden "home game" is included in there. One game's not going to skew things too much with 14/15 games played, but I have no idea if that was a large/small arena and how many fans showed up.

On the island of misfit toys, what’s wrong with the doll?

I’ve had one (alexa) for about a year. It’s mostly just a music thing for me, but right after the time change this year I caved and bought one smart plug. I have a light on a timer downstairs and the plug is behind a bulky piece of furniture. I got sick of having to move that thing and possibly scratch the floor a couple times a year and got the plug. I’m not going to use voice commands to turn it on, but being able to change the timer on my phone is a hell of a lot easier than dealing with the mystery time windows that come with those old crappy mechanics timers.

The New Jersey Devils: good for what ails you

I haven't started watching it yet but have everything DVRed. This was the one question I could not get people to answer.

The angles are too tricky on that one. If by some chance that's a straight down shot from the crossbar, I'd say that puck is in line with some of the post. There's nothing there to clearly say it's over the line. Now, if you can pair this shot with the same exact moment from a side view, you can compare the two to get a better idea of where exactly the puck is.

Wasn't there some talk about how communication with Maggie had dropped off right before the Whisperers show up. For whatever reason, I seem to remember Jesus mentioning it. I guess we'll find out about here soon enough, whether she shows up late in the season or for the start of the next one. I wish they would just not mention Rick at all so that this show can be free of the movie stuff for now, but I doubt that happens. As for the kids, I think they stick around because they want a Grimes connection to this show still. But hey, I guess that means only RJ has to stick around since that's the only Grimes blood remaining.

People can call me whenever they want. I can't even tell you the last time I heard the ringer on my phone (and it's an awesome one). I could probably just break the button off of my phone because my may as well be permanently set to silent.

The stuff with Commodore is so odd because their time spent together is such a small blip on the radar that was his entire career. It's kind of impressive how much venom he's built up during so little time.

They're heading towards a naval base. That seems like an awfully convenient place for helicopters to be taking off from. I doubt we see any modern weaponry reintroduced for the Whisperer war because my guess is that Michonne won't be returning from this trip. Like you said, this will lead her off towards Rick. I want to know who will wind up raising Judith and RJ now. I don't like the thought of her leaving them, but I think they're shoe horned into it at this point. I hope she has some sort of zombie apocalypse will that says "anyone but Carol".

My house was built 4 years ago. I did have phone connections placed in a couple rooms. But now that I think about it, those lines aren't actually connected to anything. Whoever it is that actually provides the service for a landline nowadays would have had to come out and connect that line to the house the same way my internet provided did when I signed up, right?

The league was very calculated with the 3 games for Pouncey. Even if reduced, it pretty much guaranteed he was out for the rematch next week.

And it's important information to come out because if the claim winds up being convincingly shot down, Garrett just added even more time to his sentence. It won't come in the form of a suspension, but it may as well be career suicide. If he made it up, he doesn't get the public shame he deserves unless the story was put out there in the first place. You've got two possibilities here. You have a guy who made a racist comment or you have a guy who blatantly played the race card to cover his own ass. I'll leave it up to everyone to decide which the think is more despicable.

I like to picture an actual struggle between Dubas and Babcock in my mind. It's really tough to pick a winner in that one.?

Cap issues are defined completely by dollars. A winning team can have cap issues too. A perfect example is Boston who has no cap space either but is in first place.

So now you've moved the goal posts on me. First it was those guys causing cap issues, now it's that they are under-performing.

Each of these guys would be replaced by someone making similar money. Your list combined is going to be right around the average NHL salary. Those are not the kind of deals that cause cap issues. The highest on your list is Scandella at $4 million and quite honestly I don't see him as a part of the issue right now. Oh, and I missed Bogosian earlier on the list of bigger contracts at $5.1 million. That's one that is part of the problem and again, is a Murray contract.

The cap does limit the moves significantly. That's just a fact of life. That said, there's no reason to hide behind it with every public statement. I'm not going to throw that cap jail status completely on his shoulders though. But if you want to do that, you also have to acknowledge that he also put them into the position where $20+ million of that is off the books this offseason. Once we get to the offseason, here are the remaining large contracts: Eichel (10) Skinner (9) Okposo (6) Ristolainen (5.4) There are some others, but I'll cut it off at $5 million as I don't see deals smaller than that as too much of an issue, particularly because each of them is short term. So looking at these 4 deals, the first two were signed by Boterill and the last two by Murray. I don't know about anyone else, but I see no problem with the first two, especially once they're paired back together. It really comes down to the price tag and term on that Okposo deal, which fall squarely on Murray. As much as it may scare some, Boterill's target has always been this offseason where that cap purge happens. So that's really the big difference between those two GMs, Murray made a swing for the fences at day 1 while Boterill was waiting until that future date. Neither approach is any fun, but one left no ammo for the future while the other still held onto a bullet or two. I do think there's at least a plan here, but whether or not that will actually work is another story all together. I see what they're trying, but my major concern with it is how many years they've wasted of an elite talent like Eichel and even a lesser but still very useful player in Reinhart. I also worry about how tough it is for guys like this to wash away the stench of so many years of pure garbage hockey. I'm not sure they really have much other choice, but they are definitely underestimating the damage that has done and continues to do to many of these players.

I see what you did there. The team is so incompetent that even the PR guy has no idea how to use apostrophes.

What is this, 1985?