shrader

They need to keep this run going through the rest of the season. It would be a major sign of growth. They've got a long road ahead of them, but any sign of growth is going to a go a long way towards changing this from a 5 year project into a 3 year one. Filter out some of the crap and replace it with better pieces and you can speed this thing up. It's no easy task, but you've got to take any positive sign you can find. Personally, I just want to get back to a point where I can watch these games again. At this point, I know I'm not spending the money on center ice next year unless something miraculous happens.

If the kid wants to sit out 3 years so that he can become a free agent, good luck to him. That's a ton of money to walk away from. Do yourself a favor to calm that irrational fear: look up how many teams over the salary cap years have been awarded a compensatory pick for losing a first round pick. It's an incredibly short list, especially when you look at picks from the first half of the draft. I won't pretend that I know the prospects well. I'm too far removed from paying attention to that stuff. But anyway, technically they can't guarantee him a spot, at least not in writing. What usually winds up happening is that they sign agree to burn off the first year of the entry level contract so that he can get to a bigger money deal quicker. It seems like that is what winds up happening with these guys most of the time, so that's what they'd do here too. And the 9 game rule is strictly for guys under 20 years old. Borgen has aged out of that already. I'd imagine that they sign him once St. Cloud's season is done. They're #1 in the country though, so if they make the Frozen Four, it really doesn't leave any time for him to get into a Sabres game this year. There is time for the Amerks though.

That's completely different than penciling him into the starting lineup next year. I have absolutely zero issue with allowing certain prospects like him to get their feet wet like this at the end of a season. The full training camp at the start of the season is the real proving ground for whether not not they are ready for more serious time. I wish they had taken this same approach with Nylander and even someone like Girgensons and Ristolainen. I'm not really sure where I stand on throwing those guys into the AHL right away vs. keeping them in their junior or european league. There's going to be merits to both and they're different for each player.

Only if the turtle shell is flat.

It drives me mad when I see anyone slotting guys like Mittelstadt and next year's yet unknown draft pick into the roster immediately. Have we not learned a thing from how poorly this approach has worked out so far? The player who can step in from day one and make an immediate impact is so incredibly rare, yet we continue to think that every single guy this team drafts is that guy. I know no one wants to hear it, but we're going to need to sit back and wait through what is going to be a long ride. Tim Murray reset the clock, so we're pretty much at day 1 of that road now. You want something to really scare our fans? Compare the reactions to Mittelstadt today to those of Nylander in the first year after he was drafted. It may as well be a cut and paste. We do the same damn thing every single year. Even if by some chance, they're actually right about this guy, they need to start landing 2 or 3 more players who wind up contributing at the pro level in any given year before they're going to be able to establish some depth. They'll never be anything until they can roll out legitimate NHL talent on every line.

Its too early for that no matter how lost he may look right now. He’s just about to hit the age where most of these kids would just be starting their first pro contract. Add to that the fact that he missed so much time from camp into the season due to injury, he’s missed out on significant developmental time. They’ve got plenty of time to still make this one work. He’s going to wind up being he first guinea pig of the new focus on player development.

Ignoring the lottery for second, I fully expect this team to jump Ottawa in the standings. I think their dysfunction may take things to a whole new level soon enough.

But circular logic is completely acceptable. Claiming that all pictures are fake and then requesting people post pictures? I have no idea what the next possible step in that could be.

That’s he beautiful thing about living in a world where you believe that everything is faked, absolutely nothing can be proved

I do find it interesting to be told to question the truth of all history and science books, all while at the same time treating one specific book as absolute.

I've been trying to think of those guys over the years who have been in the league for an extended period of time without making the playoffs. I can't really think of any who are supposed to be a top line player like this. It's almost always the journeyman or depth forward/defender. I think it does say a lot about Kane.

Not being able to stick in the league so far isn't necessarily a bad thing though. Let's remember that we are talking about a 2nd year pro who has spent that entire time in a strong organization. He's going to get his shot here. They've essentially given themselves another guy at the status of Baptiste/Bailey, another coin flip at being a productive NHLer. Until this team is able to replenish the Murray purge of any futures, these are the type of guy they're going to have to take their shot on. You pair that with what is supposed to be a better system of player development, and hopefully those 50/50 coin flips start to turn to 60/40 instead. Sadly, that's the best we can hope in the foreseeable future.

Pierre should probably try to get the player's name correct when announcing a trade.

It'd be funny if it was O'Regan, just so that Buffalo would now have Eichel's entire BU line.

I went to Black Panther this weekend. I wish it had been a little shorter. I really liked the Killmonger character, but it took too long to get him seriously involved.

Jessica Jones season 2 comes out next week.

I do think the game could turn to 4 on 4 in the distant future. It would take a nuclear labor war to get there though. You're cutting a good number of jobs if you shrink the roster size.

Take away the gun and you're left with a kid who still wants to kill a lot of people. The problem isn't solved, it's only shifted. There's probably only one good thing that comes out of this kid surviving his attack, that they can hopefully expand on on the knowledge of that pathology of a shooter that you mentioned. Then again, I'd imagine that it's completely different than the guy who attacks with no intention of surviving. We never get to study those ones like we can here. It's crazy to see how many times some of the warning signs are ignored or not followed up on closely. My wife's a teacher and she's got a kid this year with a ton of issues way beyond anything she has dealt with in her 12 or so years in the field. The parents flat out refuse to do anything about it due to money issues. You can see the writing on the wall with this kid, going to be major trouble down the road (kid is early elementary school years right now). I'm not saying we have a future shooter on our hands, but it's looking to be another case where help is an option, but it's being ignored. "Not my little angel..."

Did he have plastic surgery to put a face in his crotch?

So is the tone of the movie more along the lines of Winter Soldier? I think that one may have been my favorite of the bunch (and it just so happens to be on FX right now). im going with the hood on Saturday.

No matter what anyone wants to think, there's no simple one off solution to the whole thing. At the very least, while this guy is still alive, they need to learn as much from him as they possibly can. They need to figure out how to better identify warning signs for this stuff and then react to them sooner. I can't offer something concrete here since I don't know enough about it. All I know is that we shouldn't look the other way simply because "it doesn't happen often".

Im not trying to compare the exact numbers of anything here. I only mention Parkinson’s because it was the first thing that came to mind due to personal experience. But whatever, I do think things can be done to help prevent these, things that fall far short of governmental intervention.

They most certainly are a problem that we should be exploring avenues to prevent. Should we not bother to research something like ALS or Parkinsons since they are nowhere near as common a killer as heart disease is? Obviously so many of the ideas out there are far too extreme, but there is nothing to be lost by trying to find realistic ways to limit the number of these events.

The coverage of these stories drive me mad. Do we really need to see picture after picture of crying parents and kids or the incoherent interview with a kid who can't keep her composure just hours after everything happened? Then there's the need to rank each one in terms of body count, encouraging the next whackjob out there who wants to go for the high score. But hey, whatever it takes to keep the ratings up. If anything, all these pictures do is actually make the incident look like it wasn't bad at all. This guy goes crazy with a gun and the end result is a bunch of crying people. I'm not going to suggest they show the real pictures, I just want them to stop taking advantage of these people at their peak moment of suffering.

Sliced-bread