shrader

I'm with you. The price for any free agent d-man, let alone Shattenkirk, is going to be through the roof. I think it's going to have to be via trade if you want to add a higher end guy.

I forget which one is which, but I assume Liam is the one who hasn't appeared on the last one or two McPoyle episodes. The gang may very well be free of him.

Right, and with Shattenkirk, they might as well just wait until the offseason if they're interested. Washington won't be keeping him anyway, so there's no concern about him signing an extension.

I feel pretty much the same way. I watch, but I don't particularly look forward to it. They've pretty much done everything already. The only thing that could save it in my mind is Jack Bauer.

Anyone still watching?

Sorry, I wasn't trying to cherry pick only your first paragraph. I just thought it was a perfect illustration of the holes in this team. Most reviews of Murray's work are always the same: this forward's good... that forward's good. It's going to be a tough spot to correct though. The cost of a top 4 d-man is through the roof at this point. As for the expansion draft and the trades it should bring on, there's one angle I haven't seen mentioned so far. Teams like Anaheim or Minnesota could very easily make a deep run in the playoffs. That would wind up giving their GMs less time to work out a deal. Tim Murray will be able to make a trade the second the season is over, but Bob Murray and Fletcher could very well have to wait until very close to the end of the line. Sure, they could talk deals behind the scenes, but the results of those games could wind up changing things. That or they could come to a quiet agreement, but then two weeks later someone else swoops in with a better offer. Oh how I'd love to be a fly on the wall during some of these trade talks.

This reminds me of the long list of Jerry's girlfriends from Seinfeld. That and some of the recurring characters (Dr. Tim Whatley). But anyway, I like it when someone is able to graduate from the "hey I know that guy" status. They play that same bit role over and over and you never know who they are. Suddenly one day people learn his/her name. The first one that comes to mind is Danny Trejo.

Completely absent from your description here is NHL-level defensemen. That's exactly why they're struggling right now. Fortunately, even the most inept GM in the world would have to be aware of this problem. Where he goes moving forward to address this issue is going to make or break his stay with the Sabres.

That and even if he was pulling the trigger when he was killed, the walkers can move their hands. He would have long since let go of trigger. But if by some chance he never let go of the trigger, the gun would have been out of bullets ages ago.

Do yourself a favor and google the text that quickly scrolls the screen at the end. It's hilariously random.

I think the weapons thing is far more understandable to the average viewer than the gas thing is. That and things get boring pretty fast if they aren't able to drive around. It's one of those things you just have to accept in order to keep the story moving.

But he doesn't really have any reason to think he'll be seeing any of the Alexandria people any time soon, if ever again. He might have some loyalty to Rick, but at this very moment, all he can be thinking about is making ends meet in his new home. Last night's show was just kind of there, nothing much to talk about really. It was kind of fun to see them slice through so many walkers for the first time in ages, but that's about it. It looks like next week is where we will start to get some action.

All I can get is the Pittsburgh broadcast through the NHL network? No thank you. This is painful to listen to.

Right, he's on year two of his three year entry level contract. All ELCs are exempt.

I won't lie, I was hoping for zombie costumes

I never thought I'd see the day where you'd recommend that someone go watch Power Rangers. Then again, I suppose I never expected the opposite either.

I don't mean to suggest to draft to fill current holes on the big club. That obviously will never work. I'm thinking of it more in terms of systemic or organizational needs. You need to be stocking up with guys on both sides of the ice. Because of that exact crap shoot nature that you described, I don't believe that best player available exists much beyond the second round. It's just a muddled mess of kids who could each head off on completely different paths depending on where and how they develop. I think we're very much on the same place once we get past the meaning of "needs". The draft itself is about spreading those roots and hoping that the tree grows well years from now.

Personally, I lean towards drafting for need once you move beyond the section be or third round. It looks like Murray has actually done that the last two years. But either way, draft day decisions made by Murray couldn't possibly have changed today's situation. None of those guys would be NHL ready right now. The only draft move that would have impacted today's roster would have been winning the lottery back in 2014. I know it's been said that they wanted Reinhart anyway but that's pure BS. They would have taken Ekblad for sure there.

I'm loving the possibilities of Logan now that they're making some R rated comic movies. The little girl looks completely brutal in the trailers/commercials.

You're up in Vermont, right? I wonder how similar the play there was to what I ran into in Boston. It sounds pretty similar. I played for ten years or so around there. The caveman mentality eventually lead me to knee surgery and that completely killed it for me.

On paper that may be the case, but I don't get the impression that anyone within the organization believed that he was a top four d-man on this team. If they don't believe in him and won't play him in that role, the whole thing is moot.

I'm in a new construction so it's an interesting time in terms of yard work. I've only ever dealt with well established landscaping up until now. We've been here about a year and a half and we're still trying to figure out exactly what we want where. The yard care itself is mostly non-existent. The trees are very young so there are almost no leaves. It's pretty much just mowing and weeding until we really figure out what we want to do. The grass is bermuda and has a very short growing season, so even the mowing doesn't happen very much over the course of a year. I pay someone for fertilizer and weed treatments. Other than that, it's all me.

It's a step above beer leagues. This might as well be a video of a pickup basketball game.

I'm kind of curious who the guy manning the penalty box door is. Is that someone from the team or someone from the league? I'm not trying to blame him one bit, but I bet he was kicking himself over it for a bit. I do love the reaction from the ECC teammate at center ice though. Even with his back to the camera you could see him roll his eyes at what his former teammate did. He then immediately went to check on the ref. This definitely didn't look like a case of an entire team turning on a ref and one taking it too far.

Ignoring the trade for a second, I think you're overvaluing Pysyk a bit here. It became fairly clear last year that this team didn't the most glowing view of him as he was up in the press box fairly consistently. Whether it was a system fit or something else, he wasn't a guy that Byslma was going to lean on (whether or not that's a bad decision is a discussion for another day). And he wasn't just a rookie riding the shuttle back and forth to Rochester. He was already on his second contract at that point, so he was no longer entry level and they should have had a better idea for what they had or didn't have in him. I lean more towards him being JAG. As for the trade itself, I really don't mind rolling the dice hoping to turn a 5-7 guy into a 3-4 guy. Unfortunately, it didn't work, but I don't think we lost all that much. Let's just hope that Asplund becomes something in 3 years or so. That's all we have to show now (minus any deadline deal return).