Samson's Flow

That's not a good look. Only PSE can get negative press celebrating a Buffalo-centric made up holiday. ?

I mean he was down 18-8 or something and rattled off 10 homers in a row on consecutive swings with the time running out. I think the new format is way better because of the timed element. You can't just take your time knowing you have potentially infinite swings as long as you don't miss. It certainly added to the drama of what Harper did in the final.

You and me both bud! ?

To your point, I would vote in the "anyone but Neymar" camp as he only perpetuates the diving stigma that many casual viewers of soccer hate about the game. I had just not heard of Mbappe as a player of note until the World Cup. It sounds like that was just me living under a rock.

Maybe i'm all wet on this one, but i've seen plenty of "balls contacting hands" (phrasing ?) in the box not called because the arm/hand was in a natural position. This looked to me more like that than an intentional effort to obstruct the play. IMO, it was a harsh call that only came about from VAR replay. flagrant/fragrant same thing right?? ?

Picked up some weekend Redbox movies over the weekend - Jumanji and Red Sparrow. Jumanji was entertaining in that stupid funny nostalgia inducing remake of a classic. Not going to win any awards by any means, but my wife enjoyed it on a rainy Saturday. Red Sparrow was good, but was far more focused on the sexualization of the Russian operatives than I expected from a spy thriller. Once they got past teaching Jennifer Lawrence how to be a wh0re, which seemed gratuitous, it picked up and turned into an interesting story about the risky balance of playing both sides (US v. Russia) against each other for personal gain. Both were pretty good, although for vastly different reasons.

I liked most of the VAR calls during the tournament, but that handball penalty in the final was pretty bad IMO. While the ball clearly hit the Croatian player's arm, it was in no way intentional and was a result of him being screened by the jumping player attempting a header in front of him. His arm looked to be in a pretty natural position after jumping. It was called as a play-on on the field, but was only overturned after multiple slow motion replays. It's the same issue I have with the NFL catch reviews. It didn't look like a fragrant violation on the field, but when you slow it down and go frame by frame the interpretation gets distorted. The penalty call changed the outcome of the entire game, as Croatia had the momentum and the pressure and it was all taken away by that decision.

So after the World Cup Final, all of the analysts seem to be slurping up Mbappe as the next soccer star to follow the Messi/Ronaldo generation. Is this just a result of the French side winning the World Cup and getting him the exposure, or is he really better than the more notable names of Neymar, Pulisic, etc? Who do you vote for as the next "big name" in the soccer world?

I always attribute the NFL's problems to a gladiator complex. These guys are trained all their lives to be these hyper-competitive tough, physical athletes and then the public is surprised that they have a hard time acting civilly in the off-season. I'm not trying to make excuses for objectively horrible behavior, but when you train yourself to be an indestructible bada$$ the odds are some of that attitude will make a handful of NFL'ers feel like the rules don't apply to them.

Glad to see England go home (to the 3rd place game). I'm going to be rooting for Croatia in the final, since the Belgium side was my favorite but didn't make the final thanks to the efforts on the time-wasting Frenchies.

The canadians might be getting an auto berth from the World Cup bid in a few years, so they better start getting their team together. ?

This was really great. The illustrations made it very easy to follow exactly what he was getting at. I agree that this is most likely a remnant of the Byslma conservatism, where our players were so used to playing prevent that they don't instinctively attack as the system requires.

Sorry I should have been more specific. there is a FIFA rule that doesn't allow youth development players to join overseas clubs until after their 19th birthday. Much of the major skill development occurs in the 15-18 age range, and our top youth players in the US end up being underdeveloped because of a lack of competition & skill focus domestically. Those young "stars" end up being the primary focus of their youth teams, where the team strategy amounts to "pass it to star player and have him run past everyone". Compare that to the youth academies in Europe/England that have a higher talent base and continue to focus on skill development and tactics. The only US players that can go to those top European development programs early are ones with dual citizenship and EU passports (like Pulisic who has a Croatian citizenship). This was a big focus of the Jurgen Klinsmann era, is finding and developing the dual citizen US players to play more of a European style game. https://www.socceramerica.com/publications/article/70870/us-players-in-europe-a-quality-problem-not-qua.html Excerpt from above:

Good to hear another great review of an Alaskan cruise. My wife and I are planning to take one next spring and can not wait!

Interesting. Thanks! How much impact the "locker room culture" has on actually winning is still to be determined. I still think getting better players is far more important to winning than any of this tangential stuff.

But because of passport freedom, the Belgium & Croatia players can play in any of the elite leagues in Europe. Americans can only play in the US during their teen development years, unless you have a dual citizenship passport like Pulisic did. Our development system in the US is way below what the British and European football academies are, and it really hurts us from generating top-tier skill players.

If only we knew...

I don't think Eichel's linemates need to keep up for him stride for stride, but they do need to be in the same zip code so he isn't playing 1on3 while he's waiting for support. Tage's reported straight line speed should allow him to be a few strides behind and ready for the trailer goals that come from all the attention on Jack. At least in theory.

If the moves to jettison Lehner and O'Reilly as quickly as possible weren't enough of an indicator that management felt there was something wrong with the team (the one that finished last btw), then I don't know what to tell you. Now the big question is did they remove the right guys to fix this festering turd of a team, or is the cancer still in there? None of us know anything about what is really going on in the locker room, we can only hope that the issues are gone and it isn't an Eichel/Reinhart/Risto issue. If it is, then we're boned because I don't see us trading those guys away without losing a ton of on-ice value. When do we trade for Taylor Hall?

Wow. Okposo didn't really help anyone last year. All of the red numbers to the right and all the of black numbers to the left is no beuno. I too think that was the intent of the trades to get those wingers. Especially hearing from Thompson himself that they have "big plans" for his role on the team.

No discussion here about how Trump is rumored to make his recommendation for the new SCOTUS judge today (Monday)? It sounds like his final candidates are all fairly conservative, creating a dynamic the SC hasn't seen in many years.

And Americans wonder why the USMNT didn't qualify for the World Cup this year? Your home league is just not up to par with the international stage, so we don't have the depth required to have a strong national team.

As someone who has an Eichel #15 jersey, i'll still wear that with pride. Now it's retro. (#15 was my number all through my athletic career)

Right - Good/Great players on terrible teams can look statistically similar to Average players on great teams if you just take the numbers in a vacuum without context. Hockey is a team sport so the advanced stats in the NHL are heavily weighted to who you are playing with and your opponents, as opposed to Baseball which is far more isolated on just your talent. Taylor Hall looked way better on good New Jersey than he did on a crappy Edmonton team, but his raw talent level didn't really change. It will be interesting to see how much better ROR's metrics look on a good Blues team v. our tire fire team.

As Flagg mentioned (I think), goal differential is aligned with past performance but is less successful in predicting future performance due to the streaky/random nature of goal scoring. CorsiFor% on the other hand is a stronger predictive stat since over a longer sample the teams generating the most shot events have proven to be most successful. EDIT: I should clarify and say that goal differential is a good shorthand for overall team performance, its just that CF% is the better predictive stat.