shrader

I just bumped into this story on TSN. Yesterday, in his 6,827th plate appearance over 13 years, Joey Votto popped out to first for first time ever. I have no idea how they are even aware of a stat like that, but that's kind of crazy. That long of a career, and up until yesterday, he was tied with me. Amazing.

Be prepared to be surrounded by a bunch of southie up there. If they don't beat your head in already, you'll want to do it yourself after listening to them talk for about ten minutes.

You're confusing us enough as is, but then at the end you bring the Czechs into the equation as well?

We've checked the obvious Ristolainen jokes off the list. Now who follows up with the obvious Star Wars jokes?

Scanning through those picks, I get the feeling that none of you will have picked the winner. That would be an interesting result.

Has anyone actually seen Nylander recently with both of his legs?

Well LA already nailed their first overall pick last year (20th overall), so we'll know fast.?

And if either of them goes out and gets hit by a bus tomorrow? Crude, I know, but there's just way too much that can happen in the upcoming years before we can say anything.

St. Louis is kind of a funny one. They've kind of operated mostly in obscurity over the years. I had to look up their recent history to see where they've been finishing. It's probably just a western conference thing. I'm paying less attention and you tend to miss the middle of the pack teams. But anyway, the NHL really is a breath of fresh air compared to certain other leagues. In the 13 years post-lockout, we've had 18 different teams in the finals and 8 different winners. The NFL is surprisingly close to those numbers over the same timeframe actually (more winners, less teams), once you're able to look past new england being in 4 of the last 5. If nothing else, the NHL has always felt like more teams have a shot.

I kind of went off on a tangent there. When you're trying to see who wound up with the final 4 picks in previous drafts, you want to just look at those draft results. But since at least one of those picks usually winds up being dealt, it ruins that simple plan. 3 of them were traded last year, which adds to the fun if you don't go to the right place to track the draft history.

I guess it depends on your definition of a "prolonged period of time". Including Toronto definitely means you're using a very loose definition. It's what, 3 years for them now? But anyway, there's a lot of turnover in the NHL as a whole, but that's the nature of the beast when you are comparing a 16 team 7 game series playoff field to a 12 team single elimination field. As for Vegas and the branding and the selling of gear, I'm not so sure that's really a unique situation. A team wins, they see a massive spike in sales. It will drop off once they do. They're not the first team to see that and they won't be the last. Hell, wasn't the slug one of, if not the highest selling jerseys in the NHL for a period of time? If that's not proof of concept, I don't know what is. After all of this though, it'll be interesting to see how things go for Seattle. The bar has been set impossibly high. And they won't have that unique market benefit either. I hope they don't wind up with an Ottawa-like entrance, but I feel like the pendulum may very well wind up swinging back in that direction.

Can you pull some strings and make this a fact in the NFL as well?

It has nothing to do with the trades, just like how Colorado had the highest draft lottery odds, the pick is based solely on the original holder. Looking at the standings, Toronto was above St. Louis and Columbus was below.

Yes. Well, there's a pretty good shot that at least one of those 4 picks has already been traded away. If Toronto moves on to face Columbus, that would guarantee it, as both teams have traded their pick.

I'd say they're a unique situation where financial stability and on ice stability are almost completely independent. Both the team and the league would love for them to have a fanbase, but it's really just an added bonus.

Two years does not make a franchise. Fans responding to a winner is nothing new. The true test is when they struggle, and they will. Personally, I think that market will do well attendance-wise no matter what the sport. They'll give away tickets just like they do with everything else out there if they have to. Whether or not a fanbase develops seems moot to me. They'll thrive with or without, just like the Raiders will.

It's funny how things that once looked absurd suddenly seem far more realistic. A week ago I would have stopped reading after the 4th word. Ultimately there may not wind up being a difference between those two picks, but it would still be nice to have more of a choice in who you take. Conference finals, the last 4

I hate that these two are counted together. I'm not going to bother looking up how many fake shoot out wins Tampa had, but those aren't the same as Detroit's 62. Asterisk!* *Just like our 10 game streak to start the 06-07 season.

I should read better. I was mostly focusing on the three year part. If you looked through ten years for teams, I now understand even more why you stopped after six teams. Anyway, I’ve always been a bit iffy on crediting these guys for the drafts with the other teams. I understand that he or Boterill May have been high up in that room even if not in the GM chair. But they’re still just a voice in that room as opposed to being THE voice in that room. By the same logic, shouldn’t someone get the credit/blame for their drafts here? I’ve never quite understood why we can have it both ways.

I look at that list and the first question that immediately comes to mind is if any team had more picks than the others. I feel like we probably had more than most teams, but at the same time, he did trade away a lot. But also, did you really only look at just 6 teams? I don't blame you for not wanting to sink much time into it, but it's a bit tough to take away too much from so few teams, especially when 2-3 of them were always drafting in the late 20s (not sure where St. Louis falls in).

Every single remaining job opening would be loading up the Brinks truck immediately. That and a few other currently unavailable jobs.

I assume he's talking about the shirts. I wouldn't be surprised if that was something the players did on their own. That kind of stuff happens all the time.

It's at least a two hour drive from Duluth to Minneapolis though. Those folks up there are going to have the same issues that many smaller cities have, where they can only get direct flights to a handful of destinations. So yeah, of course they had easier access to the St. Paul and Chicago Frozen Fours. Looking at their airport website, those are the only two cities they seem to have any flights to at all. The rest of the article has plenty of valid points. They really need to avoid the "hard to get to" section though, because they can say that about pretty much everywhere.

I'm sure he cries himself to sleep each night, into his pillows stuffed with hundred dollar bills because a few randoms on message boards think he's a loser. He's one of the biggest names in the history of sports, so yeah, such a loser.

Can you easily get anywhere from Duluth other than St. Paul?