MattPie

"Phew, I'm sure glad Darcy missed this round of layoffs." -- no one.

I wasn't old enough to drink when he was hired. EDIT: oops, i was. By 3 weeks.

So long Lindy, and thanks for all the fish (fry-fridays). Really wanted to see you win a cup here. So has Lindy called Barry Trotz yet to congratulate him? Heh, I just found this. I know it's something wikipedia editors must put up for every team, but it just seems silly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nashville_Predators_head_coaches

OK, So O'Reilly is some sort of ELFA (Entry-level Free Agent), and not an RFA in the usual sense. Now it's making sense. He's not holding out, so I was mistaken about that, and it changes the discussion quite a bit. So right now, any team can: - Offer sheet him under the usual offer sheet rules - Trade with COL for his rights, and then hope that O'Reilly and the team can come to a contract agreement. If O'Reilly doesn't agree with the new team after a trade, what next? Does he become UFA at the end of the year? Sounds like the Sabres could trade for a guy that may never play an a game and then lose him at the end of the season to the highest bidder.

So Leopold (for example) is playing (or sitting, as the case may be) without a contract right now? That doesn't make sense to me.

OK, I'm clearly confused. There's some kind of RFA that doesn't happen in the last year of your current contract?

"Yeah, well you try to win with Hatcher on your team!" (Flyers fan after a Buffalo goal, November 2006)

I'm not sure how character jives with holding out on a contract. Is fulfilling your obligations not part of the character equation?

I completely understand where you're coming from. But I'd wager $100 that the contract that NBC and each of the 'team stations' (MSG, Leafs TV, FoxSports Dallas, etc.) have with the NHL says something to the effect, "The NHL grants *exclusive* rights to [station] to broadcast this set of games.". The stations would be stupid to sign anything else that would allow people to watch the games somewhere else, and the NHL survives on it's TV revenue. It's business. Now, you could make the argument that the NHL *might* be able to make a go of it if they got rid of all their TV contracts and streamed everything over the Internet, which is the only way I'll ever get local games on gamecenter. NBC stumped up $200m (I think) this year alone, I doubt the NHL is going to get over a million people to pay $150/yr for streaming.

Simply put, it's how TV entertainment contracts work. Leafs TV (in your case) pays a bunch of money for the rights to broadcast games. And since they're paying the money, they make sure that they have the exclusive rights to those games so the Leafs (or NHL) can't sell the rights to someone else, too. Leafs TV has to do this so they can tell their advertising clients that all the Leafs fans will be watching our channel during the game. Second to that, your local cable company pays Leafs TV for the rights to have their programming on their cable system. If people have the ability to watch the game somewhere else, Leafs TV becomes far less valuable. It's how the business works. Would it be great if CI/GameCenter was complete? Sure. But it'll never happen until there's a fundamental shift in the way TV distribution works. I'm doing what you just described, and I just go over to a friend's house or out to a bar when the Sabres are on cable here (NBC Sports, NHL network, or Flyers games).

Yep. I was passing thru town on a Monday night and ended up staying for 2 nights it was so nice.

Further, the statement only really makes sense if nothing else in the system (lowercase 's', not the Lindy System) changes in the mean time.

Probably more people watching L&S. :)

I was there last June on a riding vacation, and it's great. It may be the first time I've seriously considered moving somewhere that wasn't a transfer due to work. It's a somewhat 'hippie' town, like a larger Ithaca or smaller San Francisco. Lots of little restaurants, shops, and breweries downtown, with the more national chain stuff on the outskirts.

As far as I know, it's mostly a bandwidth question. I think most cable companies are 'tight' on bandwidth, so they need to choose what they provide. I can't imagine that there's that many people watching a Blackhawks/Stars tilt in DC (for example), so they cut back on those feeds so they have more room for other stations. Plus there's the fighting between cable companies as evidenced by the MSG nonsense a year or two ago. But the OP is right, the NHL should mandate a certain level of coverage no matter what.

Kids these days.

I think it was suggested somewhere around here at one point that you could also play the backup against the offensive powerhouse (not the case here) and your #1 against the weaker team in a back to back to "guarantee" 2 pts.., whereas the other way around you might end up with 4 pts, or you might end up with 0.

My prediction for Sabreland:

OK, there has to be something in the CBA that I'm missing. Is there anything tying O'Reilly to the Avs (or the team he's traded to) after this year? Why would wouldn't the kid wait until July and sign with the highest bidder?

And yet, you just suggested Vanek and a prospect for a 2nd-3rd Centre and a pick? Granted, that pick looks to be in the top five, lottery notwithstanding, but I think I'm missing some sarcasm here.

The marketing video *is* the best part of this season. I haven't watched them, but I'm really hopeful that when I do watch them, they'll be much better than the other Sabres-related TV (the games) I've been watching lately.

All I know is Vanek should be talking all our tough faceoffs, he's winning 75% of them! :)

shrader: really sorry to hear it. I hope things work out for the best. I'll second the small wedding, mostly because it's what I'm doing. There were 18 people at my wedding (parents, grandparents, siblings, and a few close friends (3 each)). It was a really cool, easy way to do things. My wife's Dad was beaming the entire time. It was a bit easier for us though, being my wife's second marriage and neither of us being religious. Not sure of those things apply to you.

I think the point was that some of the goalies have only played a handful of games, so there's a wide variation. Enroth, for instance, looked spectacular for the first bunch of games he played, and now looks awful. At this point in the season, anyone who hasn't played at least 8-9 games doesn't really count.

Another Briton said, "We should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analysing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will." I, for one, welcome our new Chz-led overlords.