Sabel79

This is what happens when you don’t play my sweet baby angel boy Kieran Tierney for some reason, Scotland. Do better next time.

This is a purely subjective exercise, and as such any answer given is going to be an opinion, albeit with varying degrees of reasoning behind it. YMMV, but here goes mine: I'd say yes but with an asterisk. I have never not cared about this team, found no reason to watch or follow up in any way, or indeed considered liking basketball as hard as I have since about the time the team got shut down for COVID in February, or whenever that happened. That timing is somewhat significant, as I'm unable to sort out how much the general dumpster-fire state of the world in general colors my personal experience there. I'm betting rather a lot, but if all things hockey were the same and, you know, everything else were not so existentially bleak, my opinion might be different. The tank years were at least interesting; I found it easy to engage even if what was going on was a abomination. Perhaps the immediate aftermath of Adelphia's demise and then league ownership, running straight up to the '04 lockout was as dire, but a year without hockey followed up with a couple really good seasons might take the edge off that.

I've avoided reading or thinking about any of the hockey threads here for a bit because of, you know, reasons. I'm all in on this, frankly. Cleanse this franchise with fire. Perhaps the wish on a monkey's paw that was the tank will finally stop having its inevitable horrific consequences once Eichel, Samson, Risto and anything else not nailed down is as far away from Buffalo as possible. There is no way anything will get worse, at any rate. Sorry, sorry.... not going to provide such an obvious target to the Hockey Gods. But still, trade absolutely everyone.

Netherlands-Ukraine has been perhaps the most entertaining game so far. From 2-0 Netherlands to 2-2 and then 3-2 Netherlands again in the 86th minute. Atrocious defending = fun. At least for those of us who don't have a dog in the fight.

England are the Toronto Maple Leafs of International Football. Forever dining out on the glories of the mid-to-late 1960’s. Insufferable, deluded, highly punchable fans convinced that every year/tournament will be theirs, even though it never will be. Let’s not even get started about the insufferable, deluded, highly punchable press. They freakin’ booed Raheem Sterling before the game for having the temerity to be a black guy who (redacted because of reasons) but then cheered wildly when he scored as if none of that had happened. So I suppose I can’t wait to see how they Munson this one, but I’m the meantime, congratulations to Raheem Sterling, Ian Wright, and absolutely nobody else.

It’s always more palatable to the administration if they make themselves believe they signed off on what was obviously going to happen anyway no matter what they did. Anyway, hope Scotland do well. it’s been forever (WC ‘98 iirc) since you guys have been to a tournament.

It's only not cheating if the league subsequently (and retroactively) changes the cap rules to screw Tampa as hard as possible, like they did to the Sabres and Ehrhoff. I might be salty about that to this very day.

Just gonna put this here after I put it there...

I really didn't need to see the medical staff doing chest compressions on him right there on the pitch while his teammates desperately tried to hide him from the cameras. FFS, it was ghoulish. Game should not have been restarted, didn't watch, but saw highlights. Nobody wanted to or should have been out there.

As long as England goes out in humiliating fashion, as is their wont, I'm fine with anybody winning it, and have no clue who will.

If only there were a word in German for what I'm experiencing right now...

Mr. Big or GTFO.

Oh, come on. You know better than this.

These are great. Just ordered three.

I’m starting to think that this team isn’t all that good, you guys....

Currently $19.99 at Target...

MEH WHATEVER

They could always just splurge the money they so wisely saved on ROR's bonus by shunting him out for wooden nickels on the dollar to pay off RK if money's the issue. Just a thought.

I don’t even have the energy or the will to exert enough of it if I did to have a take at this point, but doomscrolling Sabres Twitter is giving me nothing but gold this evening. Here’s another one: