TheAud

I used to have the Pizza Junction sheet pizza from time to time. Agree it was heavy on the cheese and also it had a distinctively sweet sauce. as you say, novel, but it worked. I never viewed it as a "staple" pizza but rather something to enjoy at a party or a change of pace. My understanding is that the original owner got into some unrelated (to pizza) financial/legal problems and it folded. Then someone opened up a place that attempted to copy the recipe, but that may have folded too.

For me, Bocce's pizza is an almost spiritual experience. A couple years ago I was made aware of Imperial Pizza in South Buffalo. I sought it out. It's righteous. Now we figure out how to make stops there in or out of travels from the Southern Tier to Niagara County. For me, it's now up there with Bocce's in the 'heavenly' echelon of pizza pies. I haven't found any pizza quite that good in all my travels in various states and countries. But I'll keep looking.

Hate to see movement of Pu. He might not be a 1st liner but I thought he was a solid #2. Sorry...I just needed to let one more of those fly as he heads South. Gonna miss ya buddy.

This is hockey

I really thought Crosby was dead. Glad to hear he's not! Working on my wife to convince her we should go to Newport Folk next summer (or Tedeschi Trucks at Red Rocks where I have always wanted to see a show, which occurs at about the same time every year...)

I believe he needs to do 3 push-ups, in a row, as well to be on the 2nd line. And I mean deep, nose touching the ground push-ups. Not fake ones.

Just this week my eldest daughter is studying for the GRE's and was complaining to me about the vocabulary section. She said "Did you know that the word 'albatross' is not just a bird?" I know that Washington Capitals fans will know the secondary meaning of that word in 2-3 years.

Speaking of which, concerts at the New York State Fair are free with admission to the Fair that day. The line-up: https://nysfair.ny.gov/venue/chevy-court/ So, I am going with my two college age daughters on 8/23, 4 days before school starts for them, to see Dave Mason & Steve Cropper at 2PM and Tedeschi Trucks Band at 8PM...for $3 admission. I told the girls they have to pay for my ticket this time ?

I remember the whole "if it's too loud you're too old" mantra of my youth being more metaphorical than physiological, at least in my mind. Much to my surprise I have learned that, no sh*t, when you get old the loudness becomes physically intolerable well below a level that was great at 21. At a Lowest of the Low show this year in Ithaca I thought I might keel over with vertigo as the noise was literally throwing my balance off. Just pathetic. (awesome going to a show with your son though...I am enjoying some concerts with my college and HS age daughters this summer and it's the best)

Yes, I noted my missing on the birthdate in subsequent posts. Casey may or may not put up 55 pts this year. He may or may not score 29 goals...in 62 games. I'll take the under on all those for this season. I said he MIGHT have the upside of Eichel. Of course no one agrees with me as this is a Sabres board. I am not saying I'd take him over Eichel. Heck, maybe one of these seasons Eichel will score 29 goals too.

Our 2nd pairing RD:

I think they're upsides are in the same ballpark, albeit Jack's is higher for sure. I was just reacting to the idea that Boeser's wasn't even as high as Middlestadt's which I don't think is true.

I was looking at the birthdates too quickly...so if Casey is 1 year 9 months younger than Boeser if we compare Casey's 2018-2019 to Boeser's 2017-2018 we aren't exactly apples to apples, are we? Closer to a year (more or less) apart still. Hmmm. Ok then I amend my original thought somewhat. But I still think Boeser is going to be a 40+ goal scorer at some point but he's a better 2-way player and passer than Vanek.

Boesser put up 29 goals and 26 A’s in 62 games in his 20 year old season. This will be Casey’s 20 year old season (3 months older than Boeser) and I seriously doubt he’s gonna do anything like that. I’d say Mittelstadt might have the upside of Boeser. But I’d also say Boeser might have the upside of Eichel. If Casey can exceed Horvat’s career that will be a win.

This is well done. Good job by his agent.

Two words: Lynyrd Skynyrd It's a Dad-Daughter summer date...except I get to have three dates at once, with daughters aged 14, 18, and 21 :-) Life is good.

Blackhawks got their future bass player in this deal. The Ox...

I'm thinking...championship.

I believe that BMI index is not based on professional athletes.

Without knowing exactly what future time frame was being predicted...I had a different interpretation of the charts. I had only two takeaways: 1) Expected Goals works best as a predictor when using the past 30 games or so (highest point of R-sq on it's curve), CF% works best with the past 20 games, and GF% works best with about 40 games of data. In other words, using less data than those number of games for each variable doesn't let us utilize their full predictive power. This intuitively makes sense as we can't expect a 5 or even 10 game run to necessarily represent what will happen some number of games in the future as there is too much luck over a short time frame. Likewise, as additional games are added to the data set being used to make predictions beyond the optimal number of games, the predictive power of each variable gets worse. Intuitively this makes sense to me because at some point the data being used to make predictions has occurred long enough ago that conditions have changed enough (think injuries, trades, luck, new coach's system kicks in or players lose interest, etc) that that data's inclusion in the model has a negative impact on it's predictive power. 2) At all points from 10 games through 70 games, both CF% and Exp. Goals are better predictors of future performance than GF%. Why are Corsi and Expected Goals being better predictors than GF% (i.e. +/-)? To some extent, who knows, they just are. But...I think it makes sense, at least to me. Goals for and against are of course what teams are focused on to win games and can directly explain W-L record with some set of probabilistic outcomes associated with every team +/-. In other words, a team that scores 200 goals and gives up 200 goals over the course of a season is most likely to have a 0.500 record (I'm ignoring the impact of the loser point) but that likelihood is much less than 50% chance. They can easily have win%'s of .490 or .510 etc. It's a bell curve of outcomes centered around 0.500. If they happened to have scored 200 goals in one game and were shut out in every other game they will have a win % of 0.012. This is way out on the extreme tail of outcomes, but it's not theoretically impossible. Anyway, goals are scored or allowed due to myriad factors: number of shot attempts, quality of shots, skill of the shooter, skill of the goaltender, luck, etc. In other words, goals for and against are dependent variables, not independent variables. Goals do not stand alone as an explanation of events. Pragmatically speaking, everything we talk about as a sports statistics could be described as a dependent variable based on something else (compared to say, temperature at a given pressure, which is entirely descriptive in and of itself). Since we can't consider every variable in existence, any predictive stat will inherently not have an R-squ approaching 1.0 since all the variables we are not explicitly considering have some level of impact that will create noise in our predictions. But...we can get more discrete than Goals by looking at the major drivers of how goals are scored (or allowed) and separate those factors out. Now we have searched one level below goals and found some variables that have less luck involved with them and have some level of fundamental consistency over time. We still have a bucket containing the rest of the variables ("everything else") which lowers our predictive power, but at least now we can discern trends in key variables that have some predictive power. These key variables are a stronger signal of what will happen next. Whereas just looking at goals alone co-mingles the signal (the key variables) with the noise (everything else) and hence has a lower R-squ. This may make no sense to anyone but me but it helped to try to write it out ?

So...first ballot HOF’er?

Very true. Observers league wide were linking “Tavares Watch” with “Wilson Watch” all the time, so your post makes total sense.

Challenging to find a trade offer for ROR that doesn't involve getting back any players from the CHL. :P

Hutton for 3 years @2.75 instead of Bernier, and Wedgewood for Rochester....I'm happy.