DarthEbriate

Grumble grumble. Go get it back!

https://www.audacy.com/thefanrochester

True that. Cue a TL;DR Ebriate flashback... When I was a wee Ebriate I was one of those super short kids who was sneaky good at sports. So in my age-11 Little League year our team got a shiny new super light TPX bat. The entire team used it. You can imagine the diseases just floating on that thing. I didn't use it because I was rocking the 28" Easton that was in the team's regular equipment set. So one game we're facing a "the best pitcher in our division" type pitcher. The kid was one of those freaks who's already 6 feet tall at age 12. So I'm thinking... let's go ultralight. I swing the TPX. Late. Late. Late. That kid struck me out twice that day. I don't ever remember striking out before. I'm sure I had but I never remembered striking out before. I was flabbergasted. My manager (who was a very good kids coach) was like "what are you doing using the TPX? Go back to the 28". I did. I did not keep tabs that season but I probably batted .400-.500-ish. I was good and I loved baseball and was going to be a left-handed shortstop in the majors (but probably center fielder because the some would consider the mechanics of a lefty short to be... unnatural, but I made it work). Fast forward to age 12. The final year of LL. I'm ready to be a rockstar again. And the 12 year-olds graduated (and with one of them, his dad the manager). So I was ready to be the bestest of the best for the new manager and young team. And then I took a baseball in the eye in the backyard playing catch. The ball went through a tree branch just like it'd done a thousand times. I froze. Time slowed. It hit me. That season I batted .000. .000! Every out I made was a strikeout. I went from batting leadoff to batting ninth. I went from an upright batting stance to one of those annoying super-short and crouched Craig Biggio types. The new manager stuck me on first base. The worst base! I used the TPX and the manager never told me to go back to the 28" Easton. Our team sucked. I hated playing baseball. My complete lack of plate confidence was my weakness. But I did keep track of at-bats that year (limited appearances from a family vacation + maybe out sick a week + I definitely called in sick and skipped one game out of spite).... I batted .000, but my on-base percentage was .714 between throwing/fielding errors and crouched-over walks. The rookie manager gave me one steal sign all season which I converted.

Tyson Kozak (and the rest of the Portland Winterhawks offense) have gone ice-cold in their two attempts to close out the T-Birds. They have only 2 goals in their last 69 shots on T-Birds' goalie Milic. It's now to a deciding game 7 tonight in Portland.

This has been a weekend long remembered. It has seen the end of the Bruins and Leafs, and will soon now has seen the end of the Penguins.

Fantastic pass and the 0:40 second of the video freezes leaving those two forever waiting to connect their high five. Tales of R2's departure were premature. Whatever parts or gears were necessary for the playoffs were given to him.

Good. good....

I don't care if he's 4'2" if he can negate would-be deflections, box out would-be screens and block shots, and punt an opponent into next week they take a late hack at my goalie's glove after the save is made.

In my rise and downfall of Jackikin Eichwalker saga... Threepio is the most difficult character to define. I thought maybe Rick Jeanneret because of the narrator/translator aspect and the end-to-end participation, but RJ is much better as the Ric Olie character who provides exposition and even has the same name. I think in the end Threepio will be a bunch of different persons as he goes through different transformations in each of the prequel films. The more you know!

Signing an offer sheet = the ultimate "does he wants to be here?" test For Otter, probably $6M (1st and a 3rd) is the starting point. But Dallas has Radulov and Klingberg coming off the books so they'll have the space to refocus on Oettinger next season. They do have Khudobin and Bishop still signed next year, but Bishop may be on LTIR for the duration of his career.

You don't have to break the draft pick bank on an RFA offer sheet. I could see a team giving an offer sheet at the 2nd-round (under $4.1M) or 3rd-round level (<$2.05M) for one of those cap-strapped teams' depth guys. For example, Nicolas Roy of the Golden Knights would make a solid 3C addition on many rosters and Vegas might simply have to take the pick if Stone is healthy. (Case in point: the Sabres would have a tremendous upgrade replacing Eakin with Roy, in my opinion. And they'd still have 2 2nds in 2023)

Now *this* is podracing gameday threading.

That didn't last too long. Time to put on the headset and get back between the benches.

Weird. He's a darn good coach. They started the season as wanderers while the arena was completed and then had one of the biggest COVID outbreaks in the league. In mid-December, they were 8-12-6 as a result. The back end of the season they were just off a playoff pace. Not great, but not really "fire a really good coatch" worthy.

Highly recommended! Maybe visit in later May so it's just a touch warmer, but before the summer heat and tourist season mayhem. Or in autumn.

All the locations were great, but I did like Slovenia quite a bit. We only passed through Ljubljana but I thought it was really charming and would've loved to go to college there in an alternate timeline. Bled and the Postojna caves were both nice. As to the statue... we did have a guide give us a 10-second side note on it, but in the same breath mention that the President/First Lady basically treated their country with disdain, at least from a Slovenian point-of-view. I didn't hear anything about re-erecting said statue.

True. Maybe take Laaksonen instead of Bryson in the 4th after a Farrance pick. Laaksonen is still only 22 and was a definite long-term project pick so the jury is still out. He's also only listed at 172 pounds and 6-2... he needs to drink more beer. He had the 2nd most points as a D in ROC this season. It's just disheartening he can't get into the lineup for the playoff experience on a team with a famously thin D-corp this season (once Muel and Fitz were gone). Not even as a 5/6+PP specialist.

Doing some after-the-fact follow-up... Not a good look for Laaksonen to get scratched when the team is dressing 7 D because Weissbach is hurt and Samuelsson is also injured. Do we know if Laaksonen has an injury as well?

Three really wonderful weeks in Italy-Slovenia-Croatia. Minus some COVID for folks in the traveling party and COVID tele-health host no-show shenanigans. And a Happy Ramadan! (if that's an appropriate salutation) for your time away.

Power finished the season +3. He'll be a career + player for us.

The odds: tell me! Gimme gimme gimme all the odds.

INTERIOR: SabreSpace Cruiser. A blast door slides open. Ebriate walks in and sets down suitcases. So! What did I miss? Nah... I'm kidding. I lurked the 'Space and y'all kept me entertained in the downfall of Jackikin Eichwalker and the collapse of his new Empire Knights.

Own goal. In my experience there's no such thing as luck. But tonight the bounces have been Blue.

Seriously this could be 6-5 Buffalo in the lead.

Tarasenko's a pretty player. Now I can start worrying....