Marvin

Wrong. 😉

I told Greg that it has been getting a lot of play here. I e-mailed it to the Sabres a few days ago. Let's see if the marketing department has any brains. https://makeagif.com/gif/brain-and-brain-what-is-brain-ll8qfv

Now you can listen to it specifically: And a couple of other tracks for natives, expats, etc. who love Buffalo: And a paean to his home town:

The draft discussion more resembles The List of Adrian Messenger.

We still would need a centre. Hence... If memory serves me right, the one potential hitch for us is that he is 1 year to UFA. True, but Darcy wanted him to as a partner for Myers. Here, we would need to move both Ristolainen and Montour to fit his likely salary. Can we live with that?

Just as Yes, (Prime) Minister was the place where British civil servants leaked their frustrations about the government (including TWO of Thatcher's cabinet), Barney Miller was a place where honest, real cops could vent about their frustrations about public policy, police actions, etc. The Season 7 opener was the greatest example of the show and its writers being spokespeople for honest cops. I think that Barney Miller is far better than the sitcoms that critics love. Few series wear as well at it does.

Did you know that Barney Miller actually affected public policy? Start of season 7. Now, there are talks about rethinking the police to have specialty squads for dealing with civil problems after things like shootings.

The one inexpensive purchase that we might be able to make with a UFA would be an G.

The problem people seem to have is that the players and coaches are bringing their politics into the discussion. There is no dodging it: this is Colin Kaepernick writ large. Some people don't want their sports enjoyment sullied by the grimy world of politics. IMHO, this is a forlorn hope. I expounded on this at length on the politics board, so I will not go into detail here. For those who have left over the politics, I hope that you will all be back if the Sabres make moves which make them sustainably successful for several years and that they actually manage to be as successful as people like me expect of them.

I am a believer in ensemble play; the Isles have that in spades.

Let us think about this systematically. If we ask a player to sign with us, what will the player do? Obviously, call his potential teammates and ask how they feel about how the team. Thus, KA, TP, and KP had all better have Eichel, Reinhart, Dahlin, etc. "on board" with their plans AND be happy with them. Now we need to compare the Sabres' situation and offer with others'. What could entice someone to sign with Buffalo besides money? I personally might like the challenge of being one of the guys who change the mentality, expectations, culture, etc. around team. Others may see that they are filling a glaring hole, like ROR and Binnington did in St. Louis. Honestly, I would not spend a ton of money on UFA's -- IMHO, many will use the Sabres' cap situation and recent history against us to extort untenable money and/or term. I would be targetting whom I think are 2C's in need of a chance and a G upgrade.

I so feel for you, SDS, and nfreeman.

From the main board, Around the NHL: '1) justification or not is not the "root" of the problem. The problem is the lack of morals, self responsibility, and faith( other than 1hr/week). If this were to change there would be much less police inter-actions and maybe less need for them all together. There's an old saying...."if you can't do the time, don't do the crime".' I have a different fear: I don't do the crime, but I do the time anyway. I have a perpetual fear of being killed by someone in authority over my skin colour and/or religious beliefs. If you don't feel this, you don't get it. '2) Why aren't these players protesting the violence that's killing innocent people on the streets everyday causing the police to get involved? There are many more people getting killed in this fashion.' Because I could die today from police bigotry and racism. The survival instinct trumps all others. Besides, the players DO work on those other issues. But they may have been or seen their friends been targetted by police just because of their skin colour. This has to be dealt with first because no one is exempt, no matter how law-abiding, we are presumed guilty until proven innocent. 'Just to add another point, I'm ok with equal justice system . However, my conclusion is if there is an inequality in minority vs white sentencing, then raise the white sentencing to equal that of the minorities and not the other way around. I'm sure that would make everyone "equally" unhappy.' No white would accept a black person shooting two white people at a Trump rally and just being taken in peacefully by the cops. But the white guy who shoots two innocent people helping blacks? He's a ****ing hero. And you wonder why people cheered OJ getting away with murder. That was the one time it went the other way.

I responded in the politics board.

I sure did. IMHO, it was a thumb in the eye of the people who attacked us as well as a psychological lift to the country. Ditto the NFL games the weekend after 9/11 and so on.

I think the balance between including and excluding politics is currently much harder than we think it is. The players are bringing their politics, sociology, economics, etc. into sports; the people who want to keep it out are SOL. It's impossible right now. You can't stop them unless you stop watching. The only sport I have successfully boycotted is MLB after the 1994 strike. (No one cares.) I recommend that we understand that politics of some sort have always been part of the game. IMHO, that is the only way that we can accept labour strife, sports-based jingoism, and social protests in stride and keep our tempers down and some modicum of sanity when we see the stuff around the game.

I vote 2020 to be considered as the vilest profanity. This year has been abso-2020-lutely bull2020.

Ugh, iCarly?

I must comment. Every time a cop pulls me over and I am not with my wife, I surreptitiously call her on the phone and leave the line open in case I die. Who else thinks about this? Thanks, SwampD.

Let me let you in on a secret: the only difference between me and the rioters is my financial situation. I am not going to excuse anything I have done. But I understand race riots from the inside. I have been angry enough to lash out. If you have not had that barely-concealed, always simmering anger at authority figures who persistently harass and harm you and your friends for no reason, you probably won't get it. Songs like "911 is a Joke", "**** the Police", and "Fight the Power" are your anthems. So before you make too many generalisations about them, ask a fellow Sabres fan about it. And I guarantee that the players feel that too. And I went to the hospital, got sedation, and now see a therapist and a psychiatrist to deal with it. Sometimes, in righteous anger, you take pride in what you did. I brag about why I am banned from the Smithsonian. I am proud that alt-righters threatened my life at a 2nd amendment rally. So the rants and lectures that we should just let everything be are wasted on us. (I use "us" here because the players, protesters, etc. speak for me too.) We have heard them our whole lives. If we are going to be boycotted, murdered, etc., we might as well go down fighting for something worth the price.

I have complicated views. Every police(wo)man I have met wants their precinct to be as clean as the ol' one-two from Barney Miller. That is one of the hardest jobs I can imagine, so I contribute to any fundraiser they have when I can. Thus, when I went protesting, I wore a mask and worked with police to weed out potential trouble-makers. I have also been so mistreated by police that sometimes, I need to listen to It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Fear of a Black Planet, and Straight Outta Compton every now and then like I had to after the Kenosha shootings. Thus, I also support #BlackLivesMatter and the protests of the players. I was the first non-Caucasian in Amherst. As such, I am the most westernised of the orthodox Sikhs in the area. Thus, I feel a responsibility to those who don't interact with the general community as much to teach them how to mix and assimilate better, speak up for them when they don't know how or can't, and, in short, lead. I speak at interfaith gatherings around town to try and increase understanding amidst all the division. Being the person with the "A" or "C" on your figurative jersey is hard. I understand that they feel because they have the means, visibility, and platform to do so, they feel the responsibility to protest for those who can't afford it. They are not protesting just for themselves -- even those who had their legs broken, heads beaten, and the like -- they are the voice of those without a say. They know that they need to be Tommie Smiths and Juan Carloses of this day and age. The players have the same problems I do magnified thousands-fold. I totally feel what LeBron James tweeted about the shooting -- while a white killer of two was brought peacefully into custody by the same police department the same night. That is ludicrous -- the injustice of the difference was a bridge too far. It does not matter if you like it or not; they feel that responsibility to their voiceless fellows -- period. There was already opposition to even restarting. They restarted in good faith with the hope that their peaceful protests would stop crap like Kenosha. From their point of view, their peaceful, quiet protest did exactly nothing. Their conclusion is action that incurs the broad rant of @Randall Flagg is all we have left.

If this belongs in the politics board, please feel free to move it. I want to point out that politics and sports have never been separate except in our minds. The entire 20th century of sports was subsumed within the political problems of the day. For instance, it is flat out delusional to ignore the Cold War, stagflation, and the Iran Hostage Crisis when someone my age remembers the Miracle on Ice so fondly. Other examples are too easy to think of: the 1936 Olympics, the creation of women's competitive sports, the propaganda of the Cold War in international tournaments, the eventual acceptance of South American, then African, and now Asian teams in the World Cup of Football, to now with the #BlackLivesMatter protests. The mix of politics and sport is not new. There is also no purity of sport, except in our childhoods. Owners treated the players like dirt until Curtis Flood sued to create free agency. We thought about how great it would be to play for the Sabres. Meanwhile, Mike Robitaille used to pump gas in the off-season because he was borderline illiterate and couldn't get another job. Competition begets toxic competitiveness in some people, so Canadians excuse Bobby Clarke for breaking Kharlamov's ankle in the 1972 Summit Series. Canadians also accepted not having Bobby Hull and others on Team Canada while the Soviets had a player boycott because of the power struggle lost by Tarasov. In the 1990's, I as an expatriate Buffalonian was expected to take verbal abuse and apologise for bringing the country down because the Bills lost 4 Super Bowls. In grad school, a Buffalo Bills coat was an open invitation for people to throw iceballs at me or to try and run me over with their cars. I quit playing bridge because some novices violated the ACBL's rules on behaviour to openly denigrate me at a game in Columbus Ohio because I was a Bills fan. For some reason, being a Bills fan meant I wasn't as good a bridge player as the guy who trained Meckstroth-Rodwell thought I was and that I needed to be put in my place. More coming.

Sorry to see you go. The issue is that sports are played by real people. When those real people are affected by external events, then sports takes on a meaning more than entertainment. This goes back to before 1936 Olympics in Berlin to Smith and Carlos in the 1968 Olympics past the opening ceremonies of the 2016 games. Even when the game is being played, you can still feel external intrusions. At the Red Army - Sabres game from 1980, there was a sign in Russian that said, "Better Dead than Red" and a second sign in Arabic that said, "God Is Great - Kill the Commies." The best that you can do is put the external disturbances out of your mind as best you can when the game is being played. Good luck to you.