Doohickie

The Hurricanes don't have an AHL team? How can you run an NHL club without an AHL affiliate? And... there is no *new* mention of the Sabres; only a reference to rumors from July.

Thanks for the memories, RJ. Godspeed.

100 degrees at 9 pm. Wild.

It embedded for me. But yeah, he's done.

Complaint: People who are concerned enough about what goes on in their neighborhood that they get security cameras, but stupid enough to leave their bicycles unlocked *in their front yard* and oblivious enough to post their Ring videos of someone stealing said bike at 3 am on Nextdoor. No, I'm not exonerating the dipshit who stole the bike but yes I am victim blaming the fool who left the bike out. I think most people (myself included) learn the hard way that if you don't take care of your stuff, someone else will help themself to it. But if you think you need a security camera and don't bother to secure your belongings.... I'm not gonna feel sorry for you. (I had to post this here to get it out of my system because replying to the Nextdoor thread would not have come to any good.)

Oh I know. He's the one who tipped me off on the two-first-name guys. I think the way it works is, if you're legit you don't mind doing business under your full name, but if you need to dodge people you hide your name.

My complaint is the number of scammers on Facebook. I am moderator for my neighborhood's page and at this point for every legit new member there are at least 4 or 5 guys with a name like Jason Brian (no last name, or a very common last name), whose actual name in their Facebook profile url is akeem.faruk. If I can convince myself there is no way a new member is legit, I punt them on the spot. Unfortunately the page admin only denied scammy posts but didn't punt the people who made them so they re-emerge periodically like cicadas. When she first made me a moderator I was very careful and cleared every banning with her but she said she trusts me now and I just ban scammers with impunity.

There aren't other Quest locations in the area? There are dozens of those in Fort Worth... in every medical office park and sometimes right in the same building with the doctor.

But DeSmith is 32. What is his trajectory? I would expect it's downward and UPL is upward, which is why I think UPL will outperform DeSmith this season.

Is he? I'm not so sure. Past career? Yes. Going forward? Remains to be seen. I could see UPL (or Comrie but in my mind more likely UPL) playing better than DeSmith this year.

Not really.

Amazing. The Sabre with that same kind of feel on today's team is Tage, although I would say Tage brings even more.

Last one out of TD Garden, turn out the lights please.

Head coaching a team is different from being a developmental coach. Some can do both, some can't. Redmond has been tapped to develop young players. For such a job I think it's conceivable that he will be better that than someone like Patrick Kane or Sydney Crosby or Connor McDavid or Wayne Gretzky... guys who were always better than the rest of the players on the ice. I'm not saying they don't/didn't work to elevate their games, but they didn't have to work as hard to get the results they wanted. This is why a Matt Ellis or Nathan Paetsch or Zach Redmond can be a good coach: They had to bring out abilities that weren't naturally there based on talent alone.

I think this thread wouldn't even exist if Montour hadn't scored 13 points in the playoffs; several of his goals were crucial. That shined the spotlight on him. I think it will turn out that last year was his peak year for scoring and he'll be back to 20-30 points per season going forward.

I didn't say they'd score a lot, I said they'd be hard to play against.

fixed it for ya, nills. That could be a very powerful, punishing line and hard to play against.

He's one better than Owen Power, according to The Hockey Guy (cued up to his Montour remarks) What he says about Montour is pretty much in line with my view.

He's not in the Norris conversation so I won't even answer the poll which centers on Norrisness. He's a solid D coming off a career year.

Pizzazz

Well they seem to think Levi is the answer.

Friday was our 39th wedding anniversary. We enjoyed a nice dinner at a really good restaurant. How it started: How it's going:

That happened to me once, where I braced for impact when a car behind me was barreling up behind me as traffic on the freeway in front of me was stopped. I was in a Ford Escort with my wife and two young sons; the car behind was an old-school full-sized Ford LTD. He noticed at the last minute and took his car into the left shoulder and guardrail and bounced into the guardrail several times before popping out into the lane ahead of me into an impossibly small spot (probably about 6 inches from his bumper to the car in front of him and 6 inches from our bumper in the back. The car literally jumped sideways after hitting the railing the last time. His rearview mirror was gone. Traffic started moving again and got up to freeway speeds and he just kept driving. It was wild. This was about 30 years ago, no cell phones involved.1