Doohicksie

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

Scotty Bowman whose playing career ended with a fractured skull in junior hockey... one of the all-time coaching greats.

They've had some success with players who couldn't get by on talent alone and had to develop the work ethic to develop their skills.

It doesn't take two car lengths to be able to pull around someone else. If you can see the bottom of their bumper you have enough room.

The other thing I've noticed is that increasingly these low wage jobs are being done by people who appear to be well past retirement age. While you might think that's on them because they should have saved more in their youth, you also don't know what their life story is. I'm okay, not great, financially, but most of that is driven by the fact that I was laid off 4 times in 5 years, 30 years ago, and when I should have been putting a good chunk of my salary away for retirement I was instead constantly behind the ball trying to catch up. I'm maxed out on what I'm putting in now, but it's a catch up game. For whatever reason, a lot of people haven't had even the level of opportunity that I have and never saved up enough to retire so they're 75 and still working at a ***** job. Yes we're all a product of the decisions we make but some people either were never taught how to properly make those decisions or have had to navigate through a life journey that put them into situations that forced them to take actions they knew weren't in their best long term interests but had to get through the short term first.

I was going to say the same without such a concrete example, but that basically if we're lucky, we'll be that old person some day. None of us looks forward to being in the care of others but rather picture ourselves as still living and operating independently. To think you're not going to have a drop off in cognitive performance or speed is just hubris. Cut the older people some slack. I will admit that I get impatient in stores but I try to hold it inside as much as I can; it's the old, "You never know what someone else is going through" thing.

If they're that far away I just assume they're not. If they are in line, they'll let you know. ...but in the fast food example, it could be a line of people who have already ordered and are waiting for their food.

Actually there's been a spate of bomb threats/active shooter reports/both together lately. One night a week or two ago, a mall near me was evacuated when people started calling in that there were gun shots. At virtually the same time, similar reports were called in about a Walmart about 30 miles away, and other shopping center about 40 miles away. I think there was probably some social media prank thing urging teens to call in reports on that night. ...or we could talk about my bunions.

Ah, Agent Cooper!

I haven't noticed it around here (Texas). It's usually a coupla feet, if that.