caucasianheat

Someone will give it to him. Whether he's actually cut out to play in such a role consistently is more up in the air. Spezza's no-trade list allegedly includes every other Canadian team (oof!) plus the Islanders, Predators, Jackets and Panthers.

Buyout season commences. RIP the Ville Leino contract.

Cotto v. Martinez tonight at the Garden. Very excited! Should be an awesome matchup.

Everybody bid a fond farewell to hippie.

I suspect certain parts of the ratings can't be tampered with. Like when Sophie tells you your target TV rating, it would seem to be defined in the game itself (Level/PI and strength of the market maybe?) and not relative to the network.dat file. The ratings might be high because they're based on references from 2001 or so. I'm not sure but that's my guess.

^ The whole album is streaming on Pitchfork and it's really really good.

I wouldn't say badly, they just didn't kill penalties well and had at least one freak goal go in. The too many men call that led to a goal and then Carter's weird one that dropped down from the sky seemed to take the air out of Chicago. The game could have been 6-6 or something but Quick was dynamite.

Make it personal when the series is actually on, fine. That should be expected. In the handshake line after you've been beaten? Show a tiny bit of sportsmanship. Truthfully I can't imagine a greater compliment going into the next round for a guy like Weise than "you made Milan Lucic lose his fucking mind".

Getting the Family Guy lead-in suggests they've got high hopes for Mulaney, which is great news. NBC is beyond stupid to have passed on it given the deep SNL connection the show has and how starved their comedy lineup is going to be.

Agreed, I think they're better off trading someone else to try and get a top-flight partner for Phaneuf than getting rid of him. They wanted Scuderi last year but couldn't get him. Nonis didn't sound all that high on the free agent market this year when he was interviewed a few days ago.

The Phaneuf rumour seems to be exclusively from Sportsnet via Kypreos - the same place that cooked up a completely untrue story about Mike Babcock being in the running for the coaching job in Toronto a week ago. Bob McKenzie confirmed the Spezza rumour with more details but didn't breathe a word about any Phaneuf trade. That's probably telling. The only thing that really leans in the favour of a trade happening is that Phaneuf has a NTC which kicks in after the summer. This is the window if they want to move him without having to tailor a trade to his wishes.

Spezza apparently told Sens management at his end of year meeting he wouldn't object to them finding him a trade. He's never played anywhere else and only has one year left on his current contract. He probably doesn't want to be the new Alfredsson of a team that seemed to stall in their growth this year. Moving him now makes sense for Ottawa as the return only diminishes the closer he gets to expiry. Watched the Rangers/Pens with my mom tonight and it got a little dusty for MSL's goal...

I'm not trolling, but the Sun definitely is with today's sports cover: Extensions never mean certainly sticking around for the duration. Carlyle's going to get a little retool of the roster (which they need regardless of whether the coach got fired) and if it flops he'll probably be gone by New Years. One of the new assistants should probably be someone they could promote down the line to head coach, but who knows.

When you consider one judge gave Alvarez a draw against Mayweather too, you'd think Maidana might have fared even better Mayweather swept the last four rounds and some of the earlier ones are subjective because they were close/boring. Maidana (per Compubox) landed more punches on Mayweather than anyone else has in their records. It sounds today like they might do the quick rematch possibly in September but Khan at some point down the road might be Mayweather's last 'big' fight.

But you can also have John Tortorella, so there's that.

I don't even really dislike the Blues but I LOVE seeing all their hype get deflated every single year. ... meanwhile, my Sharks and Sharking it up bigtime.

It's pretty specious interference. I get that it's a 'to the letter of the rules' kind of call but Killorn's presence in the crease is completely due to Montreal's players and the degree to which he actually interfered with Price is debatable. I definitely don't get why people are crying conspiracy over it though. Even though I drew San Jose in the sweeps and like them, it's depressing to see LA just wilt in the first two games because I thought it would be more of a battle. The hate is there but the games haven't been close by any means.

I'll go in.

Of course Buffalo can't even win a lottery.

I always cringe now when I see a puck race happening at that spot and one guy goes to cut in. So many hits from behind that same way this year. Teemu with a nice twist on the farewell lap. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJuGmu9T8AE

The Leafs will hire Brendan Shanahan as their angel of death new team president.

Linden is officially the new president of hockey operations.

Trevor Linden is supposedly going to be the new president, put in charge of hiring a GM and overseeing the team from there. I would say it's not unexpected for Gillis, though it happened faster than maybe you would have figured. He confirmed his head was probably on the chopping block in a radio interview a week ago so maybe he was aware or wanted to be let go or who knows. They need some change because it's fallen apart really badly down the stretch. I watched last night's game with Anaheim and it was a really poor effort.

Check out this link for some samples of the themes http://youtu.be/VKHHqmZ5b00?t=1m23s You have to work for it by watching the video to completion.

The fake Orton theme. Oh my lord.