zurch1818

Blake Geoffrion with his first career hat trick against Ryan Miller and the Sabres today.

Great find...makes me feel better about the situation. Something tells me they might try and fail again though. I see Milwaukee is nearly almost 4 times bigger in terms of GDP, maybe they could move to Mil instead. I know that won't happen though...but I can still dream.

I was at my first ever NHL game this year too. From watching just about the entire NHL season on TV, I knew that the pro game was much faster than college. Seeing it in person, made it so much faster. Passing in the NHL is at another level and can be quite entertaining. The playoff push in the Western Conference is insane...and a lot of fun to watch and digest. You know it's insane when trwi7 says it to start and finish a post. Coyotes with another huge win in Vancouver last night. Now only one point back of the Sharks for third place. They supposedly have no talent but just keep finding ways to win. Having solid depth in lines 1-3 to spread the offense and an amazing goalie in Ilya Bryzgalov is a perfect recipe for postseason success. Hopefully they don't move to Winnipeg and turn into the Jets again. This whole bond sale lawsuit is driving me nuts. Even though I don't live in Phoenix and have no plans on moving there, I don't think I could root for a Canadian team. If your a Brewer fan and you live in the Phoenix area, start going to games for my sake!

Doing what DKM recommended should work. I've had success getting rid of malware with the program malwarebytes anti-malware before (the program referenced in that fix).

I just found the best website to LEGALLY stream NHL games for free. If it were illegal, I wouldn't be posting the link. I watched the Kings play the Ducks last night on it. Yahoo sports is the provider of the stream (local blackout restrictions do apply and a US IP address is needed). They show two games per night at a good quality. Trwi7 and berniebrewer will be happy for tonight's games...the Preds play the Hawks and the Habs play the Nucks. I believe Wisconsin is technically in the Wild market, so these games should not be blacked out. Enjoy! Yahoo Hockey Night

I also totally agree that hockey and baseball shouldn't be directly compared. It is just an example of how some type of cap can make a sport much more competitive. Yes, the quantity of money is much smaller, but some of the concepts can dramatically help baseball. Actually hockey is booming right now. The salary cap has risen from $40 million from its inception back in '05 all the way up to $60 million that it is at now. Only one team that I know of (my Coyotes again) are in financial trouble. I'm not trying to change baseball into hockey but just having baseball do something so teams can be more competitive needs to happen. The thing with the current system is players are always going to be asking for more than the last guy. Remember when Arod signed a 200 million dollar contract and we thought it was unheard of. Now we are talking about Pujols getting 300 million. I just think the line needs to be drawn somewhere. If you were to implement a TV revenue sharing policy (which I think the NFL does...not really sure), teams would have more money and could afford to keep their players. Good point with the world draft. It would definitely take away some of the power they have in choosing what team they play for (and teams driving up their price by bidding for them). I'm going to say that players won't want to give up that right either...Something has to give.

Ok. Maybe economy in that sense wasn't the right word. I'm looking at it in a different sense...getting teams across the league to be competitive. With the current system, teams simply buy wins. Teams like the Pirates and Royals are struggling to produce a winning team. Teams with high payrolls are taking advantage of the current draft pick compensation policy. Something needs to be done to make baseball more competitive. So in that sense, baseball economics are broken.

These Pujols contract negotiations got me thinking about a potential solution to baseball's economic problem. What if there was a maximum per year salary....say 15-20 million? A hard cap would be introduced...but it is much larger than any team has historically spent (375 million - 500 million). This would allow small market teams to still potentially keep their homegrown talent but teams like the Yankees could still load up on these top players at the maximum salary. A luxury tax penalty would still have to be payed though. I know this system isn't perfect...but it is much better than the current system. My dream would be the hard cap seen in the NHL. The cap is 60 million and the maximum salary is 20% of that. If players get injured, teams are allowed to temporarily spend an allowance over the cap but must be under the cap by season's end. This is the time of the year where teams are starting to scramble to get under the cap if they aren't already. I'm not saying hockey is perfect...the cap hit still needs some work (see Ilya Kovalchuk situation). However, this system works...just look at how competitive the Western conference is. The third place team (my Coyotes) is only 3 points ahead of the team currently in 8th place....and 8 teams in each conference make the playoffs. If you are unaware...a win is worth 2 points and a OTL is worth 1. Each game is a grind and is really starting to get fun to watch. If baseball were to just implement just a couple of the concepts this game would be extremely fun to watch.

Current Badger Jake Gardiner was also traded to the Leafs today too.

Maybe it should sound more like the original 1700's English Drinking song, To Anacreon In Heaven.? I still can't believe our National Anthem is based off a drinking song.

Mods: Can we get a merger of the two pro hockey threads? I know these threads cater to a very small portion of BF, but it is annoying having information about the same topic in two different threads. Thanks

http://www.dailyfaceoff.com/ This site is the best. It tells you when goalies are playing and also has the most updated lines. It tells you the 4 lines of forwards, the 3 defensive pairings and both powerplay lines. The lines update from game to game pending on what changes the team made.

If you still have it DVR'd, could you take a picture of the screen and post it on here. I'm very familiar with campus right now and I could tell you what it was.

Thanks all. I reset all the settings on my TV and did a full digital rescan. And it worked! You guys should consider getting a job at Charter. Much more helpful than them.

We are having a lot of people over today for a Packer party. We have 2 HD tvs and only 1 cable box. The plan was to put the game on both TVs...one with the box and the other with the QAM tuner. However, for the past week, HD channels have not been working with the QAM tuner. Is anyone else struggling to get them? Also, does anyone have any solutions that doesn't involve calling charter? I just tried it and they told me the only way to get HD channels was through a box. They said QAM tuners aren't reliable. Wow is all I need to say.....

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1111480568.png My Brother's wired desktop http://www.speedtest.net/result/1111484204.png My Desktop with a USB wireless adapter. The router is in the basement and I'm on the second floor...not bad.

I completely understand your situation. I'm commissioner, so I kind of made all the scoring categories. Because half of the people in my leaugue don't follow hockey as close as I do, I was able to recover from my poor drafting in the first couple rounds. I got Ryan Miller in the first round, no problem (I had the 11th pick out of the 12 teams). Second round, there were so many people that I wanted to take that I panicked. I was looking at names such as Kopitar, Thornton, Toews, E. Staal and I couldn't decide. The clock ran out and it autodrafted Jeff Carter for me. He's not bad, but I really didn't want to take him. I started out the year 2-2, but I was able to see potential in FA early and picked them up. Now I'm 10-3. A small finetune of the scoring is necessary for next year, but I definitely like the head-to-head format much better than the rotisserie. With points assigned to everything, you can get by with bad goaltending if you have solid skaters. Funny story here about our draft. We got my brother into the league who doesn't even follow hockey. He had the 10th pick and was drafting based upon how American they sounded. I'm drafting upstairs in my room and he is downstairs doing the same. He got really excited with his first pick and yells up to me while really emphasizing the e "I got Semin." I said corrected the pronunciation and said he was Russian. His third pick was Hossa, but he likes to say Hasa instead. That's a good article on the Admirals. I had no idea that many players played for them. I was shocked to see Scottie Upshall on there. Over the past couple years of playing NHL on my xbox, the Coyotes have grown to be my favorite team in the NHL.

Thanks for the advice. That is quite the scouting report on him. I picked up Gagne when someone got impatient with his neck problem and gave up on him. I had an open IR spot, so why not? It's Simon Gagne! Now it's more like it's Simon Gagne? He played decent his first week back and then has just done nothing. I think Kostitsyn is worth a shot especially since he is in a contract year. It's good to hear that from a Preds fan. That's what I thought about Reimer too. Only 4% of the leagues have him right now, but I definitely see that climbing with his stellar play as of late. His line of .947/1.92 is probably unsustainable, but still should project well. I've got the best netminding in the league with Miller, Quick, and Crawford, so I don't think I could drop any of them. I took a gamble with Crawford early (owned by 9%) when Niittymaki was losing his job and it has worked out great. This is why I thought Reimer might be a good buy low. I've seen some pretty stupid trades go through this year, so I still could capitalize on it and bring in a solid skater. How is your fantasy team doing this year?

Awesome find trwi! I had no idea Carey Price was a Brewers fan. I've got a Preds question/fantasy question. Sergei Kostitsyn is on fire as of late. As of now he is a free agent and Simon Gagne is really just terrible this year. Is he worth the pickup? I really haven't seen him play at so I'm not sure if it is a fluke. He would go great with Shea Weber though who is on my team. Ah...one more question that isn't Preds related. Is James Reimer the real deal? Goalies are a premium in our league. Most teams only have 3 goalies out of the 20 players but they account for roughly a quarter of the total points. I have no need for a goalie right now, but I am thinking about scooping on him then having him catch fire and use him for trade bait.

Congrats to Mcdonagh being called up. Even though he hasn't really had that spectacular of a season in the AHL with 8 pts in 38 games, he still was a solid player for the Badgers last year. Now they have Stepan and McDonagh on the same team.

I love this quote because it is so true. Our family made this connection last year and even gave him a nickname, Brian Butch 2.0 (or 2.0 for short). He is a new and improved version. His play in the post against Minnesota really emphasized this. Also, if you want to see 3.0....check out Anderson, the sole player to redshirt this year. In the exhibition games (the only games he played), his style was eerily similar to Butch's and Berggren's. It's really surprising that this style of player works well in Bo's offense.

Glad you liked the game. As I inferred earlier, this game is highly addictive. I still play (and enjoy) this game a lot. When I play against the computer, I usually play on Pro (the next level up from rookie) or All-Star (two levels up from rookie) if I really want a challenge. I exclusively play online now, so I really don't remember what it is like playing against the computer. I do remember that when I made this transition, people play much more aggressively when trying to get the puck into the zone. I hate to break it to you, but once you play at a higher level, it is much harder to have open wrist and slap shots. They get into the passing and shooting lanes much better. The easiest way to score on this though is to set up a lot of backdoor one-timer plays. This is basically all I do online. Regarding defense and shooting from the point, make sure that you hold down the left trigger (not sure what button it would be on ps3). It squares you up with the making poke checks on defense and shooting on offense much more reliable. I do have some minor complaints about the game though. For one, I think it is nearly impossible to execute a one-on-one deke against the computer or online. However, I do like when people do them against me. It is really easy to break up with poke checking. I also don't like how you can get sucked into the boards when getting pinned. It just doesn't seem realistic. Also I don't like that auto-aim is even an option. It makes it too easy to score. Maybe it shouldn't be a complaint (because it is how I get most of my goals), but I think it is too easy to set up backdoor one-timers on rushes. All in all these complaints are so minor and don't really affect game play much. I still play it too much!

You may be right TLB. I was hoping that there would be something streamed on the Brewers homepage. It did say that he just got off the phone with him at the start of that Witrado blog post, so I'm still going to hope that there will be something later today.

Does this mean there is going to be a presser this afternoon? I can't find anything saying for certain.

Lindback has been amazing. In my fantasy league, I had Niittymaki as my third goalie but he has really struggled of late (well next two my other two goalies Miller and Quick). I dropped him and picked up Corey Crawford. I really am starting to think that I should have picked up Lindback (but now it's too late). Speaking of Quick, how amazing was his 51 save shutout? I really haven't followed hockey long enough to know the answer to this, but I wonder if is one of the highest save totals in a shutout post 2005. He has been amazingly solid this year. At the beginning of the year they were expecting Bernier to play 30% of the time, but how can you shut Quick down when he has been hot for most of the year?