TrueBlue4ever

Jonathan Toews suffering from long COVID symptoms, stepping away from the team for a bit, and will not be traded by the deadline as a result. According to ESPN.

It was in the obscurity of back pages until you bumped it to the top just now. Thanks for the PTSD!!!!!!!!!

What would really make me happiest, beyond Fox News going into bankruptcy, would be a judicial order forcing them to make an on-air public retraction of their false claims from each and every host who ever peddled the lie at the main network. Murdoch, Dobbs, Hannity, Carlson, Ingraham, Pirro, every single one of them in full, forced to tell their viewers that they knowingly lied to them.

And why if he was always so determined to be nowhere but Winnipeg did it take two weeks into free agency for him to stay here? And what other offers did he turn down, and for how much? Curious to hear some numbers.

I think Leguizamo was always intended to be a temporary character arc rather than a series regular. I stopped watching regularly after they killed off the Mark Greene character. Caught the last few episodes of the final season. Stamos was the new “Clooney”, or more accurately the newest “Clooney” after Goran Visnich’s “Luka” left.

Only other decent gig he had was on “e.r.” For 3 seasons at the end of it’s run.

Not sure I totally buy Farhan’s “belief”. Bailey was expendable here once we got Lawler signed and Schoen did not get an NFL bite. Bailey committed to free agency knowing he was not a priority here, and we heard crickets for a week, which suggests that the other teams saw what Walters saw, that Bailey is a supplemental piece and not a number one receiver (and his career stats back up that assertion, IMO). I don’t buy that he left heaps of money and a higher profile role as a prime target receiver on another team to come back here as the 4th option in the progressions. My “belief” is that he did not get any great offers, and teams were not prepared to pay close to his $130,000 salary from last year for a 35-40 yards a game average third option American receiver. So he chose the best option which was to come back where he was comfortable and knew the system, and earn what he could and hope for bonus playoff cash. But a great depth signing if we got him for less than 6 figures.

I’m not suggesting he’s “starting” calibre, just wondering if he is in fact on the roster or if he is a free agent. Although, if he was auditioning to be a starter, he did mop up really well in the Grey Cup as his audition tape (dammit).

Chad Kelly?

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/16/sport/tim-mccarver-mlb-obit-spt/index.html

I hear what you are saying about draft picks, but personally I don’t think it is a huge loss. If you are inclined to overspend and take the penalty, then you are better off paying for a known commodity in free agency rather than taking a flyer on a draft choice who may be a free agent by the time their draft potential starts to be met. At least that was the Brendan Tamen philosophy, one that I did not disagree with. Long term it is no way to build a club, sure, but in a world of one year contracts and quick re-builds, it wasn’t the worst idea, and paid off handsomely in a few cases where teams loaded up for a home Grey Cup.

The only way to counter this malignant behaviour is to beat them with their own logic. Ban books with sexuality in them so we don’t “indoctrinate” kids? OK, let’s start with the Bible, given the sexualization of Adam and Eve after the Original Sin, all of the incestuous behaviour (“go forth and multiply”), and other sexual references. Of course, Santos, as the original author of the Holy book, will exempt himself from that list. I’ll go wait in the corner for the lightning strike.

Owners in all sports prefer to keep salaries hidden, because once players hear what others make, they use it as leverage in negotiations by making comparables (especially with overpay contracts - “if Fajardo makes $500,000 then Dane Evans is worth more based on the 15-3 season in 2019”) and salaries jump across the board, with profits shrinking and dans paying the freight. The additional headache for the CFL is that since cap enforcement is so weak (the penalties for going over are not much, and for example Sask in 2013 made a $20 million profit off of their stacked team Grey Cup, and maybe paid a few hundred thousand in cap penalties) and “side deals” apparently a thing (Sask. endorsements deals with local companies were a rumoured thing), the league wouldn’t want to expose the fallacy that is the hard cap. Players should always want salaries public because it inevitably drives things upward in all cases. But the player’s union has so little power the owners call the shots, and want to keep their budgets private for tax reasons I suspect. Just my random opinion.

You may have just created the next great thread idea for this site, matching avatars to posters. Or the next big Karen gathering, depending on the thickness of skin around here.

Maybe, but with back-to-backs in Jersey and MSG Sunday-Monday Rittich was getting action soon anyway. But Helle didn’t get an all-star layoff like the rest of the team, and it’s Columbus, so not the worst spot to give Dave another start.

There was a Twitter link to an article saying Calgary was interested, but he has not signed with them or any team yet.

Don’t know why but I heard it in this voice: And with this face:

Sounds a bit like the 2002 mentality though. “All-time team, just fell flat in the big game. Let’s just run it back and we’ll be fine”. And we all painfully remember how that turned out. I think a small bit of skepticism is fair.

For people dumping on the CFL for not going with the local Eric LaPointe group instead of Stern and Spiegel in 2020, here’s some info from another source with impeccable credibility. Food for thought.

Interesting take. I have been wondering how much of an “unfinished business” approach the team has been taking here. But then, they were 15-3 so would you really want to tear down a team like that anyway? And in 2002 when we launched the original “unfinished business” we were probably just Stegall and Roberts injuries away from getting back to the Grey Cup. I won’t say there are no concerns here. Collaros has played his least impressive football in the playoffs the last 3 seasons, I wonder openly how much Bighill has left in the tank, and Jeffcoat is now looking like he could be an injury liability. Even Jefferson’s “game wrecking” seemed less frequent last year and Hardrick and Bryant may see Father Time and injuries catching up with them. But here’s the question: with talent that got you to a 3rd straight Grey Cup and best record in club history (albeit with some visible flaws) do you quit on that level of talent maybe a year or two early, or risk being a year too late?

Likewise, players who sign fat contracts and then underperform always agree to re-negotiate down in the same interest of fairness as they expect the teams to do after a breakout year on a value deal.

Wheeler with 40 points in 44 games now. For a guy people want to bump down to the 3rd or 4th line, he is still playing up to the value of his contract, IMO.

Jets kind of sleeping this period.

To be fair, this would be my audition tape