buddha

but i am happy he is getting his number retired and i will probably tear up a little watching all those old highlights. the red wings getting the russians together and taking players out of the eastern bloc has been told a number of times now, but its still an amazing story how they did it, and it set the franchise up for a 25 year run that has never been duplicated in the modern post original six era. unlike the penguins or blackhawks or any other team that has won multiple cups, the wings won with different teams and werent gifted generational players thanks to the lottery gods. they did it through scouting and development. as a wings fan, that's a source of pride. and sergei was a big part of that.

Sergei might have been the most talented red wing ever. but also the most frustrating. he was so good that you always expected even more, and some nights it was clear he just wasnt into it. he was always my second favorite red wing after yzerman just cause he was so good, but he'd never replace yzerman. two stories indicate why. the first is the story of how fedorov got a knock in a game and left. it took konstantinov or fetisov going into the medical room and basically calling him out as a pansy ass and to get his behind back on the ice for sergei to go back out and play. meanwhile yzerman finished his career playing with zero cartilage in his knee, with constant pain, and was still out there every night playing defense and blocking shots. it took scotty bowman to make yzerman from a fancy offensive stats player to one of the best two way centers in hockey. sergei was born as one of the best two way centers in hockey, but not even scotty bowman or slava fetisov could get him to do it consistently.

you've always struck me as more danton than robespierre. actually, youre more of a desmoulins, idealistic and young!

Did Marcus Freeman use a weapon when he assaulted that guy? lol.

secondary is losing a lot of guys too. some of those losses may not be a bad thing...

i dont know if 94 gets you in this year.

seems like there have been a lot more ties and loser points. so teams are "losing" but still getting a point.

from max: "he’s picked it up even further. After a 27-save shutout in Montreal, Gibson has stopped 111 out of 117 shots in January — a .949 save percentage through his first four starts this month." the atlantic division is crazy right now. two losses in a row for detroit would likely out them out of the pkayoffs. two wins and they'd be the #1 seed. nobody is losing. not even **** teams like the leafs.

at this point, does ivey even play in the playoffs?

i suspect that they look at pitching in a tinstaapp sort of way. drafting pitchers is very risky due to injury. youre more likely to find a pitching prospect "in the rough" (like say...tarik skubal) than you are to get one at the top of the draft who avoids injury (like say...casey mize or jackson jobe). so dont spend draft capital on pitchers and instead find pitchers via free agency/minor league free agents/scrap heap guys who you can rehabilitate (cobb, morton, paddack, maeda, flaherty). pitchers are too risky an asset. hitters are much easier to quantify. just a theory.

illinois doesnt have a tax on services. after pritzker is re-elected governor next year, i suspect they will change the law and implement a services tax. that will bring in a considerable amount of revenue. now, the smart thing to do would be to cut other taxes, but they wont. instead - this being illinois - they will hire more union jobs, pay for construction projects that dont need to happen, pay for more teachers aides and more cops, and increase the pension debt even more with sweeteners and other goodies. just like they did with covid money. instead of using it for capital improvements, or for paying off debt, they used it to create more jobs. more jobs that now require pensions and other continually incurring labor payments that they cannot afford now that the covid money has run out. we are a city run by corruption, unions, and idiots. we get what we deserve.

free agency in general is not the way to build a team. but signing an occasional difference maker for a contending team, or committing a long term deal to a difference maker just entering his prime are useful team building tools. bregman LAST YEAR would have been such a player, but harris didnt get it done (and its possible bregman was not interested in detroit). bregman THIS YEAR might not be such an investment. i'd rather have them bring up mcgonigle and play him at third every day. i suspect mcgonigle's numbers wont be far off bregman's in the very near future.

chicago keeps talking about implementing some sort of such tax. so people working in the burbs have to pay a tax to work in the city. they just shot down a "head tax" that would charge employers an extra fee per employee who worked in the city. as you say, they are "addicted" to the revenue. pensions and debt (from borrowing to pay the costs of the pensions they cannot afford) eat up almost 40% of the city's budget before they even start to count salaries and current services. its unsustainable unless they grow the tax base. but the current "progressive" administration doesnt understand that part. they only understand "tax the rich (meaning anyone with a job) to help the "poor" (meaning anyone on the city payroll or a "victim" of "disinvestment", meaning black and brown people.) its a mess.

yes. about 10-12 years ago, they sold the rights to our parking meter revenue to a third party (the saudis, i believe) for the next 75 years for $1 billion. the investment has already returned $3 or $4 billion to the investors. and it still has about 60 more years to go. in the meantime, chicago allegedly put that $1 billion as a one time payment to its pension funds. allegedly. however, that was over 10 years ago and since then the pension debt continues to balloon. chicago now has four or five of the lowest funded pension systems in the country, two of which are functionally insolvent. and the city continues to add to the payrolls and to increase the pension benefits. its a colossal cluster**** that will drive the city to bankruptcy at some point. the current mayor is a boob beholden to the unions who just wants to increase payrolls and increase taxes "on rich people and corporations", while the republican party doesnt exist in chicago (there are no republicans on the city ballot) and the state republicans are a joke of a party (they continue to nominate maga people from downstate who will never, ever gain any traction in the chicago suburbs). in other words. were ****ed. but the restaurant scene is pretty good...

so will the cubs include shaw and cade horton as centerpieces for their skubal offee?

illinois has 4.9 flat tax and even higher property taxes. plus a monster sales tax in cook county. plus the city of chicago and all its exrra fees and taxes.... and is still in so much debt it makes pre-bankruptcy detroit look solvent.

when did tanking start?

Notre Dame's priests are wondering what it takes to be the best team in the State of Indiana or the ACC, much less a national champion...

i remember d rose flunking his ACT three times and then mysteriously passing it IN DETROIT on his 4th attempt. he was signed and sealed to illinois until memphis came in and gave his brother a "job" for $250k per year doing nothing. so rose spends a semester at memphis and all the records and wiped out two years later because he never actually passed his act. anthony davis famously charged schools $250k just to take a VISIT to campus. of course he ended up at kentucky.

i had a casual acquaintance who played at michigan with the fab five. he said jalen had 4 independent study classes and a cpr class. got a C in cpr but A's in the independent studies. they sat around and smoked pot and played video games all day, surrounded by huge boxes of shoes and clothes Nike constantly sent to them. had other friends who knew basketball players at michigan. traylor would show up for class on the first day but never again. then there would be a strange number of asian kids who showed up to take the final exam. willie mitchell? quite possibly the dumbest person she ever met. they would all get free cab rides whenever they wanted (pre-uber) and all the free subway they could eat. another person i know knew steve smith at state. said he had a huge SUV and lived in a nice condo in a really nice apartment complex. nice guy, but when he gave $5m to msu, he was paying them back... grant hill? really nice guy at duke. laettner and thomas hill? gay as all get out and the biggest snobby ass holes on campus.

i know this is a stupid thought, and a naive thought, but how many of these guys are actually going to class? bryce underwood is getting millions of dollars to play football for michigan, is he really going to English 101? is anyone still actually checking?

but this guy isnt 99 other guys. its your best player. that said, we'll never know because were not privy to all the information, and it is just as likely that this is driven by boras as by the tigers. its equally as likely that boras told skubal "the tigers are likely to come in at $19 to get to a number like $25, so we'll come in at $32." as you pointed out, DD and others hate this process because it makes you go in and tell your player how less valuable they are than they think they are. better to resolve it out of "court" than have to publicly denounce your talent.

i think emotion and an incredible sense of competitiveness got him there as well as incredible athletic talent. if you dont think great athletes can be petty and hold grudges over "business" and minor transgressions, i direct your attention to Michael Jeffrey Jordan. sometimes minor slights drive great athletes. im not saying this is happening with skubal, but dismissing it out of hand because "well, they know its a business" is just as likely to be false.

how do we know he doesnt? again, these guys are human. youre right, they know its a business, but we all work in business. and not everyone is mature enough to let things go. i imagine boras has told him everything that you've said, and everything you've said about it being a "business" and he's not a middle schooler is correct, but that doesnt mean he wont take offense, wont hold a grudge, and wont think about it the next time he has leverage....which should be in about 10 months.

hilman and mangum too. when you want a raise, enter the portal. i think haynes will leave. michigan picked up that kid from oklahoma because i think they knew haynes wanted more money than was in the budget for rb.