mcj882000

The Down Goes Brown book was talked about before, and having spent the last 2 weeks reading through it I really have to mention the insane 1970 draft "lottery" that it talks about in one part. That year they gave the expansion Sabres & Canucks the top picks, but apparently decided flipping a coin to see who picked #1 was too easy, so they hastily brought out a big wheel with 13 numbers on it, decided landing on a 7 would be a respin to make the wheel actually even, and then let the teams pick what half of the wheel they got. Buffalo won the right* to pick so they took 8-13, Vancouver was left with 1-6, and so they spun. President Campbell then announced that the winning number was 1 for the Canucks, but Sabres GM Punch Imlach noticed something: the winning number was actually eleven and it was shown vertically as 
1 
1
instead of "11" on the wheel, which Campbell proceeded to misread. So, Vancouver got swerved, Buffalo won the #1 pick and got Gilbert Perreault; the Canucks settled on Dale Tallon and the rest is history. 

* - how did the Sabres win the right to pick first? Easy, they flipped a coin

On 12/4/2018 at 10:47 PM, SFGiants58 said:

Ah yes, the "I'd rather be anywhere else" face, a classic

Guess we'll never know for sure where he disappeared to during the "have another donut!" mess.

Quote

Gordon, Jeff. “NHL Discovers Another Way To Get Laughs.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch: 30 May 1991. 1D. Print.

huh, I didn't realise Jeff Gordon had a career in hockey journalism before getting into stock car racing :V

Oh man, I remember that Greatest Uniforms poll the NHL did for their centennial last year, I think I'll go see the results again- 



...oh

On 10/4/2018 at 11:53 AM, Gary. said:

I would love to see Detroit back to the West. But I know geographically that won’t happen. And I’m on the “Ky-OATZ” bandwagon. 

If I had my way Detroit and Toronto would still be in the West. I know, "muh timezones", but I think they both had better rivalries over there anyways: Detroit had San Jose & especially Colorado, Toronto had St. Louis & arguably Los Angeles and they both had Chicago and obviously each other; and I think splitting the "Original Six" 3 per conference was a better setup than dumping 5 in the same conference anyways, and leaving Chicago on their own to feud with St. Louis and... Nashville, I guess?

Saw someone on Facebook compare Dundon's short run with the Hurricanes thus far to Loria and the Expos; which, for starters: 
 

On 5/9/2018 at 4:39 PM, Sodboy13 said:

The theory rumbling in my brain is that Dundon, a vulture capitalist by trade whose big windfall came from predatory auto loans, is going to run the franchise all cheap and bare-bones until he can flip it to Quebecor, who will pay an NHL-mandated premium price for it.

 

Rod Brin-da-who? Chuck Kai-who?  him. He's just an employee. I got mine, bye.

But also, the difference being that once upon a time people actually cared about the Montreal Expos.

I'm just gonna point out that the only reason Bettman got the job in 1993 was because President Gil Stein resigned in disgrace after nominating himself to the Hall of Fame. I'm not saying that's what happened here, but maybe wait until he's out of the job before considering him for the Hall?

I think the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have a salvageable look.

To me this set has an amazing colour balance; the way the brighter red pops with the pewter and orange just looks so good. Change the still-terrible number font and shrink the logo on the helmet a bit, and I think their uniforms become among the best in the NFL.

On 6/5/2018 at 6:58 PM, Cujo said:

The Washington Capitals have never looked better than this.

 

That was the only jersey in the Capitals' 90s identity I actually liked. Once they ditched that for the black alternate, the one with bronze numbers you could barely even read half the time, I was like "nah, you guys can just rebrand now"

On 5/30/2018 at 9:21 AM, the admiral said:

when Olbermann covers serious issues within sports, he's more in his element than when he's, for the sake of argument, trying to bring down the entire Bush Administration by doing Howard Beale shtick on a low-rated cable infotainment channel.

I feel the same way - it's funny how I can agree with him a lot on politics, yet I find him so much more fun, entertaining and funny when he's covering sports.

Only the goddamn NHL could try and influence a foreign election to suit their own needs and fail at it.

In other news, lockout-instigator and Growing The Game™ expert Jeremy Jacobs thinks Quebec City is "too challenged" to support an NHL team: 
https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/bruins-owner-jeremy-jacobs-quebec-nhl-market-theyre-challenged/

1 hour ago, kroywen said:

 

Okay, unpopular opinion: I grew up during the 90s, and I hate the retro 90s trend going on right now. Fashion was never tackier than in the 90s, and sports uniforms epitomized that.

 

Leave the 90s nostalgia for TV shows and WWF ice cream sandwiches. Keep it out of sports uniforms, please.

Yeah, most of the uniforms that came out in the 90s I either loathe or like ironically, meaning I like it because it's stupid but never wanna see it actually come back ever again, except maybe as an April Fools' Day stunt. 

Tacky, busy, and just plain stupid:



How are these popular, especially around here? I just don't get it. A lot of those crazy bad uniforms from the 90s look tame compared to these. (Actually, that might answer my question - stupid 90s stuff is in right now. )

I can't help but wonder if the NHL will ask for another $500M from Quebecor for a second expansion bid, and then hang 'em out to dry once again.

This isn't so unpopular on this board (I don't think?) but apparently the Stampeders' 2-colour helmet they use with their black alternate jersey is really popular amongst CFL fans, and I just don't understand it at all:

It's bad enough that it's just a recolour of the Jaguars' awful helmet, but the front's flat and the back's shiny - its not consistent at all, and that just really irritates me.

Here's my alt-history, hindsight is 20/20, "fantasy booking" take: if Karmanos was so intent on moving the Whalercanes to North Carolina in 1997 then he should've went to Charlotte instead of Raleigh. Not only would they not have needed to waste 2 dreadful years in Greensboro but they would've likely played at the old 21,000 seat Coliseum, in a city that had recently proved it actually did like pro sports.

Now you might say, "what about the Hornets?" Indeed, I'm going to just assume this was something the team was worried about at the time, and I believe it's been brought up in this very thread as well. The funny thing is, while the Hornets indeed drew an impressive 23,405 fans per game in 1997-98, the 'Canes first season in Greensboro, that fell to 19,232 per game in 1998-99 due to the NBA lockout. And from there their attendance completely cratered as Hornets owner George Shinn basically alienated the entire city (in 2001-02, their last season in Charlotte, they drew just 11,286 per game) which led to their move to New Orleans in 2002 - just in time, I might add, for the Hurricanes' Cinderella playoff run that very spring. If that happens in a recently-scorned city looking for a new team to cheer for, instead of a city seemingly-apathetic to pro sports (not to mention the 2 seasons afterwards with no NBA team at all to compete with, or the decade they would've gone against the "who gives a " Bobcats after that) and maybe they could've made it work in Charlotte. 

Obviously it's too late now, the Spectrum as it is would be about as good for hockey as Barclays Center is - indeed, even the Checkers moved out a couple of years back - and obviously they would've had no idea any of the drama with the Hornets was gonna happen, but if at some point they decided "Hell, let's take a chance on Charlotte anyways" they might've lucked into some success. Hell, at the very least I'm willing to bet it would've still gone better than it has in Raleigh!

Well, actually, LEDs do produce heat, just less than other light-sources. Still, get 29 million pixels worth of them, and that adds up...

On 26/09/2017 at 1:39 PM, FinsUp1214 said:

On today's episode of "I'm just gonna go ahead and say it"....

 

This is my all-time favorite Leafs look.

 

 

*ducks for cover*

One thing that occurred to me about this set: swap out the front crest and replace the arm-sash(?) with standard stripes and this is basically what they're wearing now.
 

8 hours ago, Marcos Flamengo said:

If the NHL returns, one day, to Hartford, they would use ressurect the "Whalers" name. If the NHL arrives to Houston, as an expansion team if Carolina says NO to a relocation, they would obviously use the "Aeros" name.

The admittedly-silly point I was making was specifically if the Hurricanes moved to Houston, since they'd likely have to change their name anyways, then maybe they could revive the Whalers name and still pull it off. It's from the same franchise, it has a (loose, I admit) connection to the area (FWIW I didn't know whales lived in the Gulf until I looked it up for that), the hidden-H logo would still work for Houston; heck, since Houston was also a major WHA city the "WHAlers" connection would even work!

Obviously they'd likely just take the Aeros name, since it has actual history there. It was just a dumb "what if?" bit of speculation from this wannabe Whalers fan. 

Sorry for the double post, but I was thinking about something in Francis' article that stuck out to me:
 

Quote

It’s a jarring response from a frustrated Flames group that had offered to pay $200 million of the arena’s cost as part of their CalgaryNext building in the west end of downtown. They were willing to make a similar contribution for the city’s east side counter proposal.

Oh my, $200 million, that's an awful lot of money they offered! I wonder why the city turned that down-

oh

And just for some quick math:
 

Basically the Flames offered to pay anywhere from 11-24% of this complex's steep price, depending on which projection was more accurate, and that's why the city told them to stuff it. I wonder why Eric didn't mention that?

One thing I found from a different article on the situation is that the Flames lease with the Saddledome doesn't expire until 2033. The Saddledome's owned by the city, and while I know leases aren't always ironclad, I don't see the city being very eager to let the Flames loose from the lease just to see them leave town. Just based on that, before you get into whether they'd even make more money in a place like Seattle, I don't see them moving.

I was playing Madden NFL 2000 for the PS1 last night when I discovered an inaccuracy, and so I decided to take some screenshots of it and a couple of others.
-The Tennessee Titans, 1999 being their first ever season under that name, were just given a generic block font for their then-brand new uniforms:

-The Philadelphia Eagles' home jersey's front & back numbers have their colours reversed!

Unlike the Titans example there's no real excuse for this, the Eagles have worn that uniform since 1996!

-And lastly, a lot of historic teams just have the same generic, too-bold number font; case in point, compare Marcus Allen "RB No. 32" from the 1990 Raiders...

...with Zack Crockett of the then-modern Raiders:


(One example I can't get a screenshot of is the too-old-to-run-on-modern-systems PC version, where every team shared the same generic block font, even teams that use custom fonts IRL like the Broncos!)

46 minutes ago, CRichardson said:

The name wouldn't make sense, though. There's no historical whaling industry in Houston that I know of.

That's a very fair point; Connecticut's state mammal is even the sperm whale. Still, I can't help but feel that the name would be a bit of an artifact no matter where they played, given that there's really no major whaling industry anywhere in the continental US anymore. (For what it's worth I did do a bit of research Googling beforehand, and while there never was a whaling presence in Texas, it turns out there are several species of whale in the Gulf of Mexico. Today I learned...)

46 minutes ago, CRichardson said:

Then again, the Lakers kept their name when they moved from Minneapolis to Los Angeles and the Jazz kept their name when they moved from New Orleans to Utah, and as Baseketball reminded us, there are no lakes in LA and they don't allow music in Utah.

This was my other thought as well - I figure as long as the name has a ring to it and the team's good, nobody will really care too much.