Cosmic

Not that anybody cares about defending the honor of 2010s AFC East but me, but I found my note on Google Keep. From 2010 to 2018, the Patriots were 70-20 (.778) out of the division in the regular season and 43-11 (.796) in the division. If they had a .778 winning percentage in their 54 division games in that time, they would have lost about one more game over nine years. Not one game per year... one game.

Alex Smith obviously didn't read my post here on CCSLC where I actually did the math and the Patriots' winning percentage was basically the same in-division or out. Yeah, they dominated their division, but they also dominated everybody else, too. I can't find it now, so I'll have to re-do it at some point (and hope the math didn't change too much since then).

The NHL, as usual, has stepped in it again. After saying he would pay the fine to wear the mask in warmups, the NHL threatened the Wild with double secret probation or something. Now, we get to see what the league will actually do about it. Amazing mask, btw.

Reminds me of when that girl tried to blackmail Jagr but he wasn't married and he didn't really have anything to hide. Belichick's divorced, right? Good for him for doing anything other than football.

The pressure was not that bad, and the receiver stopped running after the ball was in the air. It was just a miscommunication. It may have been slightly overthrown, but it was definitely not throwing the ball away.

The Giants really should have gone for it on that 4th-and-1 with ~30 seconds left. They had had remarkable success running the ball in the second half considering they had completely given up on passing and everybody knew it. The penalty that basically ended the game in OT was really dumb (on the player, not on the refs). They needed some baseball-like situational awareness in the defensive huddle. Doing a horribly blatant PI gives the Jets the game anyway, so it doesn't really matter if the DB gets beat there. Just play defense and there's still a chance he doesn't catch the ball!

No game has ever deserved to be a tie as much as this Jets-Giants game.

Flag. And now he used up his one pass attempt per half.

If you say every team sucks and they have no shot at winning the Super Bowl, you'll be right about 97% of the time.

Dr. Josh Allen and Mr. Hyde. Very scary.

Did they get rid of PI reviews? I just remember the success rate getting them overturned was pretty atrocious, so I thought maybe coaches just stopped challenging.

Harborcenter has a second floor skybridge to the arena, but I think the arena itself is virtually the same as in 1996. New paint to replace the 90s office park terra cotta scheme, some new seats, ribbon board, a couple generations of jumbotron, but I think that's it. I've heard stories of things like hot water not working in some bathrooms, but for something built in the 90s (not like it's depression-era plumbing and electrical), that seems like they're maybe letting little things go on purpose so they can cry poor. I think newer arenas have a little more room on the concourses, but there's really not much I would change. There's a cool project that's already happening to turn an old railroad terminal behind the arena into (finally) a proper light rail station for the arena. That's probably all the arena really needs. Since 1996, there's been a tempo-permanent "station" for the arena that's literally 10'-15' long. There's not many things the Buffalo light rail does well, but bringing people to the arena is one of them; it deserves a nice station down there. Edit: A little tldr for "the whole thing"... the Pegulas seem to have bitten off more than they could chew trying to get into the restaurant and entertainment field, but things seem to be pretty steadily growing/renovating in the Canalside/arena area even with them pulling back. One of the encouraging signs is ugly little pieces of land finding uses. There's a building going up completely encircled by an off-ramp clover leaf. I think the final pit from the former Aud site is finally getting built up. There's a rich developer from DC who's been buying up everything that's not nailed down in the whole area, but he actually seems to get projects done. Overall, it's promising tortoise-like slow but steady improvement in the area.

The unifying superstructure behind the Bills and Sabres is being dissolved. Maybe that belongs in the Good Business Decision Aggregator? Several reports over the years that it was a pretty dysfunctional place to work. Some speculation that the Sabres will start looking for public handouts for their arena; it will be 30 years old in 2026, and I don't think it's ever had what could be considered a "major" renovation.

I guess I don't really understand how affiliation deals work. Carolina was going to fire the coach in Chicago? But they don't own the team?

RIP Rick Jeanneret. Called Sabres games for 50 years. Absolutely iconic voice. He's a bigger part of Sabres history than any individual player.

In their first year in the Big 10, 6 out of their 7 games were at home!

I'm convinced the only reason the Coyotes have this current (bad) owner at all is because of the gambling license. It's the sports equivalent of hiding Grandma's body so you can keep cashing her Social Security checks.

You have to at least do Year 2 to see if the numbers get better. It's a tough time to start a spring football league, with AAF and XFL 2.0 in recent memory and the USFL competing for eyeballs and players. The best thing XFL 3.0 can do is keep existing and it will give an implicit reason to care.

Never ask a man his salary, a woman her age, or a German company what they were doing in the 1930s and 40s.

No matter who wins, there's a decent chance of having a second Conn Smythe winner cast off from a basement-dwelling Sabres team.

Obviously the Utah Raptors (Utahraptor is basically a bigger version of the Jurassic Park raptor).

Also should be noted there's a pretty decent chance Tkachuk was trying to get away from a coach that everyone else also wanted to be free from. The GM quit when he wasn't allowed to fire the coach and then when they finally did fire him, it was reported afterwards that multiple players rescinded their trade requests.

The main piece coming back was Jonathan Huberdeau, who had 115 points last year in Florida and 55 this year in Calgary. The trade seems slanted for Florida right now, but it was a salvage job for Calgary as Tkachuk requested a trade. It was viewed as being a pretty even trade at the time, but neither team matched their regular season performance from the year before. The Calgary GM wanted to fix his team by firing the coach, ownership wouldn't let him, and the GM quit... then ownership fired the coach anyway after the reason for the GM quitting leaked.

NFL's probably not too happy about this, but I thought it was pretty funny.