UnkNuk

But how many franchises like Arizona are there? I'm open to the idea of adjusting the lottery percentages for the non-playoff teams. But, for the fans' sake, I still like the idea of every team, playoff and non-playoff, having a stake in the outcome of the playoffs.

Well, if nothing else, think about how entertaining CDC would be under those circumstances.

You know, that's actually an interesting idea. Teams might still want to tank but not tank too much. Which might be difficult to pull off.

The problem with that proposal, I think, is that the purpose of the draft is to help the really bad teams get better, for the sake of their franchise and for the sake of the league. So you want to give the really bad teams a better chance of getting the higher picks.

Well, I don't know about you but If Calgary winning the Stanley Cup meant that we get Bedard, I'm cheering for Calgary.

"Athletic" writer Sean McIndoe recently wrote an article about how to change the draft lottery based on an idea sent to him by a fan. First, he would scrap the lottery balls. Instead, what he proposes is that each non-playoff team be paired with a playoff team. The better a playoff team does, the higher the draft pick the non-playoff team paired with it gets. Ultimately, the non-playoff team paired with the eventual Stanley Cup winner would get the first overall draft pick. The non-playoff team paired with the Stanley Cup loser would get the second overall pick. And so on. I like this idea. Mainly because it would give the fans of the non-playoff teams something to root for during the playoffs. Suppose, for instance, that this year the Canucks were paired with, say, the Dallas Stars. Suddenly, the Dallas Stars playoff games would be of extreme interest for Canuck fans. He goes into more detail in the article. For instance, the pairings would be done in reverse order according to the non-playoff teams standing at the end of the season. That is, the team with the worst record would be the first to choose which playoff team it wanted to be paired with. Then the team with the second worst record would choose and so on. The article is here: https://theathletic.com/4384689/2023/04/07/nhl-draft-lottery-bill-daly/?source=weeklyemail&campaign=602288 Change the NHL Draft lottery? Here’s an idea so absurd it might be brilliant

Thank you, sirs. Somehow I missed the fact that he continued playing from his original shot. I thought he had continued from his second tee shot with no apparent penalty. Nice trick if you can get away with it.

On the last hole Rahm took his tee shot and it seemed to go into the trees. He then just took another tee shot as if the first one didn't happen. What was that all about?

Liverpool 2 Arsenal 2 Well, it was an exciting game. One of the best of the season, I thought. And coming away from Liverpool with a point isn't a bad result. Just not as good as I hoped and which seemed quite possible. Funny how it works - if Arsenal had come back from a 2-0 deficit I'd be feeling better about this game. But to lose a two goal lead? That's aggravating. The game seemed to change right after Xhaka got into it with a Liverpool player near the end of the first half, where they both got yellows. Up to that point, Arsenal had dominated the game. But after that, the whole game flipped, and Arsenal was on the back foot for the rest of the game. So City are six points back, with a game in hand, a home game against Arsenal yet to come and a five goal lead in goal-difference. Arsenal's six point lead seems a bit wonky at this point. This is gonna be interesting. (One other aggravating factor: watching the game on a slightly delayed basis on FUBO, I had a persistent problem with slow loading of the video. Many times throughout the broadcast I got a blank screen with the dreaded circle of loading. Each time only lasted for about 20 seconds or so, but it was aggravating. I've never had that problem with FUBO before. Not sure what happened.)

I hope the baseball and hockey games were more entertaining than the soccer game. But at least they won.

I think a lot of people may agree with you. I read an item in another group that stated that Apple has only signed up 40% of their inital projection. I don't know what their initial projections were but, If true, I imagine there are some serious discussions going on at Apple. That being said, tonight's game should be worth checking out if only to watch the new kids: Simon Becher and Ali Ahmed. They're both showing a lot of promise in the early going. Assuming they start. With Vanni you just never know.

College Pals Raise $15M and Collect 100 Million Lbs. of Surplus Food to Fight Food Waste and Insecurity In April 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had taken hold in the U.S. Hospitals were filling up, thousands were dying and the country's food supply chain was strained as workers got sick and businesses shut down in an attempt to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. Ben Collier and Aidan Reilly, then 21, had just been sent home — Reilly to Los Angeles and Collier to Connecticut — during their junior year at Brown University, when they observed how labor shortages had caused food from local farms to go to waste as food banks scrambled to feed millions in need. "There was bad news every single day, and we're like, 'Where can we help?' " Reilly tells PEOPLE. The college friends decided to rent a U-Haul and call up local farmers, offering to deliver surplus food to a local food bank. "A month later," says Collier, who joined Reilly in L.A., "we'd delivered a million pounds of food, and we're like, 'We haven't even really started this thing.' " https://people.com/human-interest/college-pals-raise-15m-collect-100-million-pounds-surplus-food-fight-food-waste-insecurity/?utm_source=join1440&utm_medium=email&utm_placement=newsletter

The Whitecaps game tonight against Portland is available on TSN - 7:30.

Haaland scores a brace in Man City's 4-1 win over Southampton.

I bake pancakes in a toaster oven. Comes out quite nicely. Pour the ingredients in a 8 x 8 pan, bake it for about 10 minutes at about 400 and - voila - you have a cake made of pancake. I have a problematical relationship with traditional pancakes. Whenever I try to fry them in a pan, they either burn, or don't cook right through, or fall apart. Plus, the oil seems to cause a lot of smoke. And if you don't use oil of some sort, they stick to the pan.

Whitecaps play tomorrow (Wednesday) against LAFC in the first leg of the Concacaf Champions League quarter final. The game is available on OneSoccer and FUBO at 7pm. Normally, I'd expect the Whitecaps to get blitzed. And they'll be the underdogs, no doubt. But I am eager to see how Becher performs against a full strength good team.

Interesting analysis. I don't know how much truth there is to it but I remember there was a theory that, prior to the Iraq invasion, Saddam was making noises about switching from the American dollar for purchases of oil to some other currency. And it was suggested that this was one of the main reasons for the invasion. Ditto for Gaddafi. If that was true, the Saudi royal family might want to rethink this new strategy. The US might be in a vulnerable financial position in some respects but they are still, by far, the biggest military power in the world. Any attempt to wreck their economy, as suggested in the video posted by @AV's Coin, could be regarded as an act of war. Probably not a smart thing to do.

Wasn't there an agreement years ago wherein the US guaranteed the security of Saudi Arabia as long as the Saudis agreed to only accept US dollars for oil?

But isn't the concern that, if countries don't need to buy US dollars to buy oil, the value of the US dollar will drop?

It's too bad that yesterday's game against Montreal wasn't available on network tv because Simon Becher's first start was a memorable one and as many Whitecap fans as possible should have been able to see it. Two goals and an assist! Plus, Becher was the one who caused the red card against a Montreal player, who had to tackle Becher to stop him, in the first half. He's also the fastest player in league history to score his first four MLS goals, doing so in 87 minutes of game action. Not to get too far ahead of ourselves but we may have our star striker.

What thread did you mean to put it in?

Go to a double-header. Two hours each - bingo! - there's your four hours.

Too bad Man City won today but Arsenal kept the pressure on them. Next up, away at Liverpool.

Wasn't the social housing program one of the casualties of the Chretien/Martin LIberal government's attempt to deal with the national debt crisis that came home to roost in the nineties? Or am I misremembering?

And Man City plays at home against Liverpool in an early game. Fingers crossed for the right results.