The Lock

This is why I said potential. I think he has more potential than Burroughs. A lot more if I'm being frank.

We're going to have to agree to disagree then if we can't agree on Bear himself. As the very base level, I picture Bear as potential 2nd pairing material. For whatever reason, I don't see that in Burroughs. The pay (as far as we know anyway) agrees with me as well if we're to base things off the numbers we're going by for each of those players. lol Even if we're to look at base stats, Bear has more points, more games under his belt, was actually a PLUS on our team (not that plus/minus is a great stat to go by but still, Burroughs was a minus in comparison). Bear's also the younger of the 2.

I guess call me weird maybe, but I'd much rather have an improved defense than a Barbashev. Maybe thinking about Gavrikov instead could help, but I'm not 100% sold on needing Barbashev, but that's me. I also don't really care about 3C when we need good 1st and 2nd pairings overall. I'm more of a guy who prefers we get the important pieces out of the way 1st and care less about the 3C position. I also picture Bear as more than just a 3C, which might be the 10 or 20% difference you mentioned earlier perhaps.

Again, no. We wouldn't have the better player of the bunch which would be Bear still. We need quality on defense, not quantity.

They just want all the things and don't have the money to buy that shiny new player on the other side of the window! I wonder if these are the same people who rack up a lot of credit card debt.

Personally, I take frequent breaks from here. Sometimes, if I'm on here too much, I start to feel like I'm cutting into my more productive side of life. Often times it's the direction a conversation heads that prompts me to start thinking that way. I wouldn't be surprised if he's at least on such a break.

Honestly, yes. I think it does. Think about Bear, and then think about what Poolman didn't bring for the same amount of money. I'd much rather have Bear at that price tag than Poolman. Burroughs was good, but consider the fact that that 10 or 20% extra from Bear is what this team needs from defense. We need defense and penny pinching is just going to keep up with that problem. I'm not saying spend spend spend or anything. I'm just saying I want the best team possible out there and good defense is hard to come by these days. Besides, who says we can't have both Bear and Burroughs next year?

Bear is the kind of player that strikes me as one who will always be underrated, just because he isn't going to be the flashy kind of defenseman. He's more the kind of defenseman that's in the backdrop but in a good way.

NYI in 7. I think Barzal returning is huge for the Islanders. I also think Svechnikov not in is bad for the Canes

Wild in 7. I think Kaprizov could be a game changer in this.

I'm going to say Vegas in 7. Winnipeg's no slouch but Vegas seems to have pulled a 180 since last year from the start of the season.

Lightning in 7. I think the Leafs fight for it, but they have one big problem ahead of them: Vasilevskiy. I don't care how "old and tired" the people above think the rest of the Lightning team is. lol

Oilers in 6. However, I wouldn't be surprised if LA wears them down. They're not exactly a matchup I'd want to start with if I'm Edmonton.

Avs in 5. However, I was to see the Kraken win, so if I'm wrong I'll be happy. lol

Boston in 5. I don't see the Panthers as being the same as last season despite having Tkachuk instead of Huberdeau,

Out of all the matchups, this might be the one I'm really looking forward to. I feel like this could be a pretty even matchup in the end. I'm going with NYR in 7.

But talking about that smells way too musky... and not in a good way.

So basically it's another rich person wanting to create a metaverse-like app that has everything. The guy's going to get a rude awakening when (if) he realises how far gone his reputation is at this point.

I only use Twitter to keep tabs on the Ukrainian war. Otherwise, I hardly use social media to begin with. That being said, I don't see why it would make me quit social media altogether. Twitter's just 1 platform of many. It just happened to be a popular platform but, otherwise, it's nothing special in my mind.

Covid hasn't disappeared. It's just become less lethal. It's very common for viruses to mutate in order to increase its infection rate but usually that comes at a price of it being less severe. Think about how the omicron strain was less of an issue than the previous strains. Remember that viruses are living organisms too with a primary goal of survival. If you are already boosted you can get COVID. The booster makes the severity less of an issue. Boosters were never about not getting the virus at all. They were about protecting yourself in the event that you do get it. It saved lives in the end since people who likely would have died without a booster had less severe symptoms, allowing them to survive. Also, if you got COVID once you can get it again. As far as the 6 months go, just think logically on it. Just because you get a booster once, it doesn't mean that booster's going to stay in you forever. When that booster's gone from your body really depends. It's not like immediately after 6 months you won't have immunity anymore, it just depends on when that booster leaves your body. So there's definately no need to overthink this. Just look at logically what happens to boosters over a period of time. Simply put, they don't last forever.

So I figured I might as well give a bit of an update on my whiskey journeys as of late. The past couple of months I've ended up really going for international whiskeys: Morris Rutherford (Austrailia) Stauning Kaos (Denmark) Kavalan No. 1 (Taiwan) Kavalan Port Cask Finish (Taiwan) These were all EXTREMELY different whiskey from each other but I'm here for it. The Morris is by far my favourite of the lot and probably my favourite international whiskey so far. It's a distillery on what's traditionally a winery and they really made the wine finish extremely pleasant on this. I might actually have to get another bottle of this and hide it so I can at least enjoy the 1st bottle because who know if/when I see this show up again. The Stauning was... weird to me? It was very peated (which was very nice) and smokey but it's a blend with their 3 main whiskeys which includes a rye. The result was a whiskey from Denmark that tasted almost like a peated Canadian (the... weird part). Ironically enough, I still have some of Lot 40's limited edition where they finishted their rye in peated scotch casks. The taste test was way more similar than I thought it would be. Kavalan No. 1 I'm still up in the air with. It's a base whiskey and a tad expensive for what you get. There's also a flavour in it I'm not fully digging. The port cask however is slowly growing on me which may be a good sign. I've heard with Kavalan it's the more expensive whiskeys that are worth it so maybe I'll find that out one day.

I'm happy to see you cheer for Bo instead of attack him. Gotta give credit where credit is due.

Yeah, but you still need those building blocks. If people want to win in playoffs, we have to make them first. Rebuild, retool, tank, whatever... none of whatever strategy people want to try is going to matter if it doesn't get us into the playoffs.

I don't know what the future holds for this team at this point as there are a lot of x factors; however, I think there's a bit of an overreaction in terms of thinking this team's worse than it is. I think there are far more than 4 or 5 teams worse than us and I'm not surprised by our spot in the standing. The part I question is whether or not we are an actual playoff team in terms of skill. Right now, I don't see us being over that hump yet. We still don't have the defense for it. Hronek helps, but I can't see it being enough. We also clearly don't have consistency given how we don't seem to know how to start a season properly. Of course, nothing that happens now is really going to determine our start next year, so I guess we'd better hope Tocchet's better at getting this team going out of the gate I guess?

I remember when fans here really wanted to trade with Montreal for the guy much like how they wanted to trade for Juulsen later on.