Googer

Just thought I would chime in just to show not everyone here is clueless. Owoowejieb q;bra Arwcwba

I at least glance over the front page and read anything that catches my eye. You may consider putting only the first paragraph as a teaser with a More.... at the bottom of it to get the full version. This would help you to both see what people are actually reading and also serve to make the front page shorter which is good for both bandwidth costs (though this is probably light as it is ) and automatically give it a better-looking layout. Just now I noticed that the front page in its entirety ends after what would be only a couple screenfuls for most people, except for the articles, which continue to go on for pages and pages.

....and here I figured that the last column meant points.

Well, it's definitely weird. In actuality, no team would ever play 90 games assuming that you'd end each series the instant there was a winner (as I'd think you should because then you could end up with many completely meaningless games); most teams would probably play somewhere around 75-80 games per season. Since every team would end up playing different numbers of games, you would no longer really be able to compare individual stats at the end of the season as you can now though. The NHL's scoring leader, for example, would likely come from a team that's mediocre and keeps having their mini-series go the distance. A dominant team that keeps on sweeping its opponents in 3 games would have (in theory) as few as only 3/5ths the games played at the end of the season!

If you don't care about inter-conference games, lots of rival games that work out math-wise are quite simple really; the quick example I thought of works out as an 80-game schedule: 10 games vs. divisional opponents (5 home, 5 away): 10 x 4 = 40 games 4 games vs. non-divisional conference opponents (2 home, 2 away): 4 x 10 = 40 games 0 against non-conference teams Voila.

Two posts by me in one day! Some miscellaneous points (not all game-related). I was strongely reminded how much and why I hate city driving so much, at least in Pittsburgh. Friggin' impossible to get where you want to go, especially in the Golden Triangle section of downtown with the triangular blocks instead of normal square/rectangular ones. I technically was never actually lost (as I'm relatively familiar with quite a bit of Pittsburgh as a pedestrian), but it took me close to a half hour to truly get on my way out of the city (should've taken about 3 minutes once I was clear of the arena traffic). Devils controlled play for most of the yet another game and blew yet another lead. Fortunately they didn't have a let-down from the late 2nd-period goal and came back with a strong third. That said, I was worried when Stevens got the cross-checking minor with a few minutes to go that they'd blow their lead yet again. Fortunately NJ came up with a terrific kill and didn't allow the Pens any real noteworthy chances during the penalty or afterwards for the remainder of the game. Pens fans were going ballistic when Little G's goal stood, kinda like I would've been had it been waved off. Overall though most of the fans around me were very friendly though and easy enough to get along with (none of the drunk idiots were sitting by me ). Marc-Andre Fleury looks to be the real deal, but oh my eyes! Those pads have gotta go. He made some saves that seemed to be pretty unreal from where I was sitting; it wasn't just a case of the Devils shooting right into him. This of course could also be interpreted as him getting caught out of position at times and being athletic enough to make up for it, but I suspect he'll only get better in this respect with time.

I don't much care much about who scores how many or anything, just as long the Devils win. I'm leaving for it in just a couple minutes.

I'm using Trillian Pro, but I think it's about the same for the non-Pro version of it. You'll want to add an IRC connection and add a new server. Give it a description of whatever you want (njdevs.com works well ), server arena.webchat.org, country United States, port 6667, group whatever you want (njdevs.com works well once again ). Then find your newly-created server in the IRC server manager and on click on the Perform Buffer tab for it once you've selected the server off your list. Have it perform the following line on connection: /join #njdevs and click on Set on all servers in group. Finally, click on Create and Connect. With any luck you'll be chatting at this point.

I believe the line of thinking the Pens are taking a calculated gamble that there's going to be a hard cap in place with the next CBA. They'll certainly have no problem being well under whatever it'll be at that time, especially considering Mario should be retired again by then. They've definitely conceded even trying to compete in the NHL as it is now and they're just trying to stay alive at the moment...

And yes of course I'm still here, just lurking around (until now anyway).

And here I thought they lost because I forgot to empty my dishwasher when I got home from work (because it meant I had unfinished housework around while the game was going on). Silly me.

lol Dew, it shouldn't be hard to get working if you've ever listened to any MP3's on your computer - just save the file linked to in the Pens forum and then play it. If your computer can't play MP3's by some freak of nature, go find yourself a copy of Winamp or something. Anyhoo, the gist of it is that van Hellemond comes across sounding like a total buffoon.

Yes, you're reading correctly, the lurker has started a topic! What's the world coming to?!? Anyway, the best local sports radio show over here had an interview with van Hellemond last week on the state of officiating in the NHL. I heard this live and thought it was rather amusing (brutal?) but of course I didn't record it to be able to share it with you. Fortunately, someone did record it and has posted an MP3 to it on the Pens' Lets Go Pens board. It's a bit over 8 minutes long and is really crappy quality, but hey, you can make out what they're saying well enough. LGP Topic Enjoy.

I don't like this new motion thing either for the same reasons that DM said. The lack of apparent time to stream the clips is only because it downloads them in advance without letting you know it's doing anything. Yeah you can kill the start-at-bootup but it doesn't even seem to realize you've got it installed next time you visit ESPN's site if you do that (or at least it didn't on my computer, as the website wanted to reinstall it). In any case, I not only didn't let it do that, I made sure I uninstalled it afterwards.

Hate to break it to you Has cuz I somewhat agree about not wanting to rush players back in too quickly, but AFAIK neither Gionta's nor White's reinjuries had anything to do with their original ones. Just look at it as Straka-syndrome hitting both of them because that's all it is.

Eh, wasn't all that long since the Devs got shellacked like that. I was at last season's game in Pittsburgh (boxscore here) where the whole game seemed to go like that on the way to the Devs losing 6-0. Funny part is that game was actually pretty one-sided in the Devils' favor, they just had nothing go right all game long.

Yes, the guy's an idiot. I quote from the NHL rulebook, rule 89, note 5 (here): Edit: I see Rowdy had the same idea as I did (get it straight from the horse's mouth) but got the post in slightly earlier.

Derek, to avoid plays like that happening, you'll have to take all hitting out of the game altogether "just in case". Somehow I doubt you want that.

I dunno, even the Minnesota announcing team said that shouldn't have been called.

The price difference between comparable-sized 'normal' TV's and so-called HD-ready TV's (HDTV's with no HD tuner in them) usually isn't all that big, the 'problem' is that there's no such thing as a small HDTV yet. (actually, you could say there is, at least in terms of picture quality - it's known as your computer monitor ) I expect cheaper HDTV's to become available over the next couple years as more and more HD programming becomes available. I believe federal law says all TV programming must be available in HD by sometime in 2005 and the old analog feeds must be turned off in 2006 (so all TV will be HD-only at that point), which really isn't that far away. Last I knew, this schedule was actually progressing at something just a bit slower than these target dates, as broadcasters are finally deciding to stop dragging their feet on the switchover. And BTW, if you've never actually seen true HDTV in action, you're missing out. Basically take DVD-quality and make it somewhere about 2-3x as sharp and detailed as that and you've got it. Note that on any screen smaller than somewhere around 30" (no matter how good it is), you probably will be hard-pressed to actually see that kind of detail from any 'normal' viewing distance, but hey.

Hey you're right, that is a nice picture. So nice in fact....

Looks like I need to check the off-topic forum more often, I didn't even notice this thread 'til just a few seconds ago, only one-and-a-half weeks late. Oh well, thanks guys (and gals)! I'm outta cake so maybe I'll have a bowl of ice cream or something to celebrate again.

Well that sucked, I thought it was an evening game, and I just happened to flip it on with about 10 seconds left.

Injuries, schminjuries.....I don't care why the Pens are losing so much lately and I don't like it. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. I LOVE IT!!!!!! Let's just hope it keeps up so I see the Pengwhines get their butts kicked around yet again in person when Thursday rolls around.

I'm counting on tonight's game being the TB feed myself, but it still could be the Metro feed. As I've said earlier, I did indeed sometimes get the Metro feed on Center Ice last year, and I've already seen that at least one Islander broadcast this year on Center Ice this year was via Metro. So I guess we'll see...