I won't even dignify the thread with a song. Honestly, there shouldn't be a thread at all!

Anyway, they play the Wings at home tonight on CSN+ if you want to subject yourself to a scrimmage for some reason. Cam Barker is back with the Blackhawks on a PTO, in case you hadn't heard, presumably as a familiar face/warm body to have around camp and not much else.

I guess if you want to see guys slug it out for the fourth-line wings/#13 forward, you can drop in. I'll probably watch a period before I'm overcome with guilt. It's like eating dessert at noon, you know?

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IkeSouth.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

NHL regular season?

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NFL Preseason.

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The UC was sold out yesterday to watch a Hawks scrimmage game.

HAWKSSS!!!

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CSFMB 2014 Nascar Pick 'em Champion

We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much. — Ronald Reagan

And a minute after I read this, my boss offered me two tickets to tonight's game. I passed

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-- source

This guy gets it!

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I love that it's on. These are my favorite nights.

Cuba gooding Jr is doing shoot the puck. He was pretty good. Now he is stripping.

Never knew that!

Holy shit that's some serious slumming for an Oscar winner.

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I was in an exercise-induced coma from about 6 in the afternoon to about 5 minutes ago. Hope I didn't miss anything!

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Just watched the highlights. Luke Glendening's goal showed that Crawford is already in, shall we say, midseason form. Richards springing Kane on a breakaway was nice to see. I hear that Cam Barker injured Teuvo Terevainen already. Derp.

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Good thing you are trying not to "lose your shit" this season...

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Not a mult.

I reported my observations with Zen-like calm, I will have you know.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

Are you on the Dale Decker exercise routine......100 "reps" per day?

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Now that'd be some coma.

Nah, just getting back to doing some more serious running after getting away from it for a while, plus I had slept really poorly Sunday and Monday night. Feeling great now, though!

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Five more of these fuckin' things. Good god. Take two preseason games away and go back to the 84-game regular season that the league tried for a couple years, where everyone got/had to play one home game out of town.

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Is the one tonight on tv anywhere?

I watched Rags-Hawks up through the first stoppage before I realized my life didn't have to be this way. Cam Barker blew his coverage so egregiously on a goal 51 seconds in that he got cut from training camp right after. Brad Richards looks good. Pat and Eddie are selling Jeremy Morin like a used car, but I don't know whether that means they're talking him up for us or talking him up for teams who want to trade for him. Some meathead named Cody Bass started a fight and got his shit handed to him by a guy whose name I didn't catch but who apparently "led Hartford in penalty minutes last year."

Checking the box score, Lundqvist split the game with some dude while Crawford played the full sixty and went 25/29.

Cam Barker is gone. He was only here on an invite, not a two-way contract or anything, so he's just gone-gone. They assigned my guy Stephen Johns to Rockford; he'll get his time down the road, I'm sure. Matt Carey and Danault are down to Rockford as well.

At defense, it looks like Kyle Cumiskey has the inside track on getting a roster spot out of camp only because he doesn't have a waiver exemption while Clendening, Dahlbeck, and van Riemsdyk do. People elsewhere are speaking glowingly of Trevor van Riemsdyk, however. Might be the steal that Drew LeBlanc wasn't.

Next scrimmage is Sunday against the Oilers in Saskatoon. My guess is our roster is heavy on the guys who need evaluating (you have to dress eight established NHLers, though) while the Oilers go all out to put on a good show for the home-away-from-home crowd. No TV, no radio, no matter.

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Or the Hawks shut 'em out 5-0. Oh, the Oilers, expect the unexpected expected.

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Rasmussen, Nordstrom, Dahlbeck all sent down. It's a Swede-icide!

Twenty-eight guys left, they need at least five cuts if not six or seven. At defense, the Hawks have Keith, Seabrook, and Hjalmarsson all locked in. Oduya, Rozsival, and Leddy are trade risks, though to hear it from Ferraro, Oduya is going nowhere. Kyle Cumiskey, David Rundblad, and Trevor van Riemsdyk are basically playing for the Sheldon Brookbank Memorial 7th Defenseman spot. JVR's brother is probably headed to Rockford to join Clendening for seasoning. Rundblad's a goner if we waive him and he cost Stan this year's 2nd-round pick but I have no idea where he fits into the plan for a championship contender. I never thought much of Cumiskey other than as a general principle regarding the conception of a child.

At forward, Ryan Hartman is still on the roster for some reason, which baffles me unless Shaw is on the way out and they expect Hartman to slot into the Bottom-Six Nuisance role without the team missing a beat. I don't think he'll slot right into a 20-goal scorer role, I know that. Brandon Mashinter is probably going to be a 13th forward because as with Bollig, Q needs his idiot (except for when Q abruptly stopped using Bollig altogether). We can bury Regin in Rockford and not bear dead cap space, but it's more likely that a team claims him on waivers before he gets there, and I don't want that because I find Regin useful as a 13th. I'm inclined to keep Teravainen in the AHL a little longer. Versteeg is the one who probably should go, but he has negative value at this moment and it would probably be better to hope he bounces back than to dump him and a good player as an inducement, but it's not looking good unless someone else around the league gets his shit fucked up in a preseason game, though this has been happening a lot.

I'm sure Leighton will clear juuuust fine.

A roster of
Saad - Toews - Hossa
Sharp - Richards - Kane
Bickell - Shaw - Versteeg
Morin - Kruger - Smith
Keith - Seabrook
Hjalmarsson - Oduya
Leddy - Johns
Crawford
Raanta

with Regin and Rundblad as spares and Rozsival traded away comes out to about $77,000 below the cap. That third pairing, though, could be a disaster waiting to happen. It might be time to confront the reality that with a $3.4MM minimum qualifying offer next summer, Nick Leddy is done here by the end of the week.

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You are on a roll today, if this means what I think it means...


"I never thought much of Cumiskey other than as a general principle regarding the conception of a child. "

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Lazerus reporting that Richards is at the point on PP2. So. Think he gets us a first?

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I said before last season that the Bickell and Crow contracts would cost us future players, and so here we stand. I hate giving up Leddy, but he seems to be in Q's dawghouse. And the Versteeg trade still makes no sense.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Can't seem to pick up anything from the loss to the Habs other than Trevor van Riemsdyk continuing to impress. I wouldn't be surprised if he makes the team, at least to start the season, like Nordstrom did last year. Q doesn't always like rookies, but when he does like rookies, he really likes rookies.

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Bickell is one of those cost of doing business things. You need a big body. I'm just happy he wasn't given a Penner/Clarkson/Horton contract.