kimmy

Why is Nelson a mistake? After going through so many coaches over the past few years, they should stick with him for a while. The players like him, he developed some of them in the minors. Oscar Klefbom is their best defenseman by a mile, and it is probably because Nelson worked with him for a couple of years in the AHL. Nelson's wins and losses results are pretty much in line with what the team was doing while Kruger was coach. I wish they had kept Kruger, but since it's too late for that they should keep Nelson. Instead of rolling the dice on more coaches, maybe MacTavish should pull his head out of his ass and fix the roster instead. Is the roster that Eakins had any worse than the one that Kruger had the year before? If it is, that's on MacTavish. MacTavish has turned over most of the team. I heard that Jordan Eberle is now the longest serving Oiler. And how much did Eakins and his Corsi-inspired philosophy affect the moves MacTavish made? The Oilers probably only acquired Mark Fraser because Eakins coached him in the AHL, for example. I heard that they went and got Pouliot and Nikitin because they had good Corsi, too. And again... did the players just get better after Eakins left? I'm super tired of hearing people make excuses for him. Like I turned on the TV one night and heard the guy say "I bet Dallas Eakins wishes he had a guy like Derek Roy while he was coaching the Oilers." Yeah? Well I bet Todd Nelson wishes he had a guy like Taylor Hall, who has been injured for most of the games since Nelson took over. Taylor Hall who was one of the league's top scorers last year, or Derek Roy, who passed through wavers? You be the judge. Or right after Eakins was fired, his buddy from TSN wrote a big column claiming that Eakins got a bad rap because Taylor Hall was actually the problem in Edmonton, that he's uncoachable. Sick of hearing people making excuses for Eakins. He was a piece of dog crap. That's all there is to it. The team has many problems, but Eakins made it way worse. I am looking forward to seeing the players continue to improve under a coach who isn't a mental retard. Hopefully MacTavish will make some deals to fix some of the weak spots, like bringing in better defensemen and some scoring forwards who aren't wimps. But since MacTavish is a big moron I don't have much hope that he'll do anything good. Since Lowe is also a big moron I doubt MacTavish will get fired either. And since Katz doesn't give a crap I think we are stuck with Lowe and MacTavish for many many years. -k

He didn't "forget" to stop the puck so much as discover it was almost impossible to do it in Dallas Eakins' idiotic "swarm" system. Dubnyk had a top ten save percentage the year before Eakins arrived when, Ralph Kruger was coach. It was like .923 or something like that. Then Eakins comes to town and Dubnyk is getting lit up every game, and his save percentage is like .890 and MacTavish trades Dubnyk and signs the crazy Russian dude, and trades for Scrivens and Fasth and wow, for some reason their save percentage isn't any better than Dubnyk's was, go figure. And then last summer MacTavish is like "bad goaltending put us in a hole that we never got out of last season, but now that problem is fixed so we're not bringing in a new goalie." So then this season starts and they're still getting lit up most nights and the goaltenders save percentage is still around .890 and meanwhile Dubnyk is reborn in Phoenix. And then the Oilers have done their "internal audit" and concluded that the only guy who needs to get fired is the goalie coach, so they fired him and then nothing changes. Meanwhile the Coyotes trade Dubnyk to Minnesota for a low draft pick because Dubnyk was winning too many games in Phoenix and ruining their chances of getting the Wonder Kid in the draft. Then somebody, probably the owner, mades MacTavish fire Eakins because the team went over a month without a win and the fans are furious and putting up billboards about how much the team sucks. And since Eakins got fired Ben Scrivens save percentage jumped from .887 to .912, and Dubnyk is entering the Vezina Trophy race. There were two main problems with Eakins. The first is that the players obviously hated his guts and didn't want to play for him. The second is that his stupid system was completely worthless in the NHL. The whole idea behind the "swarm" defense was to "swarm" the puck carrier along the boards to force turn-overs. Maybe in the AHL, or EA Sports, or wherever it was that Eakins invented this plan, puck-carriers turn over the puck when they get "swarmed". But in the NHL, when puck-carriers get "swarmed" along the boards they can usually make a pass to a team-mate who is wide-open because all the defenders are "swarming" along the boards. Somebody made a compliation video of all the goals the Oilers gave up this season while Eakins was coaching (it was a really long video) and it's amazing how often they come as one-timers from wide-open players in the slot while Oiler defenders are "swarming" along the boards. And also from guys who were able to pick up a loose puck and walk to the front of the net which was was undefended because too many Oilers were "swarming" the guy who had the puck a few seconds earlier. Also I read that Eakins was completely obsessed with a statistic called "Corsi" which is basically a measure of shot attempts differential. So he wanted the Oilers to take lots of low-percentage shots from the perimeter instead of trying to get into better percentage shooting locations. And meanwhile at the other end of the ice the Oilers were giving up fewer shots, even though they were high percentage shots. So the Oilers actually had good "Corsi" under Eakins, because they were taking lots of low-quality shots, while the opposition didn't need to take very many shots to get good scoring chances. So Eakins is like "our Corsi is improving, and Corsi correlates with winning, so the wins are going to come as long as we stick with my system!" It's so pathetic that it a season and a half of this nonsense for the Oilers to fire the guy. They basically wasted 2 seasons of Hall and Eberle's time with the team trying to implement a stupid idea that only works on Xbox. MacTavish is an idiot for falling for this scam in the first place, and he's a bigger idiot for sticking with it for as long as he did. What's most pathetic of all is that he didn't want to fire Eakins at all. He was convinced right up to the end that Eakins was on the right track. He probably still is. -k

I wouldn't think that deciding who to spend ones' life with is the venue by which most people would "make a difference". -k

Except that the litmus tests one must go through to obtain the Republican nomination requires making statements that inherently alienate people who are fairly moderate. You have to kiss up to the Religious Right Moral Majority types, the Tea Party types, the Grover Norquist Tax Pledge types, and by the end of the process you've inevitably said stuff that pisses off moderate voters. Romney's advisor Eric Fehrnstrom said something to this effect during the Republican nominations... the plan was to move to the right during the nomination to try to appeal to those people, then once the nomination was secured, walk back towards the center to win back moderates and independent voters. Except that leaves you with two problems: the first being a bunch of youtube clips and soundbites and quotes that you can't just erase once the nomination is wrapped up. The second is that nobody-- moderates or conservatives-- is really sure what you actually stand for. -k

Going by stats, Devan Dubnyk is now the 2nd best goalie in the league. If only the Oilers had a guy like that! errr.. wait.. AARRRRGHHHH -k

Shady's statement made sense to me. If sexual preference was something that was consciously decided, I don't think many would choose the prejudice and strife and heartache that comes with being gay. Especially in other parts of the world, where people who are gay are arrested or killed or beaten to death by mobs. If it was a matter of conscious choice, why would anybody choose that? -k

Ted Cruz is running to make the eventual winner seem like a moderate by comparison. -k

Practice? We're talking about practice? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGDBR2L5kzI#t=46s -k

The loss of a safety deposit box deduction would be well down my list of concerns. Not to mention school. If rich people were the only ones who could get their kids an education, we'd all be back to living in caves trying to figure out whether rocks are edible before long. -k

I was listening to the radio today and it was pointed out that there is a "Highway To Hell", but only a "Stairway to Heaven." "Speaks volumes about the expected traffic volume," the DJ noted. -k

Well, luckily for us, neither the Saudi Morality Police, nor the Moral Majority, nor the Politically Correct Social Justice Police have managed to shut down the entertainment business yet. I don't worry much about the first two, but I think the latter does pose a bit of a danger. Well, you make a fair point. I wrote about the moment I first realized that Julianne Moore is incredible in this review I posted about 5 years ago. "Chloe" was an otherwise crappy film, but Julianne Moore was just spellbinding. I felt like I could feel everything she was feeling as I watched her, which is incredibly rare. She brought the same sort of quality to "Game Change", creating a portrait of Sarah Palin that (while not very flattering) was very human-- rather than Tina Fey's cartoony shtick, Moore gave us a Palin who was increasingly stressed and overwhelmed by the demands of the role she'd been thrust into. I confess that I hadn't even heard of "Still Alice" until yesterday. And perhaps that's a good enough reason for there to be an Academy Awards. -k

She puts on her meat dress one pork-chop at a time, just like the rest of us. Except, once her meat dress is on, she makes gold records, baby! With some pop performers, there's not much substance behind the gimmicks, so it was easy to assume that she was just a product of hype and marketing too. I assumed there wasn't much to her, but started to change my mind when I saw a clip of her on Howard Stern performing with just her piano, where Stern was almost moved to tears. Then she did these duets with Tony Bennett that really showed off her voice. People who liked the Julie Andrews tribute might like this: -k

I still find it surprising that people bother watching the Academy Awards. It's a long, boring circlejerk. Fawning over absurd gowns. Lavishing praise on the kinds of movies that most moviegoers don't pay much attention to. Self-congratulation for their supposed contributions to social justice. This sort of thing. Blech. I sometimes watch the highlights on Youtube afterward. One year I watched Adele performing the theme from Skyfall; it gave me goosebumps. Last year, I watched the clip of John Travolta introducing Idina Menzel as "Adele Dazeem" about 62 times; it gets funnier each time you watch it. This year perhaps I'll watch Lady Gaga's musical performance, based on BC's comment. -k

The energy spent pressurizing the municipal water system is spent by the time the water has been raised to the level of my sink, toilet, or shower. The utility company expends energy E = m*g*h filling my toilet tank each time I flush, and that amount doesn't change whether or not I am attempting to turn a mini-turbine or a Cornish Wheel or whatever as the water leaves my toilet and heads back down toward the sewage system. For a little low-rise apartment building like the one I live in, the potential energy generation is probably minimal. But for a high-rise that has 200+ suites with some at high elevations, there's potentially a lot of energy that could be harvested. It could help offset electricity costs for building common areas. -k

I think getting rid of Dallas Eakins has made a huge difference for Yakupov, and other guys too. It's no wonder MacTavish and Lowe were so impressed with Eakins, he's the only guy in hockey who thinks the game at their level-- which is somewhere between "Protozoa" and "Inanimate Object" -k

So the US, Russia, and China are obviously the top 3... You're saying Saudi Arabia is ahead of Great Britain, Germany, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, Iran, Turkey, South Korea? I am skeptical... -k

I doubt it's "the base" that's asking for this, I suspect it's industry groups that can donate to campaigns. -k

The collusion between these tech giants most certainly affected the salaries of 60000 to 100000 engineers and programmers in Northern California. Whether it directly affected salaries in Vancouver or Calgary is beside the point. Illegal is illegal, whether people in Vancouver are directly impacted or not. I'm sure the lawyers working on this massive antitrust lawsuit don't give "two hoots" what the effect on salaries in Vancouver were either. BTW, it does affect salaries in Vancouver and Calgary and elsewhere. When we lived in Ottawa and dad worked at Nortel, he'd often come home from work and jokingly (?) ask "so, who wants to move to Carolina?" "Who wants to move to Dallas?" because every week he got phone calls from recruiters in places like that. And I am acquainted with a couple of programmers right here in Kim City who are working for companies in Silicon Valley. They don't even have to get out of their pyjamas to go to work. -k

Why do we even need a new law? I mean, obviously I disagree with people who want to blow up pipelines and oil wells and powerlines and things like that, but that stuff is already illegal. While Prime Minister Harper assures as that this bill would not be used to prevent Canadians from protesting (of course he said that. what else is he going to say?) the text of the law doesn't guarantee that it can't be used that way: Peter MacKay himself won't make that guarantee either: More lawyers agree: Even an industry group that requested stronger penalties for tampering with infrastructure was surprised by what's in the bill: If they are sincere in saying that they don't want this law to be used in the way the critics are saying it could be used, then they should withdraw it, and bring it back when it is fixed so that it matches their intentions. -k

The Leafs should get Dallas Eakins! He loves a challenge, he loves Toronto, and he's already friends with the Toronto media, so it'll be a smooth transition for him. It'll be perfect! Eakins was great with the Marlies, right? I think Eakins and the Leafs were made for each other. Has to happen! -k

To call Bill Maher a neocon is ridiculous. He might be argued to be a bigot, a sexist, and a hypocrite, but I can't imagine how you decided he's a neocon. Words have meanings, and the meaning of "neocon" has nothing to do with how one feels about Muslims. Perhaps he has confused Dawkins with Hitchens ... though that would be a glaring error for somebody who wishes to portray himself as an informed critic of the New Atheists. -k

ISIS is creating unity by being so despicable that everybody agrees they need to be killed. It's kind of like "Mothers and daughters reunited by hatred of Homer Simpson". -k

Oh? I thought that Jobs was held to be some kind of religious figure among Apple fanatics. To me, Apple products are kind of like the Leafs or Justin Beiber. I don't have anything against the product itself, but some of the fans can be pretty annoying. One of my friends won't even respond to my text messages anymore because I won't switch to Apple. -k

What went on between Apple and Google and others is an example of why antitrust laws were created. Unfortunately it's pretty hard to actually prove that this stuff goes on behind the scenes. -k