Built Ford Tough

Welcome back to the NHL, Matthew Lombardi!!!! Nice job from him and Brown utilizing their speed on the PK to create a scoring chance. EDIT: Wow, Healy is ridiculous. According to him the Leafs only scored that goal because Andrei Markov wasn't in the lineup. Seriously?

Detroit with back-to-back solo shots from Kelly and Young to start the 1st inning (well, one out, but whatever). Pretty much the ideal start for the Tigers.

When Mike Komisarek was your best player (aside Reimer, although I thought Grabovski was good too) you know you played an absolutely awful period.

Brad Marchand scores the first goal of the 2011-12 season. Yay!

So Mike Komisarek was greeted with a nice chorus of boos during the opening introductions. That didn't take long. EDIT: Also, Wilson was booed when he was introduced and responded by laughing and saying "I knew it".

So what exactly is the point of the whole Three Days Grace mini-concert in Winnipeg when they don't even play tonight? I know it is Face-Off 2011 and all, but you think they would do something like that when the Jets actually play.

Lineup for tonights opener agaisnt the Habs: Kulemin - Grabovski - Frattin Lupul - Bozak - Kessel Dupuis - Steckel - Armstrong Rosehill - Lombardi - Brown Gunnarson - Phaneuf Liles - Schenn Gardiner - Komisarek Reimer Gustavsson

Depends on who you are talking about when it comes to TSN. They have the best in the business in McKenzie and Dreger is excellent as well, although not up to Bob's standards. They have some good writers as well, but they also have a lot of blowhards. I'd still talk TSN over any other major media outlet when it comes to hockey, though.

I wouldn't considering how strong the 2012 draft is projected to be and the fact that a Kessel type player isn't a franchise player. If the Leafs were to trade 3 more early round picks, they better be getting somebody better than Kessel. Don't get me wrong, Kessel is a very good player and clearly a 1st line talent, but I wouldn't be happy with getting another Kessel type for that kind of package. Oh yeah, there is also the fact that I have very little faith in this Leaf team. I know they played really well to end the season last year, but we have seen them do that plenty of times before. I don't expect Reimer to play like he did last year and the only way I see them making the playoffs is if he can repeat that kind of performance. If they were a lock for the playoffs I'd be all for it, but I can see them finishing 12th in the East just as easily as I can see them making 8th.

TSN released their power rankings. http://www.tsn.ca/fantasy_news/rankings/nhl/ Top 5 was: Boston Chicago San Jose Philadelphia Vancouver Nashville sent Ryan Ellis to Milwaukee also. Not a big surprise considering Nashville's approach to developing their d-men (both Suter and Weber spent a year in the A) and the fact that he had an underwhelming camp, but I thought it was worth posting anyways.

Leafs picked up David Steckel from the Devils for a 4th round pick. http://tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=377419 This move kind of confuses me, unless Burke has another deal lined up somewhere else. The Leafs have a glut of bottom 6 forwards now and I'm not exactly sure where everybody fits in. If I had to guess, Steckel takes over the 4th line center role and as a faceoff specialist. Dupuis either gets waived or moves to the wing, but that would also push one of Orr/Rosehill out of the lineup and we all know how Burke likes to have an enforcer on his 4th line. This also makes you wonder about the future of Bozak. If Lombardi regains his form that likely pushes Bozak out of the 3rd line center role and there isn't exactly a lot of room on the wings anywhere, unless both Frattin and Kadri play with the Marlies this year, which I can't see happening.

Desmond Jennings hit a lead off home run to make it a 4-3 Texas lead.

In the 2nd part of ESPN's 3 part series of profiling the top 3 prospects in the 2012 NBA Draft, they took a look at UNC's sophomore small forward Harrison Barnes, who is currently ranked their 2nd ranked prospect. From David Thorpe From Fran Fraschilla From Chad Ford They had a lot more to say about Barnes than they did Drummond considering there is more footage of him and he has had a full year of college under his belt already, so I'll just leave it with this to avoid ending up posting 90% of the article. I'll post what they say about Anthony Davis, ESPN's #1 ranked prospect, in a couple of days.

Jones was hyped, but not nearly to the degree that Drummond has been. People were more in love with Jones because they thought he was a small forward in a power forwards body and I think how much success Durant was coming off of played a part in how much he was hyped. If Durant doesn't experience his breakout season when he did, I don't think Jones gets nearly as much hype as he did. Drummond gets hyped because many believe he can become the next dominant big man rather than a mismatch nightmare like people thought of Jones. I do agree with you in that I would wait until we see how he plays at the collegiate level, though. At this time last season Harrison Barnes, Kyrie irving and Perry Jones were considered the three best prospects in college and two of them ended up returning for their sophomore seasons after up and down seasons.

A failed double steal attempt by the Rangers (Andrus got caught in between 3rd and after a faked throw to 2nd) resulted in the Rangers getting no insurance runs in the top of the 7th. The Rays are now threatening with the bases loaded and only 1 out in the bottom half of the 7th. Looks like I may have spoke too soon about this game looking to be over. I should've known better than to count out the Rays after what they accomplished just to even get into the playoffs.

Valanciunas' club team (Lietuvos Rytas) is currently playing in some sort of tournament to qualify for Euroleague (or something like that, I'm not exactly sure of the details). Anyways, basically what I am saying is that his 2011-12 season has started and I'll post as many updates about his play as I can in this thread. If anybody else notices something about his play, feel free to post it in here as well. So far he has played 3 games and his numbers in each were: vs KK Buducnost - 11 points, 8 rebounds, 2 blocks on 3/5 shooting and 5/6 FT in 18:44 vs Cibona Zagreb - 5 points, 6 rebounds on 1/3 shooting and 3/4 FT in 17:26 vs Galatasaray - 8 points, 5 rebounds, 2 blocks on 3/6 shooting and 2/2 FT in 19:24 Which averages out to 8 ppg, 6.3 rpg, 1.3 bpg on 50% shooting and 83.2% FT in 18.31 mpg

Huge hit by Hamilton with the bases loaded and two outs to give the Rangers a 3 run lead. Napoli's 2 run homer off of Price started off the 4 run 7th. The Rangers currently have runners on the corners with 2 outs and Michael Young at the plate. They have an excellent chance of putting this game on ice with a hit right here.

http://www.goldenstateofmind.com/2011/9/24/2446337/who-are-the-nbas-most-valuable-mid-range-shooters He also ranked 28th overall in the league. I know that these rankings are hardly completely reflective of who the best mid range players are in the NBA as things like degree of difficulty, defensive attention, etc... aren't taken into consideration and nobody would take a player like DeRozan or Vujacic over the likes of Kobe Bryant if they needed a mid range jumper, but it does show that DeRozan's mid range game is very solid. A lot of people who don't watch much of the Raptors think that DeRozan can't shoot the ball at all because he is an awful 3 point shooter, but that is definitely not the case as his mid range jumper is actually very good and has been ever since his days at USC. It is part of the reason why I think so highly of his potential as a scorer and believe that he can definitely average around 22-23 ppg at some point in his career, given the right circumstances. Also, Andrea Bargnani ranked 2nd among centers (29th oveall) and Jose Calderon ranked 9th among point guards. I don't think either of these are really much of a surprise though, since we all know that these two are very good shooters from all over the court.

Some roster news from today. Chicago signed Ray Emery to a 1 year contract. The Panthers sent 3rd overall pick Johnathan Huberdeau back to St. John despite him leading the team in goals (3) and being tied for points (4) during the preseason. Jets signed Mark Scheifele to an entry level contract after tallying 8 points in 5 exhibition games. Adam Larsson is expected to make the Devils roster and Petr Sykora is still in the mix for a roster spot. Detroit signed Fabian Brunnstrom.

Rather than clog up the General Hockey Thread with a bunch of Leaf stuff, I figured between myself and CmS, this thread is worth making. Some pretty big news from today. Keith Aulie was sent to the Marlies which means that Jake Gardiner made the Leafs and will be seeing regular minutes in the NHL, at least to start the season. His play in training camp/preseason was absolutely brilliant (aside from the last game against Detroit, but given the sheer volume of hockey he played in such a short time period, it is understandable) and based on his play alone, there was absolutely no way that you could leave him off of the team. He was quite possibly the Leafs' best defenseman during the preseason. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how he plays on Thursday against the Habs. It is pretty unfortunate for Aulie, though. He played very well last seson but struggled in camp/preseason this year. Him not having to clear waivers certainly was a key element in the decision to send him down. Hopefully he goes down to the Marlies and really continues to work on his game. It is only a matter of time before he is back up with the big club, whether it is because of injuries, Gardiner struggles or just his play in the AHL. Also, Darryl Boyce, Joey Crabb and Matt Lashoff were placed on waivers, which means it looks like Dupuis won the 4th line center role.

Pretty much. Follow that up with Nitro and Eric Blasco and you should have the top 3.

Ford, Thorpe and Fraschilla did a 3 part piece on ESPN arguing the merits of each of the top 3 prospects in the 2012 NBA Draft (Harrison Barnes, Andre Drummond and Anthony Davis) as to why they should go first overall. Here is what they said about Andre Drummond, who they currently have ranked 3rd. From Thorpe: From Fraschilla From Ford: I'll post what they said about Harrison Barnes, who is ranked 2nd, in a couple of days.

Like CmS said, are you surprised? It is pretty damn clear that the two sides are ridiculously far apart and no agreement is going to come anytime soon unless one side completely caves, which seems highly unlikely. I've said it plenty of times before. The best case scenario is a 50 game season, but the most likely one is no season at all. Nothing that has been reported after these meetings has given me any reason to think otherwise.

Cards really blew a fantastic chance in this game. It isn't often that you can score 3 runs on Halladay, let alone 3 in the 1st inning against him. I watched him for pretty much 10 years and I could probably count on one hand how many times he came out and gave up 3 runs in the 1st inning (not literally, but you get my point) and with him completely dominating since then, it is going to be very difficult to get another 4 on him.

I love it. I can actually watch a game for once rather than miss them all because of work/class. I don't understand the decision to send Bloomquist home on that play during the top of the 1st. After he had to hold up to make sure that the liner wasn't caught it was clear that he had no chance of scoring and Braun's throw was about 2 seconds ahead of him. They should've held him at third and took their chances with runners at the corners and 1 out. I'm all for taking chances and playing aggressive baseball, but that was just a stupid risk as he had no chance of scoring unless Braun completely botched the throw.