BlueSoxSWJ

I had a chance to watch the game again on TV last night and actually see replays (one of my few complaints about the Bruins - we get very few replays on the HDx scoreboard) of the plays, and the irony is thick if the Canucks are whining about Boychuk's hit. If Mike Gillis "didn't see the puck around him," he wasn't looking down at the ice, because the initial contact was a clean stick-lift by Boychuk just as Raymond was about to play the puck. The players' sticks then get tangled up, which led to the awkward slide into the boards. It's a play that happens dozens of times every game, and only the awkward angle they were at when hitting the boards caused an injury. I say the irony is thick because shortly after that play, Edler's boarding of Rich Peverly almost certainly is drawing a suspension right now if Peverly ends up injured. Boarding a player racing to touch the puck in a potential icing situation is one of the most dangerous acts in hockey; that's why it's always a penalty and almost always a major + suspension if it does cause an injury.

What time is it in Boston? (slightly off topic) Why couldn't LeBron James afford a $1 Gatorade?

Game 7 would be in Vancouver. It's game 6 that's back in Boston. I wish now I hadn't promised my cousin he could buy my 2nd seat at face value if we made the finals - tickets in my section are going for upwards of $1200 for game 6! The big question now for Van is who to start in goal in game 5. If you go with Schneider and he chokes under the spotlight (or hurts himself failing to stop a penalty shot like he did in round 1), can you count on Luongo to bounce back at the TD Garden where he just let up 12 goals in just over 4 periods? On the other hand, do you come back with Luongo now and risk that his cold streak continues and game 5 features more of the same?

128 was indeed sarcasm. In actuality in the NBA, each team gets 7 timeouts 8 timeouts for regulation, one of which can carry into overtime, where teams each get 3 more per overtime. That means, in an NBA overtime, 5 minutes of play can be interrupted by 8 timeouts. In hockey playoffs, not only do teams usually not have any timeouts for overtime (since, by definition, the game was close in the third and both coaches probably already used them), but they also eliminate the TV timeouts, so you get 20 minutes of action, usually with no breaks (unless, of course, someone scores). In the regular season, when overtime happens after a 60 second break after the third and is limited to 5 minutes, after which the game goes to a shootout, it's very, very rare for a game to approach the 3 hour mark. Of course, in the playoffs, failing to grab dinner before the game automatically guarantees at least a double overtime game, and the concession stands will obviously run out of food by the time you cave and decide you can't wait any longer for something to eat. edit: in the nba, each team gets 2 20-second timeouts, 1 per half, so they get 8, not 7, timeouts for regulation.

Some observations from an avid hockey fan (Boston Bruins season ticket holder): First, fighting on the ice just isn't that dangerous, because the fighters have little to no leverage. In the two seasons I've had tickets, the Bruins have been involved in 1 fight that resulted in an injury. (Andrew Ference broke a bone in Adam Burish's face after Burish took a late slapshot on Tuukka Rask after the whistle.) Also, possibly unknown to fans who only follow the playoffs, most NHL fights aren't emotional, they're strategic - a move to change the momentum in a fast-paced sport that allows only 1 timeout per game. In football, you have 3 timeouts per half and get the ball after your opponent scores (well, except on a safety). In basketball, each team gets approximately 128 timeouts per game. Soccer is played at such a slow pace that you can stall the momentum just by keeping possession near midfield for a while instead of attacking. I don't think I even need to address baseball. Regular season fighting is often less about actually fighting the other guy and more about taking a de facto timeout. When they put mics on the players, it's common to hear the fighters telling each other "good fight" after the linesmen break it up. Second, the league has changed a lot of the rules around fighting to take out the things that did lead to injuries. The "third man in" rule keeps fights to one-on-one fighting, since many injuries happened when a player already fighting took a hit from a second opponent. The league now automatically hands out a ten game ban to anyone leaving the bench during an incident. Even earlier this year when a player on the Islanders starting taking cheap shots at the Pittsburgh goaltender, the Penguin who left the bench to protect his goalie got the automatic 10. The league also tries to calm games down if it gets to the point of a line brawl by making any fights that break out while the puck is not in play come with an automatic misconduct penalty on top of the fighting major. (This means that if multiple fights happen at once, only the one the refs deem broke out first gets just 5 minute majors. Every other pairing gets 5 for fighting and 10 for misconduct, usually sending those players off for the rest of the period.) But again, to answer the initial question, even though it's already been addressed, fighting is condoned in hockey because it makes money. Fans enjoy the fights, and fans also enjoy the way the players are allowed to police their own game. One of the biggest complaints right now about the NBA is that the slightest confrontation between players results in a quick double technical, so there's no way for the players to settle their differences without the refs taking over the game. And really, wouldn't everyone's job be better off if, when you get frustrated, you could have a good fight with someone, sit in timeout for 5 minutes, then get back to work?

If this series goes 7, Rome starts next year with a clean slate. Otherwise, he will be suspended for the first 1 or 2 games next year. Unless they're specifically phrased as being for a specific round of the playoffs (like Matt Cooke's), a suspension treats regular season and playoff games identically, and carries over to the next season, if necessary. And what about Sox '07?

I think the Bruins have taken about 6 years off my life so far this playoffs. They better win the cup to make it all worth it.

I can't think of the last time something that cost me $194 made me so happy. I love the NHL playoffs.

13 out of the last 14 days have featured at least one playoff overtime game, a total of 16 overtimes (and 4 double overtimes). On the one hand, this may be the most exciting playoff season ever. On the other hand, I think I've aged 3 years from the stress.

Gotta love overtime in the playoffs.

I mostly use facebook to keep up with people and events going on, and rarely post to it. My name is actually really difficult to Google; even if you put my full name and hometown in, only 2 of the results on the first page relate to me at all. I've tried to figure out other tricks to find info on myself (hint: people use the same username on lots of sites, so if you know someone's e-mail address, the part before the @ can be the best way to get info about them), and mostly all you can figure out is that I post here, that I like video games, and that I make a twitter post about once every 3 weeks ...

This is what I mean by considering the surroundings. I remember when I was applying to schools, Duke was ranked fairly high as a gay-friendly school. I asked a few people about that, and basically was told "Duke's campus is perfectly safe for a gay couple ... as long as you never step off campus in your four years there." I was fortunate enough to be in a gay-friendly fraternity at a gay-friendly school in a relatively gay-friendly city (Providence, RI). But I also spent a lot of time the summer before my junior year, and during my junior year, researching potential schools.

If someone's seriously looking at schools, I'd say don't rely on some list or a few people's opinions on here, but go out and do the research. Check out the school's website (although take that with a grain of salt; remember they're trying to sell the school). Many colleges have an overnight program, which is a good way to meet some freshmen and get a feel for daily life on the campus. Also consider the location of the school - Boston College had a bad reputation for a long time because they refused to allow a gay-straight alliance, but with the school so close to Boston (BC is neither in Boston nor a college ...), it still wasn't a terrible place to attend as a gay student. Google search the school plus LGBT organization and see if you can find contact info for the leader of the group.

Most of the things that drive me nuts happen at work: - E-mailing the entire floor/department to ask a single person a question --- Continuing to CC the entire floor as you have a 15 e-mail conversation about a topic that doesn't apply to anyone else - "Please advice." It's "please advise." - One particular coworker sends follow up e-mails (CCd to the entire department) asking "Any update on the below?" every 15 minutes after sending an inquiry. Thus far I have managed not to reply with "Sorry, but I do not possess the technology to freeze time while I research your inquiry or go to lunch, so it may sometimes take me more than 15 minutes to research your inquiry." - People who make the same mistake, day after day, never bothering to learn how to do a task properly, because they know it's someone else's job to check their work.

I think this may speak more to the editing process than the writing process. I guess the thing an author could do differently is to make sure, if you write about a topic you're not very knowledgeable in, at least one of your editors is familiar with that topic. As a general sports nut, Boston Bruins (hockey) season ticket holder, and two sport varsity athlete in high school (football and baseball), nothing breaks up the flow of a story for me more than a nonsensical sports detail. Examples I can think of off the top of my head from books I've read lately include pickoff attempts in Little League games (runners can't lead in LL), an inning consisting of only two outs (there should be three), and a football player that teleported 35 yards during a play (if you intercept a pass at midfield, you can't return it 15 yards for a touchdown). Any of these mistakes would have been obvious to an editor who played the sport competitively. In the case above, an American writer setting a story in the UK may want to seek out a British beta reader, if they can find someone willing to do the job. P.S. Firefox spell check seems to think "teleport" is not a word ...

I got into this show when they put all of season 1 on Hulu, but I could never time my schedule right to catch the next season two episode when it was showing on Syfy. Then I found this site and all was well again.

I was playing Pok

SeppuKuties - people in this thread will probably appreciate the ending of this one.

It's probably very much a personal thing, but I did a lot of programming in college and now like fixed-width fonts (the most common being Courier). I also think TNR is a personal choice because it was the required font for all my high school papers.

Our day has considerable built in down time - our workload is designed so that we can still complete it in a worst case scenario (people on vacation and a busy day), since us missing even 1 deadline can cost the company more than it costs to add 20 full time employees. As a result, we're allowed to use the internet, but it's heavily censored, mainly focusing on games - they don't want anyone losing track of time, basically. To be safe, I stick to boston.com, fivethirtyeight.com, news.google.com, espn.com, and on a particularly slow day, a story from the Baen Free Library. edit: typo

The official scorer of a game has 24 hours to change on-the-spot scoring decisions based on replays he sees later.

He actually said he thought he got it right until he saw a replay after the game. I love baseball and loved playing it, but I can't just sit and watch a game. Unless I'm at Fenway, I need to be multitasking to get through a Red Sox game.