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thornescratch · 3 years ago

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Hi! You are my Sensible Hockey Opinions got to, and I was wondering what your thoughts are on how the Caps have been playing? Their record over the last few games looks not great, but then I watch the games and it doesn’t feel like they’re doing that badly. I guess goaltending and finishing could improve but those are cyclical for most teams anyway. Thanks!

Damn, I'm not used to being the most sensible option in the room. Usually it's kind of the opposite.

To my eye, the Caps have been inconsistent of late, but that’s not a surprise; their lineup, which got hit hard with regular injuries early on, is still going through the COVID shuffle, which means the lines are in a blender half the time. Of the the entire team, only one player (GUESS WHO, IT’S A RUSSIAN MACHINE THAT NEVER BREAKS) has played every game of this season so far. And their schedule has been extremely uneven, with back to backs and then gaps of 4-5 days between games. Players don’t thrive in that.

That said, it’s not time to panic, but the Caps have two and a half issues: they haven’t been healthy the entire season, and their goaltending is very janky. They are definitely at the point where they’ve got to figure out their goaltending going forward. These numbers by Japers Rink are super damning: the Caps have not had consistent league average goal tending for more than three games in a row for a long time now, stretching back to last season. While each have had hot streaks, looking at their records, neither Samsonov nor Vanecek (nor Fucale, whose sample size is EXTREMELY small) have really shone. This is, to some extent, also understandable, as the sample size is still growing with both of these guys, and they’re doing it in an inconsistent environment that has been interrupted multiple times. It’s also hard to assess both completely when they have to share net time.

Obviously, this wasn’t the plan for last year, where the Caps were clearly hoping to have Lundqvist mentor Samsonov and also potentially backstop a playoff run with his experience; that would have allowed Samsonov to develop more NHL time with a veteran who wasn’t under the pressure of a contract, and Vanecek to log more experience in the AHL. The heart issue derailed that, and we got Chara instead for the defense.

One imagines that Maclellan has to be keeping his options open on how he can upgrade both goaltending and potentially pick up a scoring winger, given we don’t know when Mantha will will come back, and how healthy Oshie can stay, all while having to juggle some really tight cap situations and retain their first round pick. But with Ovechkin having a career year and the team still in the thick of the playoff projections even with all injuries, I’d assume the Caps are thinking seriously about how much they can go for another Cup this year and if that means they go short term on upgrading goalie now, or what. (I also fully expect them to pull the Kucherov LTIR move with Mantha if they can feasibly do it.)

And of course, the powerplay, which has been in steady misery, but I’m putting this as the half issue, as I suspect the Caps are hoping for the personnel fix to carry it through the rest of the year. Backstrom is the straw that stirs the drink of it; you remove him, and it falls apart. If you don’t have him on the halfwall, it means Kuzy has to move there, which in turn moves Eller or Sheary to the goal line feeding the slot, and you need a legit playmaker there. When Backstrom’s in his proper spot, it all runs much better.

So, yeah, shit’s been uneven, but given the circumstances, it’s not unexpected. I am cutting this off before it turns into a full blown analysis of Samsonov vs Vanecek, or the powerplay, because both of those things would be much longer. In conclusion: they can get better, they still have solid underlying stats, health is gonna direct a lot of the previous two things. And the goalie duo is probably gonna look different next year.

#Anonymous #Washington Capitals

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csykora · 4 years ago

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Sergei, 1958

“When he was in a bad mood, he would lock himself in a shell. He had his own understanding of life and of hockey, which he held to firmly, and revealed rarely….”

[Sergei Makarov in his Red Army sweater, coming over the boards for a shift with a determined expression.]

Sergei Makarov was born in Chelyabinsk, Russia’s Detroit. His parents didn’t bother to send him to daycare, because they always knew where he would be, toddling around the apartment block, pushing a puck.

His favorite game was playing the “Makarov Championship” with his older brothers. Kneeling on the floor of their apartment to bat a puck around, they each pretended to be one of the three famous teams in Moscow. Nikolai, already a teenager, picked Dynamo, Yuri would be Spartak, and baby Sergei imagined himself as CSKA.

Outside the Makarov home, those teams had secret identities of their own. CSKA was naturally favored by the military brass. Dynamo’s biggest fans were intelligence officers—the KGB. (I don’t know if anyone liked Spartak.)

Nikolai would soon be chosen by CSKA’s farm team. Tween Sergei visited whenever he could—not so much to see his brother, but his brother’s new teammate, a winger like Sergei wanted to be, named Valeri Kharlamov.

When Nikolai could come home, Sergei would beg him to teach him all of Kharlamov’s new moves. When he couldn’t copy them all to Sergei’s satisfaction, Nikolai pled ‘being a defenseman’, and invited Kharlamov home for dinner to meet his biggest fan. Nikolai was traded back to Chelyabinsk’s senior team, where he would have his own successful career, but the impression Kharlamov left on Sergei lingered.

[Two black and white pictures of Sergei and Nikolai Makarov on the ice. In the first, it’s extremely hard to tell which one is ten years older than the other. In the second, Nikolai is hanging off his brother while Sergei looks amused.]

With movie-star cool looks, he grew up confident and fiercely independent. By the time he was 17, Sergei’s two passions were ‘Kharlamov’ and ‘quitting hockey.’ When the team scraped together a win, Sergei was most of the reason. So when the team lost, his coaches would point to him for failing. Sergei would snap back about why they even needed him if he sucked so much, and so on.

It was only when it got up to the head coach of the senior team, who called him up to stop him walking, that Chelyabinsk started winning. When he made the junior national team, they won gold.

Coach Tikhonov invited him to practice with the big boys. Then he added the rookie to the men’s national team roster for the ’78 Worlds. Then they won gold. It was the start of a long, strange pattern: for every major international tournament, Coach Tikhonov liked to bring a new rookie.

CSKA decided they were interested in another Makarov brother after all. Sergei and another prospect from the junior national team, a left winger named Vladimir Krutov, joined a roster already stacked with famous players like Boris Mikhailov, young star Slava Fetisov, and, of course, Kharlamov.

Vova, 1960

[A headshot of Vladimir Krutov in the famous green sweater that the National team's top line wore in practice. He has a round face, very blue round eyes, and a gentle expression.]

“Volodya was such a dependable and steadfast man that I would have gone anywhere with him — to war, to espionage, into peril.”

Playing in Moscow’s backstreets, the boys had a nickname for Vladimir Krutov—Пупсик (“Pupsik”) means “sweetie” or “babydoll”. As a young man he picked up another name that doesn’t need translation: “Tank.”

With a cherubic, pink-cheeked face and easy smile, he inspired affection in very nearly everyone who met him, and kept it with a death-defying loyalty. He couldn’t stand, or understand, unfairness: if someone went after his friends, on or off the ice, he’d dive in to sort it out.

But when authority figures treated him badly, his fairness and faithfulness butted heads. His best friend described a moment when, as a teenager, he took a puck to the face and fell down, then skated unsteadily to the team doctor. The coach screamed at him for coming off before a change. “Vladimir was crushed. Never before—or since—had anyone questioned his guts.” But he simply stood there and took it without talking back, as if he couldn’t imagine a coach could do wrong.

He wasn’t the enforcer you’d expect, though. In three World Juniors he always came out the top scorer, his speed and strength catching the attention of Canadian juniors who’d one day be his teammates.

In ’79 Vova was called up from CSKA’s junior team to join the men for a few games, and scored 4 goals in a game against arch-nemesis Dynamo. The next year Vova and Sergei both scrambled into the CSKA lineup full-time, and Coach Tikhonov decided Vova would be his rookie of the year. He was headed to the 1980 Olympics, without having even played a World Championship at the men’s level.

“For American people, selective memory, it’s a national thing,” Slava says about 1980. “I admit, I own one of the most famous silver medals in sports history. Correct? Done?”

[An action shot of Vova sprawled in the crease beside the American goaltender]

The Miracle on Ice story looks up at the Soviet team from under the chin. But Kharlamov and goaltender Vladislav Tretiak were Coach Tarasov’s giants, not Coach Tikhonov’s. Slava and Sergei were only 21 years old. Lyosha, 20. Vova was 19. The player who would make him and Sergei world-famous was another teenager, not even on the team. I’m not saying the US’s win wasn’t wonderful, but it wasn’t a simple or satisfying end—just the beginning of an unraveling.

[Vova throwing his arms in the air as the American goaltender turns to see the puck bouncing out of the net behind him]

[Sergei carrying the puck through open ice. His stick is tangled with two American defenders’, but he’s still got the puck between his feet]

Vova scored the first goal in the game, and Sergei tied it back up before the end of the first. (In an underdog story, what does it say when we don’t name the 19 year old who’d never been here before, and stood up to the pressure at only 5 foot 9? Some college boys played a game against another boy called Baby. Any way we spin that is a choice.)

But Tretiak had let in two as well, so Tikhonov pulled the best goalie in the world after twenty minutes. He put in Vladimir Myshkin, who will be remembered to history as “Not Tretiak” (or just as Tretiak: many people think Tretiak played the Miracle game). He seemed to lean on other defensemen than Slava and Lyosha, despite how they’d helped set up those goals: the other d-men were older, and they were from the contingent of the national team that didn’t play for CSKA most of the year, but for Dynamo.

Remember, the KGB’s favorites. And Tikhonov had been trained there, years before. Maybe Tikhonov wanted to please somebody, wanted a different position, coaching Dynamo during the season instead of CSKA, which was still packed with players who Tarasov, not Tikhonov, had chosen. If he had played Tretiak and Tretiak won, in their hearts people would still have given the win to Tarasov, not Tikhonov. That was only rumor, but hey, that’s Russia. What mattered was respect.

“Tikhonov was quiet like a fucking rabbit after this game,” Slava says. “But he had no choice but to stick with us, and we took over the world, just like that.”

Tikhonov’s loss in February 1980 was followed by another he might eventually have regretted more.

Vova had scored as many goals as Boris Mikhailov, a legend on the team. Sergei, just behind him, tied for points and squeaked passed Kharlamov in goals. But all the pieces around the two young stars had been Coach Tarasov’s—30, 32, 32, 35. Old, old, old. Coach Tikhonov scrambled the plans, put the rookies together, and went hunting for a center for them.

Igor, 1960

[A candid headshot of Igor Larionov in practice. He has blue eyes and an expression I can either describe as ‘wistful’ or ‘pouty.’]

If you like horror movies, spoiler: Igor Larionov will be Coach Tikhonov’s ‘final girl’.

Just down the river from Moscow, Igor was born in Voskresensk, a one-stoplight town that eventually grew to two. Voskresensk’s team, Khimik, is a bit of a spoiler too: they might not be very good, but they’re good at kicking the shit out of Moscow.

His grandfather had been kicked out of Moscow for mocking the regime. His parents had been raised as laborers, who moved from peasant farming to the town as factories grew. Igor loved his parents and his hometown, but already from a little distance. Unlike the Makarovs, he never felt quite the same as his brother, who played hockey too but who Igor thought wasted every opportunity with some knucklehead move. No one else ever seemed to see the opportunities Igor did, waiting spaces for a perfect plan to slither through. He was always small, and he had a lot of thoughts about everything, and even more feelings. Most of those feelings ended with “f— you.” He liked people a lot, but he would never feel sure enough if they liked him.

Apparently he loved ‘80s glam rock music.

No one noticed when he started to play for Khimik. His second season, he put up 45 points in 43 games, and that was enough to draw attention. In the fall of 1980 CSKA played Khimik, and before the game Coach Tikhonov sent a note inviting the 19 year-old to meet outside the rink. He made him the usual offer: sign with CSKA instead, and maybe you’ll make the national team.

Igor said something like, “Uh, I have a game to play? (F— you),” and picked up five more points against CSKA that night.

Igor knew signing with Coach Tikhonov’s CSKA was bad news. He knew other players from Voskresensk who had passed through CSKA’s grinding system, and who intimated that the coaching was nothing like Khimik’s. He knew that once you travelled to Moscow’s training facility, there wouldn’t be any going home on weekends. Worst, once you signed as an officer of the Army, he knew that breaking those contracts counted as treason. He was the teenage geek being invited to a party in the woods by the lake where teenagers always get murdered by the lake monster.

But he was also a teenage geek getting invited to a party.

He had gotten to go to World Juniors U-20 twice, both times with Vova. Like most people, Igor liked Vova rather helplessly, and he had loved traveling. He was proud of his English, proud of his reading and writing, and proud of his ability to understand people. Hotels full of visiting teams had been like feasts: he loved meeting other players and snatched up every opportunity to talk with them. He liked to sit in the stands to watch every game he didn’t have to play in, and cheered for his opponents. He refused to call them ‘rivals’, or 'enemies.' He thought that was how you talked about soldiers and war, not players of a game.

That year in U-20 Vova had been the top junior scorer as usual, but Igor had been voted the MVP. He’d been sure it meant something, that the two of them would be going places, together. Then almost as soon as they’d returned from World Juniors, Tikhonov had appeared in a whirlwind and whisked Vova away on an American adventure, off to the Olympics--alone. Igor watched the Miracle game on TV with his Khimik teammates, and realized he was running out of time.

With 20 looming, the only way he’d ever travel again would be if he could make the men’s national team too. Igor was proud of his play, and he knew that he was good enough to make the national team while playing on any team he wanted—as long as it was Moscow’s. No one who cared would keep watching Khimik.

And at 20, like everyone else in Russia, he was already in debt—those two years of mandatory military service. Spartak was courting him that year too: their coach acted friendly, and bought Igor food, and offered to help his family. But Igor knew Spartak’s coach was out of favor with the Army officials, and Tikhonov was in. So even if he signed with Spartak and tried to fulfill his service through work assignments and trainings on their side of Moscow, he could be mysteriously called up to “active duty” on CSKA’s side at any moment.

At least, he thought, Tikhonov was honest. He knew something was wrong, or he maybe he just thinks he should have, looking back. But he was lonely.

While Igor was overthinking everything, Coach Tikhonov played Sergei and Vova with a center named Viktor Zhluktov for the rest of the ’80-81 season. Viktor Zhluktov probably has a rich interior life like anyone else: for our purposes he is a transparent cut-out with “Mean Girl” stamped on his forehead. He even has an evil mustache.

[An old Soviet graphic with a headshot of Viktor Zhluktov. He has a really bad mustache.]

Vova probably thought he was nice.

Igor, who was still with Khimik and totally didn’t care, thought Viktor “did not shine as a player, but thanks to his faultless obedience to Tikhonov, he got onto the national team with no problem.”

By August 1981, Coach Tikhonov was ready to make the team a little more obediently his. He told Kharlamov not to bother joining the national team for that fall’s Canada Cup: he was getting too old.

Kharlamov had been privately planning to retire before the winter, but he’d wanted to travel with the team and play one last time, a goodbye tour. While driving back to Moscow with his wife Irina, he was killed in a car crash on August 27.

Overnight, it was official: Vova became the best left winger outside the NHL by default. He inherited CSKA’s top line spot, the top line on the national team too. Sergei, who had just lost his childhood friend, rose silently on the right.

That summer Igor signed as a private in the Army. He was not going to be a good soldier, and he knew it. But he reported to Moscow’s training camp.

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#green unit #long post #sergei makarov #igor larionov #vladimir krutov #slava fetisov #alexei kasatanov

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wrestlingisfake · 4 years ago

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Wrestle Kingdom 15 day 2 preview

TBD vs. Jay White - White is challenging for the IWGP heavyweight title and IWGP intercontinental title, against the winner of Tetsuya Naito vs. Kota Ibushi from last night. In fact several of the matches on this card are major spoilers for yesterday’s show, so I guess the whole thing needs to go under the cut.

Kota Ibushi vs. Jay White - Ibushi defeated Tetsuya Naito last night to become the 73rd IWGP heavyweight champion and the 27th IWGP intercontinental champion. White is using his “IWGP double championship right to challenge” contract to receive this title shot. If White wins, Ibushi’s 24 hours as double champion would be the shortest reign in the history of either championship.

Ibushi was devastated when he was knocked out of the Double Gold Dash last year, and moreso when he lost to White in the consolation match. Ibushi and White met again during the G1 Climax, where Jay beat him again. Ibushi nevertheless won the G1 Climax to earn the “right to challenge” contract. However, the contract is defended like a championship, and Ibushi put it on the line against White...who beat him again. White then elected to take January 4 off and schedule his title match with Naito for January 5. However, Naito decided to spend the 4th defending the title against Ibushi. The upshot is that Ibushi has finally achieved his dream, but he must immediately put it all on the line against his nemesis, who isn’t exhausted from working last night.

Frankly, I’m not sure why they set this up where the 1/4 main event sets up who gets to wrestle White, like he’s the biggest star in this thing. I suppose maybe the idea is that he’s unavoidable so that you’ll worry until the very end that he could ruin everything. Maybe that psychology connects with the Japanese audience. It doesn’t with me. I’d rather just see the best and/or biggest match close the second show, and White vs. Ibushi isn’t it. Their match at Wrestle Kingdom 14 last year was so dull that I lost interest for about 20 minutes. Jay will go for the same cheap heat spots he always goes for, and Ibushi will randomly no-sell or oversell each of them, depending on whether he wants to be Ultra Instinct Shaggy or Ricky Morton at any given moment.

I suppose White-Ibushi matches have been fun, sometimes. I really liked the G1 Climax 2019 final. But personally I was over this feud months ago. I really hope they’ve come up with some new material, or this is going to be a long slog for me. I’m picking Ibushi to win, because I really don’t think they’ll book White to win just to troll the Tokyo Dome. But the bigger problem is, I wouldn’t care if they did.

Taiji Ishimori vs. Hiromu Takahashi - Ishimori is defending the IWGP junior heavyweight championship. Hiromu defeated El Phantasmo last night to earn this title shot. Ishimori won the title from Takahashi on August 29, although they met again in the Best of the Super Jr. tournament on November 15, where Hiromu won. So this is the rubber match.

This match should be good to great, but it feels inevitable that Takahashi will regain the title. That’s not all bad, since he’s a big star and I’m a fan, but the match would mean more if Ishimori had been built up bigger. I suppose the pandemic made that difficult, since there were enough shows (or junior heavyweights) for Taiji to really burn through other top contenders.

I guess I’ll just try to get in the mindset of enjoying Hiromu’s coronation, instead of hoping for a match that could go either way. Then, on the off chance Ishimori actually wins, I’ll be properly shocked. But I’m not betting on that happening.

EVIL vs. SANADA - Welp, it had to happen--after Evil turned on Los Ingobernables de Japon and joined Bullet Club, it was only a matter of time before his tag team partner Sanada finally got a hold of him and...wait. I’m looking at my notes for the Evil-Sanada match from October 17. I’m frankly not sure why Sanada suddenly got mad at Evil two months after winning that match. I’m pretty sure they just ran out of ideas for each guy. Well, the October bout wasn’t as emotionally charged as I wanted anyway, so I’ll take a delayed grudge match if I can get it.

I believe Kevin Kelly commented recently that a win for Sanada here moves him closer to the main event title picture, but a loss sends him tumbling back down. I’d agree with that assessment. Along the same lines, a win for Evil suggests a renewed push for him, whereas a loss would signal that they’re putting him on the back burner for a while. I don’t expect either guy to headline the really big shows, but even on the lesser shows, only the winner of this match makes sense chasing the heavyweight and intercontinental titles.

I’d be in favor of these two brawling all around the ringside area (as much as safety procedures allow) and getting it out of their system. Blow this feud off quickly, so we can get on with new business--Sanada working his way up the ladder, and Evil plotting against his rivals within Bullet Club. I’m picking Sanada to win.

Shingo Takagi vs. Jeff Cobb - Takagi is defending the NEVER title. Cobb beat Shingo in their last singles encounter in September, but Takagi wasn’t champion yet. So Cobb had to beat him again in a tag match in December to set up this match. Of course, in the meantime, Cobb turned heel by joining Will Ospreay’s new stable, the Empire.

You could always count on either of these guys to have a great clubberin’ battle, but Cobb’s heel turn should add a vicious new edge to this matchup. We should get a strong showcase of what to expect from Evil Jeff Cobb, above and beyond what he demonstrated in World Tag League. Accordingly, I think he basically has to win the title. There just isn’t anything so important that it’s worth keeping the belt on Takagi; the most interesting thing he could do right now is chase Cobb. So this is another “feels like a foregone conclusion” match on a card full of them. At least this one should be fairly different from the others.

El Desperado & Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs. Master Wato & Ryusuke Taguchi - Despy and Kanemaru are defending the IWGP junior heavyweight tag team titles. Wato and Taguchi each managed to beat Despy in one-on-one matches during Best of the Super Jr., so I guess they figured they’d make a go of it as a team.

If you’d told me a year ago that a Young Lion would come back from excursion with a bunch of fancy vignettes, and it was all to build to this match, past-me would never have dreamed that the new guy would be the dimmest star of this group. But as it happens, Desperado had an epic star-making performance in BOSJ, Taguchi is a comedy institution in the promotion, and Kanemaru is at least a champion. Wato just hasn’t been booked like a hot new star, and the whole idea of having guys like Taguchi and Hiroyoshi Tenzan coach him just makes him look weaker. You get the feeling this match is designed to help him recover from all that, except that I have no confidence he’ll actually win the big one in the Tokyo Dome. If he loses here, he’s basically Captain New Japan Mark II.

What’s worse for Wato is that I’m not even sure it’s a good idea for him to finally win the big one, not at Desperado’s expense. The drama of the BOSJ final took me from “Oh, that one guy who looks like Skeletor cosplaying El Kabong” to “holy shit El Desperado isn’t fucking around.” They need to run with that, and maybe dropping the tag title is step one. But dropping it to Master Wato? I guess Wato could pin Kanemaru, but still.

To me the best finish for everyone involved is if the champs retain and Wato flips out and turns on Taguchi. But that sort of thing is awfully swerve-y for New Japan, and it’s smarter not to assume it’ll happen every time it’d be a little convenient. So I guess we’ll see what they’ve got. But I feel safe predicting the champs retain and Wato doesn’t get over as a babyface.

Toru Yano vs. Bad Luck Fale vs. Chase Owens vs. BUSHI - This is a four-way match to decide who gets first possession of the provisional KOPW 2021 trophy. Whoever holds the trophy at the end of the year will be the official King of Pro Wrestling in 2021, or something. Yano won the title for 2020, but it’s a new year so we have a new title. The participants here were the final four of last night’s New Japan Ranbo gauntlet match. I gather that the first man to score a fall over any other opponent wins.

This is a pretty oddball lineup so I would imagine this match will just be a lot of shenanigans. All four guys will cheat to win, but Owens and Fale will work together to double-team cheat, so they can be bigger heels than the other two.

Yano originally won the KOPW 2020 trophy in a four-way like this one, by stealing a pin over Kazuchika Okada of all people. So I would think that makes him a heavy favorite to win here. The only question is if the bookers think it’d be funnier for his tricks to backfire when dealing with the massive, extremely irritated Fale. I think I’d rather see Fale defending the trophy for six months, to be honest, but my gut says Yano will win again.

AZM & Saya Kamitani & Utami Hayashishita vs. Natsupo & Himeka & Maika - This is one of two women’s matches to provide exposure to STARDOM, the women’s promotion owned by New Japan’s parent company. In Japan it’s seems to be considered normal for promotions to be all-male or all-female, and for fans to only want to see one or the other on a given event. So I get the impression some New Japan fans have a problem with running Stardom matches on a NJPW show, although I certainly don’t see why. In any case, TV and streaming rights mean that Western fans probably won’t actually see this match; I’m not even sure it will be televised. And I unfortunately know nothing baout Stardom, so it’s kind of pointless for me to comment on performers I’ve never heard of in a match I’ll probably never get to see.

Tam Nakano & Mayu Iwatani vs. Syuri & Giulia - Another women’s match to showcase Stardom. In this case I at least recognize Iwatani’s name from some ROH shows a couple of years ago, but that’s about it. I’m all for getting women’s wrestling some more exposure anywhere you can do it, but unfortunately these matches are aimed at the live audience in the Tokyo Dome, and won’t do much good raising my awareness.

#njpw #wrestle kingdom 15 #jay white #taiji ishimori #other guys but they're spoilers

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dccomicsnews · 5 years ago

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Review: THE FLASH #750

[Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers]

Writers: Joshua Williamson, Geoff Johns, Francis Manapul, Brian Buccellato, Marv Wolfman, Scott Lobdell

Artists: Rafa Sandoval, Stephen Segovia, Scott Kolins, Francis Manapul, Riley Rossmo, David Marquez, Brett Booth, Norm Rapmund

Colours: Arif Prianto, Michael Atiyeh, Ivan Plascencia, Alejandro Sanchez, Luis Guerrero

Letters: Steve Wands, Rob Leigh, Joshua Reed, Deron Bennett, ALW’s Troy Peteri

Reviewed By: Derek McNeil

Summary

The Flash #750: Beginning: “The Flash Age”! The story we’ve been building toward since issue #50 comes to a head! While a supercharged Speed Force wreaks havoc on Barry Allen’s life, a new threat appears on the horizon in the form of the deadly Paradox. Destined to destroy the Flash’s legacy, Paradox sends his herald, Godspeed, to trap the Flash family! Plus, in this special anniversary issue: tales from across the generations of super-speedsters by an all-star lineup of writers and artists!

Positives

In honour of the 80th Anniversary of the title, DC has reverted back to legacy numbering. Thus, The Flash #750 hits the stands this week instead of the expected 89th issue of the series. “Legacy numbering” means that if the title kept the same incremental numbering through every relaunch of the title, then the number would have naturally progressed to issue #750 with this very issue.

This covers the tenures of DC’s primary three Flashes, Jay Garrick, Barry Allen, and Wally West, and appropriately, all three are well represented in the six stories included. As the current star of the title, Barry merits three stories, while Jay and Wally each get a single, yet important story each.

This first, and main, story is the first chapter of regular series writer Josh Williamson’s “The Flash Age”. I really liked this story, as it mostly gives a break and allows us to catch up with the current status of Barry’s world and the people in it, before pushing into the next big conflict. This makes the story a nice jumping-on point for new readers as well as providing a neat wrap up of the previous story arc.

Most importantly, it shows that Barry and Iris are back together and that their relationship is as strong as ever. In fact, things seemed to be going so well, that when Iris said, “I have something to talk to you about. A surprise”, I was expecting that she might propose to Barry.

Positives Cont.

Unfortunately, this is where the impending conflict cut into the story. Godspeed interrupts this moment, taking Barry to face Paradox. Paradox then gives Barry a choice between giving up being the Flash or fighting for his life against Godspeed. This is where the story leaves off, giving us a rather effective cliffhanger to bring readers back for the rest of “The Flash Age”.

I also love that this story includes several instances of Central City’s citizens showing their gratitude to the Flash for saving their lives or helping them in other ways. It’s a nice touch for an anniversary story. Plus, it provides a nice counterpoint to Paradox’s claims that Barry has been endangering everybody by the effect his powers have had on reality itself. Hopefully, this will help Barry realize that the good he has done outweighs any damage he has caused.

In the second story, Geoff Johns bring us an interesting little tale featuring Captain Cold, set during Wally’s tenure as the DCU’s primary Flash. In this story, we see that what Wally assumes that Cold goes on a rampage for the sole purpose of infuriating Wally.

However, the story shows us that the “rampage” came about unintentionally. Cold merely stumbled into the midst of an armed robbery when shopping at his local corner store. Through a series of misunderstandings, he finds himself in the middle of a confrontation with the Keystone City Police. While this doesn’t excuse Cold for his crimes, this does show how easy it is for events to quickly get out of control for a villain in the DCU.

Positives Cont.

The next story, by Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato features Barry examining the question of whether the Flash has to be Barry Allen. He does this by using a previously unseen power to send his consciousness through other timelines where somebody else became the Flash instead of him. In each timeline, he finds that someone admirably fills the role of the Flash. He arrives at the moral of the “Even if it doesn’t have to be me… I”m glad that it is”

However, I have to wonder why the examples of Wally and Jay aren’t enough evidence that that someone else could serve as the Flash other than Barry. I would have thought either would be proof enough to settle the question.

Marv Wolfman, the man wrote the story of Barry’s death in Crisis On Infinite Earths, returns to the character to tell of an interesting encounter between Barry and the Mirror Master. The interesting conceit of this story is that the Mirror Master’s mirrors in the story enact various transformations upon the Flash’s body. These transformations allow artist Riley Rossmo to revisit some of the bizarre transformations over the years, such as the time Abra-Kadabra turned Barry into a walking wooden puppet.

Next, regular writer Joshua Williamson gives us a story of Jay Garrick, set in the title’s inaugural year, 1940. The story centres around an encounter between Jay and the Thinker. However, the most intriguing bit of the story is when a mysterious figure, presumably the Reverse Flash, whispers in Jay’s ear, “They’ll forget you Jay Garrick. I’ve seen your future…”.

Positives Cont.

This seems to be setting up a future storyline involving Jay and the Reverse Flash, which is further borne out by the blurb at the story’s end. This blurb promises, “To be continued in The Flash in 2020″. Unfortunately, this seems to imply that we won’t see the followup immediately, but it is coming relatively shortly.

Also, I noticed that the image on that page also shows Wally and Bart. I hope this means that we will be seeing a full reunion of the Flash Family when this story continues.

Finally, the entire creative team for the Flash Forward miniseries returns to provide an epilogue to that miniseries. Writer Scott Lobdell continues where that story left off, creating a bridge between it and the upcoming Generation Zero: Gods Among Us and subsequent Generation One to Five specials.

While little is known about this upcoming event, it has been speculated that it will involve a major shift in DCU continuity. That speculation seems to be borne out in this story, where Wally, now wielding the power and knowledge of the Mobius Chair, exams the current state of the DC Universe’s continuity.

It has been my theory for a while now that the time itself is unravelling in the DC Universe, and this story confirms that. Wally looks through his own personal timeline and sees that multiple contradictory events seem to concurrently exist in the current continuity. The original Silver Age origin of the Teen Titans happened as Wally remembers it, but the New 52 Teen Titans also exist as the first group to call themselves by that name.

#gallery-0-4 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-4 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-4 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-4 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

The Flash #750 1940s Cover

The Flash #750 1950s Cover

The Flash #750 1960s Cover

The Flash #750 1970s Cover

The Flash #750 1980s Cover

The Flash #750 1990s Cover

The Flash #750 2000s Cover

The Flash #750 2010s Cover

Positives Cont.

I must also interject that it’s great to see that Wally remembers the original Teen Titans costumes, and not the New 52/Rebirth re-imagined versions of the original outfit – even down to Robin’s short pants.

Wally confronts Tempus Fuginaut about the state of the DCU, stating, “Everything. Time. Space. Reality. It’s all broken. It all risks collapse”. And if there is any doubt about the severity of the situation in the reader’s mind, the story itself drop many significant keywords that indicate big reality-changing events in DC history: “Crisis”, “Flashpoint”, “Doomsday”, “Rebirth”, and others.

Truly, the DCU is reaching an important turning point. But there we are given ample reason not to dread this. When Fuginaut asks if Wally is up to the task of repairing this damage, Wally West, the DCU’s symbol of hope and rebirth replies, “My name is Wally West. I’m the Fastest Man Alive. I sit on the Mobius Chair. The power of a God races through me. So yeah. I got this”.

This speech gave me chills and reassures me that whatever the Generation special lead to, it bodes well for the future of the DCU.

Besides the amazing lineup of artists in each of the stories, there are also fine selection of pinups, as well as the multitude of gorgeous variant covers. I love the look of the decade covers. Especially, with the care taken to match the title logo and DC symbol for each time period. DC does pull out the stops to make sure these anniversary events look truly amazing.

Negatives

However, there is a nasty side to all these variant covers. This is a book with a $7.99 cover price. But with ten different covers (including the blank cover), that’s almost 80 bucks. Now I didn’t mind this when Action Comics and Detective Comics reached issue #1000. That’s a once in a lifetime milestone. Now DC is doing the same for Wonder Woman and The Flash reaching #750, which is a bit much, but okay. But DC has announced similar 80th Anniversary events for Robin, Catwoman, The Joker, and Green Lantern. That’s one or two of these expensive specials a month. Such a cash grab is excusable when it is once in a blue moon, but DC is venturing into the realm of highway robbery. Please, DC! Have mercy on my bank account!

Verdict

Review: The Flash #750 Review: THE FLASH #750 Writers: Joshua Williamson, Geoff Johns, Francis Manapul, Brian Buccellato…

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thesportssoundoff · 5 years ago

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Sometimes Good Enough Just Ain’t Good Enough: 10 Challenges For The Yankees Going Forward

Joey

October 21st

At the end of the year, 29 teams will head into the latter stages of the Fall simply saying they weren't good enough. On Saturday night, it was the Yankees turn to stand up, look in the mirror and say "Not good enough" as they bowed out of the ALCS in the deciding sixth game of the series. When you win 100 games, survive countless injuries, win with a sweep in the ALDS and lose on a walk off in game 6 of the ALCS it's normally a successful season but this is New York where expectations aren't the same as Milwaukee, Oakland, St. Louis or any of the teams who played into October before finally saying "Not good enough!" as they hung up their hats. The Yankees expect championships and it's sometimes mutant fanbase (of which I am firmly a member of) are now going on 10 years of no ticker tape parades. Still let's not lose ourselves to delirium and point out that this is a damn good team with a deep core and plenty of organizational depth to take the next step. The Yankees aren't falling off or in a rebuild; they have a team that guarantees every October, they'll be talking about the chase for 28 in earnest. With the season in the rear view mirror, let's chit chat about ten things the Yankees have to do or figure out as they continue that chase for 28.

1. Fire the training staff

Easy enough! Injuries can sometimes be fluky but good lord, the Yankees were besieged with them. All three starting outfielders (Judge, Stanton, Hicks) saw IL time, their back up OFs saw IL time, their starting catcher saw IL time, starting 1B saw IL time, pitchers both high on the totem pole and in the jabroni ranks went on the IL. Clean house!

2. The same ol' same ol' scramble for a lead starter

Since the end of 2016 when the rebuild was officially over, this team has been chasing the #1 starter you normally need in the post season. At the end of the day, it's just easier to win in the playoffs when you have a game 1 starter you have endless confidence in. While Boston got away with it in 2018, they also had Chris Sale who maybe didn't pitch like an ace but was clearly one of the top 5 starters in the AL that year. The big myth is that the Yankees don't have good starting pitching and that is for the most part a lie. The Yankees pitching after the All Star break was pretty solid and in the playoffs they got quality enough from guys like Severino, Paxton and Tanaka on an inconsistent basis. The Yankees pitching rotation is NOT awful and plenty of teams would kill for a 1-2-3 of a healthy Louis Severino, Masahiro Tanaka in big games and James Paxton after the All Star Break where he went 10-3 with a 3.59 ERA and an 11 K/9. In the playoffs, Paxton was more good than bad and Tanaka shoved in two of the three games he pitched in. That said those three have all battled injuries (Paxton admittedly pitched with a knee he never quite felt great about) and all three of them weren't good enough in the playoffs. Maybe that changes with Severino healthy, Paxton more comfortable and Tanaka staying his usual course but it would be difficult to return with the same rotation in tact and say you feel confident about your chances against the Astros. This has been a chase that has spanned three years now as the Yankees tried with James Paxton, Sonny Gray and J.A Happ, were outbit on the likes of Carlos Quintana, Yu Darvish and Gerritt Cole and allegedly never tried for the likes of Marcus Stroman, Patrick Corbin, Justin Verlander and countless others. 2019 will be yet another year where they'll enter Christmas hoping to have a starter locked up.

The two obvious names will play next week when Gerrit Cole and Stephen Strasburg take the bump for Houston and Washington respectively. In the Yankees of old, George Steinbrenner would hand Brian Cashman a blank check and tell him to pay for one IF not both. Time's have changed for better and/or worse with the Yankees. Brian Cashman is a man of due diligence and a man with the longest leash in sports. The Yankees didn't spend on Corbin, didn't try on Harper and made a modicum of effort for Manny Machado last year. In the free agent market, they're likely to not play heavily unless Hal Steinbrenner pretty much demands it. Paying for Cole and Strasburg is the easier fix but it's an avenue they've shied away from recently plus there are teams who "need" those guys more. The Yankees probably aren't as desperate as, say, the Angels are to win in the Mike Trout era and they've got money to play with so why not? The solution may be the trade market where the Yankees can make some hay in their search for a #1. Brian Cashman has parlayed his farm system (which is still plenty deep) into the opportunity to trade for arms in the past which figures to once again be the case. Conversely in the trade market, the farm is thinner than it's been in recent years AND Cashman prides himself on not losing trades. Also there's not much TO trade out there. Obviously it's his job as a GM to go out and find a potential solution that maybe the public hasn't heard is available but right now who is the best starter knowing that the Mets and the Yankees won't trade? It's not a robust market.

So your solutions are to pull a rabbit out of your hat or pay or hope Severino becomes an ace again after an injury plagued season. I suppose the only potential opt out route would be to sign a Hyun Jin-Ryu or a Jake Odorizzi and hope you can just build a deep rotation of names and faces that will give you quantity (while not high end quality) at the end of it.

3. Figure out Luke Voit

Let's play a game.

Player A- .333/.405/.689 195 wRC+ 14 HR 26.4% K rate Player B- .280/.393/.509 140 wRC+ 19 HR 25.8% K rate Player C- .238/.348/.368 95 wRC+ 4 HR 32.3% K rate

Player A is Luke Voit during his 2018 run with the Yankees Player B is Luke Voit up until he got hurt in the London Series Player C is Luke Voit from July 12th to the end of the year

Voit will never be the guy who took over the MLB in 2018. The sample size was bound to even itself out over time and Voit was bound to cool off when pitchers got to know him better. Player B though is a borderline All Star level first basemen. A power hitter who could hit for average, got on base at a solid clip and play a somewhat manageable first base is an asset for any team but especially a Yankees squad that has been hungry for competent first base play since injuries robbed Mark Texeira of his ability. Then? Voit got hurt. Back issues limited down the stretch and as you can tell by the numbers, Player C was awful. He just looked timid and afraid like he had been sapped of his confidence entirely. Luke Voit got left off the ALCS roster and had to watch as the offense struggled without him. Imagine a confident and healthy Luke Voit at the DH spot instead of Edwin Encarnacion when he went ice cold in the ALCS and maybe the series is a bit different. The Yankees are saddled with determining which half of the Luke Voit story is the real one. The Yankees are a better team when DJ LeMahieu is freed up to play 2B where he's an insanely elite defender and Luke Voit could help in that regard. At the same time? The Yankees have been burnt in the past by gambling at 1B (like when they kept thinking Greg Bird would finally put it together) and options would help. Even if he ran out of gas, Edwin Encarnacion did some good work when he was healthy and few dudes hit dingers the way he does when he's locked in. There's also Greg Bird I guess? Which reminds me....

4. MAYBE chase better balance

I don't believe a team gets better by marrying itself to letters next to names ie: we have to have x amount of leties in our pen. I do think that the Yankees righty heavy lineup could use some better balance. The team was batting Gardner 3rd in the playoffs despite his inability to do much of anything for stretches because they felt like they needed someone to break up the righties at the top of the bill. With two lefties about to hit free agency, maybe the Yankees need to flirt a bit with shaking things up in their lineup. Getting back a healthy Hicks would help of course but in general, this team could benefit from having maybe one more competent lefty bat especially if Did is out of here. It's not the sexiest name alive but given Voit's struggles down the stretch and the fact that they could probably use a more competent 1B defensively, maybe Mitch Moreland (former Red Sox 1B) as a back up/defensive replacement could make sense. Coming off an injury plagued season where he was still pretty damn productive vs righties. Maybe this is even where Mike Ford (who caught on late) fits as a future part of the team.

5. Figure out your free agents

Dellin Betances- There's some serious rebound value in bringing Betances back at fair market value. The Yankees just never had a replacement for what Betances could do as a pseudo fireman; a guy with low contact rates who can K a side and come in the middle of an inning to calm things down. Betances at a multi year deal would be a fair and modest investment.

Brett Gardner- There's a group of mutant Yankee fans who hate Brett Gardner and I feel like people forget Gardner was supposed to be at the very most a part time 4th OF. Injuries forced Gardner to continually play and he answered the bell quite well every time. He'll likely take a step back next year BUT he'll also be asked to play less.

Edwin Encarnacion- Was absolutely brutal in the ALCS but hits for power and usually has composed at bats. Was always a hired gun who the Yankees were probably gonna buy out when the time was right.

Didi Gregorios- Ugh. Didi went from being one of Brian Cashman's biggest steals and a potential cornerstone to a guy who will probably be allowed to test the open market. Didi's strengths are his defense, his clubhouse presence and his better than advertised bat but the Yankees have been waiting on him to take a firm step into top 10 SS for about two years now and it's not coming. He deserves a lot of credit for battling back from injury but he was brutal outside of games vs the Twins. I also sort of feel like his approach is all wrong for the Yankees as its constructed. For a team that preaches patience at the place and commanding the strike zone, Didi's approach often gets worse the more pitches he takes so he often swings at the first pitch and often does so when it's the wrong time. Defensively it looked like he took a step back as well although that may have been due to injury. The Yankees are better with DJ at 2nd and Gleyber at short and a competent 1B manning that spot but they love Didi so much (and he's so valuable when he's right) that they kept forcing him into the spot.

Austin Romine- Catching across the league is bad and Romine, noodle arm aside, is a solid back up catcher. Those tend to get signed for decent coin and normally for multi year deals. As such the Yankees need to maybe consider their options at the BUC spot because they won't have Romine.

Cameron Maybin- I'm not entirely sure Maybin's got a real fit here now. If Stanton, Judge and Hicks are healthy then it's probably him vs Gardner because Mike Tauchman has a long term future here. I wish Cameron Maybin well, he was a breath of fresh of air in the locker room and he deserves to have a good spot on a team somewhere.

6. Figure your outfield situation out

We know Judge, Stanton and Hicks are going to be here. Mike Tauchman was a star and a half for a month and change before injuries finally sapped him of his super powers. Gardner is a free agent but I'm betting the Yankees will bring him back comfortably so. Beyond them you have Estevan Florial (a former Yankees top prospect on a slide), Clint Frazier (a borderline toxic fit for the Yankees) as well as pseudo OFs Tyler Wade and Thairo Estrada. The Yankees OF depth tends to get tested throughout the year but is Clint Frazier better suited to be a trade piece for some team in desperate need of an outfielder?

7. Settle the 'pen out a bit.

Yankees have four tremendous bullpen arms tied up with Britton, Ottavino, Green and Kahnle comfortably under wraps. Aroldis Chapman will probably opt out in a so-so closer's market and the Yankees will probably re-sign him (they took the PR smear after trading for him and then brought him back so clearly they value him). If not? Britton was an ace closer but in general the bullpen needs more arms. Remember the CLOSEST they got for a trade in July was for Bluejays closer Ken Giles so I'd imagine they'll poke around there too. If you can't find a starter of high quality and won't trade for one then you need one more big arm in the pen. It'd be pretty cool to both a) get a stud reliever and b) hurt your primary rivalries by signing either Joe Smith or Will Harris from under Houston.

8. Find a role for whatever J.A. Happ is.

The Yankees got ace level production of J.A. Happ when they had him in 2018 and even including his playoff bust vs Boston, bringing him back in some form or fashion seemed like a can't miss concept. Well it done missed. Pick whatever metric you want and Happ was genuinely bad for a Yankees team that desperately needed him to ONLY be a competent arm. He did improve as the season went along (imagine how awful he had to be that his last five starts with a 2.33 ERA that it managed to ONLY finish at a sub 5 ERA) and a lot of his game felt like it was just blitzed by the juiced ball and a lack of adapting to that. Happ is still under contract for 2020 and it's going to be hard to shake his deal so you're stuck with him. Figure out I guess if he's a long man, a 5th starter or a really overly expensive LOOGY type.

9. Battle royal the 5th spot

Keeping with that, the Yankees were roasted for their lack of SP depth and it showed up big last year. The fact that this team turned to an opener and wound up riding the likes of Chance Adams and Nestor Cortes as long men suggests they got got by the lack of options in the rotation. Turn the 5th spot into a battle royal position. Jordan Montgomery, J.A. Happ, Johnny Lasagna, a few retreads on other teams who are a tinkered arm angle away from being a competent 5th starter etc etc etc. Don't go into the year just figuring your minor league depth options are going to be enough because it probably won't be.

Unless you want to sign Zack Wheeler or Jake Odorizzi and be done with it.

10. Accept Gary Sanchez

I guess this is more for Yankees fans than anybody else. Gary Sanchez is a good catcher. Offensively when he's healthy, he's among the game's best and defensively? He's actually improving really well to be one of the better catches in the AL. He has a crazy throwing arm and while stolen bases are becoming less frequent, he's still got the ability to further mitigate that. Sanchez is a good player who plays the most physically demanding position in baseball and does a good job at it. His playoff numbers were abysmal this year but I still have faith.

#MLB #Yankees #playoffs #2019 #aaron judge #tanaka #severino #chapman #baseball #sports #hicks #stanton #sanchez

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league-of-light · 6 years ago

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Week 4 Pick’em

Look, I know I’m late on the picks this week. I wanted to get them in yesterday, but other things came up and I didn’t get to it. I’m sorry, ok? To make up for it, I have written quite the long pick’em for this week. I’m not entirely sure if I will be able to make them this long every week, but I think I should be able to.

Why would I spend all this time writing the pick’em? Great question. Isn’t there a more productive use of your time? Probably. Will, you’re moving next week, shouldn’t you be packing or something? Are you just spending way more time writing picks as a means to delay the inevitable anxiety you’re going to feel about starting a new job and moving? Do you think this is the healthiest way to deal with that? Psh, you’re not my therapist.

Anyway, here goes

Yerboi vs Brenner? I hardly know’er

This Will vs. Brenner bout, should be promotionally billed as “Chronically Injured and Underperforming” vs “Complete Lineup Ineptitude”. Both teams come into Week 3 at a resounding 0-2, and are looking to get their season on track after some of high profile trades in the first couple weeks of the season.

There are always big expectations when you make a trade in Fantasy Football. Typically speaking, you hope and expect that the players you got are going to outperform whomever you traded away (or at the very least perform somewhat similarly). Unfortunately, that won’t always be the case. Sometimes there are weeks like last week, where JuJu outscored T.Y. Hilton and I am forced to sit there and reflect on how I would have won if I just kept JuJu. Other times, there are weeks like this week, where Brenner ensures he doesn’t have to deal with the emotional trauma of a trade gone awry because he benches the players he traded for. (No there aren’t, this literally never happens)

I pick myself, simply because I don’t think I’ve actually ever seen a team projected to score as few points as Brenner.

Story To Watch: How quickly it will take Drew Brees to score more than the 3 points Brenner got from Tyrod Taylor. My guess is 4 plays.

Tangiphil vs Hewie and the Hashslingers

After a fairly explosive first week of the season, we can all finally exhale — Phil’s team is bad again. Shockingly, his 3-headed Running Back Monster is down a head. Unlike the legend of the Hydra, instead of another head growing in it’s place, Phil decided to chase last week’s bench points and play Nelson Agholor. If you check his bench this week you may notice Joe Mixon outside of the IR slot, Isaiah Crowell’s wasted 18 point TNF total, and another Jets receiver. That’s right folks, it’s week 3 and Phil is already in midseason form.

But enough about Phil. Steve is 2-0 and I expect his win streak to continue this week. In my humble opinion, his team is underprojected with only 98 points, as Big Ben, Melvin Gordon, and Marvin Jones all look poised to be playing catchup in potentially high scoring games. Look for Steve to hopefully rise in the power rankings after squashing Phil.

Story To Watch: He may be the second head of a three two-headed running back monstrosity, but Adrian Peterson is going to look more like Mike Wazowski than James P. Sullivan this week. The Packers offense comes to FedEx Field with an offense that looks like two-day expedited shipping, while the Redskins offense has been looking like the Pony Express. Game script gets away from the ‘Skins and they abandon the run.

Kyle vs Sean

Close to half of this league isn’t from Rockland, so I’m going to use this opportunity to tell a story. To the hometown heroes - some of the overarching details may be incorrect, but I don’t care I have the talking stick. If you want accuracy you can write the damn blog post next week. Anyway, in sixth grade every middle school student has to take World History. The curriculum is geared towards ancient civilizations, and a decent chunk of time is spent on Egypt. As such, every year there was (is?, not sure if they still do it) a grade-wide Egypt project where students had to use their knowledge of Egypt, make something, and showcase it to the class. Think of it like a science fair, but with crappy Egyptian dioramas instead of baking soda volcanoes. Since I was a bright eyed ambitious young man who loved art and mythology, I knew I would do great on this project. I chose the ambitious task of making a sculpture of Horus, the Falcon-headed man prince of the Egyptian pantheon. It wasn’t long before I realized my doodling skills didn’t translate well into making 3D models, but I was in far too deep. I molded the clay as best I could, and then “accidentally” left it in the oven too long so it burned to a crisp and was nearly unidentifiable. Needless to say, I didn’t do very well on that project.

Why am I telling you this? Because look at Sean’s team. Does it look real good on paper? Sure. Does that mean he is likely going to win this week? Probably. But has his overconfidence blinded him into creating a team made of glass with absolutely no depth in a 16-team league? 67%, yes. (Because that is the grade I got on the project.)

Story to Watch: Alex Collins has become the running back equivalent of Hillary Swank. Hot or not? Stay tuned this week and find out…

You Guys Again vs. Johnson Ertz

The moment you’ve all been waiting for is here folks. I…..I can’t believe it’s finally happening. After almost two full years, the day has finally come. Dylan Feldman vs. Dylan Costa are facing off in a fantasy football matchup which I am officially dubbing “The Battle for the Right to be Called Dylan in the Fantasy Football League Group Chat” (and since we love our acronyms here, aka TB4TR2BCDITFFLGC). Two Dylans enter, only one Dylan leaves. This matchup is arguably one of the most important matchups we have ever seen in this league, and has a chance to change the history books forever.

Unfortunately for Dylan Costa, his squad isn’t exactly striking fear into anyone these days. I’ll have to go with Dylan Feldman, but his lineup has more red letters than Hester Prynne after an all weekend slumber party at Arthur Dimmesdale’s Dimmesdale Dimmahome.

Story to Watch: With the return of Aaron “I smoke Marijuana so Bowers thinks I’m a bad person” Jones coming back to Green Bay, Jamaal Williams’ usage should be monitored. As the kids say, he hasn’t been very good over the past two weeks, and Aaron Jones is ready to come in blazing *~!420!~*

Bearkley vs. Watch Me

Imagine my shock when I saw I won the bidding war for Ryan Fitzpatrick. I immediately rushed to find the owners of the Tampa Bay WRs so I could celebrate our good fortune as Fitzmagic showers us all with fantasy points. Now imagine my shock when I saw Samantha has benched Chris Godwin, not only a rookie (we all know my irrational hype with rookies), but a rookie whose name is lit a combination of God and Win. I don’t know about you, but doesn’t it feel like Samantha has renounced God and doesn’t want to win this week’s matchup?

On the flipside, Nico runs our Dungeons and Dragons group, and if the 80s taught me anything it’s don’t feed weird aliens after midnight, and that D&D is for devil worshipping heathens. With any hope of good Christian fun squandered for this matchup, it really is anybody’s game. I want to believe in the underdog, but more favorable matchups lead me to believe that Nico will pull out the W.

Story to Watch: Saquon Barkley caught 2 of 6 targets week 1 against the Jags. That number increased to 14 of 16 targets last week as Eli Manning completely lost interest in holding on to the football for more than 1 second. Is it possible that Saquon receives 28 targets this game as Eli Manning has to look JJ Watt and Jadaveon Clowney in the eyes?

Washington vs. Walshington

I want to take a second here and pour one out for Walsh, who didn’t answer my trade offer or my text message regarding Dalvin Cook and Allen Robinson. Walsh, you took an injury bullet for me and I will forever be grateful. It’s appropriate that I mention taking a bullet, because rumors have it Frank Gore was actually there when the first metal bullet was shot in 1425. Between Gore and Kerryon Johnson, Walsh will be lucky if he gets 14.25 points from his running backs this week.

Andy surprisingly continues to ride or die with Andrew Luck, despite Luck being unable to throw the football more than 15 yards. At this point I assume he is just taunting Arielle with Bortles on his bench, and we have to assume that if Bortles continues putting up 30 point games, eventually Andy might start him. The biggest story on this squad is how Andy managed to get two of the best big play boom or bust WRs with John Brown and Will Fuller, while also having Amari Cooper and Mike Evans. That’s a solid receiving core you got there pal, and I just want you to know I see it and appreciate it.

Story To Watch: C’mon, it’s Philip Lindsay. Every week it’s Philip Lindsay. Everyone loves a hometown hero and I have greatly enjoyed watching this kid ball out.

Bowers v Arielle

I’m high on Dylan Leone Arielle’s team this year. How could you not be? It was drafted by a man who has $45,000 in fantasy football great young woman who has shown her commitment to the league. For whatever reason, ESPN’s site stopped working just as I was going to look at this matchup, so unfortunately I am going to have to give an abridged write up of my pick. I have played these teams back to back so you would assume I know who is on their rosters, but I can’t remember anything other than Russell Wilson and James Conner on Arielle’s team, and Golden Tate and Kirk Cousins on Bowers’.

Based on this limited memory alone, I suppose I am going to pick Bowers in what will likely be another close matchup for the Reikland Reavers

Story to Watch: The story of life as I take this momentary absence from ESPN’s Fantasy Football to reflect on the finer things in the world. Like Yahoo Fantasy Football.

Jason v Harnsowl

ESPN is still not working for me, neither on my phone nor my computer, so I can’t really give much analysis here. However, not much analysis is needed. Unlike his godless sister, Jason is a man of faith. And if George Michaels taught us anything, it’s that you gotta have faith. You gotta have faith, faith, faith. Carson Wentz returns this week and I don’t care whoever Harnsowl is playing, it doesn’t really matter. I mean, as far as the matchup is concerned it might matter, but emotionally speaking, Jason has already won this week.

I can’t be expected to pick a winner in a matchup that already has a winner, so instead I’ll take this time to remind you to spay or neuter your pets. Bob Barker used to do a fantastic job of reminding the American people to do so, and if I am being completely honest I just don’t think Drew Carey delivers the message with the same panache. Like sure, I know Drew still says it at the end of the show, but does he really even believe it? Only Drew can really answer that question, but if I had to guess I would bet $100 $101 Drew. While we’re on the topic, if any of you ever manage to go on Price is Right and you do that thing where you bid one dollar higher than someone else did, you can consider our friendship over. Not only is it the worst strategy ever, it’s also rude as hell to the other contestant. In some cases I’m sure the people legitimately don’t know what to bet after someone else bet around the same thing they did, but for the love of God at least bet like $10 higher so there is some tension in the room.

But yeah, back to football, I pick Jason

Story to Watch: The next episode of Price is Right, Monday September 24th

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dynamitekrp · 4 years ago

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SEARCHING FOR HYUN . . .

PUBLIC PROFILE

birthday: september 22, 1993 years trained: 4 position: main rap

CAREER

2015, produced butterfly for icarus 2017, produced wine for a solo artist 2019, produced we don’t talk together for a solo artist 2020, produced black swan for icarus

IMAGE

hyun is icarus’s rock.

he is: rough around the edges.

they tell him not to lose his daegu accent, not entirely. to let it slip on purpose more often than not. to not let people forget that he's just a country boy at heart who had a dream, a passion for music and risked it all by coming to seoul to pursue it. they say not to censor himself too much, either, let a cuss word or two slip every now and then, let his face betray all his emotions sometimes, even negative ones when he's annoyed or angry or confused or sad. if you're feeling down, post some thoughts on the fan café, maybe go live. obviously, they say not to do it too much or at the wrong time, but just enough to give off the feeling that he's genuine, unpolished, not some cookie cutter idol. he won't be relatable by any means, but real. believably flawed like anyone else. just a daegu boy who happens to rap because he wants to.

he is: stubborn. or, in nicer terms, strong-willed. immovable.

of course, icarus as a whole stands for hard work making the dream work, but hyun’s inherent stubbornness is played up just that much more. like when they tell him to talk about how long he takes to produce tracks sometimes because he won't let it go until it's exactly how he imagined it. or to talk about how he couldn't dance worth a damn and almost got kicked out of the tentative lineup, but, well, look at him now. he still can't quite dance anywhere near as well as the rest of the group, but that's fine, they say. that's all part of it too, because now his ability to follow choreography as well as he can is the product of pure hard work with no natural talent to back it up.

he is: foundation.

when it comes to icarus's music (post 2015), hyun is a large part of the foundation it lies upon. he's not the only one, of course, but he is often the one they turn to when questions about their music come up. about the concept. about the lyrics. about the meaning behind it all and the process with which they came up with it. they tell him to go all out, go ahead and answer with technical terms to show he has a deep understanding. show the people that he knows what he's talking about, what he’s doing. that icarus's music is good because "of course, the members helped write the lyrics" or "of course, the members helped produce it" or "as expected of self-producing icarus~"

he is: well grounded.

with hyun, what you see is what you get. he is confident sometimes veering on cocky, he is decisive often veering stubborn. he is real, genuine, flawed, human, just with a particularly strong passion for music. at least, that's the vibe they want him to give off. a real, serious musician.

it's a precarious image, to say the least, still manufactured in its supposed genuineness. an image he has trouble balancing because sometimes he's not quite sure anymore where icarus hyun ends and moon hyun begins

if he begins anywhere at all anymore.

BACKGROUND

when hyun was born, it was the day the samsung lions advance to the playoffs. his father was no where to be found in the hospital room, instead sitting in the arena of the game.

it’s perhaps unsurprising, then, that his life had been decided for him the moment his parents found out he was a boy. his father, a failed baseball player that never could hit a ball as much as he could talk it, pushed his dreams onto hyun the second he walked into the hospital room hours after his birth. he arrived with a signed baseball in hand, calling it a lucky charm.

one year later during his doljabi, hyun grabbed that same ball without hesitation.

the smile on his father’s face that day was the widest it’s ever been, even maybe to this day.

from that point forward, he was determined. every story he told him at night to get hyun to sleep was a baseball one, every toy he got him was either a ball or a toy bat or mitt, every present a samsung lion piece of merch. the moment hyun was able to run consistently, he put a bat in his hands and taught him how to swing it. when hyun was able to think a little more, he taught him how to throw a ball and they’d play catch in the park until his mom had to come drag them home. when he was old enough, he had him join a local tee ball team and baseball became all he knew.

hyun loved it.

on his own accord, he played it endlessly, trained as much as he could, threw pitches at a tattered target pad hooked onto a chain linked fence well into the evening until he was dragged to bed kicking and screaming. he progressed steadily as a promising pitcher, from tee ball to school teams to local daegu youth teams. the coaches would say his future looked bright if he kept at it, and so he did. he kept it up. he pitched and pitched until there was an ache in his shoulder. then he continued pitching through it with gritted teeth and zipped lips when the coaches would ask him if he was alright when his basic fastballs started veering off line.

he kept pitching, stubborn as ever, until physically he could not anymore.

hyun didn’t know he had a labrum or what it was, much less that he could tear it when the doctor told him what was causing the pain. all he heard was that he should take a break from baseball for a few months. a few months too long, if you asked him. but even now hyun’s not sure what was worse: the shattering of his dreams or the look of disappointment on his father’s face.

at thirteen years old, as he was going through many other changes at the same time, all of it was just a little too much. maybe, hyun sometimes thinks, if his father didn’t look so disappointed that day and didn’t speak to him substantially during his rest, maybe he would’ve picked a ball up again after those few months were up and he was cleared. maybe.

but instead, he found music and picked up a mic instead.

he found rap in particular. because the anger in some of it matched his mood, the fire in the verses burned as hot as his head. rap music became his solace, his comfort, his replacement for throwing frustrations out in a fastball clanging against the fence.

as years went by, it became less and less of a replacement and more of a true passion, much to his father’s dismay. they’d gone from attending baseball games together to arguing at the drop of a hat over even the smallest things. he channeled all that anger and frustration of a young teen into beats he mixed on whatever free programs and equipment he could get his hands on. just as he pitched and pitched and pitched, he produced and produced and produced. one mp3 file after the other, all rough beats saved across multiple folders on his computer.

and it was with one of those beats and a scribbled down verse that he auditioned for view.

he had been 15 going on 16 at the time, not expecting much. after the tear, he gave up on dreaming. on looking forward to anything. it had been a friend that told him about the audition and teased him into going just for shits and giggles, and really he did not expect the call. he missed it, even, listening to the voicemail they left a whole day later with a blank expression on his face.

his dad had a similar one when he told his parents about it, but instead of holding a hidden sparkle of hope, it held the same disappointment from that day at the doctor’s. it took a week before he signed it, and within a few days time after, he was out of his little corner in daegu and right in the heart of seoul.

it was jarring, to say the least. to go from a little city in the outskirts of daegu, to a bustling one in the capital. and to go from producing and rapping daily as a fun hobby, to training daily in other fields he had no experience in. dancing was particularly hard for him, a phantom ache in his shoulder imagined by his brain always present. but he chugged along, because maybe he had found a dream again. maybe it was okay to hope.

he continued to hope as the years went on and he made it onto the tentative lineup, staying steady with only one brief slip up when he injured the same shoulder. it had been even more painful this second time, despite the injury itself being much smaller, because it felt like his new dream being crushed by his old one. like salt poured into the reopened wound. he almost quit, again, until he was snapped back into it from another member, something his father never did.

it was with that in mind that he pushed on. and on, and on. until icarus debuted and he was at the forefront.

that meant nothing in the beginning, of course, considering how lackluster their entrance into the scene was. if anything, it made him feel more burdened. his phantom aches came back and insomnia swept him into a vicious cycle of exhaustion and doubt and the slow fade of hope more painful than the first.

before their comeback in 2015, he’d reached his lowest point. wondering if he’d made the right choice, or if he’d wasted his youth away for an unsure thing. after all, everyone knows only a small percent of idol groups break through it all. but, maybe on pure survival mode alone, he pushed through once more. he rapped about being destroyed, and needing someone, and the sun shined on icarus. it enticed him, them, to fly closer and closer.

and so they did. to heights he never would have imagined possible. to heights that made it scary to look down. to heights that felt more burdensome with every new year and every new pair of eyes watching, waiting, expecting. now, he is exhausted. to say the least. he’s been running on two hours of sleep since the moment he signed his life to view.

he is exhausted, but he is prideful, too.

it’s a difficult thing to balance. the pressure and the pride. they both nibble at his brain, infusing him with worries that maybe, it was better to be at the bottom. because at least from there, the only way to go was up. but also at the top, his name is being recognized. produced by hyun. featuring hyun. and isn’t that all he ever wanted? whether on the back of jerseys or in small print in the credits of albums, his name immortalized across the country?

sometimes, he doesn’t know anymore what it is he wants. all he knows is underneath all the pride he wears on his sleeve, there are worries deep rooted that he’ll never live up to expectations.

#dyn.min yoongi #dyn.icarus #dyn.app

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pomnavi · 5 years ago

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YowaPeda Vol 50 Ch. 429

Support the series by purchasing it when it’s available in your area!

YowaPeda Volume 50 Chapter 429: The Pack's Leader

Page 1 Bu 1: Let's go! Bu 2: Surpassing all these obstacles Bu 3: Pursuing what's at the end of this path Bu 4: The goal!!

Page 2 (double page) (no text)

Page 3 (no text)

Page 4 Bu 1: Just wait for us! Onoda-san, Imaizumi-san!! Bu 2: Our collaboration, the super limited express Kaburagi train

Page 5 (double page) Bu 1: Will catch up in no time!! Bu 2: You stupid orange bastard! What "Kaburagi express train", you don't get to choose the name!! Bu 3: Haha don't sweat the details, Doubashi-kun Bu 4: Use "-san"! Bu 5: So fast!! Bu 6: Look at that drafting! Bu 7: Oh my god they're cooperating!! Bu 8: WOAH Bu 9: Last year's champions, Sohoku, and the reigning champions, Hakone, are cooperating!! Bu 10: We just saw something amazing Bu 11: How exciting Bu 12: If they have the same goal, competing teams can pool their resources and work together! Bu 13: Once they reach their goal, they'll be enemies again! Bu 14: Road races are so interesting! Bu 15: I got a good picture! I'll send it to you Bu 16: Yuki, what do you think of the guys moving behind us? Bu 17: There are several small groups and then the largest pack at the back Bu 18: On the last day of inter-high, it's easy to form a cohesive group Bu 19: What if Bu 20: they manage to unite and pursue us?

Page 6 Bu 1: ..... Bu 2: All the guys behind cooperating? Bu 3: You sure do worry a lot Bu 4: Feeling anxious about that, Touichirou? Bu 5: There was a lot of chaos about it last year. Bu 6: I want to prepare for every possibility Bu 7: My prediction is that it won't happen this year Bu 8: You need a leader that everyone recognizes is strong Bu 9: Just looking at the lineup, there isn't anyone who can do that. Bu 10: Also, since Hiroshima struggled last year, everyone is wary of them. Bu 11: They can't have just anyone as a leader, if they're too nice it's over. Bu 12: If they're too ruthless, it's still no good Bu 13: Don't worry Bu 14: Even if they manage to unite, Bu 15: That barely held together group Bu 16: Won't even last 30 minutes.

Page 7 Bu 1: They'll just fall apart Bu 2: Higo mokkosu!!** **T/n: "Higo mokkosu" is a phrase specific to the Kumamoto area. Higo is the name of an old province in Kumamoto Prefecture. "mokkosu" is a Kumamoto phrase meaning "unmoveable", "stubborn", etc. Bu 3: Oh it's the main pack! Bu 4: Mokkosu!! Bu 5: The last group made a proper peloton! Bu 6: I'm this here pack's leader, Kumadai 3rd year "Demon sergeant", Ise Shinya!! Bu 7: We'll join t'gether and show the boys up front what we're made of!! Bu 8: It's already the last day!! Bu 9: We got nothin' to lose!! Bu 10: Let's give it our all!!

Page 8 Bu 1: Yeah!! Bu 2: Up till the front...!! Bu 3: Let's do our best!! Bu 4: Y..yeah Bu 5: Since it's the last day, do as much as you can! Bu 6: We'll catch up to the front!! Bu 7: Actually... Bu 8: How far are we from the front? Bu 9: I-idiot! Don't think about that for now Bu 10: Just focus on what's in front of you Bu 11: ...Ok Bu 12: HIGOO.... Bu 13: MOKKOSU!!

Page 9 Bu 1: We need to increase our speed!! Bu 2: Even more!! Bu 3: Ise!! Bu 4: ! Bu 5: Fukuoka Jousei's Oohori!! Bu 6: Hey nobodies Bu 7: Let's switch! You'd be a lifesaver. Help raise the speed!! Bu 8: Especially since you're one of the First Result candidates.... Bu 9: Sorry, I strained myself too much on the 1st and 2nd days Bu 10: Since the morning my legs... they haven't been performing!! Bu 11: I'm feverish too...Even though we're both from Kyuushuu and I want to assist...sorry. Bu 12: I can't!! Bu 13: ..... Bu 14: C- Bu 15: Can't be helped! Too many people have gotten injured on the 3rd day of Inter-high...!! Bu 16: Ok, just stick to the inside of the pack Oohori!! Bu 17: There's no air resistance on the inside Bu 18: You can stay there until you recover!!

Page 10 Bu 1: Don't worry, we'll manage somehow!! Bu 2: Since I'm the leader, we ain't leavin anyone behind!! Bu 3: Listen up everyone! Anyone who's injured or not feeling well Bu 4: Gather at the center to rest!! Bu 5: The guys who are injured... Bu 6: Ise-san!! Bu 7: What is it Fujiwara Bu 8: Um... Bu 9: The guys inside the pack are complaining!! Bu 10: ! Bu 11: If we go at this pace Bu 12: They're wondering if we'll even catch up to the front Bu 13: going at this slow pace Bu 14: Iwasaki is dealing with those guys right now Bu 15: Let's raise the pace even more!! Bu 16: Uh, from now we'lll Bu 17: Will we even catch up at this rate, Kumadai!! Bu 18: Uh...

Page 11 Bu 1: What the heck is the leader doin'!! Bu 2: The famous Hakogaku is at the front!! Sohoku is there too Bu 3: They're super fast!! Bu 4: We definitely won't catch up at this rate Bu 5: Should some of us just push ahead? Bu 6: That'd be too hard Bu 7: ..........It's time Bu 8: Anyways, what the hell does "Higo Mokkosu" mean Bu 9: It's from Higo, I think it means stubborn. Bu 10: Why have we been yelling that! Bu 11: He's not in control at all! Bu 12: Get it together, Kumadai! Bu 13: We've been pulling the whole time! Bu 14: Their discontent...we can't unite... Bu 15: If we keep going like this... Bu 16: This pack is gonna...

Page 12 Bu 1: What's wrong, Kumadai? Bu 2: Ah Bu 3: You alright? Bu 4: Hiroshima!! Bu 5: What, did you overexert yourself Bu 6: Kumadai? Bu 7: Did you just stagger a lil'? That's dangerous Bu 8: If I don't support you now Bu 9: You could fall and get hurt!! Bu 10: naha!!* (T/n: This is his weird laugh)

Page 13 Bu 1: Even though you finally gathered the group and started chasing the front Bu 2: Hiroshima!! Bu 3: Ise-san Bu 4: I'm staggering...? I see, thanks for the help. Bu 5: But..Hiroshima, you guys betrayed us last year. Bu 6: Oh, no need to thank me, naha!! Bu 7: However, it's true that Ise-kun has become a great leader. Bu 8: You're even looking after the others Bu 9: !? Bu 10: Yesterday, you even pursued the front and delivered actual results Bu 11: Everyone recognizes your abilities Bu 12: I asked for your cooperation yesterday Bu 13: But you guys turned us down Bu 14: Kumadai started kickin! Bu 15: The whole team! Bu 16: They intend to catch up to Hakogaku!! Bu 17: Will you work with us, Kumadai!! Bu 18: We can help pull, let's reach the front together!! Bu 19: No way!! Especially not you guys!! Bu 20: We'll catch up by ourselves!!

Page 14 Bu 1: That sure made me sad Bu 2: If we had worked together back then, maybe the results would have been different. Bu 3: !! Bu 4: After that... you challenged Kyofushi in the mountains and raised your pace Bu 5: But your team dwindled Bu 6: .... Bu 7: !! Bu 8: I'm sure it was hard Bu 9: We sure regretted it Bu 10: !? Bu 11: Why was it back then.... Bu 12: That I was being so pushy about coordinating with you guys

Page 15 Bu 1: We were full of regret.... Bu 2: Kyofushi, Hakogaku, Sohoku...and Kumadai's "4 Strongest", we wanted to win against all of you. Bu 3: That's what Machimiya-paisen wanted at least... Bu 4: Well... Bu 5: Let us make amends? Bu 6: For our sins? Bu 7: Could you please believe us? This year, we're a cozy Bu 8: and friendly team. Bu 9: Are these guys actually friendly this year...!!! Bu 10: "Making amends"....!! Bu 11: We'll help out a little Bu 12: With the pack Bu 13: It's fine if Ise-kun is the leader Bu 14: I'm sure it's fine to let us support you Bu 15: Instead of simply coordinating, we'll cooperate and lend our full strength. Bu 16: ......

Page 16 Bu 1: Of course!! Bu 2: Our leader Ise-kun just gave his permission!! Bu 3: Huh? Bu 4: Uh Bu 5: Hiroshima? Bu 6: Shiono!! Satozaki!! Bu 7: Yeah! Bu 8: Yup!! Bu 9: Go up front and pull Bu 10: We'll help too!! Bu 11: yeah Bu 12: We need to catch up to the front Bu 13: Pull at full speed!! Bu 14: Okay!!

Page 17 Bu 1: Okay! Also, the injured guys Bu 2: And the guys not feeling well should stay back!! Bu 3: Even the ones who only feel a little off Bu 4: Eh Bu 5: Ah... Bu 6: Huh? Bu 7: Gather up at the back Bu 8: We're going to start speeding up Bu 9: Eh? Bu 10: At the back? Bu 11: Why? Bu 12: !? Bu 13: The back? Bu 14: There were guys who complained we were going too slow Bu 15: Everyone, let's work together Bu 16: K? Bu 17: Will you cooperate?

Page 18 (double page) Bu 1: They broke away!! Bu 2: Huh? Bu 3: EH Bu 4: Hiroshima pushed forward... Bu 5: Damn Bu 6: They suddenly increased their pace!

Page 19 Bu 1: Hiroshima... They just strangely Bu 2: Pulled forward so efficiently!! Bu 3: Ah! Bu 4: What.. What's going to happen with us... Bu 5: Huh!? Bu 6: Were we left behind!? Bu 7: We were left behind!! Bu 8: Fukuoka Jousei's Oohori!! Bu 9: What!? Bu 10: They broke away!! Bu 11: If you increase the people in the pack, you can increase the speed overall Bu 12: But if you have weaklings, you can't achieve max speed Bu 13: You really intend to cull the herd, Hiroshima Urakubo! Bu 14: I won't let you!! Bu 15: I'm the limitless sprinter,

Page 20 Bu 1: Fukuoka Jousei's Oohori Jouji!! Oohori sfx: *pant* Bu 2: Ura- Bu 3: -kubo... Bu 4: You're lookin' pale Bu 5: Ugh.. Bu 6: Ooooo Bu 7: Don't overdo it

Page 21 Bu 1: The guys who were all in bad shape or injured.... Bu 2: Wha- Bu 3: Oohori! Bu 4: What are you doing, raising the pace all of the sudden!! Bu 5: What the hell are you plannin' Urakubo!! Bu 6: Did you want to increase our speed? Catch up to the front? Bu 7: This is how I'm helping. Bu 8: I got rid of the useless ones. Bu 9: We'll speed up this way Bu 10: W- Bu 11: I made sure to warn them? Bu 12: That we'd be accelerating

Page 22 Bu 1: It's no good to just speed up without telling anybody Bu 2: But I made sure to tell them "We're speeding up so get behind us" Bu 3: They didn't think what'll happen when they start heading back while we push forward Bu 4: The ones who complied lack imagination Bu 5: You...You... Bu 6: I wanted...to properly take everyone..that was the purpose of this pack... Bu 7: Calm down "Mr. Leader" Bu 8: There's no way we could have taken everyone to the front. Bu 9: This guy...! Bu 10: Shiono, Satozaki!! Speed up even more! Bu 11: Are you taking over this peloton!!

Page 23 Bu 1: Let's get along, Leader~ Bu 2: .... Bu 3: You're counting on me, arent you? Leader? Bu 4: Oh yeah, I forgot to introduce myself Bu 5: I'm Bu 6: the man who sinks his teeth into his prey and never lets go Bu 7: Also known as Bu 8: The Land Shark of Kure

#YowaPeda #my translations

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junker-town · 5 years ago

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Lionel Messi’s 73-goal season was an individual triumph, and a disaster for Barcelona

Remembering the greatest soccer player on Earth’s wildest season ever.

Anyone who has followed Lionel Messi’s career can, if they really think about it, pinpoint the moment when they realized he is better than any footballer they’ve ever seen. For me, that moment was his five-goal performance against Bayer Leverkusen in the UEFA Champions League.

These poor souls are not bad players.

Every member of this Leverkusen lineup had a solid pedigree. They started for their respective national teams, or had at least one season when they were considered one of the Bundesliga’s top players, or were eventually sold to a richer club for a lot of money. The midfielders were defensive-minded and the forwards were hard-working. Even if they did not have anywhere near the talent of Barcelona, they should have been very difficult to play against. This is a lineup that should have been, if nothing else, frustrating.

But they didn’t slow down Messi for a second. He sped right through them, as if the game was being played on a sheet of ice and Messi had skates while Leverkusen defenders wore sneakers. It isn’t hard to imagine Messi scoring five goals against a quality opponent, but it’s unbelievable how easy he made it look. This was when I realized there is no one like Messi.

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These were goals 44-48 in Messi’s record-breaking 73-goal season, an accomplishment that has never been matched in high level soccer before or after that 2011-12 season. If European club competitions retain their current formats, no one may ever beat it.

But though it facilitated the greatest individual season of all time, Barcelona also found out that winning titles isn’t as simple as giving Messi as many goal-scoring chances as possible. Messi’s most eye-popping season wound up a colossal failure from a team perspective, and Barcelona has learned since that one superstar — even if he’s the best player the sport has ever seen — cannot carry a team by himself.

The how and why

Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have posted 50-plus goal seasons so many times now that fans have taken the accomplishment for granted. But when both scored 53 goals during the 2010-11 season, conventional wisdom said that was as high as anyone could go. Diego Forlan, a World Cup golden ball and two-time European golden shoe winner, topped out at 35 goals in a year. Thierry Henry got to 39. Brazilian legend Ronaldo once had a 47-goal season, and never got close to that mark again.

While we assumed we had seen the pinnacle, then-Barcelona manager Pep Guardiola spent the 2011 preseason devising a new system that would prioritize, above all else, feeding Messi as many goal-scoring chances as possible. Messi’s previous season — his first as Barca’s starting center forward — went spectacularly well, but Guardiola believed he could get even more out of his superstar. Guardiola also sensed his 4-3-3 system was beginning to get found out, and he wanted to incorporate new signing Cesc Fabregas into the team.

Guaridola’s solution was to rotate his old setup with a 3-4-3 system that had a diamond midfield and no traditional wingbacks. The team’s shape and the quality of players in the center of midfield meant Barcelona could overwhelm opponents in the center of the pitch. The system was also unorthodox; Barcelona’s opponents had never seen anything like it.

Perhaps we should have known what was coming from Messi based on his performance in the Supercopa de España. He absolutely ragdolled Pepe — a large, tough defender who could knock out most people with one punch — for his first goal of the season.

Messi’s two goals in the first leg, a 2-2 draw away from home, gave Barcelona a great chance to win the trophy. His team struggled to contain Real Madrid’s attack in the return fixture, but Messi delivered two more goals, including an 88th-minute winner.

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Messi would keep up this blistering goal-scoring pace for 10 months, almost uninterrupted.

The best of the 73

While the five-goal destruction of Leverkusen is the most famous Messi performance from his record campaign, my favorite is his utter destruction of Atlético Madrid. He got a hat trick — goals 10-12 for the season, all before the end of September — and it felt like he could have scored more. He forced an own goal, and was fouled several times at the end of slalom runs through multiple defenders that felt like they were going to end with shots on goal.

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Messi scored his 15th of the season a couple of weeks later against Racing Santander, and showed off everything that makes him so special in front of the goal. He fully embarrassed two defenders and the goalkeeper in three touches. Before they realized what had happened, the ball was in the back of the net.

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Goals 34-36 against Malaga were some of his finest work. The first, a header, was out of character for the miniature magician. But the next two were the kind that only Messi scores. On the second, he was surrounded by five defenders, and yet it felt like none of them could get close to him. He might as well have been playing in open space. On the third, he stepped past a hard challenge from his international teammate Martin Demichelis, then turned on the jets and burned the rest of the defense.

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In the middle of the season, Messi hit an impossible-looking free kick to score No. 43 and terrorize Atlético Madrid a second time. Atléti complained that Messi shot before they knew play was live, but a perfectly positioned wall and goalkeeper couldn’t have done anything. To this day, it is arguably Messi’s most impressive free-kick goal.

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Goal No. 61 might have been the most aesthetically pleasing of the bunch. It was vintage Barca, with Messi and Iniesta playing a perfect one-two combination, and Iniesta providing a backheel assist.

Throughout that season, it felt like Messi produced at this level every week. Unfortunately for Barcelona, Messi’s teammates weren’t nearly up to his caliber.

Messi can’t do everything

No matter the formation, Barca was set up to feed Messi shooting opportunities. Guardiola rotated playmakers Fabregas, Xavi Hernandez, Andres Iniesta and Thiago Alcantara, and on rare occasions put all four on the field at the same time. For opponents, focusing on slowing down Messi was nearly impossible, because so many different players could hit him with creative passes from any angle.

But there was a problem.

I believe that Messi’s 2011-12 is the greatest individual season anyone has ever had in professional team sports, but one person can only take a team so far in soccer. An expertly constructed team with no stars can stifle a team with the greatest player on Earth and a bunch of mismatched parts.

By the time El Clásico rolled around in December, Barca lagged well behind Real Madrid, despite Messi’s heroics. Pep’s 3-4-3 lacked defensive solidity, and Barca didn’t have another ruthless finisher to take pressure off its superstar. The Blaugrana’s highest highs were much higher than Real Madrid’s, but Ronaldo’s and manager Jose Mourinho’s team was much more consistent.

Real Madrid had lost one game and drawn one up to that point, while Barca had lost one and drawn four. But Barcelona cut their rival’s La Liga lead to three points thanks to a Messi masterclass away at Estadio Santiago Bernabeu.

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Messi didn’t score — in fact, he rarely even got into the penalty area. But he was universally acclaimed as the best player on the pitch. He turned playmaker for his teammates, setting up Fabregas and Alexis Sanchez to finish off his moves. The match showed how Messi is arguably at his best: sitting in a deeper position, picking passes for runners in front of him, and arriving late in the penalty area to clean up the garbage after an initial save or block. But that strategy can only only work if the players in front of him step up.

Fabregas and Sanchez delivered on that day at the Bernabeu, but they never had the lethal finishing touch of Messi’s previous teammates, Samuel Eto’o and Thierry Henry, or his future teammates, Luis Suarez and Neymar.

One match later, Barca threw away the points gained in El Clásico. Fabregas scored in the first half against local rivals Espanyol, but didn’t attempt a shot in the second half of what ended as a 1-1 draw. Sanchez looked like he couldn’t finish his dinner, and was hauled off. Another draw against Valencia and a loss to Osasuna followed, effectively ending the La Liga title race by February.

But at least Barcelona still had a Champions League to play for ... ah, dammit.

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The legacy of the best season ever played

Barcelona won Copa del Rey at the end of the 2011-12 season, but Barca supporters don’t exactly look back on this season fondly. Instead, it is remembered as the season when Chelsea dumped Barca out of the Champions League and Real Madrid posted a record 100 points.

The season fell apart for Barca one week in April when Mourinho and Chelsea manager Roberto Di Matteo came to the same conclusion: they had to shut down Messi at all costs, even if it meant leaving other talented players wide open.

And so, in both Champions League games against Chelsea and in El Clásico, Messi did not score. He played well in all three games, regularly finding open teammates for shots, but they couldn’t score, either. Fabregas, Sanchez and Pedro choked.

Guardiola’s idea to start the season made sense: if Messi is the best goal-scorer in the world, let’s surround him with good, unselfish supporting players who can give him as many shots as possible. But without a secondary finisher, teams could get away with swarming Messi and ignoring his partners. Barcelona had no plan B.

The failures of 2011-12 Barcelona, and the subsequent successes of Messi teams in which he plays a deeper role while others act as goal-poachers, suggests that we may never see anything like his 73-goal season again. Even if another Messi-level player emerges, they likely won’t be used in the same way he was. The lesson of that season is that it’s easy to gameplan against a team with just one focal point, even if that player is the best the sport has ever seen.

That’s why Barcelona would eventually buy Neymar, even though he was unproven in Europe, and the deal to sign him would put them in legal trouble. And it’s why they had to sign Luis Suarez in the immediate aftermath of him biting an opponent for a third time. With those two playing alongside Messi, Barcelona won a treble in 2014-15, capturing the Champions League, La Liga and Copa del Rey in the same season.

Messi can carry average players to title contention, but he is at his best when the opponent also has to respect his teammates’ goal-scoring. He’s too good in a deeper, playmaking role to be a goal-poacher.

Which is saying something, given that when he was asked to play as the primary striker, he scored 73 times. Messi couldn’t help Barcelona overcome its structural deficiencies, but he still performed the job he was given to near perfection. He was in the wrong role, with the wrong players around him, but the 2011-12 season was Messi at his absolute best.

0 notes

buttdawg · 5 years ago

Text

New Beginning in Nashville: A Buttdawg Special Report

NJPW is in the middle of a U.S. tour, and it turned out that they were doing a show pretty close to where I live, right when I had scheduled some time off, so I figured “what the hell?” and bought a ticket. Then I finally saw the lineup for the show and I was like “ehhhhh...” But then it turned out to be really great!

I guess two things got me on board with this show. First, Wrestle Kingdom 14 hype was in full swing when I bought the ticket, so I wanted More of That. Second, I watched a bunch of matches from the World Tag League a few months ago, and a big chunk of those shows were set in smaller, cozier venues with no English commentary. Some of them didn’t even have Japanese commentary, and I’m pretty sure those were the ones where I could see basketball backboards in the background. One was in Osaka-jo Hall, and I thought that was a big arena, but it turned out the show was in the “sub arena”, which sounds awesome. So I imagined what it might be like to go to a show like that, and then I realized they’re doing them in America this month.

This was in the War Memorial Auditorium, which I think holds like 2,000 people. Low four digits, definitely. Pretty sure the WWF used to run house shows here, because every time I think the words “War Memorial Auditorium” I hear it in Howard Finkel’s voice. On the way down, I listened to this piece by Jim Valley about how the WWE is no longer turning a profit on their live events, for the first time ever. He blames guys like Seth Rollins who complain about their fans instead of enticing them to buy tickets. Would toay’s WWE even run a house show in a venue this small? All I know is the WMA had 560 in attendance, and everyone seemed pretty happy to be there. There’s a market for wrestling tickets. New Japan didn’t fly all these guys out to Tennessee to break even.

Anyway, I wasn’t too jazzed about the card, and for most of January I was starting to wonder if I’d let my enthusiasm get the better of me. but once I found the place and got my bearings, I was very pleased. The WMA looks even smaller in person than it does on the website. Imagine a high school gym with a stage and a balcony. You walk into the theater and the ring is right in front of you. The merch stand is to your right. I don’t think there’s a bad seat in the house, unless you’re sitting behind a really tall guy or something.

As for the card, the audience made it feel special. They had this big monitor on the stage, and they opened with a video package about the tour, and everyone popped when they heard the announcer, even though he’s speaking Japanese. He’s the guy you hear at the start of every show thought, so hearing his voice just makes the whole thing feel important.

I wasn’t really prepared for that, I guess. There were a lot of kids there, and I guess I was surprised that so many people from so many demographics would be this familiar with the product. I’ve only been watching New Japan for about seven months, so the filthiest casual was probably me.

Match 1: Alex Zayne & Misterioso d. Alex Coughlin & Ren Narita (9:46)

I have no idea who most of these guys are. I’ve probably seen Coughlin before, but I spent the whole match thinking he was Karl Fredericks. The crowd recognized Zayne and Misterioso, though, because they were behind those guys the whole match. I started to think Zayne had family in the crowd, and he’s from Lexington, Kentucky, so it’s not impossible.

Match 2: YOSHI-HASHI d. Karl Fredericks (8:48)

This was when the real Karl Fredericks came out. The monitor on the stage displays the names of the participants throughout the match, but I couldn’t see it very well because of the glare from the lighting. Crowd was behind Karl all the way, I guess because he’s been a Young Lion long enough that he’s due to start winning matches one of these days, but not tonight. I mean, Yoshi’s in CHAOS, so he ought to be a face, right?

Match 3: Colt Cabana & Toru Yano d. Clark Conners & TJP (13:22)

I’m not a huge fan of Colt and Yano, but they were the first guys I’d consider ““real”““ stars to come out. TJP won the Cruiserweight Classic in WWE, but I had to keep reminding myself of that while the match went on.

The comedy wrestling works a lot better live. My favorite bit was when Colt brazenly stuck his hands in the air and challenged Conners to a test of strength spot. “TEST OF STRENGTH” he said loud enough for everyone to hear him. Then as soon as they got locked up Colt looked over his shoulder and said “Oh my God, he’s really strong!”

This was the only match I tried to take pictures for, because I wanted to capture Yano untying the turnbuckle pad. I also managed to get this pic, of Young Lions putting it back together after the match was over.

Seriously, it takes like two guys to fix those things. Yano’s a real jerk.

Anyway, during this match, there was a kid further back in the balcony who was really rooting for TJP and Conners. As the show continued, it became clear that this kid was in the tank for all the heels. It took me a while to catch on to this, because sometimes I can’t tell if Yano’s a face or a hell. But no, this kid was rooting for all the heels. Not like in a smarky “the faces are jerks!” kind of way, either. It’s like this kid just watched enough matches to objectively decide that guys like Lance Archer rules and Colt Cabana’s kind of a dick. Same, kid. Same.

So during the match Yano and Colt are making Conners look like a real geek, to the point where it’s practically a face-in-peril situation (again, are we sure Yano and Colt aren’t evil?). So this kid’s begging Conners to make the hot tag to TJP. Then the other team makes a tag, and the kid goes “Not you!” Priceless.

Match 4: Jeff Cobb d. Satoshi Kojima (10:02)

This match kind of represents my flip-flopping towards the card. They’re doing a tournament in the U.S., and they bring the worst two guys in CHAOS, nobody from LIJ, the only champions they booked were the shithole tag champions and they’re not even defending the belts... but they got Jeff Cobb, by gum. It just felt very underwhelming, but once he came out, and I’m sitting there like fifty feet away from him, I’m like “Yeah, Jeff Cobb’s a cool guy. This is great.” Watching wrestling on TV has a way of raising your expectations to unrealistic levels, I guess. Once you’re sitting there watching these guys in person, the equation changes.

I wasn’t super-thrilled to see Cobb facing Kojima, since they had no issue, and Kojima jobbed all the way through the World Tag League, but by this point in the show I was just pleased to get to see Jeff Cobb strut his stuff. This was how American wrestling used to work in the 80′s and 90′s, and it still does, I just had to get re-accustomed to it. Everyone was hot for Kojima, either because he’s a legend or because he was wearing hot-orange ring gear to pander to the UT fans in the audience. Well I went to UK so fuck you, Kojima, you deserved to lose to Cobb.

And the match was very competitive, to the point where Cobb was all exhausted at the end, and Kojima went over to shake his hand after it was over, so a feel-good moment for the audience. Nice.

Match 5: Lance Archer d. Yuji Nagata (11:16)

Never mind that shit, everybody dies! Lance comes out and he was basically my favorite guy on this card. Crowd was pretty into Lance too, so he takes the mic and says “Nashville, Tennessee! Who wants a T-shirt!?” crowd gets all excited, and then he just throws it.... onto the mat, and he goes “Nope!” and everyone is pissed! Except me, Lance Archer fucking rules. Also, Roots-for-Heels Kid probably didn’t mind, but we didn’t hear from that kid until the middle of the match, when Lance was basically mugging Blue Justice. I salute Yuji Nagata for wearing Wildcat blue in a sea of orange bullshit, but as they say, everybody dies.

The crowd haaaates Lance, and he just milks it for all it’s worth. The fans can’t help Yuji--his fate is sealed--so they make fun of Lance’s fashion sense. They mock the red braid at the end of his mohawk, they make fun of his back tattoo, calling it a “tramp stamp”, and so on. Lance just yells back at them. “Shut up!” “Booooooooooo.” Lance is the fucking man. Even the ref was afraid of him, which makes Nagata look like a million bucks for even putting up a fight. I wanted more Suzuki-gun guys at this show, but honestly, one was plenty. Lance wins with the EBD claw, and that’s it.

Match 6: Hiroshi Tanahashi d. Yujiro Takahashi (10:38)

Yujiro doesn’t have Pieter with him, although no one seems concerned by this. From what I can tell, they only bring out Pieter when Yujiro is booked for bigger venues. That’s probably got more to do with Pieter’s contract than anything else, but I like to think all these smaller towns in Japan take one look at Bullet Club and go “Look, you’re not doing that stripper crap in our building.”

Big response for Tanahashi. They did the hockey chant for him and everything “Ta-na-ha-shi (clap, clap, clap-clap-clap)”. Nothing particularly notable about the match, but Hiroshi went around ringside hugging and taking photos with fans at ringside. He’s a real class act.

Match 7: Rocky Romero, David Finlay, & Juice Robinson d. Bullet Club (Chase Owens, Tanga Loa & Tama Tonga) (13:52)

This was originally supposed to be an eight-man tag with Kota Ibushi on the face team and Jado on the Bullet Club side. Turns out Kota came down with the flu, so they just scaled it back to a six-man. I also read that Karl Fredericks got injured, so he’s off the tour too. I guess that happened on this show, because he seemed fine Sunday night, and the announcement came out before the show on the 27th started.

Anyway, now I see the value in New Japan’s strategy of using multi-man tag matches for tours like these. If someone has to pull out, they just shuffle around partners or scale back eight-mans to six-mans, and so on. I guess if things really got bad, they could just do seven singles matches, so as long as they have fourteen healthy performers, they can manage.

Roots-for-Heels Kid was in full-effect here. Again, not really sure if the kid’s Bullet Club 4-life, or just hates Juice Robinson as much as I do, or maybe the kid takes pity on Chase Owens. But that kid really wanted Bullet Club to win. Too bad it wasn’t in the cards.

One moment that stuck out to me was when the faces were doing pretty well, and enough stuff was going on that I didn’t notice Jado whacking someone with the kendo stick until it had already happened. They do that bit in every G.O.D. match. Face is doing okay, he runs the ropes, and then whack, Jado hits him right as he bounces off the ropes near the G.O.D. corner. I’ve watched enough Guerrilas of Destiny matches by now that it’s become predictable, even formulaic, but this time, I never saw it coming. I think that’s because on video, they’ve got the camera man anticipating that spot. The camera angles of the guy running the ropes practically warns you what’s about to happen. When you see it live, you have to be your own cameraman, and figure out which parts of the ring to watch. I was in the second row of the balcony, with a great view of the ring, but not of Jado. I could see him, but not his lower body, to give you an idea. By contrast, there were fans on the floor who were directly behind him the whole match, so they could see every move he made. So it’s a completely different experience depending on where your seat is. And that’s why they do the kendo stick spot in every match.

Anyway, big chunks of the match were brawls, and eventually FinnJuice and G.O.D. fought their way out of the theater, so it came down to Rocky and Chase wrapping up the match by themselves. I wasn’t sure what to make of Rocky Romero wrestling, since I’ve only ever seen him doing commentary, or managing Roppongi 3K. But it turns out he’s really good, so now I don’t understand why they keep him stuck behind a desk all the time. Maybe he’s semi-retired or something?

After the match, Rocky cuts the end-of-show promo, and explains that Kota couldn’t be here, so now it’s going to be Chase Owens vs. Rocky Romero in the Atlanta show. Chase takes the mic and says “Maybe I don’t want to wait until Atlanta? Who wants to see me and Rocky go here, tonight!” The crowd is up for it, and then he shouts “Then buy another ticket!” and leaves in a huff. Classic, total classic. Rocky thanks everyone for supporting NJPW, the best wrestling in the world, and the crowd goes home happy.

So yeah, good show all around, and they even had the whole thing done in two hours. I had no idea what to expect, but if I’d known they would be finished by 7pm I might have just driven home that night instead of getting a hotel. Well, I’ll keep that in mind for next year.

#njpw #new japan pro wrestling #new beginning usa #fuck you juice #worst tag champions ever

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fmlfpl · 6 years ago

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Lineup Lamentations - GW4 - Walsh Wildcard Edition

Our Transfers, Captains, and Starting 11s for the week!

*AND* New starting this week we’re gonna do a Slacker of the Week Lambs, someone randomly selected from our Patreon Slack channel each week, and this week it’s Rai from Slack great lad and on wildcard too with Walsh...

This week it was not random I have to admit but every week for the rest of the season it’ll be random. Get in.

—

WALSH - On Wildcard

TRANSFERS:

Wildcard

GK:

Pope (LIV)

Pope retains his spot and seems like a great long term hold. BAPs for every clean is great and he's great. Burnley look back to basics and have had great underlying defensive stats.

DEF:

Alexander-Arnold & Robertson (bur)

Trent and Robbo also retain their spots from the old guard team.

I debated over whether to go with d33n instead of r0bbo but in the end I just trust Livp a lot more than I trust Everton and I just want to keep Robbo.

The literal worst thing I did last season was remove Robbo from my GW1 team after the first handful of games and so I'm trying to learn from past mistakes for some reason. His stats look great and he has looked great so I am sticking with him. Obv Adrian is a bit of a nutter and a lot worse than Alisson but these two fullbacks are still the creative cogs for Livp and still seem like great picks.

Laporte (BHA)

Slotting in alongside is Laporte.

I really want to have a share of the City defense and now that my break glass is gone I don't want to fuck around with Zinc or some other cuck. Laporte is as safe as safe comes and seems like a guy I could just not look at or worry about for months. See a pattern here?

MID:

Salah (bur)

Mo sticks obv. Nothing to say about that.

Sterling & De Bruyne (BHA)

Raz and Kevin are in alongside and also picks that don't really need much explanation.

Alon did float an interesting idea to go Kun over Kevin for the next couple little miniwindow of good fixtures but in the end I just didn't want to take on that risk when I view Kevin as just a guy I could hold for months.

Now that my triple City and triple Pool are out there in the open, it's time to get into the dross.

Cantwell (whu)

Cantwell is in... and although his underlying stats are questionable at best given his high points total so far... he still seems like a no brainer option right now. I have no clue how long he'll keep it up, but at his price I'll find out.

McGinn (cry)

Finally, I'm going with McGinn to round out the midfield.

I don't feel greattttt about him, but they've got pretty good fixtures in the near term and he seems to be in and around a lot of what they do so far. Villa look like they are somewhat reasonable going forward and after a nice performance against Everton maybe they will be able to score some goals in this good run.

Certainly not a long term pick here, but he'll do for now.

FWD:

Pukki (whu)

Pukki is still in... nothing to see here.

Haller (NOR)

Next to him is Haller.

He looks good and looks to be justifying the preseason hype. Realistically I was looking at him or Mount as my last call to make. I'm not sure I'm going the right direction with Haller and McGinn but it seems like an okay gamble to go for the upside play with West Ham up against NOR, avl in the next two.

Mount seems like a better long term pick, but with a tricky next few I'll go without for a little and then reassess. Haller might also just be the truth. Pod partner loved the fuck out of him preseason, so that's a good sign. He might just be great and wetspam, as we know, are not built to defend.

BENCH:

Lundstram (che)

Rico (lei)

Nketiah (TOT)

Avert your eyes. I'm on Lundy, Rico, and Necktie.

Oh yeah and Woodman the legend.

I know the likes of Button may be in better standing with the price changes but I will not be bullied into getting rid of my Championship players. I will not stand for that. Anyway, this bench is fucking bad, but I think I'll be able to get away with it for a little bit. Lund will rotate a bit with Cantwell. Seems fine. Rico...I have no fucking idea what Edward is doing but it seems like Rico has a better chance than Kelly to have a job for more than another couple of games. Or he won't play another minute this season - who is to say.

I have no delusions about this, I will need to do something about this nightmare group at some point, but that point is not now. The biggest risk of my team is probably how absurdly bad the bench is so we'll see if that comes back to fuck me over or not.

CAP:

Sterling (BHA)

I'll be on Raz. Pretty straightforward and not going to overthink it. Should batter Brighton - hopefully he'll be in with a return or two.

—

ALON

TRANSFERS:

OUT: Pérez, Richarlison, Gomez

IN (for -4 points hit): Mount, De Bruyne, Emerson

Clearly if your name ends in a zed then you’re straight out my fucking team.

But in actuality these moves kinda wrote themselves... I had exactly four bad picks in my side after last GW and I’m off to a solid start. Three of them are now dealt with via guys that I like short term and long term and my last bad guy, Gerry D, has a fabulous fixture so just praying on that one.

First hit of the season I have to say does not feel as thrilling as I thought it might. It kinda feels like the beginning of the end??? But I’m trying to not be dramatic about it.

GK:

Ederson (BHA)

Potter is a clever lad and gave City a scare in the cup last season but as long as Pep takes his head out of his ass and starts ‘Dinho or Rodrigo then this should be a straightforward clean.

If neither start then I’m genuinely scared and might start thinking about moving away from City defense.

DEF:

van Dijk (bur)

Liverpool haven’t cleaned home or away vs. Burnley in a long ass time and it’s understandable why. They’re tough, they’re annoying, they throw bodies around, Barnes and Wood are good, McNeil is good, Gudmundsson is pretty good, etc etc... But still, this should be a clean, and Matip’s aerial prowess will be very useful... I wonder if this is the game Gomez starts over Trent at RB for another big boy to win headers and shit? TBD.

Digne (WOL)

Should be an easy clean here. Wolves have been the worst attack in the division thus far and I see no reason for that to really turn around.

Wolves will park and barely attack and as long as Everton don’t get caught with their pants at their ankles on a Jota/Jim counter then it should be a clean. And maybe Digne will dazzle us with another worldy FK like he hit in the cup.

Nightmare for all of our eyes that this match is one of the two featured matches on Sunday. It will be a disgusting viewing experience.

Söyüncü (BOU)

Leicester have been very tight to start the season and getting Ndidi back fit is gigantic for their cleansheet prospects. I like Leicester to control this game and allow Bournemouth very little... Söy is the fucking man I love him.

Emerson (SHU)

Last but not least is the first new boy into my team, Emerson gets SHU at home.

it should be a relatively straight forward clean but I say that and they’re still without Kante and Rudiger so ugh who the fuck knows... They did a great job shutting down Norwich for the final ~60 minutes of that match and I’m hoping they continue with that form.

Emerson also has been on the ball constantly for Chelsea and creating and shooting and everything good so here here to an attacking return.

MID:

Salah (bur)

It’s sorta weird how some people are still slagging off Mo and avoiding him on wildcard and he’s not been talked about for captaincy at all. I don’t get it but whatever. He’s simply the best attacker in the league and best fantasy player in the game for the third year running. /shrug.

Sterling & De Bruyne (BHA)

Welcome to the team Kevin!! Been talking about him a lot on basically every pod this season so far so it’s nice to finally have the boy in my team.

City attack are best in the world and I feel like Sterling is the biggest piece of it you can get in one player and conversely for 9.5 the value of Kevin is just incredible. 200 points coming as usual for Kev barring injury: book it.

Mount (SHU)

Mount, another new boy and another pod darling, coming straight the fuck in...

The fixtures following Sheff U. are brutal but he’s just been so fucking good. Eye test and stats and everything about him make him very easy to love from the FPL perspective. Shooting a ton and it’s not hard to imagine another goal on the break vs. Sheff U.

FWD:

Pukki (whu)

Duh Pukki easy. Dynamite fixture should be a wide open crazy game. Can’t wait.

Deulofeu (new)

The aforementioned last shitty guy in my team is this guy.

Gerry has looked pretty good in last couple and had very nice stats vs. West Ham last week.

With Deeney out hurt you’d imagine Gerry goes back up top and hopefully Sarr comes in for Hughes and maybe Watford get going this week... They really have not been as bad as their points column shows so far. Bounce back for me lad.

BENCH:

Greenwood (sou)

Hayden (WAT)

Maitland-Niles (TOT)

CAP:

Pukki (whu)

I really foresee this being an absolute barnburner no defense yolo high-scoring face-fuck of a match and Pukki is the absolute center of everything that Norwich do scoring wise - assisting goals and scoring goals. I’m expecting a double return with an upside of more...

It’s risky and punty seeing how Sterling and other City players will makeup the huuuuuuuge percentage of caps this week but the one thing, maybe only thing?, about Sterling or Kun or Kevin vs. Pukki is that City can score 5 and one of those guys can blank... We’ve seen it happen before... I don’t really see a world where Norwich score 2+ and Pukki isn’t heavily involved....... I’m riding the hottest player in the league against a bottom 3-5 defense in the league. It’s not that crazy... right?!?!?

Hold me.

—

RANDOM SLACKER OF THE WEEK: RAI - On Wildcard

The words of Random Slacker are not officially endorsed by this website nor any employees of FML FPL LLC.

TRANSFERS:

Wildcard

GK:

Pope (LIV)

An easy pick despite a less than ideal first fixture. Turf Moor is back to being a FOOKIN' FORTRESS and BUR keepers are always golden for FPL.

RIP Leno my sweet prince.

DEF:

Alexander-Arnold & Robertson (bur)

Most managers started with at least 2 pool defenders and how we react to their lack of cleans defines what kind of manager you are.

I've personally gone for the 9000 IQ move of buying Robbo back for 0.1 cheaper and I look forward to their inevitable attacking returns (and hopefully some cleans too).

Digne (WOL)

Every time I watch Everton play they look unfathomably awful but Digne keeps punishing me with an endless stream of cleans, dongs, and assists.

I had him in my draft before the absurd Carabao free kick and that cemented his place for me. Just like the Pool boys Digne is a friend with benefits: a defender, offering multiple ways to slap your anus beyond cleans.

MID:

Sterling & De Bruyne (BHA)

I'm all in on City this wildcard, their mini-run of BHA nor WAT is arguably their tastiest run of the season and if there's any time to triple on City attack it feels like now.

Not much to say about these two that you don't know already but I fully expect Kevin to break his duck and score his first dong this season at home to Brighton.

Mount (SHU)

Mount is looking like the cheap value mid on a top team that we all wanted Perez to be. He is showing a Lampard-esque knack of knowing when to make late runs to pick up goals. His price point and Chelsea's medium term fixtures make him a no brainer.

Cantwell (whu)

Interlinks with Pukki well. A pure value pick with a nice attacking fixture this week.

FWD:

Agüero (BHA)

Jesus is out for at least this fixture which hopefully means a 90 minute fuck fest for Kun. I'm hoping Pep utilizes Jesus mainly for their predictably easy UCL group. Funding Kun has meant sacrificing a Pool mid which is obviously a huge risk but ultimately I'm having fun and Kun is fun.

Haller (NOR)

A definite bandwagon pick this week but the Frenchman is proving hard to ignore particularly for all of us on wildcard.

He has a nice couple of fixtures and there are plenty of strikers priced just below him to move to if it doesn't work out.

Pukki (whu)

I delayed slightly in signing Pukki and my rank plummeted faster than a piss towel so I won't be doubting the master plan again.

He's looking like the Jimi of this season.

BENCH:

Lundstram (che)

OOP cheap lad, nothing more to say here.

Söyüncü (BOU)

Considered Kelly in this spot but Söy is much more nailed and a cheap way into a solid team.

Elneny (TOT)

Non-playing 3rd bench at 4.4 mil, if I had the extra 0.1 then this would be Dendoncker.

CAP:

Agüero (BHA)

One downside of triple City attack is having no idea who to cap.

A chance of 90 minutes of Kun is hard to ignore and I’m going with the big balls play here.

#lineup lamentations

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poetspade45-blog · 6 years ago

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Weekly Rumours – Free Agent Frenzy Edition

I had high hopes for the NHL Draft and I was extremely disappointed. Every year I buy into the hype and hope that we’ll see a flurry of activity and this year was more boring than ever. But, with the salary cap being finalized and lower than expected, we might see some interesting moves once free agency draws closer.

The Oilers are being connected to a few different names and given their cap situation, there is a world of possibilities. Let’s dig into a few rumours.

I’m going to be referencing Elliotte Friedman a lot in this week’s blog since his final “31 Thoughts” dropped yesterday. He mentioned the Oilers in connection to both Petr Mrazek and Mike Smith, which is hardly a surprise.

For me, those two options would reflect just how much the Oilers are willing to spend on a goaltender. If they go with Mrazek, then they’re likely looking at a $3 million cap hit on a deal that spans at least three seasons. If it’s Mike Smith, I think you’re looking more at a one year deal worth about $2 million, which is exactly what Brian Elliott got from the Flyers yesterday.

Friedman also hit us with a bit of a curveball, connecting the Oilers to Semyon Varlamov. He added that Varlamov will be an expensive option, I would imagine that he gets at least $4.5 million, and that likely takes the Oilers out of it unless they find a way to free up money. If they shed Kris Russell without taking back a really bad contract, Varlamov could be in the picture.

Clearing out Russell or maybe even an extra $2 million could lead to Holland having some extra flexibility when it comes to adding a forward as well.

Friedman and Pierre LeBrun have connected the Oilers to a whole flurry of depth wingers.

Obviously, we know that they’re in on Bret Connolly since his agent confirmed to Reid Wilkins that there have been discussions between the two sides.

Agent Gerry Johannson confirms on @OilersNow that pending UFA Brett Connolly has spoken to the #Oilers.

— Reid Wilkins (@ReidWilkins) June 25, 2019

That would make sense. Connolly is coming off of a good season where he spent most of the time playing with Lars Eller. If he was thrown next to Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, I think he could continue being a 20-25 goal guy for the next few seasons. For the cost, I don’t think we’ll see it get to $4 million, something around $3.5 over four years seems realistic to me.

LeBrun also said that the Oilers have reached out to Gustav Nyquist’s camp to see if there would be interest. Nyquist is a consistent 20 goal, 40 point player and considering his past with Ken Holland and the Wings, it’s easy to see why this would be a fit. Similar to Semyon Varlamov, I think he might be too expensive. If the Oilers rid themselves of $4 million in cap space, then they may be able to afford a Varlamov/Nyquist combo instead of a Smith/Connolly combo, but it would still be tight.

There’s also the middle tier of options for the Oilers which includes Joonas Donskoi, Brandon Tanev, and Alex Chiasson. All three bring something different to the table but I really like Tanev. He scored 14 goals last season, which 13 of them coming at even strength, and he can play both wings. I can’t imagine he’d cost more than $2 million.

There are also a few lower tier options. Daniel Carr spent this past season with the Chicago Wolves, the Golden Knights AHL affiliate, and racked up 72 points in 51 games. He was also named the AHL’s MVP for the season. He’s a Sherwood Park product, so I would imagine he’d be interested in coming to Edmonton. As for a cost, it won’t be more than $1 million. He would be a good bet.

Brandon Pirri is another former Golden Knight who the Oilers might have an interest in. When he’s in the NHL, he scores goals. In 259 career games, he has 79 goals. That’s an average of 25 goals every 82 games. His skating and consistency are issues and the Oilers need guys who can move and put up goals on a consistent basis. Pirri should be cheap as well, but I think I might prefer Daniel Carr. I would expect the Oilers to make calls to both of these players though.

Friedman also hit us with a bit of a curveball, mentioning the Oilers and Jason Zucker in the same breathe. I love Zucker as a player. He’s a guy who can step into any lineup and score at least 20 goals. He’s got lots of skill, but his $5.5 million cap hit leads me to believe he isn’t a realistic option for the Oilers. The asking price would probably include Ryan Nugent-Hopkins as well, which is not something I’d consider. If a package of futures and a cap dump would interest the Wild, then I’d do it, but I think Paul Fenton wants to get that team into the playoffs next season.

Friedman also added in that the Oilers are still looking to move on from Jesse Puljujarvi and his preference would be to leave Canada. Friedman mentioned the Carolina Hurricanes, Boston Bruins, and Tampa Bay Lightning as possible suitors.

The idea of trading with Tampa entices me. If the Oilers want a third line centre, maybe Cedric Paquette could be had? You’re losing the upside of Puljujarvi, but Paquette is a competent NHLer.

With the Canes, the name Julien Gauthier has been mentioned but I don’t think he’d ever be more than a fourth line winger, if that.

For the Bruins, I was trying to see where they have some depth. At centre, they have Krejci, Bergeron, Coyle, and Kuraly. Would they be tempted to move 24-year-old Karson Kuhlman? For right-shot defensemen, they have Charlie McAvoy, Brandon Carlo, and Kevan Miller. I wonder if the Oilers could pry Connor Clifton out of Boston.

I’m obviously just spitballing here.

I think the return in any Puljujarvi deal is going to be disappointing, but if the Oilers think they can get a young player, with some NHL experience, that they like from another organization who isn’t getting an opportunity, they should jump at it.

After having such a blast over the past two years, we absolutely knew that we were going to organize another golf tourney for the summer and, after a few months of planning, we’re psyched to finally be able to launch our third annual golf tournament.

When – August 29th, 2019 (Thursday)

Where – Cougar Creek Golf Resort

How much – $1000/team or get in on the $900 Early Bird price until July 10th

Teams – Groups of Four (4)

How – Book your team here

As always, a portion of all proceeds from your ticket purchase will be donated directly to a local charity. This time we’ve partnered up with the Gregor Foundation to make sure that our kids are at their most handsome.

Source: https://oilersnation.com/2019/06/27/edmonton-oilers-weekly-rumours-free-agent-frenzy-edition/

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andrewuttaro · 6 years ago

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New Look Sabres: GM 73 - TOR - The Nylander Bowl

There was a part of this season the Sabres and Leafs were on a collision course. Right after the win streak there was that game that felt like a real rivalry matchup. I suppose I’m a little bias since I experienced it in person, but I think we all felt the same way at the time. The Sabres, slotted right behind Toronto in the standings at that point looked like they were finally in the same league for the first time in a long time. Perhaps they were both in a quite shitty place together at one time but that’s not nearly as fun. That game was so close it damn near went to the shootout. It was not to be and since that matchup Buffalo has tumbled down a hill in a historic way, not only falling out of the playoff picture but losing so much in the back half that there is an outside chance they pick top 5 in the Draft. We can rehash our mournful lack of playoffs or we can look north of the border where getting playoff games hasn’t exactly made our Canadian brethren all that much happier. They have also been rather shit since the New Year, albeit not quite as shitty, and they’re now staring down the barrel of a first-round matchup that runs a high likelihood of knocking them out early. Trust me, I’m near to selling a kidney for a Sabres playoff series at this point but in Toronto they’ve had one going on in April three years in a row now and enter this one prepared to sound a five-alarm fire when their predicted knockout comes. The grass is always greener on the other side and sometimes with the way we talk about the Leafs that other side is the other side of the border as it were. This game was a bit of that. This game last night was hardly fun but when it was it reminded you of what this matchup could be a behemoth of a rivalry waiting to happen. I’ll save the Leafs’ playoff fate for Playoffs according to the Sabres because if you are a Leafs fan reading this… well first off thank you, share this, you Ontario folks love your hockey… you probably aren’t from Toronto. Leafs fans who show up to Sabres games are mostly the St. Catherines/Hamilton bunch who either can’t afford Toronto ticket prices or just don’t want that. All the whining about Sabres fans not showing up for Leafs games is warranted but its more stupid than you think at first glance. Now let’s talk about the game that happened last night.

This game had fewer shots than some Church events I’ve been to, particularly that first period. Carter Hutton was playing the role of Nun evidently and stymied a lot of the Leafs fun. The game was grossly lopsided in favor of the not so lonely visitors from the start. The Sabres only had seven shots the whole period and didn’t break five shots until the final five minutes of the first. The Leafs shot 19 shots in the first. Some weaker opponents don’t put up that much in a game… like uh, the Sabres who only put up 24 shots the whole game! This lopsidedness perhaps colored both fanbases reactions then when the only goal of the period was by Sabre Casey Mittelstadt. Mittelstadt tapped in a Dahlin slapper from the line behind a Garret Sparks who was apparently struggling to locate the puck. Exhaustion may have been an excuse the Leafs could use, this being the back end of a back-to-back but Sparks was fresh as Spring morning so that didn’t extend to him. That said, the Leafs started on time and outplayed the Sabres in every category in the first except powerplay goals. Mind you, the Leafs have been in a bit of a funk lately and the fanbase is beginning to fire up the hot stoves for Mike Babcock’s firing. The funny thing is, they’re complaining about a lot of the stuff Sabres fans complain about Phil Housley about: player deployment, player minutes, roster choices… oh no, this is going to be another summer of courting hall-of-fame coaches isn’t it? HURRY, TO THE PEGULA JET! FIND QUENNVILLE’S HOUSE AND DROP MONEY ON IT! I DON’T WANT ANOTHER DAN BLYSMA, PLEASE! GENEROUS LOCAL PLUTOCRAT, PLEASE! I KNOW YOU CAN GIVE Q JUST AS MUCH MONEY IF NOT MORE THAN THE ENTIRE CANADIAN ECONOMY, DAMMIT!

Nonetheless, the Leafs funk was snapped out of in this game and they proceeded to put up another 19-shot period, this time scoring two goals. While the first period had a smattering of penalties that somehow the Sabres were the team to get something out of, the second period only had one and it was Zemgus Girgensons cross checking Nazem Kadri. I’m a Buffalo Sabres blog so by law I have to state what a little pest Kadri is. There you go. While I’m on it let’s just say if Girgensons scored as much as Kadri does I wouldn’t be thinking about what I can get for him in a summer trade. I’m just saying. That goes for you to, Risto. Poor Brandon Montour, showing off how great a pickup he was for the Sabres these last few games, he gets just bamboozled by Auston Matthews. You could see he didn’t realize it went in off his skate because he looked like a ghost had just given him a weggie. I’m not going to bring anymore light on his plight because once again, he’s been doing great. The feature of the second period I will bring to light is the almost goal William Nylander scored. John Tavares ended up getting credit for the second Leafs goal but for a moment it looked like it could’ve been Willie’s. Hold that image in your head as we fast forward to the third where we find noted brother of William Nylander, Alexander Nylander, getting a puck from VLADIMIR SOBOTKA, and absolutely drilling that one home from between the circles. If this game was going to be the Nylander bowl, which it is on this blog as long as it continues to feel like an unnecessarily lopsided matchup every time we face the Leafs, then fam, we have won. We won the Nylander bowl. Nylander < Nylander, obviously! Having already won the game with that goal, the Sabres pushed hard for the equalizer to perhaps force overtime and get their first back-to-back wins since November. By the time Zach Hyman scored the empty netter I was already popping bottles celebrating Buffalo’s first Nylander Bowl Title! All kidding aside, this game stung something mighty and ended up 4-2 Leafs. I literally cried in the shower.

Don’t worry, I was kidding about the shower. The good news is we have some fun speculation to talk about! I know I bit hard on the Duchene stuff and that didn’t come to pass but give me a break, the Sabres season is still active until I get back from seeing their last game in Detroit next month. Until then, I am going act like the championship can still be won with some key additions! To start out with Dave Poulin and Jeff O’Neill were having a little talk about Joel Quenneville on one of probably eight dozen hockey segments on Toronto radio stations the other day and they think Coach Q’s best option if he wants to return to coaching may just be Buffalo. All the stuff about whether or not Housley will get fired aside, is that something we want? I’ve talked about it hypothetically up until now but would the second winningest coach of all-time coming to Buffalo finally be the coaching solution we’ve been looking for since Lindy Ruff was shown the door back two millennium ago? There is certainly an argument and if it happened I can’t imagine Jason Botterill isn’t crafty enough a guy to A. work with him as now the smaller fish in the pond, and B. provide him with a good enough lineup to replicate some of the success he’s known for. I can imagine about half a dozen other options that don’t seem too bad either and also do something different than just bringing in the big Hall of Fame guy but its fun to speculate. This next rumor is all speculation backed up by zero experts… its actually more of a Play-a-GM kind of thing actually… what is the likelihood of Erik Karlsson? So: disclaimer; he’s not coming here, and that cap hit is probably not so bueno, but let’s imagine this low year he’s having with San Jose causes second thought and Karlsson leaves. He’s said he is proud of Rasmus Dahlin and loves the Swedish phenom, what if he mentored him like Ra’s al Ghul and Batman? Again, just saying. I saw some joking on twitter and it got me going. That’s what we’re here for: stupid fan shit like that.

So anyway: like, comment and share this blog around. I appreciate all you readers so much, whether you’ve been here all year or not. If you haven’t and you think it would be awesome to go back and read the win streak New Look Sabres posts than maybe use that time to share this with a friend instead; I did just that thing the other day and it made me sad. Speaking of things that make me sad: the Sabres have a chance to sweep the season series against the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday. Why does that make me sad? Well, we have now lost five straight games to the Leafs and it feels cheap to wipe out Montreal in a season series while not getting the Leafs the same way. It’s like going to the Duty-Free store on the border and getting Aunt Jemimah’s pancake syrup: you got all this Canadian around you and you take the crap! The only thing diminishes a season sweep of the Habs is getting swept on the season by the Leafs. I better end on a more positive note than that… Jeff Skinner hasn’t signed yet… SHIT!

Thanks for reading.

P.S. The Sabres getting a couple games in the “Global Series” in Stockholm, Sweden in November is pretty rad considering how much of this organization is Swedish now. On the other hand, I see all of us complaining about the travel and those games actually counting in the standings. Can we all resolve right now to just enjoy those games?

#buffalo sabres #hockey #blog #NHL

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innocent-until-proven-geeky · 8 years ago

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Want to hear my theory for Steve Rogers in Infinity War? Let's go. It starts with this: we know Chris Evans signed on for six films. As far as I've heard, he has not signed on for more. His reign is winding down, which means Steve Rogers is leaving—for good. That goes one of two ways: he lives and retires peacefully, or he dies in the Infinity War. But this is Steve we're talking about. He sees injustice and he goes for it. If he were going to retire, he would pull a Clint and come out of retirement every time something happened. That clearly isn't happening, so that narrows it down to Steve dying a (probably tragic) death. Now, who kills Steve? Well... that's a huge can of worms and I'm opening it all up, so sit back, relax, and maybe bring a box of tissues. There are three options for who kills Steve. The first and most obvious is Thanos or one of his henchmen. The other two, you're going to fight me on until I explain: either an indifferent Tony or a kicking-and-screaming James Buchanan Barnes. Yes, I said it—I think it's possible for Tony or Bucky to kill Steve. I'm going to start my explanation with Thanos's people because, you see, I haven't been paying attention to the lineups for Infinity War and I have no idea who is in which film or if they dropped it to one Infinity War movie. Please correct me if there have been confirmations and I missed them. Anyway, because I don't know these things, I have two ways this could go down. The first and, in my opinion, most likely is that Steve, frustrated with himself and with Tony, tired of that stupid shield that screwed up his life, and sickened by having Bucky back in cryo, stays out of the War for the first film (assuming there are still going to be two). But then the crap hits the fan and someone calls him back and tells him "we need you, please be Captain America again." In the second film, he's back, to cold shoulders and empty hearts and he gets reckless, frustrated, he's tired of fighting battles he doesn't understand when he thought he did and he knows that half his team doesn't care about him and he feels like the other half probably agree and he just wants to prove that he still cares about them even after everything that happened in Civil War. And so he goes up when he shouldn't and he's overwhelmed, and maybe he tries to call in backup and doesn't get it or maybe he doesn't call it in at all but he's overwhelmed and that's it. One of Thanos's made that last fatal blow and Steve dies. And before you tell me "that won't happen," this is the same guy who was a 94-pound asthmatic and fought guys twice his weight because he was maybe a bit prideful and certainly hated injustice. It could very well happen. The other version of Thanos's delivering the death blow is basically the same, except that he's in the Infinity War from the beginning and dies during the first film instead of the second. I find it less likely after Civil War, but that's just me. And now, for the moment you've all been waiting for: "Why on earth (or in the rest of the galaxy) would it be Tony or Bucky?" Well, first of all, for angst's sake. Tony because they used to be perhaps the tightest of the Avengers (except maybe Clint and Nat), and now they're angry and hateful or just indifferent to each other. Either way would be painful for fans because we've seen them work together so well and then they fell apart in Civil War and it just became a mess. Bucky because IT'S BUCKY. After years of feeling guilty for letting his best friend fall to his "death," then finding out he was alive but had been brainwashed and was living a horrid quality of life, it would be the perfect twist of awful fate for Bucky to kill Steve. Everyone would hate it. It would be wonderful (since this is Tumblr and we live off of feels). SECOND, and more important to the actually plot line: Steve sides with Thanos. "But Hope, that would never happen. How could you possibly think that?" Answer: mind control. We haven't seen it with this particular character in the MCU, but we have seen mind control in the MCU. We have also seen Steve being mind controlled outside of the MCU. Within MCU canon, the mind control came from space (specifically, Loki's scepter was the source). Thanos happens to be in space and possibly, I don't know yet, in control of the same Infinity Stone that Loki used to control Clint and Eric (and which, arguably, was used to control Loki—I don't have a link to the post but I know it's floating around out there somewhere). Sorry, don't remember which Stone it is and also don't care to look it up, y'all can tell me if you want and I'll probably just believe you. My point is, Thanos could very well use it to gain control of Steve's mind, make him work for him—and force the Avengers, Guardians, and friends to either perform cognitive recalibration or to kill him. But as I said before, I doubt Steve is surviving this one. So either Tony or Bucky kills Steve. In my imagination, the end result is always the same, though. Bucky gets to Steve, and is holding him, and Steve says "I guess this is the end of the line," and Bucky, sobbing, tells him something about "No, I just got you back" even though really it was Steve who finally just got Bucky back. And there might be more dialogue, or maybe not, but Steve dies in Bucky's arms, and a FURIOUS FUMING BUCKY BARNES says "no, this is not the end of Steve's memory" and takes up the mantle of Captain America. Introduce Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. (I don't mind if you dispute my ideas, I love hearing other fan theories, but for the love of all that is good in this world be respectful of me and of others and please don't swear)

#Marvel #Steve rogers #Bucky Barnes #captain America #Infinity War #Marvel theory #Infinity war theory #Winter Soldier

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annaxkeating · 5 years ago

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How to Do a Webinar That’s as Exciting as an In-Person Event

There’s something special about attending an in-person conference or industry event. The adrenaline rush of going to pick up your nametag on the first day. The opening keynote that gets everyone in the room buzzing. The networking breaks where you awkwardly introduce yourself to strangers and mingle over tiny sandwiches. (OK, maybe that’s just me.)

This year though, almost every single conference and event has been either delayed or canceled. COVID-19 has put a pause on large group gatherings of all kinds, and many event organizers have been left scrambling to figure out what they can or should do as an alternative.

One option is to take your event online and run a webinar (or perhaps, a series of webinars), instead. But can you really replicate all that buzz, networking, and opportunity over a laptop screen? How can you possibly do a webinar that’s as exciting as an in-person event?

Charlene Ditch, Founder and CEO of Charlene Kate Events, says the potential is there for marketers who are prepared to put in the effort:

We’re navigating a new world and while we must adapt, we still have to be thoughtful in how we deliver the attendee experience. It’s an exciting time to be an event marketer and I’m confident that if we are strategic and intentional about the way we message, market, and execute—we can deliver something magical.”

Here at Unbounce, we know from experience that Charlene speaks the truth. Our team has years of experience running everything from large-scale, in-person conferences (you can get your tickets to CTAConf21 right here) to smaller-scale virtual events (like Marketing Optimization Week). We’ve learned a lot along the way about what works online—and what really doesn’t.

So to help you out, we put together this guide to make your first experience organizing a webinar way less awkward, and way more awesome. Find out how to pick the right speakers, get set up with the best tools, and make it genuinely exciting for attendees to participate.

How to Run a Webinar or Virtual Event Like a Pro

Align Your Theme and Dates

Track Your Webinar Goals

Recruit a Lineup of Star Speakers

Set Up Your Webinar Platform and Tools

Promote the Event to Create Buzz

Perform Dry-Runs

Make Magic Happen on the Day

Follow Through Post-Event

1. Align Your Theme and Dates

Every great online event starts with a great idea. You want to put something out there that nobody else has ever done before (or do it better than anyone else)—and this can be challenging when there are hundreds of webinars happening every single month.

That’s why the theme you choose is so important. You want to cover a topic that your audience truly cares about and find a unique angle they can’t resist. You’ll want to brainstorm ways you can incorporate this theme into each of your speaker topics, the visual identity of your event, and the actual takeaways that attendees will be talking about afterward.

The theme for Digital Agency Day was growth—how agencies can scale up with tactics from the top experts in their industry.

So how do you choose the theme for your virtual event? Here are some things to consider…

Does it relate to a problem your target audience is trying to solve? Always approach your webinar from a customer-first perspective. Look for pain points that they care about, goals they’re trying to achieve, and opportunities they would like to pursue. Test out your theme by asking your current customers if they’d be interested in the topic.

Do you have expertise in this space? In order to attract qualified leads, the theme of your event should relate back to your business. Nobody wants to attend a pet grooming webinar put on by McDonald’s, for example. (Although I do wonder how they always manage to perfectly style the fur on Grimace.)

Are there industry experts who can speak on this theme? You might get stuck if the theme you choose is too narrow or niche. Ideally, there should be a few experts who can speak on this theme or other companies that you can imagine wanting to partner up for the event.

It also helps if you can tie your webinar to real-world events that are happening in your industry, or other important dates on the calendar. For example, right now many companies are putting on special webinar series to help their customers adapt to COVID-19.

This webinar series was put on by Keela to help non-profit organizations adapt to COVID-19.

2. Track Your Webinar Goals

Webinars are an excellent opportunity to generate leads for your business and build up your email list. Depending on the topic you choose and how heavily you promote the event, this will be an opportunity to reach new leads and get them interacting with your brand for the very first time. That’s why it helps to set a few goals at the start so you can be strategic with your planning and track how much ROI you drive from your efforts.

Here are some of the most important goals you should think about earl on:

Number of Registrants – Set a realistic goal for the number of registrants you’re hoping will sign up for your webinar. It’s OK if this number changes as you start building out your event—the actual number of registrants will depend on your promo efforts, your partnerships, and how much traffic you drive to the sign-up page.

Number of Attendees – According to the latest webinar benchmarks from On24, an average of 56% of registrants show up to attend an online event. This number drops to 43% if you’re expecting more than 100 attendees—so be realistic, and expect only about half of your registrants to actually be there on the day.

Number of Sales or Sign-Ups – The final goal you’ll want to track is how many registrants or attendees end up becoming customers with your business afterward. You can set a projected goal for this based on your business model and the types of leads you plan to attract.

3. Recruit a Lineup of Star Speakers

For Marketing Optimization Week, the Unbounce team recruited high-profile names and reps from high-profile companies to speak at the event.

This is a big one. Because the first thing anyone does when they see a new webinar or online event is to check who’s going to be speaking. If you don’t have the right name recognition or expertise on deck, then a lot of people just aren’t going to be all that interested.

Rachel Scott, Senior Marketing Manager at Unbounce, says that there are three valuable things to look for when creating your ideal list of speakers:

Recognizable names are a huge draw, so you’ll want to look for those first. But there are also company names that can be just as important. Try to find a balance between the two, while also actively searching for diversity and different points of view. Check out other industry webinars and see who has been speaking recently—you can find a lot of great presenters that way, and they’ll probably be more keen to participate.

You’ll want to start recruiting early because you need your speaker line-up in place before you can start promoting your event. One other tip that Rachel suggested is to offer a lead sharing opportunity to big-name partners or speakers who would help expand your reach.

Give speakers and partners the opportunity to generate leads for their business as well. You could offer a one-to-one lead share for example, and for every lead they help bring into the webinar you’ll give them access to another lead who registered. That way, they have an incentive to drive registrations to the event and spread the word. Alternatively, you can set a registration goal for them, where if they bring in a certain number of leads you’ll share the full list of webinar registrations.

In your pitch to speakers, you’ll want to emphasize what’s in it for them. Whether that’s lead sharing, a partnership opportunity for their company, the number of attendees they’ll be able to reach, or who they’ll be speaking alongside at the event.

Do You Need a Webinar Host?

A host or moderator can help make your online event more exciting and easy to follow for attendees. Look for someone within your own company who might be great at this task—charming, friendly, and knowledgeable. You can have them introduce each guest, run Q&A sessions with speakers, and act as the “face” of the event to make it more personal.

4. Set Up Your Webinar Platform and Tools

There are a number of different platforms you can use to run your webinar or online event. Here are a few of the most popular options that integrate with Unbounce landing pages:

GoToWebinar

Demio

Livestorm

Zoom

Your choice will ultimately come down to the features you need, how much control you want over the platform, and what price point makes sense for your business.

Beyond the webinar platform itself, you’ll also want to set up a landing page to promote the event and bring in new registrants. You can use Unbounce to quickly set up a page that highlights your speakers and encourages attendees to sign up. Check out our event landing page templates to get started, or see more webinar landing page examples and best practices for 2020.

The Evento landing page template would work perfectly for an online event or webinar series.

5. Promote the Event to Create Buzz

Now that you’ve got your speakers on board and your registration landing page set up, it’s time to start promoting your webinar. You’ll want to build in at least one month of lead time for your promo efforts in order to give visitors enough chances to sign up.

Send Out Promo Emails

You can send out promo emails like this one to build anticipation for your webinar or online event.

Here at Unbounce, we’ve found emails to be the single most effective way to promote webinars. Open rates and click-through rates tend to be higher here than any other channel.

Try to split out some segments of your list you think would be particularly interested in the subject matter, and send out a series of three promotional emails inviting them to attend.

Email One (“The Invitation Email”) – Send this one out about a month before your online event. This is the big unveiling of your event, so you’ll want to treat it with the right level of fanfare to get recipients excited. Focus on the customer-centric benefits of your theme, and the big reasons they’ll want to attend.

Email Two (“The Speaker Email”) – A week or two later, send a follow-up email that goes into a bit more detail about who will be speaking at the event. This is where you can do some name-dropping and get into more specifics about different topics on the agenda.

Email Three (“The Last Chance Email”) – This one should go out a day or two before the event, and really lean on the FOMO of your audience. It would be a shame if they missed out on this event that so many of their peers will be attending.

Build Anticipation on Social Media

Use social media to raise awareness and get more attendees excited for your event.

Posting about your event on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn can help build buzz for your target audience and make them more likely to attend. That’s because the more times someone sees an ad, the more likely they will be to take action. If it seems like everybody is talking about your webinar on social media, that will help convince some of these folks to get curious enough to attend.

In the weeks leading up to the big day, try sprinkling in more and more posts about the event. Ramp up the frequency as you get closer to create more “buzz” on the timeline and encourage other attendees to post about it as well.

Ask Speakers to Promote Your Event

Ask speakers to promote your event to help bring in new audiences.

Your speakers want the webinar to be as successful as possible too, because their name is attached to the event. So why not tap into their networks and ask them for help with promotion?

This can be a great strategy to bring in new leads who you might not otherwise reach on your own. Because almost everybody has an audience—whether that’s through a blog, an email list, or on social media. And even a simple retweet from the right speaker could provide a significant attendance boost to your online event.

Make sure to ask speakers early on to get their buy-in, and consider offering some sort of lead share (as we talked about earlier) to give them even more of a promotional incentive.

Use Popups and Sticky Bars on Your Website

Use a sticky bar on your website to let visitors know about your virtual event.

You can set up a popup or sticky bar to appear on your website and promote the event. This is a great way to turn any relevant or high-traffic page into a vehicle for getting visitors to your webinar registration page. You could even place one on your website homepage if you’re serious about driving more registrations.

Personally, I’m a big fan of the Set a Reminder sticky bar template—the ticking countdown clock gets the attention of folks scrolling, but it doesn’t intrude too much on the page itself.

6. Perform Dry-Runs

What’s the biggest thing that separates a ho-hum webinar from an amazing online experience? Practice. (Sorry—that’s like a way less funny version of the famous Carnegie Hall joke.)

Sure, you can put your faith in your speakers and just hope they do a great job on the big day. But if you want to elevate your virtual event and really make it seem polished for attendees like an in-person event, we would highly recommend doing a dry run with each speaker first.

Set up times with all your speakers a week or two before the event, and ask them to go through their presentation as they would when they’re live. While they’re going through, you should look for opportunities and areas of improvement around…

Content Flow – Are they making clear points? Can you follow the flow of the presentation? Do they spend too long on one slide and not enough time somewhere else? Are there any holes or obvious questions they can address?

Delivery – Not everyone is a natural-born speaker. Look for opportunities to improve their delivery, and make recommendations based on how they perform the dry-run. If someone’s delivery seems off, you may want to ask them to continue practicing and schedule another dry-run before going live.

Visuals – To give your event a cohesive feel, try giving each speaker a slide deck template to use. Look for any style inconsistencies or visuals that could be improved during the dry-runs. (E.g., blurry photos, hard-to-read fonts, etc.) You should also check each speaker’s background to make sure the lighting is easy on the eyes, their microphone is clear, and their connection is stable. (For inspiration, check out some of the behind-the-scenes equipment MozCon speakers are using for their presentations this year. Très fancy!)

Technical Requirements – Do they need to play a video during their presentation? Is there a web link they want to show? Better to know about these ahead of time than to be surprised live on the day of the webinar.

You’ll also want to do a run-through with your host, and make sure they know what they’ll be saying before and after each presentation. Go over the pronunciation of each speaker’s name, and hold a mock Q&A session so they get a feel for how they’ll be able to interact with attendees.

7. Make Magic Happen on the Day

On the day of your webinar, you’ll want to go above and beyond to bring some of that in-person excitement to attendees. Here are a few of the things you can do to really put the “event” in your “virtual event.”

Make It Interactive

I love how MozCon is building in virtual networking time into the agenda and encouraging socializing online this year.

If you’re not planning to have any audience interaction in your webinar, then why not just play a recording? The whole reason you do it live is because you want people to interact and engage with each other.

This means doing more than just a 15-minute Q&A at the end of each presentation, though. Try incorporating live polls into your webinar to engage with attendees as they’re watching. Get people in the chat room talking by having pre-prepared conversation topics that relate back to the topics you’re covering. Think outside the typical mold of a webinar to get your audience engaged.

Make It Seamless

Use your webinar platform to create a seamless experience for attendees.

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” In a great webinar or online event, you don’t see all the work that’s going on behind the scenes. Try to make things as seamless as possible for attendees by paying close attention to what their experience looks and feels like.

Have a welcome message ready for each session, prep your host with some topics of conversation to fill time in between segments, and monitor for audience engagement in the chat and on social media. Depending on the size of your event, you’ll want at least two or three people working in the background to keep things running smoothly.

Make It Surprising

We go all out for in-person conferences. Why not treat your online events the same way?

Think about some of the most memorable moments you’ve had at conferences in the past. It’s usually the stuff that you’re not expecting that sticks out, even years later. A delightful curveball—like when there’s a lineup of over-caffeinated Unbouncers ready to high-five you as you walk into CTAConf.

Brainstorm some ways you can surprise attendees and speakers with swag, giveaways, games, or activities. It can be a great way to break up a busy day, and help you go beyond that regular old webinar experience.

8. Follow Through Post-Event

Thinkific created an online community after their virtual summit to continue the conversation (and keep leads engaged).

Now that your webinar is over, you can put your feet up on the desk and relax, right? No way—there’s still one more important step that would make you smack your forehead if you forgot.

Because you don’t want the experience to just be over and forgotten by everyone, follow up with attendees (and registrants who couldn’t make it) afterward to provide any relevant materials or webinar recordings. This will give you another opportunity to track who is engaged and interested in this content—and who might fit into an email nurture to eventually become a customer.

You might also want to consider creating a Facebook Group or a Slack Community Channel to keep the conversation alive between your speakers and attendees. That’s what Thinkific did after their Think in Color Online Summit—and they now have an additional channel that can reach over 1,700 members. (Check out the full customer story for more details on how they got those numbers.)

Oh, and don’t forget to follow up and thank your speakers too! They can provide valuable feedback on what went well, and what you can improve on for next time.

Your Next Webinar Has So Much Potential

You know what needs to happen next. You just gotta start working on bringing your great idea for a webinar into the real world. Get started today with some of our webinar landing page templates, or keep sharpening your skills with our article on webinar landing page best practices for 2020.

I’ll leave you with another nugget of wisdom from Charlene Ditch:

I’ve always built and designed events around the attendee experience, and moving to a virtual event is no different. Put the attendee first and the rest will fall into place.

from Digital https://unbounce.com/campaign-strategy/how-to-do-a-webinar/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

#digital marketing

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