Panther_99FS
Retired SOH Administrator
'Looks Like The 0-6 Bills Are Much Better Off Without "T.O"....'
Disclaimer: I'm not a "T.O." fan....
Disclaimer: I'm not a "T.O." fan....
-
Please see the most recent updates in the "Where did the .com name go?" thread. Posts number 16 and 17.
'Looks Like The 0-6 Bills Are Much Better Off Without "T.O"....'
- Thread starter Panther_99FS
- Start date
Roadburner440
Charter Member 2010
LOL. Is days like this I hate to admit I am a Bills fan. I am unsure about them losing T.O. was a good thing. At least he managed to keep his mouth closed while he was with us. I just wish we had other players that were decent enough to of been able to capitalize on his talents while he was with the team. We really need to just disband the whole team and start over again I think from the ground up. I just hope the Sabres are able to pull something off this year other than losing in the first round of the Stanley Cup so I have something in this world to hang onto. 
I'm a Bills victim, I mean fan. I thought they played a very good game today against a much stronger team. It was a big improvement. I also thought Baltimore got away with a couple of offensive pass interferences that weren't called, and a couple of bump and runs. That's not (exactly) sour grapes; IMO teams with a repuatation for victory usually get the benefit of the doubt on borderline calls. I like the Ravens, and also the Jets. IMO, if those teams' key players stay healthy they'll only get stronger and stronger for the next few seasons.
JAMES
JAMES
Roadburner440
Charter Member 2010
I know. I find myself sometimes screaming at the television cause they call every little thing it seems against Buffalo (no matter what sport).. I know last season in the NHL I was so mad cause one of the Bruins blatantly slashed/tripped one of our players and it wasn't called.. Then theirs would fall and we would get blammed for it. I suppose too it is all in the eye of the beholder. I know I wouldn't want the ref job. I imagine they get a lot of hate mail/calls from irate fans. That is just how it goes though.
I'm going to say two words that will resonate with any Western New Yorker:
NO GOAL!!!
JAMES
Roadburner440
Charter Member 2010
LOL... AHHHHHHHH!!! I was only a kid then, but remember my parents screaming at the television that day. Maybe that is where I got it from?
For those SOH members not from Western New York and who don't know what Roadburner and I are talking about, this is a picture from the 1999 Stanley Cup finals of the Dallas Star's Brett Hull preparing to "score" on Buffalo Sabres' goalie Brett Hull with his skate clearly in the crease before making contact with the puck, which at the time was illegal. The series was at 3-2 in favor of the Stars and this was the "goal" that eliminated the Sabres and awarded the Stars the Stanley Cup, though you'll never get any Western New Yorker to admit the Stars actually won the game. It's 2010 and you still see "No Goal" bumper stickers. Sabres fans have never forgotten.
JAMES
ATTN: Snuffy,
My regards to your father. Also, I decided to stop hating the Patriots last year. If this has made my life somewhat more difficult in WNY, it's a burden I'm willing to bear. I even had a post here defending Tom Brady.
JAMES
ATTN: Snuffy,
My regards to your father. Also, I decided to stop hating the Patriots last year. If this has made my life somewhat more difficult in WNY, it's a burden I'm willing to bear. I even had a post here defending Tom Brady.
Roadburner440
Charter Member 2010
I didn't know you were referencing the missed goal in the Stanley Cup.. I would of probably lost my mind last night ranting about that, LOL. I thought you meant the field goal that the Bills missed in one of their 4 straight super bowl runs. I cannot remember the kicker, but just remember that he missed the goal. That started their 4 straight super bowl loss streak, lol. Man that thing about the Stanley Cup still kills me, and then they wouldn't recind the trophy. Was just "oh well." At least Hasek went on to get his ring with Detroit though. Just had to wait longer for it.
The kicker you're thinking of is Scott Norwood. If you've ever seen Vincent Gallo's indie movie Buffalo 66, Gallo's character does a stretch in jail over a lost bet on that game, and ends up going on a mission to assassinate the kicker. The kicker is named "Wood" in the movie, but everyone here knew it was.
JAMES
Roadburner440
Charter Member 2010
Never knew they made a movie out of it. I was a kid when we went to the Super Bowls. I was in high school during the Stanley Cup though, and still have vivid memories of that night. I was so confident we were going to win after what seemed like never ending OT after OT. Then boom it happened. Was so mad (have a lot of other words for it, but none forum appropriate).. Then we haven't been back since till last year. The Bruins took care of that early on though.
Oh yes, although that Superbowl loss was merely the backdrop of the story. Bills fans didn't come off very well in Buffalo 66. Vince Gallo presented Bills fandom (at least within the family unit examined in his film) as a kind of social pathology. He comes back here at least once a year and says something really offensive to the locals. (For people who don't know and are interested, Vincent Gallo is originally from Buffalo.) Part of it, I believe, is his schtick, but I suspect Buffalo 66 is semi-autobiographical.
I watched Sabres/Bruins, and I do agree with you about the calls. I really do think the refs are more lenient with the large market franchises, but I also think the Bruins were just better that year. I thought Ryan Miller did a great job during the Olympics, but I wasn't exactly crushed when the USA lost. I'd have liked them to win, mind you, I just wasn't looking forward to the wave of depression coming down from Southern Ontario if Team Canada had lost. I've never been anywhere in the US where hockey impinges the national psyche the way it does in Canada. The only exception to that was when Tean USA beat the Soviets. No one expected that to happen. I know you're too young to remember personally, but the Reds were like this unstoppable war machine on ice, and Team USA were a bunch of college kids. They'd gotten spanked by the Soviets in an earlier exhibition match.
JAMES
Roadburner440
Charter Member 2010
I am a "Ruskophile" if you will, and have an interest in Soviet culture as a whole. While I didn't personally witness the cold war in action I can only imagine the tension that existed between us during that time period. Particularly that game. I am glad we won though. Both on the ice, and the psychological battlefield.
I guess I kind of came off as the Bruins shouldn't have won. Is not that they didn't deserve it. I think Chara got a way with a lot more than he should have though. He is a humongous man, and he just knocks people all over the ice. Only later in the series did I see the refs start calling him out on this (much to the Bruins dismay). Miller is also a sore subject to me. For as good of a goalie as he is. I can not figure out why he goes so far out in front of the goal which then allows the players to shoot the puck into the goal around him. There are so many easy shots that he gives up that way (more screaming at the tv moments, lol). If he would stay in his little blue square, and trapezoid I think we could of done a lot better. Granted we need to work overall on our teamwork on defense/offense. I think they did a lot better this year not trying to claim the show for themselves, and be a 1 man team. Which is probably why we made it to the Stanley Cup playoff's. I hope to be able to attend a game at least when I go home on leave this year. Knowing my luck it will be an away game.
I guess I kind of came off as the Bruins shouldn't have won. Is not that they didn't deserve it. I think Chara got a way with a lot more than he should have though. He is a humongous man, and he just knocks people all over the ice. Only later in the series did I see the refs start calling him out on this (much to the Bruins dismay). Miller is also a sore subject to me. For as good of a goalie as he is. I can not figure out why he goes so far out in front of the goal which then allows the players to shoot the puck into the goal around him. There are so many easy shots that he gives up that way (more screaming at the tv moments, lol). If he would stay in his little blue square, and trapezoid I think we could of done a lot better. Granted we need to work overall on our teamwork on defense/offense. I think they did a lot better this year not trying to claim the show for themselves, and be a 1 man team. Which is probably why we made it to the Stanley Cup playoff's. I hope to be able to attend a game at least when I go home on leave this year. Knowing my luck it will be an away game.
Oh yes, the Cold War. I was born during the Vietnam era, but there are many SOH members who could tell you more about it than I can. I don't remember personally ever being worried about being blown up in a nuclear exchange. (Incidentally, one of my cousins was a missleman.) I read George Orwell's 1984 and always thought that as in the book both sides understood that a full-on nuclear exchange would mean the end of their authority (never mind the earth). Maybe that's naive, but that's what I thought. Mostly I remember a lot of my male relatives being over in Asia. My father was in Japan. My uncle and several of my cousins were in Vietnam. National Security Council Document 68; if I were writing history curiculum for high school students, NSC 68 would be taught right alongside The Federalist Papers. I worked for a professor who had been to Moscow. His impression of the Soviet Union was that it was a mixed First/Third World country spending way more money than it had on weapons and it couldn't last. I think that was in the mid-1980s. He and his wife also managed to be in Israel for the 73 Yom Kippur war.
Anyway, yes, that victory over the Soviet team was a great moment. I could barely believe what I was seeing and hearing. I think more than anything it was that the Iran Hostage Crisis had dragged on for week after week with no end in sight and the country just needed some good news.
I didn't think you came off like the Bruins shouldn't have won. I agree with you COMPLETELY about the penalty calling.
If you're interested in Cold War era historical fiction, two books I recommend are The Autobiography of Joseph Stalin: A Novel, by Richard Laurie, and Norman Mailer's Harlot's Ghost, about the early CIA. The classic non-fiction book about the Soviet police state is probably still The Gulag Archipelago, by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn. This last however, is very dense, very heavy reading, and it's not the happiest tale in the world. Movies like Saw, have nothing on reality.
JAMES