As a Sabres fan, I don't care who we play. We'll whip anybody. But the best idea I have heard about remaking the NHL is a Playoff Draft.

This would save the NHL from the problem whereby the second best team in a conference is often seeded 4th because the three division winners are ranked 1-2-3 regardless of records. That means sometimes it is the the advantage of a team to lose down the stretch so that they can face the weaker #3 rather than the stronger #4 or #5.

For example, if the playoffs were held today, the Islanders would be seeded 3rd although by dint of their record, the should be at best 5th and possibly 6th.

So, the answer? Get rid of the divisions altogether. Take the best 8 teams in each conference and rather than having them play for seeding, have them play for the right to choose who they will play.

If the Sabres have the most points at the end of the season (and they will) they get to choose which of the other 7 playoff teams they want to play in the first round. The second best team gets to choose among the remaining 5 teams, and so on.

The in the next round, the process is repeated with the highest team choosing which of the three opponents it wants to play.

This would be genius. Think of the talk radio time that would be devoted to strategizing about this. think of the recriminations when things go wrong. it would also make the NHL a trendsetter by completely re-imagining how a playoff system works.

who's with me? let's start a campaign.

Say what you will about Paris Hilton, it is inappropriate even in jest to put a picture of a person with a shooting target superimposed. What would salon readers think if that were Hillary or Barrack or Jesse Jackson?

Disgusting.

It would seem the key problem here is immaturity (both the LW's BF & poor Alex). I know that when I was 18 or 19 and found out that a girlfriend was much more experienced sexually than I was, I was flooded with emotions that I couldn't understand. Trying to organize those emotions, I put them in the convenient box lying next to me labeled "social norms" and thought she was an irredeemable slut. Luckily this woman (and Alex, honestly, what grad student actually calls grown women "girls" anymore?) pointed out the complete baselessness and knee-jerk hypocrisy of my view. I've never made the mistake again.

Finally, a word for benighted Alex, no one is impressed with your being a grad student. Having once been a grad student and now being a professor who trains grad students, I can attest that there are a tremendous number of grad students (and professors, doctors, professionals as well) who complete fucking morons. We credentialize ourselves with our ideas, not our affiliations or a bibliography.

So, the BF & Alex have to grow up. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. There seem to be plenty of people in this world who never manage.

forget the end of western civilization arguments. what annoys me the most is how horrible basketball fights are. Horrible in the sense that a bunch of blindfolded 8 year old girls could connect more often and with greater accuracy than these players.

I used to think it was just that they had abnormally long arms. BUt increasingly, I think they are afraid to take a punch. What makes hockey fights (and any fight involving Arturo Gatti) so enthralling is that the puncher is frequently equally the punchee. I wish for once a basketball player would stand his ground and fight.

Honestly, aside from Kermit Washington connecting with the unsuspecting Rudy Tomjanovich, can anyone think of a decent basketball punch? I can't.

O'Donnell is a horror and a hypocrite. She continually lobbies against second amendment rights while enjoying the security provided by body guards carrying concealed weapons. I guess its okay to be protected if you're rich.

She toom KMart's -- at the time, the largest gun dealer in the country -- money while simultaneously ambushing Tom Selleck on live TV.

She is a horrible person and a moralizing hypocritical scold. Joan Walsh is no better.

It is this sort of ideological inconsistency which makes the left so ineffective.