The Oilers pipeline wasn’t working in the fall of 2017. Elliotte Friedman: The first is unhappiness with the way players are developing at AHL Bakersfield. I did not see Ziyat Paigin myself, but there is disappointment that he has asked to go back to Russia, especially after a summer where he stayed to train in Edmonton. Rightly or wrongly, there is a feeling too many of their prospects are not panning out there. (Sportsnet.ca)
THE ATHLETIC!
The Athletic Edmonton features a fabulous cluster of stories (some linked below, some on the site). Great perspective from a ridiculous group of writers and analysts. Proud to be part of The Athletic, check it out here.
- New Lowetide: Dave Tippett deploys unproven talent expertly in first Oilers season
- New Lowetide, Daniel Nugent-Bowman and Jonathan Willis: Oilers ABC: Picking the best players in franchise history, from Anderson to Zuke
- Jonathan Willis: If the Oilers need to clear money with a buyout, they have one real option
- Daniel Nugent-Bowman: The 5 games that define Leon Draisaitl’s Hart Trophy-worthy season
- Lowetide: Final Oilers report cards: Second-half impact defines a successful season
- Jonathan Willis: Does Filip Berglund’s new SHL contract mean he’s done with the Oilers?
- Daniel Nugent-Bowman: Evolution of a star: Why Leon Draisaitl was our Hart pick
- Lowetide: Oilers get good news from the farm as second-half performances spike
- Lowetide: Should Oilers prospect Philip Broberg play in North America next year?
- Daniel Nugent-Bowman and Jonathan Willis: Which former Oiler has the best argument to have his jersey number retired?
- Lowetide: Which Oilers veterans are in roster peril?
- Jonathan Willis: How good is Anton Slepyshev and what will an NHL return mean for the Oilers?
- New Lowetide: Oilers’ challenge could be finding relief with a low cap ceiling
2017-18
AHL rookies included Ethan Bear (37, 6-12-18), Caleb Jones (58, 2-15-17), Joe Gambardella (50, 13-6-19). As of now, the three men have combined to play 164 NHL games.
NHL rookies included Pontus Aberg, Bear, Kailer Yamamoto, Keegan Lowe, Nathan Walker but none made a difference.
2018-19
AHL rookies included Tyler Benson (68, 15-51-66), Cooper Marody (58, 19-45-64), Kailer Yamamoto (27, 10-8-18), Shane Starrett (42, 2.33, .918). These man have played a combined 70 NHL games.
NHL rookies: Caleb Jones, Yamamoto, Colby Cave, Josh Currie and Joe Gambardella but once again no one had a real impact.
2019-20
AHL rookies included Evan Bouchard (54, 7-29-36), Ryan McLeod (56, 5-18-23), Kirill Maksimov (53, 5-8-13), Dmitri Samorukov (47, 2-8-10), Stuart Skinner (41, 3.31, .892). These men have played seven NHL games.
NHL rookies and arrivals included Kailer Yamamoto (27, 11-15-26), Ethan Bear (71, 5-16-21), Caleb Jones (43, 4-5-9). Joel Persson (since traded), Benson and William Lagesson played as well. This is a good to very good rookie crop.
The AHL rookies in 2017-18 (Bear, Jones) and 2018-19 (Yamamoto) landed in the NHL in 2019-20. If Jay Woodcroft’s magic continues, we should see Evan Bouchard and Tyler Benson in Edmonton this coming season. Perhaps Dmitri Samorukov, Ryan McLeod and others the following season.
This is what a working pipeline looks like. Jesse Puljujarvi missed it be so very little but missed it all the same.
WOODCROFT
In his first Bakersfield season, he had nine rookies and all nine had a positive story to tell about their game. From Marody and Benson (who were stellar) to Hebig, Yamamoto, Day, Starrett, Wells, Skinner and Vesel, each found an area of the game in which they could flourish. Impressive.
Men in their entry deals (who were not rookies) who were matriculating included prospect blue Ethan Bear, Caleb Jones and William Lagesson.
If we give Woodcroft some credit for Bear, Yamamoto and Jones, and then Bouchard and Benson pop in 2020-21, I think we can conclude the Oilers will have the first established pipeline since the franchise handed the Roadrunners back to the AHL. That’s a long, long time. In my opinion, this coming season, getting Benson and Bouchard to the show and seeing success, is vital. An actual pipeline would represent the ability to have plug and play options in winter and to avoid free agency in summer. Music!
Rasanen moved to the wing during this season just completed, and that impacts his value. If the Oilers still see him as a center, then signing him should be a priority. His NHLE, especially considering his age (22), speed (average) and apparent desire to go home are probably factors in signing him or letting him go. The deadline to sign is August 15, 2021. I don’t believe that changes with his decision to leave college, but this is the NHL so the magic 8-ball may give us different information.
LOWDOWN WITH LOWETIDE
It’s Friday, weekend is on the way! We get started at 10, TSN1260. Scheduled to appear: Steve Lansky from Big Mouth Sports, we’ll chat about some history (1979 the NHL-WHA agreed to merge, Gretzky scored 200 points in a season for the first time in ’81-82. Plus NHL asking teams to check on availability for August games. Matthew Iwanyk will talk NFL draft, MLB season and the flood of CFL Mock drafts we’re seeing this week. 10-1260 text, @Lowetide on twitter. See you on the radio!
So how is Canada doing any bettter in an ABSOLUTE sense. Our federal government has similarly wasted six weeks from late January to early March.
Look at David Staples timeline of the crisis in the Edmonton Journal. Look at what our federal government was saying and doing every step of the way. Not MATERIALLY different.
https://tinyurl.com/wjc53g7
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/27/a-letter-to-the-uk-from-italy-this-is-what-we-know-about-your-future
A letter to the UK from Italy: this is what we know about your future
The acclaimed Italian novelist Francesca Melandri, who has been under lockdown in Rome for almost three weeks due to the Covid-19 outbreak, has written a letter to fellow Europeans “from your future”, laying out the range of emotions people are likely to go through over the coming weeks.
I am writing to you from Italy, which means I am writing from your future. We are now where you will be in a few days. The epidemic’s charts show us all entwined in a parallel dance.
We are but a few steps ahead of you in the path of time, just like Wuhan was a few weeks ahead of us. We watch you as you behave just as we did. You hold the same arguments we did until a short time ago, between those who still say “it’s only a flu, why all the fuss?” and those who have already understood.
As we watch you from here, from your future, we know that many of you, as you were told to lock yourselves up into your homes, quoted Orwell, some even Hobbes. But soon you’ll be too busy for that.
First of all, you’ll eat. Not just because it will be one of the few last things that you can still do.
You’ll find dozens of social networking groups with tutorials on how to spend your free time in fruitful ways. You will join them all, then ignore them completely after a few days.
You’ll pull apocalyptic literature out of your bookshelves, but will soon find you don’t really feel like reading any of it.
You’ll eat again. You will not sleep well. You will ask yourselves what is happening to democracy.
You’ll have an unstoppable online social life – on Messenger, WhatsApp, Skype, Zoom…
You will miss your adult children like you never have before; the realisation that you have no idea when you will ever see them again will hit you like a punch in the chest.
Old resentments and falling-outs will seem irrelevant. You will call people you had sworn never to talk to ever again, so as to ask them: “How are you doing?” Many women will be beaten in their homes.
You will wonder what is happening to all those who can’t stay home because they don’t have one. You will feel vulnerable when going out shopping in the deserted streets, especially if you are a woman. You will ask yourselves if this is how societies collapse. Does it really happen so fast? You’ll block out these thoughts and when you get back home you’ll eat again.
You will put on weight. You’ll look for online fitness training.
You’ll laugh. You’ll laugh a lot. You’ll flaunt a gallows humour you never had before. Even people who’ve always taken everything dead seriously will contemplate the absurdity of life, of the universe and of it all.
You will make appointments in the supermarket queues with your friends and lovers, so as to briefly see them in person, all the while abiding by the social distancing rules.
You will count all the things you do not need.
The true nature of the people around you will be revealed with total clarity. You will have confirmations and surprises.
Literati who had been omnipresent in the news will disappear, their opinions suddenly irrelevant; some will take refuge in rationalisations which will be so totally lacking in empathy that people will stop listening to them. People whom you had overlooked, instead, will turn out to be reassuring, generous, reliable, pragmatic and clairvoyant.
Those who invite you to see all this mess as an opportunity for planetary renewal will help you to put things in a larger perspective. You will also find them terribly annoying: nice, the planet is breathing better because of the halved CO2 emissions, but how will you pay your bills next month?
You will not understand if witnessing the birth of a new world is more a grandiose or a miserable affair.
You will play music from your windows and lawns. When you saw us singing opera from our balconies, you thought “ah, those Italians”. But we know you will sing uplifting songs to each other too. And when you blast I Will Survive from your windows, we’ll watch you and nod just like the people of Wuhan, who sung from their windows in February, nodded while watching us.
Many of you will fall asleep vowing that the very first thing you’ll do as soon as lockdown is over is file for divorce.
Many children will be conceived.
Your children will be schooled online. They’ll be horrible nuisances; they’ll give you joy.
Elderly people will disobey you like rowdy teenagers: you’ll have to fight with them in order to forbid them from going out, to get infected and die.
You will try not to think about the lonely deaths inside the ICU.
You’ll want to cover with rose petals all medical workers’ steps.
You will be told that society is united in a communal effort, that you are all in the same boat. It will be true. This experience will change for good how you perceive yourself as an individual part of a larger whole.
Class, however, will make all the difference. Being locked up in a house with a pretty garden or in an overcrowded housing project will not be the same. Nor is being able to keep on working from home or seeing your job disappear. That boat in which you’ll be sailing in order to defeat the epidemic will not look the same to everyone nor is it actually the same for everyone: it never was.
At some point, you will realise it’s tough. You will be afraid. You will share your fear with your dear ones, or you will keep it to yourselves so as not to burden them with it too.
You will eat again.
We’re in Italy, and this is what we know about your future. But it’s just small-scale fortune-telling. We are very low-key seers.
If we turn our gaze to the more distant future, the future which is unknown both to you and to us too, we can only tell you this: when all of this is over, the world won’t be the same.
© Francesca Melandri 2020
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/28/trump-coronavirus-politics-us-health-disaster
The missing six weeks: how Trump failed the biggest test of his life
When the definitive history of the coronavirus pandemic is written, the date 20 January 2020 is certain to feature prominently. It was on that day that a 35-year-old man in Washington state, recently returned from visiting family in Wuhan in China, became the first person in the US to be diagnosed with the virus.
On the very same day, 5,000 miles away in Asia, the first confirmed case of Covid-19 was reported in South Korea. The confluence was striking, but there the similarities ended.
In the two months since that fateful day, the responses to coronavirus displayed by the US and South Korea have been polar opposites.
One country acted swiftly and aggressively to detect and isolate the virus, and by doing so has largely contained the crisis. The other country dithered and procrastinated, became mired in chaos and confusion, was distracted by the individual whims of its leader, and is now confronted by a health emergency of daunting proportions.
Within a week of its first confirmed case, South Korea’s disease control agency had summoned 20 private companies to the medical equivalent of a war-planning summit and told them to develop a test for the virus at lightning speed. A week after that, the first diagnostic test was approved and went into battle, identifying infected individuals who could then be quarantined to halt the advance of the disease.
Some 357,896 tests later, the country has more or less won the coronavirus war. On Friday only 91 new cases were reported in a country of more than 50 million.
The US response tells a different story. Two days after the first diagnosis in Washington state, Donald Trump went on air on CNBC and bragged: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming from China. It’s going to be just fine.”
‘A fiasco of incredible proportions’
A week after that, the Wall Street Journal published an opinion article by two former top health policy officials within the Trump administration under the headline Act Now to Prevent an American Epidemic. Luciana Borio and Scott Gottlieb laid out a menu of what had to be done instantly to avert a massive health disaster.
Top of their to-do list: work with private industry to develop an “easy-to-use, rapid diagnostic test” – in other words, just what South Korea was doing.
It was not until 29 February, more than a month after the Journal article and almost six weeks after the first case of coronavirus was confirmed in the country that the Trump administration put that advice into practice. Laboratories and hospitals would finally be allowed to conduct their own Covid-19 tests to speed up the process.
Today, 86,012 cases have been confirmed in the US, pushing the nation to the top of the world’s coronavirus league table
Those missing four to six weeks are likely to go down in the definitive history as a cautionary tale of the potentially devastating consequences of failed political leadership. Today, 86,012 cases have been confirmed across the US, pushing the nation to the top of the world’s coronavirus league table – above even China.
Fragile doesn’t mean he is unskilled, not a good or better player. Fragile means broken or damaged. I’m using in the context he is a soft player easily damaged which equals injury.
What would it take to get Scott Laughton out of Philly?
He takes the 4th most FOs on The Flyers… He’s 60.2 percent in the Dzone, and 62.5 percent on the PK. He was on pace for a 16-18-33 type season over 82 games played.
He turns 26 on May 30, is 6′ 01″ 190lbs, has a motor that doesn’t quit when on the ice, and his favourite player to get under-the-skin-of is Brady Tkachuk… we can offer him a better Turtle target.
Was QO’ed by Philly last summer at a cap hit of $2.3M. The contract has one more year to run. Philly had to use LTIR this past year to remain cap compliant, but have no major signings this summer. That said, they will need to divest salary if they want to play in the UFA market. They have some older players on expiring contracts that will need to be replaced.
They need RD and scoring wingers. Not sure there’s a match, but he’s a player I would take a run at. He’s pretty much a 4C there and making over $2M a year. Find a way.
This is definitely true, to an extent.
Canada absolutely does appear to be doing a better job than the US. But the Canadian case and death numbers need to be multiplied by 10 for a fair comparison. Better for sure, but not so much better that Canada should be feeling really good about itself. (I’m a Canadian living in the US so the we/they feels weird right now).
Anyway, I strongly endorse Godot’s don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched sentiment.
That’s some seriously beautiful hockey. Thanks!
I really doubt the Stars would trade Heiskanen for Petterssen. They gush over this kid in Dallas. Rating the best player in that draft is much more debatable than you think.
The NHL is driven by gate revenue and can’t get by on empty stadiums like the NBA could potentially.
At this point, both Canada and the United States are failing to contain CoVid-19. One shouldn’t count chickens before they hatch. Success against the virus is not measured relatively.
Your supposition is entirely hypothetical at this point.
Canada’s case curves look nothing like Taiwan or Singapore.
https://www.reuters.com/article/basketball-nba-resume-nofans-coronavirus-idUSKBN21E3CO?taid=5e7eaeee5ef3770001784f8d
If the NBA regular season resumes, it is almost “100 percent” the games will be played without fans present, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst reported Friday.
Windhorst said the NBA will very likely mimic the plan being used in China for a potential end to the current hiatus, which began March 12. In China, ground zero for the coronavirus in recent weeks, the plan for professional basketball to resume includes keeping players in a centralized, isolated location or shared hotel to limit the chance they come in contact with any infected person.
“If LeBron James wants to play for a championship this year he is going to have to reset his expectations,” Windhorst said. “That’s what China is looking at — clustering teams in a bubble where they can be protected. LeBron is the voice of the rest of the league. He’s speaking with emotion the way he sees it.
“The reality is, if the NBA comes back, at least in the short term, it’s going to be in empty arenas or empty aircraft hangars where they just put down a court. … That’s something players are going to have to start getting their minds around.”
***
So if Canada can contain the coronavirus at a much faster pace than the US… (highly likely) then Canada hosting all the NHL playoff teams doesn’t seem like much of a stretch.
The Quebec City hosted Lightning versus the St. John’s Bruins in the east with the Saskatoon Blues taking on the Edmonton Oilers in the west. A little bit of karma in action there since the Blues almost moved to Saskatchewan
I bet they could hold the games in arenas and have one paying customer per section. The cost of that ticket would be $100,000.
Oh yah, beer and hotdog $10,000.
Think of all the fun Canada could have hosting the playoffs!
The Hamilton Predators? Take that Balsille!
The Ottawa Capitals. The Rimouski Penguins.The Fredricton Flyers. The Whistler Avalanche (though playing in Vancouver). The Regina Stars…
The Stanley Cup played in Toronto as a “neutral site” to maximize gate revenues
My post was tongue in cheek as noone thinks that Yamamoto is better than Pettersson and noone argued that.
As an aside, what’s the sample size that you base your opinion that Rafferty is more valuable than each of Bouchard, Bear and Klefbom?
Just wanted to thank you for that. Incredible skill and chemistry with that line.
Borgan Rafferty shits on small sample sizes!
Much of this is fiction. The health App is not mandatory, it is more a convenience if you are travelling from one region to another, where you will have to get your temperature taken to continue your travels. If you have the App it serves as proof that you are healthy.
No idea about cell phones, unless they are linked to deaths by natural causes (old age) there is a massive elderly population in China and if my math is correct, there are 100,000,000+ deaths in China every year, that could explain some of this, along with the number of people including students and foreigners/companies who left China.
There are far too many cell phones (cameras) and many people know how to use VPN to get around Gov’t censures that if there was that number of people missing/dying, it would have leaked out by now.
As well, there are massive numbers of Chinese migrant workers (who have 2 cellphones) and the story does allude to this as well.
For the most part China is no different than here, but there a few pockets of places where sketchy stuff goes on, but not a lot of that takes place in the larger centers, like Wuhan.
Speaking of Wuhan, travel there is still restricted currently, but it is supposed to be relaxed on 8 April (not clear what that will look like yet).
Small sample sizes are such a crutch.
Well that was a strawman argument if I’ve ever seen one….
Of note, Yamamoto, 3rd in the NHL among forwards in P/60, Pettersson 21st.
Pettersson would definitely be 1st-3rd in a re-draft.
Yamamoto would move up to around 10th or so I would think.
The argument is over..
And was it worth it?
Fragile Pettersson, who was drafted in the same draft as Yamamoto, has scored 132 points in 139 GP.
Tiny Kailer has scored 31 points in 53GP.
In a re-draft, one of these players would be selected first overall and the other wouldn’t.
Well that for sure is an argument worth winning.
Please no politics, you can start your own blog for that purpose. Please and thanks.
Holy F Wilde! Thank you for putting this together. What a collective display of skills (each with different strengths), drive and vision. Wow. I gotta say it is so nice to see Nuge with decent players for once, instead of being the only one on a line with skill and responsibility. Beautiful hockey. What a handful they will be for the foreseeable future.
yw
Not at all.
Alberta and U.S. producers could pro-actively fight back against the Saudi/Russian oil war.
Not true.
There are massive salt caverns in Eastern Alberta that could be used for storing oil.
https://canada.constructconnect.com/joc/news/technology/2015/01/salt-caverns-in-eastern-alberta-created-to-store-energy-1005431w
http://www.pembina.com/Pembina/media/Pembina/PDFs/Making%20Connections%20Newsletters/2013-Spring-Making-Connections-Newsletter.pdf
The Oilers completed more passes on that first goal than they did in the entire 07-08 season.
It’s a travesty this only has 10 views.
Pettersson is a fragile player.
David Staples gives a timeline summary of the COVID-19 crisis in Canada in today’s Journal.
https://tinyurl.com/wjc53g7
Okay, so ignoring the impossible storage issue, a “slight premium” of 100 percent.
I’m scared to ask how big not “too big a risk” is.
The worst deflationary period the world has seen since The Great Depression has started. If the CBs lose what little control they have left, or if Gov’ts prove too corrupt to deal with this rightly (and judging by the US stimulus bill, they are), it will be worse than the GD.
There’s more risk of $10/bbl oil than you think. That’s why we over here on the Western side of the blue marble are discussing huge tariffs, which will be justified to the WTO by accusations of “predatory dumping” against the Sauds and Russkies.
______
(There’s also the huge question of whether cheap oil is more of a net benefit to society than expensive oil. Who hasn’t smiled filling the tank this past week? It would be a huge boost to businesses starting up after Covid to be facing much lower energy costs.
Not to mention all the green energy projects that are suddenly even more economically unviable.
It’s a tangled up thing.)
There is no available Canadian storage.
Even if there were, it wouldn’t work. The pandemic has killed demand, and the Russians and Saudi’s and the Americans are flooding the market.
The Canadian price could go to zero unless Canada, the US, and Mexico, NAFTA, places tariffs on imported oil
The Americans might be willing to put a floating tariff on non-NAFTA oil to the breakeven price of the Permian plus $10.
Kenney was hinting that there was a joint N. American plan coming in today’s presser. Actually, it sounded like a Western Hemisphere plan, because he said “South America” a couple of times,
satire?
Hi folks yesterday I spent the morning grabbing the tape of all 28 Nugent-Hopkins – Draisaitl – Yamamoto line goals and putting them in a thread on Twitter, managed to fit them into better-than-Twitter quality streamable to share so here’s that
https://streamable.com/75uil
That’s beautiful, thanks man..goil
Yamamoto can eat my butt.
How about you make a fancy video thing of all Elias Pettersson’s goals this season? He is a real hockey player.
Fantastic! I wish I knew how to do this…..
I don’t think paying $10/barrel would be too big a risk.
How much would the “slight premium” be? A dollar over spot? Two dollars (ie. a “slight premium” of 40 percent)? I doubt this ($7/bbl) would be enough for the industry.
Severe Outcomes Among Patients with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) —
United States, February 12–March 16, 2020
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6912e2-H.pdf
The table at the end is worth looking at.
Every oil tanker in the world will be filled and then remain anchored.
A chilling story about 21 million cell phone accounts have disappeared in China.
https://www.ibtimes.sg/china-hiding-covid-19-death-toll-21-million-cell-phones-disappeared-why-41580
I’m looking at electric hair clippers on Amazon. I think I may buy one and go with a brush cut look for the pandemic.
This guy is using anonymous cellphone location data from X-data and a visualization platform called Tectonix to show where cellphones have travelled since Spring Break, and where Manhattan phones have travelled since the crisis hit NYC…
Two very short, but cool and scary, videos found here:
https://twitter.com/MikaelThalen
The Alberta government should be buying oil at a slight premium and storing it (If storage is available) and selling it when prices rebound.
They could make a fortune.
Storage is the problem HH.
Well, the joy of playoff bearding has been sheared from our lives…
Should we grow crisis beards in support of our health care teams who are in the playoff of their lives?
Whaddyathink?
Updated Alberta numbers:
56 new cases. 542 total positive tests. 2 fatalities. 23 presently hospitalized. 10 in ICU.
Only been testing about a 1000 per week this week. Expect to be back at 2000 today, 3000 on the weekend.
Saw that earlier today. Wild scene. No idea if it will spread or not but things have got to be tense.
Things China Doesn’t Want You To Know
@TruthAbtChina 8h
SUMMARY:
1. Lockdown in Hubei was lifted 2 days ago and people wanted to go back to work in Jiangxi. Jiangxi police would not let them in. People from Hubei got mad.
2. Jiangxi police invaded Hubei police jurisdiction, causing fights between the police.
3. Riots ensued.
Apparently a police car was overturned and a Jiangxi officer was beaten with his own riot shield. Some videos are still up at the above Twitter address, although the CCP has been doing their best to take them down.
I am 100% on board with putting the kybosh on this season if they can’t get it “done” with integrity by mid to late July but my premise is different than yours.
At this point, I agree with league and their main objective – ensuring a full and normal 2020/21 is primary as opposed to trying to finish off this year. Of course, both would be ideal but its not looking like that is possible.
Personally, given this season is already “effed up”, to the extent possible, I’d prefer a normal 2020/21 season or else we are looking at 2 “effed up” seasons in a row.
—————
I LOVE summer.
Summer is so much better than winter and the only good thing about winter is hockey (and, well, making a point of heading to warm places like South America and certain Asian/African destinations).
The only thing that would make summer better – hockey!
Yup, there is tons to do outside during the summer but I will always find time to fit the Oilers in and a game is 2.5 hours (subject to amazing entertaining OT).
I’d take hockey 12 months a year if practicle. The days are super long in this part of the world – lots of time to fit in the Oilers.
summer? in Edmonton? When is that?
Draft is in the 4th week of June, not July – free agency is the first week of July.
The won’t play passed the end of July – of that I’m fairly confidant given the primary objective of a full and “normal” 2020/21 season (which I’m not even sure is do-able to start with).
Thank god for the concept of hedging and futures – should protect most mid-cap and juniors for a couple of quarters.
Of course, the majors don’t hedge….
no politics please. And thanks.
As they should. It isn’t like Seattle didn’t pay full retail for the franchise.
Hopefully they still have the money to pay for it after what is happening.
The NHL has said that, essentially, they will mirror what was done for Vegas.
Losing Starrett so early in the season for term was a killer – by the time he was actually healthy, the team itself was absolutely gutted.
I honestly can’t figure out if the responses were actually truthful or posted to encite (which I believe is the definition of a troll – a word I generally don’t use).
I said in the last thread, I think the comments were intended to raise morale on the blog. It was a classy move by DSF. It was an outlandish claim meant to distract us all from the impending global depression.