The Sultan of Swank

Montreal and Boston played an awesome game. The first period was boring as hell but Montreal really turned it up in the second half of the game. Latendresse put in another monster performance, but Thomas and Halak... well more Thomas than Halak because the Montreal D for once was actually very very effective, but Thomas made some crazy saves. Kovalev though. He had 5 quality scoring chances, 2 on open nets and one breakaway and he just couldn't do it. At 4.5 million a year, and the overrated Latendresse has a higher goal production than you, you're just not useful. Looking at the situation now, I could see Bob re-signing Bonk and Johnson, then there's Markov who I hope re-signs, but between the three of them, there's going to be between 8 and 10 million in salary. Which leaves Souray on the outside as he's going to command a huge salary. Now Abby is obviously gone with Price comming up and Halak *hopefully* improving into a consistant goalie as in the 9 games he played he won his first 3, albeit with shakey performances, dropped 4 but played his last 3 rather well, his last two incredibly well. So It could be Huet and Price sharing the load next season, if Huet can recover back to the form he had Sept through Dec. this year. Obviously there's going to be a huge effort to drop Samsonov. He's not playing again this season after he said he regretted signing with the Canadiens, Carbo flipped a shit and he's done. Problem being he's got 3.5 million left on his contract for next season. So Montreal will have to settle for a low draft pick(s) or a low level prospect for Samsonov as he has no trade value, but buying out his contract would still keep his salary on us(I Believe, correct if wrong please). This still leaves Kovalev, while his contract isn't up for another year or two, at the price he commands, he really doesn't produce. Now while Montreal is a low scoring team to begin with, at least our only other 4 million dollar player is the captain. If he were to get traded in the offseason I wouldn't be too unhappy, we would have the potential to get something decent in return. As far as playoff hopes go. I say Montreal has to win 6 of their remaining games to get in. 5 for a possibility of holding onto 8th if the cards fall into place. But I figure 6 wins in their last 8? games will do it, too bad it won't happen in all probability and that the Isles have 2 games at hand. Toronto has one, but I think that Montreal can honestly play better towards the end than the Leafs. So whatever happens to Montreal if they make the playoffs or not, I think it's going to be a re-building off-season and year next season. The younger guys are starting to show up to play(Latendresse has played very well in his last 10-15 games) Kostitsyn now has incredible vision and great hockey sense, he's going to be a great player. Lapierre is hard working, even if he's never going to be more than a shit disturber. Plekanec, Higgins and Ryder all have the ability to score 30 goals(Ryder's already proved that) it's a matter of confidence for them. But whatever happens, this will always be a year where fans of all teams look back at Montreal as an example of a total and complete meltdown. You don't go from 4th to 11th because you're in a bad stretch, it's because your team isn't as good as you thought they were. It could be a combination of any host of things, but Montreal went from 5 points behind Buffalo and 2nd overall in the east to battling with Toronto and New York(x2) for the final playoff spot. I think we dropped because we were simply over-achieving, luck, other team ineptitude but a solidly great Powerplay through the first half of the season propelled us.

I have an idea. You play as Montreal. I'll try as Toronto.

Toronto doesn't even deserve the one point they salvaged tonight. The second half of the game was ridiculous. So many blatant missed calls against the Leafs. And on their second goal, as they went into the Montreal zone, they had 6 players on the ice. The two changing off wern't even within 10 feet of the bench when Kubina had jumped onto the ice. RDS flipped a shit over the fact that nobody called the too many men. There was also all the holding and clutching and hooking Toronto did in their own zone whenever Montreal set up. I knew that they were an undisciplined team when they get behind, they take a lot of penalties for no reason other than the fact that they're frustrated because of it, but Jesus, you've gotta be blind to miss those calls. I did love how Tucker must have gotten run over at least 7 times in the game, a good 3 by Bouillon who's still teaching him the lesson not to throw dirty hits. I was suprised though, Sundin actually got called for I believe 2 penalties, usually the refs are so far up his ass their noses are covered in shit. Although the punch to the mask he gave Halak was yet another blatant missed call, but then again, Toronto did that a lot at faceoffs where the winger would just facewash a Hab. Also, hitting a player who doesn't have the puck and is no longer part of the play is usually Interference no? Because it seemed like the slow lumbering Toronto blue line was going after players who didn't have or just have the puck. But I did enjoy the hitting parade from both sides. I'd say the big hits were dealt more by the Habs, but the Leafs probably had the Biggest hit. Halak stones Tucker for the win, magnifique. Montreal hates that prick. At least Lapierre will drop 'em, Tucker's just a whiney shit-disturber. At least the other players in the league who do that as their job like Ruttu, Laraque and Avery... well Avery is a bad example, but at least they don't whine when someone pushes them around. Fun game to watch, but should have ended 2-1 in regulation, if not a larger lead for Montreal based on the penalties Toronto should have taken.

Montreal lost a game they really needed to win. It's too bad because the score really doesn't reflect the actual game. Montreal dominated the second half of the first and all of the second period making it a 3-3 game early in the third, but two really quick goals by the Penguins put us away.

Have you tried allying with a country between Austria and Burgundy? If they accept it, Austria and Burgundy will either focus their attack on your ally because they're closer, or split up their forces to attack the both of you making it easier to manage them. I've given up on the idea of war in Europe. It's just too costly for me, the land isn't very valueable and I can just roam the colonies building my treasury sky high, which in turn allows me to construct a massive navy and a formidable land force which can be used in case someone in Europe declares war on me. Castille tried it with me. They made some territory gains in a war with the French. They decided to try to attack me. I shored up defense on my bordering territories, but blokaded all of their ports on their main land. I must have captured about 10 ships from them. It also allowed for me to rape their colonies, as I occupied all the ones I knew about doubling my South American and Carribbean territory. With the war score so high in my favour they gave up all their colonies(6 territories) and Anduluca(I believe) which was a center of trade in exchange for peace. I feel sort of bad slaughtering the Indians, I'm going to work my way down to the Inca Nation soon enough. In about 15 years the rest of the world will see the territories I've uncovered so the question for me is do I focus that time settling the territories. I've got about 50-60% of them in my control right now. Or so I blaze down the America's to attack the apparently quite strong Inca's.

So the Portugese Navy rides high. Or, sails for that matter. I completed my long but fruitful 10 year mission. Constructing 15 Carracks, and 10 Cogs. I now have a North Atlantic Armada to defend my territory. I'm looking for a reason to declare war on the Cherokee but I can't seem to find one.

The first few games I played I was just swamped. If you wikipedia EU3 and go to the like for the EU3 wiki page there's all sorts of FAQ's and country guides etc. I've just conquered the Creek and the trade it's generating is huge, I'm getting about 2.5 ducats per month right now, so I'm rebuilding my Navy which was lost in the high-sea's while searching for the new world. I'll have 4 carracks by year's end to go with the Galley's and Cog's. Actually what do the Galley's do? I've colonized parts of South America, but they're not turning into cities, one has a population of 700 so soon enough I suppose. The Creek let me annex them so now I'm turning towards the Mohawks. How do I see my bad boy points?

I didn't even know that Israel had a Soccer team, let alone one they'd be willing to have play against England in a game.

yeah, alright, then Abandonia.org should have it or the-underdogs.com.

I'm running it smoothly on a 1.46 Ghz processor, 256 MB of RAM and a recently upgraded video card of 256MB. The only times it gives me trouble are on initial start up as it takes several minutes to load and when it auto saves, but besides that I haven't had it chop up on me or not run very well. Well your new job should carry it no? Heh, I bitchslapped the English out of my house. I had basically done nothing in Europe but sign an alliance with Castille. I am Portugal, so I had a safe buffer zone between me and the rest of the world. I got the Quest For New World idea and set off colonizing the Carribean Islands before landing in Florida and working up the coast slaughtering any injun that got in my way. The English I discovered, had a foothold in Quebec and the New England area. So I used my mighty Portugese navy to blockade their ports while my Cannons went to town on the English. I captured about 20 ships from the English. Now I've got the problem of an old world war that's about to come to my doorstep. I've got an armada in Portugese waters and some pretty good land defense, so I'm thinking I might just blokade all of their ports in England and stop them from being able to leave their island until we can negociate peace.

It's a presidential simulation game. You run EVERY aspect of the American political landscape from budgets to cultural exchanges to War. It's an incredibly indepth game and no it does not cost money as it is considered to be abandonware. I'm not sure if forum rules permit me to link you to a site where you could download it, but it's not hard to find. Also this belongs in entertainment. Also, if you're thinking of running a diary with the program, I believe it's been tried once or twice on here, I know that myself and Apsham have thrown around the idea trying to find the best way to go about doing it but I haven't found any success though... but I'm also not incredibly creative.

Does the game eveuntually turn into giant blob wars?

I didn't see a thread for it on the first two pages, but I recently got the game and damn do I find it hard. I love the game, but I'm having a lot of trouble balancing everything. I tried a couple of games as Burgendy but got swallowed up by France and Austria. I'm having a lot more sucess with Portugal, colonizing the islands and such.

Yeah I didn't see them moving to Canada as a real opportunity, and certainly not a third team in the Southern Ontario area. I'm in favour of moving the league down to 26 teams or so.

Pittsburgh was doing the same thing, if not worse in the 80's, Mario saved the franchise. Crosby is doing the same thing now, if you need a superstar to save your franchise, you're not a hockey city. Also, Kostitsyn's assist on the last Habs goal, a work of art.

This is the only time I'm going to say this, but Go Habs as well as Go Leafs. I want Both Canadian teams to make it into the Playoffs. While I'll always dislike the toronto media and fanbase for being so obnoxious, I'd rather see Toronto in than some bumfuck team like Carolina, or Both New York franchises.

even stronger than skintanium armour?

Right, so I've been feeling a little stressed out lately. I just finished my spring break, and going back to school means that I have to go back to struggling to succeed. I had to read a book by tomorrow for my English class, I only managed to buy the book today around 5:30 or so, but I sat down around 7pm and while I love reading, I really wasn't feeling like reading at the moment. Well I finished the book a few minutes ago, about 2 and a half hours after I started and to be honest. It was the best thing for me. I'm wondering if anyone else has read the book, it has a plot too fantastic to explain, and too absurd to be taken seriously, but the absolute wonder and adventure of the book was a wonderful tale of transformation, growth, independance and love. It really did the trick in making me not so worried about what's going on right now. I mean, beyond school, and the fact that I'll soon have no place to live as we have no more money. The book really made me feel like a child again, the incredible story telling of Salman Rushdie was spot on as far as seeing the world through the eyes of a child, with the wit of an old man. It almost felt that rather than reading I was being told the story to me by my father like when I was young. It was really a fantastic book. Anybody else read it?

I'd make, making movies about killing persians a sport so I could pimp my man crush on Gerard Butler

sort of, in a weird he loves Chicago kind of way, then I realized I was thinking about reliable old lari.

Well there's some accuarcies. The names are correct... There was only a contingent of 300 spartans, but they were supported by 700 or so others. It was a citizen who led the Persians to the alternate route. But, really, it was just such a badass movie. I went to see it twice this weekend, it was awesome.

I don't love you anymore. Leafs... might as well just stick a knife in my heart right now.

Rape is what happened tonight. Halak seems to think that if he charges 20 ft out of the net he has a better chance of stopping the puck. 6-0 in less than 30 minutes. For shame.

I won a cup with my lines being Samsonov - Koivu - Latendresse Ryder - Conroy - Kovalev Vasicek - J. Blake(ugly m.fucker) - Grabovski Kotsistyn - M.Koivu - Lapierre Roszival - Benoit Emelin - Streit I can't remember my third pairing off the top of my head. Huet Price Made use of some awesome tactics, I had 3 100 point scorers on my team. Koivu put up 40 goals 125 points, Kovalev 59 goals and 119 points and Latendresse Put up 50 goals and 101 points. I also had 4 players over 85 points. Huet had 40 wins over 55 games.

Heh, Sens fan defends Neil hit.