CanadianChris

Am I getting any right this week? Horrible. I'm dead unless Dallas can score a TD.

A lot of credit card companies will just give you an increase without you asking for it, too, especially the high-interest charge cards. My HBC charge card started at a limit of $1,000, and got as high as $4,500 before I finally cancelled it.

An Ohio State/Texas rematch in the plus-one game would be almost as bad as an Ohio State/Michigan rematch.

Alexei Kaigorodov was suspended by Ottawa yesterday for refusing to report to AHL affiliate Binghamton. That's an extra million bucks under the salary cap for a team that looks like it'll need to make a big deal at some point this season.

I have an CIBC Aeroplan Visa gold card with a $12,000 limit, and a TD GM Visa with a $9,000 limit that is unused. My wife has a Sears card with a $5,000 limit, I think. Pretty much all our expenses go on the gold card, except for the mortgage and a few other bills that can't be paid by credit card. We just got two free airline tickets a couple of months ago, and thanks to the gold card, we've almost earned another pair. We get one point for every dollar spent -- it's awesome. It even makes the annual fee worthwhile. I've never missed paying off the balance completely in any month, either.

Nope. If memory serves, I think they were 0-5, including the aforementioned two 2-man advantages, which took up over a minute total.

Damn, I'm going to have to win out to make the conference title game this year.

Denver - 23 Atlanta Cincinnati Dallas Green Bay N.Y. Giants St. Louis Chicago New Orleans Jacksonville Minnesota San Diego Denver New England Seattle

I had to sleep in O'Hare one night. It was not pleasant.

That's a bullshit argument. College basketball has a 65-team tournament, and you don't hear anyone complaining that everyone besides the top 2 or 3 teams don't deserve a shot at the title. Just the opposite, in fact -- George Mason making the Final Four was a huge deal. That's what makes it so great. That's what makes playoffs in general so great. You think the Steelers aren't happy they don't just playoff the top teams in the AFC and NFC to decide the NFL championship? Or the Cardinals in baseball? Any system besides a playoff is a complete sham.

ANOTHER one-goal loss for the Senators, after blowing a 2-0 lead and not one, but two 5-on-3 chances. I know it's still really early, and it's not as bad as what's been going on in Calgary (conspicuous by his absence, EHME), but it's starting to get a little alarming. Meanwhile, the Leafs handle the Sabres fairly easily on the road, and I want to throw up.

It's looking a lot like an 11-10 loss for me, which may help me more than it hurts.

How would a playoff keep Louisville from having a shot at the National championship? I think he meant they didn't deserve to play for the national championship in the current two-teams-only system.

Man, he had the greatest nickname ever, didn't he? Good old Andre "Red Light" Racicot.

Anyone catch Andrew Siciliano (subbing for Jim Rome) saying that neither West Virginia NOR Louisville deserve to play for the national championship based on last night's game? He framed it in a larger "the system sucks, we need a playoff" rant, but I thought that was pretty harsh. Louisville played a pretty solid game, even if WVU was able to run on them.

This does look pretty cool. The only catch is that the games won't be posted for 48 hours after they end.

That was emphatically shot down before you even posted this.

WV doesn't deserve to win this game with this kind of defense.

The markets are dropping because everyone's rushing to get out of income trusts. Typical overreaction. It'll get back up once everyone calms down. The dollar dropped because the move was seen as being unfriendly to investment in Canada. That'll level off too -- nothing to panic about yet.

I never saw what was wrong with the pre-lockout schedule in the first place. You had plenty of divisional games (I think it was 5 against every team), and you visited most teams and most teams visited you. I think each team had one game only against two or three teams in the other conference each year. Nonis is right -- rivalries are built through the playoffs. Ottawa vs. Toronto isn't a rivalry because we play them 8 times a year (12 if you throw in the exhibition games), it's a rivalry because we played them in the playoffs four times in five years. Ottawa-Toronto is a way bigger rivalry than Ottawa-Montreal for that very reason. We've never played Montreal in the playoffs, so the rivalry just isn't that heated, despite Montreal being closer than Toronto geographically. I don't know why the NHL can't just copy the NBA schedule. The leagues have an identical divisional structure, and they play an identical number of games.

Chara doesn't get many calls. He draws a whole bunch of extra penalties thanks to his size, though. Better get used to it.

Anyone else go for 2 there?

Goodnight, Mountaineers. The question now (assuming a Louisville win)...can THEY get to #3 in the BCS? WV was a given, since they were already there, but will the voters rank Louisville ahead of Texas? And if so, will that be enough to push them past Florida?

In a nutshell (and to my understanding), business trusts were a tax loophole that allowed companies with minimal opportunity for growth to restructure themselves in such a way that profits were distributed to unitholders without being subject to corporate income tax. The federal government rightly realized that too many large companies (including many growth industries) were restructuring their operations as income trusts. The final straw came when BCE (Bell Canada) announced its intentions to restructure as a trust. Faced with the prospect of every company on the TSE restructuring itself thusly, completely eroding the government's tax base, they had no choice but to close the loophole and start taxing trusts as any other corporation would be taxed. Actually, from my wanderings around the internet on this issue, it's the right that are flaming the government over this, as the Conservatives actually sided against Bay Street and investors on this issue. Remember, the Liberals avoided making such a move last year before the election -- that was the issue that was leaked before it was officially announced by Ralph Goodale. Others are flaming the government based on the fact that they said during the election campaign that they wouldn't do this, but I give credit to the government that they realized that not breaking this promise wouldn't be in the public interest.

Is TNT ever going to not go to a wide shot when Ernie Johnson is speaking? Is he that hideous?