Mike

Still fairly active on Facebook so ... he's not dead

I think it's more likely to be because of the talent pool available. This is the year you can make a big impact with some moves at the draft and in free agency. New salary cap means plenty of guys will be hitting the open market to establish value. Deep draft pool means if you know what you're doing, you could end up with two or three immediate contributors there. Going to be a very exciting offseason.

Based on what? There's literally no trend to support this statement. JJust my own observation But it's ... not an accurate observation. Since 2004, 12 OL have gone in the top 3 picks of the CFL Draft. ONE of them has signed an NFL contract after being drafted. Dmitri Tsoumpas. And he came back.

Based on what? There's literally no trend to support this statement.

Offensively you could just employ stronger blocking backs like Cory Watson and Brad Sinopoli and have that ground attack dominate.

Sign all of them!

Same with Goodrich It's Because they're from Winnipeg They're both very good. But realistically, this talk of Demski going #1 is premature. At least until the combine.

Demski slowly venturing into overrated territory around here.

Best player available. OL are always projects, the bust rate for taking the blue chip OL is fairly high.

When he got demoted to the PR he could've ended up signing a 1 year deal under the new CBA when he got promoted back up.

There's a lot of room for grey area in between "wants to be traded" and "has a desire to be here".

Show me a top flight player who plays like crap on purpose because he wants a trade but has not publicly asked for one? Kane has always played hard. Him playing hard this hear means he wants to stay but him playing hard last year means he wants out? Cant have it both ways. I never said Kane wanted out. My disagreement with Mike was his silly equation that playing hard and saying you like your line mates means you like playing for a specific city. I said I dont doubt that Kane asked for a trade. I still believe that he did. How he feels right now, I dont know. But like I said about wives, and you pointed out also, the "spouse" can have a lot to do with the happiness of a player in a particular city. If Kane is single now, you could certainly be onto something. If we're lucky, he marries a local girl. That is pretty much exactly what I said. You know, except for that it's not.

Willy has a contract that goes until the end of next season currently.

Penton says 3, but Stoudermire wasn't on any free agent lists, so I wonder if it's really a 2 year extension, if he was already under contract for next season. It's all semantics, but it'll essentially be them tearing up the existing contract he had for next year, rewriting it and adding 2 years. More money next year in return for an extra two years of commitment by the player.

Three years nice

Stopped there.

Yeah I don't really care if Etch is back or not. Will I be disappointed either way? No. I strongly believe if our defense ranked the same but it wasn't so *different*, there wouldn't be nearly as many complaints. It's because it's unconventional AND it had its ups and downs that people want Etch gone so bad. And y'know ... because they wanted him gone before he ever even got here.

I would've easily chosen Bowman over Elimimian for MOP. Bowman's numbers aren't HUGE. Until you see the numbers of everybody else.

Waters wins easily either way.

You missed the part where I said with enthusiasm. There's showing up to do your job and then there's showing up to do your job with enthusiasm. The difference is fairly obvious when it comes to Kane. Every player has options. In this day and age, you can force a trade quite easily. It may not happen quickly but players control the ability to basically dictate their future however they choose. Kane dictated his by signing a long term deal here. They have a ton to do with playing in Winnipeg. Especially when a player like Kane goes out of his way to make them. To me the reason Kane's attitude has changed has a lot more to do with the vibe inside the locker room than anything else. A coaching change can solve a lot of problems.

Disagree. You can deal in speculation. I'll deal in what I can actually see and measure. You have no way of measuring Kane's desire level when it comes to playing in Winnipeg. Unless you are close personal friends with him or his agent. I can watch him play balls to the wall, pedal to the floor every shift he's out there. I can hear him talk about how he's excited to play with Scheif and Wheels. I can see him try and get the home crowd into the game and how his energy translates to his attitude on the ice. You can ... read some articles? You do realise that you're watching of him playing hockey for which he is paid a significant amount of money has nothing to do with the question of his desire level to play in Winnipeg, right? I mean, you *do* understand that, right? And no player in the history of professional sports has ever let their desire to leave a city outweigh their obligation to perform their job at a high level with a clear sense of enthusiasm, right? Don't get me wrong. I think Kane wanted out at one point. I don't think he does anymore and the difference in his attitude is night and day.

Disagree. You can deal in speculation. I'll deal in what I can actually see and measure. You have no way of measuring Kane's desire level when it comes to playing in Winnipeg. Unless you are close personal friends with him or his agent. I can watch him play balls to the wall, pedal to the floor every shift he's out there. I can hear him talk about how he's excited to play with Scheif and Wheels. I can see him try and get the home crowd into the game and how his energy translates to his attitude on the ice. You can ... read some articles?

Disagree. You can deal in speculation. I'll deal in what I can actually see and measure.

I'm going to play silly bugger here because everyone wants to always bring up this "we would have won X amount more games with a conventional defense" argument. How many games in our big start do we lose if Etch's defense isn't locking things down and creating havoc out there prior to teams getting more film on our D? A more conventional D probably wins a few games for us this year, but let's be honest - it probably loses us a few too. Our wacky defense confused the hell out of Lefevour, shut down Glenn and forced a bunch of turnovers and scored 14 points in Montreal. Does a conventional D automatically do the same?

Because Ottawa jumped the gun and axes someone asap? Come on Iso, you're better then this.. Hey SPuDs, I guess I want to see some changes & not the status quo. I really do believe changing the coordinators needs to be done. I'm actually concerned it will be status quo coordinators wise going into training camp. What's your thoughts? My thoughts are that this happens every year. Every time another team makes a move, you use it as an opportunity to complain that the Bombers are not. How about we just discuss the move Ottawa made instead of using it to take potshots at our management?