Rich

No one was better at the time, that is the point, no competition was brought in. At no point have I said Laine or Ehlers should have been in the 'A'. It is the other prospects that were rushed. As for the 'ripen' and 'supposed' to do it, these are Chevy's words, not mine. But last year he wasn't really following what he has been preaching, which has been the point I've been making in this whole discussion.

Got this email from True North today Link to donate can be found here http://view.tmclient.ticketmaster.com/?qs=fd3d2f9fc928cf4dfe6ce2587dc46c51f618870487b4c8ccac801295d9e1a2af305b7b53adae6f3d5afe8bd6df9e4458a0a7da6df92580fca01d8aa2053705f90dafe735b61252702734b5333f30ab08 Or if you prefer to donate directly to the Red Cross, donation page is here. https://donate.redcross.ca/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=1951&ea.campaign.id=50639

Actually the debate isn't at all about resigning Stempniak. I have said I'm perfectly fine with what has happened last year. The debate is about the model that Chevy preached was to let prospect "over ripen" in the AHL before bringing them up to the NHL. And he hasn't done that at all. The argument was he didn't have to be bring all those rookies onto the team this past season when they weren't ready but he did anyway. So has he changed his philosophy and "rushing" rookies in or is this a blip in the radar.

Tlusty - Signed for 1 year @ 800k Stempniak - Signed a PTO because no one would sign him, flipped that into a 1 year @850k Yep, both of those sure look like they are not cap friendly and horrible for the long term. I have no problems with Trouba or Ehlers starting when they did. We should not have started the season with both Copp and Petan in the starting lineup. They were handed those jobs with virtually no competition. Make the kids earn it in the AHL and take a spot on an injury call up. Chevy didn't let Petan ripen in the AHL, he had him penciled in at the beginning of last season and he obviously wasn't ready so he got sent down and we really had no backup plan.

You don't have to trade to fill those spots, you could have signed players like Tlusty and Stempniak to reasonable and short contracts at the end of last season to fill out the bottom part of the roster. They made a conscious choice not to. Also Petan started the year with the Jets, mostly because there was not a better option. He wasn't ready and was sent back down. A few of those vets would have been nice at that point as there wasn't a whole lot there. That lack of depth and experience is a big factor into the season we had. We also moved Ehlers and Copp into the lineup. Thats starting the year with 3 rookies with no AHL experience and no real competition they had to beat out for those jobs. I'm not saying I disagree with those choices moving into last season. I'm okay with taking a step back for a year if it means moving forward two or three. Especially now that we are getting Laine or Mathews, but that was never a guarantee. But those choices are in contrast to one of the tenants Chevy has been preaching, which is to let prospects over ripen in the AHL. Hopefully we now have the depth to really start doing that.

It is an interesting point to discuss, and it does seem counter intuitive to Chevy's "over ripen" in the AHL quotes. At this point though, as guys are on ELC's, we can still afford to see who should actually be in that core going forward. Scheifele looks like he is going to belong, Ehlers is only one year in, and Trouba has been too up and down to say for sure one way or the other. Give Scheifele the long term deal and a bridge to Trouba to see what he really has. I think the Jets have finally gotten to the point where they have a huge amount of depth in the system that some of their prospects HAVE to be in the AHL next year. Petan, Copp, Lowry, Dano, De Leo, Armia, Lemieux .... only room for about 3 of those guys if Connor and Laine (assuming we get Laine) make the team. And if Laine or Connor don't show in training camp, or struggle during the season, there is 3 - 5 guys itching to take their spots. All of those guys are on ELC and waiver exempt, so the competition amongst that group should be immense. We will be able to pick the best of the bunch to become the core and trade the others away similar to Chicago has done to compliment those core pieces. Certainly an argument could be made that we could have signed some short term vets to let these guys play for the Moose a bit longer, and I'm not sure the reason we didn't, but it is definitely one of the reasons we were not a playoff team last year.

From the Regina Police Website http://www.reginapolice.ca/2016/05/regina-male-charged-in-assault/

Hartley wasn't their hire, but they did extend him in December 2014. Or was that Treliving who extended Hartley prior to Burke joining management?

Interesting article by Scott Cullen taking a look at the Jets lineup next season. http://www.tsn.ca/off-season-game-plan-winnipeg-jets-1.482316 Here is a very interesting stat regarding Byfuglien: And for those that love to hate on Mark Suart: You can keep on hating.... And his projected depth chart (not necessarily line combos). Of course Laine really needs to be on the left side. With Ehlers, Connor, and (probably) Laine, we would really have no room for Ladd. PROJECTED 2016-2017 DEPTH CHART LEFT WING CENTRE RIGHT WING Nikolaj Ehlers Mark Scheifele Blake Wheeler Mathieu Perreault Bryan Little Patrik Laine Kyle Connor Alexander Burmistrov Drew Stafford Marko Dano Adam Lowry Joel Armia Nic Petan Andrew Copp Chris Thorburn Brendan Lemieux Chase De Leo Anthony Peluso LEFT DEFENCE RIGHT DEFENCE GOALTENDER Tobias Enstrom Tyler Myers Connor Hellebuyck Jacob Trouba Dustin Byfuglien Ondrej Pavelec Mark Stuart Ben Chiarot Michael Hutchinson Josh Morrissey Paul Postma Julian Melchiori Jan Kostalek

Game of Thrones discussion split off to its own topic here

Found it odd to have a page of posts all hidden behind reveal tags. I felt like a kid needing a decoder ring every time I came into this topic with all of the hidden content. Split this out into its own thread so people can decide if they want to click in it and read. No need to keep posting behind hidden contents. I can add 'Spoiler" in the thread if anyone thinks it is still necessary.

When the Jets came back, the naming rights deal with the arena was extended to 2021 with the option to extend to 2030. I'm sure there would also be provisions in the contract on what would happen / how it would be handled if MTS were ever sold.

Wheeler also has a NTC. What is interesting with Buff's contract is the first 2 years (next year and the year after) are NMC, then it switches to a modified NTC. So it depends on what year they ultimately expand in.

Ryan Kessler $6.9M per for the next 6 years taking him to the ripe old age of 37. Corry Perry $8.6M per year for the next 5 years taking him to 35 Ryan Getlzaf - $8.25M per year for the next 5 years talking him to 35 Those 3 contracts are going to be boat anchors and hard to move if they decide to pull the plug and start a rebuild.

http://www.bluebombers.com/2016/04/29/bombers-acquire-hall-of-fame-football-writer-ed-tait/ Will be nice to see the quality of content on the Bomber site go up. However, Ed will now be an employee of the club, so his editorials will likely be more biased. Also going to miss his coverage of the Jets with the Free Press. Big loss for the paper. Hope Ed is happy with his new job, he has been one of the better reporters in this city for the last 20 - 30 years.

What makes him worse? How many of us have seen any of these guys play on a regular basis to make an informed opinion either way? I know I haven't, so I don't really have a strong opinion either way. Have you?

The teacher discussion has been moved to a new topic. Your guys history of this topic went too far back in this thread for me to find the beginning of it to move it. Please continue it there.

Split this off into its own topic. KBF / Mark, I couldn't split out your whole discussion on the BC teachers deal in here because I lost interest after going back 6 pages and still didn't find its start. Feel free to continue that discussion here though.

I think the measuring of teacher’s performance to weed out the bad ones is a very tricky thing which could have very bad consequences. Good in theory, very hard in practice. How do you measure that performance? If you get that wrong, does a teacher change their teaching to conform to what is in the best interest of them keeping their job vs. what is in the best interest of their students? Look at the horror stories you read in the states when they implemented their no child left behind program, where school funding was based on student performance. The result was definitely not in the best interest of the student. The unfortunate truth is that ½ of the people out there are in the bottom half of society in terms of ability and performance. You are going to get good teachers and bad. You absolutely need to be able to get rid of the abusive ones, but the so called “bad” ones do serve a purpose as well. Imagine you went through your whole education with only the “good” teachers. Everything is butterflies and rainbows. People are nice, encouraging, you are free to grow and develop. Now you get out into the real world and your first boss is a grade a ******. You are not at all equipped to handle that, because you have very little experiences to relate to this situation. I hope we all have fond memories of some teachers that have touched us and influenced us growing up, but the “bad” ones, the “boring” ones, and the “strict” ones probably taught you some valuable life lessons as well, whether they meant to or not.

I've said my peace. I'm fine if we get back to discussing politics.

I don't know what the dire situation in America is, but these two bolded statements come across as quite different. Your original post, to which to anyone reading it, sure seemed to imply that they had it really easy, since they scoffed that it was a hard job and you went on to list all of the great perks about it. But then we gloss over that and want to talk about the bad teachers and how to get rid of them.

I’ve spent a few years as an instructor at Red River and teaching isn’t at all like an office job, and if you’ve never done it day in and day out, it is hard to explain. The stress and pressures are much much different, but they are there. In fact, as an instructor at Red River, I think I had it easier then teachers. It is way different teaching adults who are paying for the right to be there versus children who you have a much greater responsibility to help grow and develop. Even at Red River, I got 2 months off at summer, a week at Christmas, a week between terms, etc. Yes, it was very nice to have that time off, but the job and the pressure in it is way different then anything else I’ve done (regular job and what I do now is in an office environment). You get to basically make the timelines, so you don't get that kind of pressure, but the pressure comes from knowing that everyday, regardless of how you feel, you need to be up, prepared, and ready to present and teach. At work if you are tired or having a bad day, you can at times go on cruise control just to get through the day. When you are teaching you have to be “on” all the time. Imagine every day you need to prepare to be up in front of people, educating them, presenting, and helping them learn. Yes, it gets easier when you teach the same material over many terms. You get to tweak it rather than having to learn it outright, but knowing something enough to be able to teach it is having to learn it to a much higher level of understanding then just comprehending it. And an hour in a classroom presenting is way more mentally exhausting then a morning spent at my desk. I don’t begrudge teachers their pay or holidays. They have an incredibly important job in our society. We basically “off load” our children to these people for them to educate rather than doing it ourselves. You want there to be enough pay and perks to the job to be able to attract competent people. In reality, kids aren’t going to go to school for 12 months of the year. Down time and summer recreation is also important for their development. What do you want teachers to do for this time? And there is a need to have time to decompress from a job where you have to be up, live, and “on” in front of a group of people or kids every day for hours on end. Or you will see a much higher rate of burnout.

This is an interesting discussion. I know someone whose work place is going through this very issue. A new staff member is transitioning from female to male and there is much consternation over which washroom he should use. I find it very hard to buy in to the children debate, and is actually quite insulting to an entire demographic of people. It is like saying no men should be around children because some men abuse them. Some adult men abuse male boys as well and no one is up in arms about creating segregated washrooms for adults and children. In fact, statistically speaking, children are much more at risk of being abused by someone they know and not a stranger in a chance meeting in a washroom. Personally, I go to the washroom for a very specific reason, and I could care less who is in the stall next to me. Make unisex washrooms for everyone, what does it really matter. In regards to a plebiscite on this, although I don’t believe it should ever be binding, but I’d be willing to bet that a high percentage of people under 40 couldn’t care less one way or the other. The problem with having a plebiscite, is only people who feel strongly about it will really vote, which means you will get much more support for people against it as the ones who truly have a stake in the “for” are relatively small in number. Those who have no problem with it but don’t feel strongly about it (like me), wouldn’t vote. People are entitled to be uncomfortable with this, you can’t really change how you feel, but people also need to try to be tolerant as well. I can assure you that any discomfort that someone feels with having a transgendered person in their washroom is a drop in the bucket compared to the discomfort, discrimination, and bullying these people live on a daily basis. And no, this is not something they “chose” to be or become, it is who they are, and they are forced to choose to live through that discrimination every day or hide who they really are. This is the choice people in this situation have with laws against transgendered people using a washroom that is not the same as their birth gender: They can dress and look in a way that is most comfortable to them and use a washroom appropriate to how they look but break the law. They can dress and look in a way that is most comfortable to them and use a washroom based on their birth gender, and get strange looks and calls from security when someone reports them using the incorrect washroom. They can hide who they really are and dress and look like their birth gender and use that washroom None of those are good choices. People who are brave enough to force this issue are taking the steps and paying the price now to bring education and understanding to the issue so that at some point down the road, this isn't something even worth having a discussion over.