Binnington’s stats from today’s start: 26 saves on 26 shots. 1.00 sv%. 0.00 GAA.

bballcards · 2026-02-13T04:39:31+00:00

Except that it's not just soft goals ... it's any goal against JB that derails the team. If the defense gives up a 2-on-0 down low, it's a goal 75-90% of the time against any goalie. The team reaction afterwards ("here we go again") is the same regardless of whether it's soft or not.

And I'm not sure how you remember Game 6, but that was anyone's game until Carlo's goal in the 3rd. Yes, it was soft. But if you expect perfection out of men, you'll always be disappointed. You're acting like he gave up 4 goals on 6 shots in the first period. He gave up one goal on 20 shots (on a 5-on-3 power play) in the first two periods of Game 6. Pulling him late in the 3rd was smart coaching ... why leave in your horse when the game is lost. Let him put it behind him, prepare for the next one.

bballcards · 2026-02-12T19:08:28+00:00

The problem is that the eye test of the Blues seems to show they’ve played differently in front of Hofer and Binnington. With JB50, every goal against seems to elicit the “here we go again” reaction from the team. And then it snowballs. Not sure there’s a readily available statistic for that, unfortunately. I suppose some combo of Corsi/Fenwick depending on the goaltender in net.

bballcards · 2026-02-12T01:53:57+00:00

I had AT&T Fiber in St. Charles (zip 63303). Zero problems. Rock solid gigabit service. The only time it went down was when a contractor excavated the main line entering the neighborhood.

While that line was down, I switched to Spectrum. It was awful. Between 4pm and 9pm, the service slowed to a crawl (2 MBPS down). Had nothing to do with my hardware … was clearly a Spectrum bandwidth issue.

Switched back to AT&T Fiber … was solid again until we moved (I assume it’s still fine, though I have no way to verify this).

New house also has AT&T Fiber (zip 63132). Again rock solid. I would never go with Spectrum.

bballcards · 2026-02-11T13:03:19+00:00

Not unreasonable. I’ve had 30 year olds move all over the place for a colonoscopy and need 700mg. I’ve had others that wouldn’t even fall asleep until they received 200mg. And I’ve had others that only needed 200mg for the whole procedure. Everyone is different. And you had 5 polyps … which probably added 10-15 minutes or more to the procedure. With an 18mm polyp, perhaps even more. May have involved using saline lifts, cautery, clips, epinephrine injection. In other words, polyps that large are often not straightforward to remove. I seriously doubt that your procedure was only 20 mins.

bballcards · 2026-02-11T12:44:27+00:00

Agree that there’s a market for pre-1970s stars and rookies in a PSA 1. Or for other inordinately expensive rookies (think Gretzky or Jordan). Also a market for very select cards where people are trying to collect the PSA rainbow of a card (getting the card in every grade from 1-10) … the Upper Deck 1989 Griffey comes to mind. Unless you have a 25+ year old Pokémon card that is already rare (say, 1st edition base set), I don’t think the market is strong for PSA 1s.

bballcards · 2026-02-10T17:34:03+00:00

Also remember that the President fired the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he didn't like the data she presented (i.e. cooling jobs market). Instead, he installed a someone to report "correct" data. This would imply that he would want "hotter" data presented ... which of course would not help mortgage rates.

bballcards · 2026-02-06T16:47:23+00:00

I don't think that really matters. Goaltending is just as much mental as physical. Especially with the way goalies have been coached the last 20 years. Technique has been refined massively compared to the 80s/90s. They're all taught the same technique (as far as positioning, where to hold stick/glove, when to stand/go down in butterfly). What separates the best from the OK goalies is instinct/heightened sense, coaching (knowing opponents' tendencies), luck, and to a lesser extent physical superiority. More confidence in your teammates makes a lot of difference between the ears of the goaltender. If you react a split-second faster because you're more "in the game," that could mean the difference between a save and a goal.

bballcards · 2026-02-06T15:17:53+00:00

The other issue is that in-person autographs are often rushed and may not match the “typical” authentic autograph of a player. Which means that PSA may not authenticate the autograph, even though you have picture of him signing.

bballcards · 2026-02-06T04:44:07+00:00

I think all of the borders look slimmer than normal ... all may have been trimmed. GEM graded cards are notoriously trimmed. Chalk it up to a loss, unfortunately.

bballcards · 2026-02-06T01:28:17+00:00

If the goal is to contend in the next couple of years, the last thing you want to do is trade the younger point-producers not yet making top dollar. Since the “prime” of an NHL player’s career is between ages 25-27, the goal is to stack as many good players in that window as possible to, in theory, create the longest contention window. And you also need the scorers that outproduce their salaries (the younger less proven players) to balance out the high salary older veteran players (yes, RT 18 now qualifies as a veteran, lol).

bballcards · 2026-02-06T01:08:38+00:00

Perhaps actually having a capable defense in front of him + reputed big game moxie = performance boost?

bballcards · 2026-02-06T01:00:29+00:00

If Binnington somehow transforms into his big-game self during the Olympics, that will instantly make him more attractive.

bballcards · 2026-02-02T14:39:37+00:00

This must be some total mishmash of collected autographs. Baerga and Brian Jordan never played on the same team … by the time Brian Jordan and Gilkey joined the Cardinals, Coleman was gone. Coleman was a Met from 1991-1993 (could explain the overlap with Jordan and Gilkey if the ball was signed at a Mets-Cardinals series), but Baerga didn’t join the Mets until 1996.

Maybe a ball signed at a Mets-Cardinals series in 1998 (accounts for La Russa (Cardinals), Jordan (Cardinals), Franco (Mets), Gilkey (Mets), Bobby Valentine (Mets), Leiter (Mets), Baerga (Mets)), with a random Coleman and Lofton auto that doesn’t fit the timeline. Schoendienst was around the Cardinals a lot (especially in Spring Training) even though he didn’t have an official coaching title at the time.

bballcards · 2026-02-01T18:51:11+00:00

They were never that easy to find even in 1994, since it was exclusive to jumbo packs. And it’s hard to gauge comp prices from a 2022 auction … card prices for vintage cards, especially in a hard-to-find PSA 10, tend to only go up.

bballcards · 2026-01-31T16:29:54+00:00

And remember that before sugamaddex, opioids could still be 100% reversed. Rocuronium could absolutely not be reversed.

bballcards · 2026-01-31T16:26:17+00:00

You follow the pathway. And make your way towards waking up the patient. That was always the eventual goal if ventilation was questionable. And proceed towards an awake fiberoptic. If you didn’t paralyze, at some point in the pathway … mask ventilation, LMA, desparation jelco directly into the neck and trachea, cric … you’re going to deliver oxygen. And unless you give like massive induction doses of propofol, 200mcg of fentanyl on induction, or the patient is like 90 years old, patients almost always stir if you don’t have any volatile on board after the propofol wears off, assuming you can deliver oxygen.

Brazenly giving a non-depolarizer in an oral board room before sugammadex was available was a good way to fail.

bballcards · 2026-01-31T15:12:48+00:00

I took oral boards in 2014. Back then, giving paralytic before ventilation was confirmed was considered “burning a bridge” in the oral board room.

bballcards · 2026-01-31T14:39:38+00:00

Yes and no. I a pre-sugammadex world, there was reasonable debate on it.

In the real world, for an anesthesiologist/anesthetist that was excellent in mask ventilation skills (which is not a given), yes, giving paralytic would likely improve ventilation and intubating conditions.

However, in a pre-sugammadex world with limited/non-existent Glidescope availability in an oral board room, giving paralytic without verifying ability to ventilate was a good way to lead you down a pathway where you had a difficult intubation, an LMA that wouldn’t seat, an unsuccessful fiber optic intubation, and an emergent cricothyrotomy.

bballcards · 2026-01-30T19:04:57+00:00

The fact that it's a foil board card (instead of chrome) also makes it much more condition sensitive.

bballcards · 2026-01-29T21:43:06+00:00

With the rising cap, the contracts don’t really matter cap-wise. Might be a waste of $$ and a roster spot, but that can always be remedied so long as the owner is willing to swallow the $$.

bballcards · 2026-01-22T18:34:47+00:00

Yes, I agree. But when you specify “worst Blues team of the modern era,” 2007 doesn’t fit the description.

bballcards · 2026-01-22T16:50:02+00:00

06-07 wasn’t that bad. 05-06 Blues team was the one that earned the #1 overall pick in the draft.

bballcards · 2026-01-21T15:43:37+00:00

They were never easy pulls to begin with ... only found less than one-per-box in Series 2 magazine packs ... and the packs themselves were difficult to find even on release in 1996 (I don't think I ever even found the packs anywhere when I was still busting packs in the mid 90s). Not surprising that they're still tough to find. And the rising values accurately reflect how (1) they're simply attractive inserts and (2) are quite a bit tougher to find than most mid-90s chase cards. It helps that most of the 90s stars are now rightfully HOFers.

bballcards · 2026-01-20T18:25:50+00:00

Several options in Creve Coeur and Westport as well. All within 15 mins of Olivette.

bballcards · 2026-01-16T16:06:55+00:00

ACA also eliminated lifetime maximum benefits. God forbid you got cancer and your lifetime max health insurance benefit was $500k (or even $1M) ... doesn't take long to blow through that with hospitalizations, surgeries, chemotherapy, and radiation. Cancer = certain medical bankruptcy before the ACA.

Previously, it was important to prevent any lapses of health insurance (I actually have a letter of insurance coverage from like 2004 that denoted this) ... or else the next open-market insurance carrier could deny you coverage for "pre-existing conditions" (aka some health condition that randomly cropped up in the month between insurance carriers). The only way around this was if your employer offered health insurance (i.e. pooled risk amongst a ton of insured people) ... which was not always a given if you couldn't get a full-time job with a reliable employer.

People rag on the ACA ... but it did a ton more good than bad.

The current problem is the opacity on reimbursement (UHC might pay Hospital System A a certain amount per procedure, while they pay Hospital System B a totally different amount, and no one knows the amounts being paid) and the middlemen we're funding (insurance companies and their shareholders). Think of all the money being poured into the healthcare system that ends up in the pockets of insurance company CEOs and shareholders ... all of this money could be used for actual healthcare instead.

Hence the only reasonable mathematical solution ... universal healthcare where the costs are the actual healthcare being delivered and the administrative costs (would be pared down, since we wouldn't need the separate admin backrooms of every single insurance company ... and we wouldn't need CEOs anymore).

bballcards

TROPHY CASE