DGWU Sports aka "The Deeg" aka "The Wu"

After a longer than normal hiatus during this off-season, the DGWU Sports crew is back with another installment of the world famous CrapTastiCast. We gathered in the Barrister's apartment in Queens while in the middle of thunderstorm that reminded us of the coming of Gozer. Luckily, we didn't lose power and had some lovely conversation.

This week we talk a lot about Bills, including our annoyance with useless and boring coverage of training camp, what players/positions we are most excited to see, and the overall hopefulness this season is bringing fans (ourselves included for once!) We also wish Derek Roy all the best in his new endeavours, welcome in the newest Sabres that the Apologist has never heard of, and get fired up for the 2012 Summer Olympics by sharing the sports we are most excited about. The Scizz also drops a conspiracy theory bomb on Jets center Nick Mangold.

You will also notice we have a call-in feature this week with some lovely fans from Buffalo and the Tri-state area. The Deeg in no way, shape, or form condone anything that is said in these calls, and they are strictly the view of geniuses who made them. Musical breaks come from Jack White, Supergrass, and Alabama Shakes.

A reminder this week that if you subscribe to the podcast, make sure you go to iTunes and RE-subscribe. We just switched over to an awesome new hoster called Libsyn.com, but unfortunately your subscriptions did not carry over, so you'll need to get on that. And while your in iTunes, make sure to check out the Jambrones, the awesome Buffalo sports band that does our sick theme music! You can also take a gander at theircool-ass youtube videos here. And a huge thanks to Coach Sal Capaccio from WGR, who when we had some editing issues, was quick on the draw to lend a hand to a bunch of venomous bloggers. Thanks coach!

So download episode 33 from Libsyn here, head to iTunes, or stream from the new Wizard Player below. Word.

The Scizz

I am a new Knicks fan. I wasn't there for Patrick Ewing, John Starks' dunk heard round the world, or Spike Lee getting into the face of Reggie Miller. In fact, to this day Reggie is still one of my favorite players, I still hate John Starks, and I cheered so hard against Ewing when he played the Chicago Bulls I used to make bets with my teacher in 6th grade with extra homework on the line. This means I'm not a typical fan. When my friends that are life long Knickerbocker fans talk about the pain and suffering the team and organization has caused them, I shut up and take a back-seat (learn a lesson here you post-lockout hockey fans).

The Knicks team I fell in love played between 2008 - 2010. They were a rag-tag group of players nobody expected to play well, and were all there simply filling space until the massive free agency rush of 2010 began. But these players, guys like David Lee (I still have an unworn jersey from him), Wilson Chandler, and Danilo Gallinari were fun to watch. They weren't big time names, but they played hard every night, and maybe my passion for lovable losers from my Buffalo sports teams made me latch on. Who knows.

The Defenseman

If you didn’t know better, you’d think space was just darkness. It isn’t.

The Space Transportation System, better known as the Space Shuttle, was the most complicated machine ever constructed when first built. The first reusable spacecraft, it pushed the boundaries of American science and engineering just to get it put together. To fly required a make up wholly unknown to almost all who inhabit this place.

As a child of both the 80’s and of science and science fiction, there were no more important names to me in my early years than Enterprise, Challenger, Columbia, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour. As spacecraft, these six sisters were the stuff of legend, carrying explorers to the very edge of human knowledge. Those who rode within them were heroes.

It was impossible to spend a school year inside of a science classroom as an elementary school student at that time and not know who Sally Ride was. As the first American woman in space her place in our history was assured, but to a small boy in the suburbs that big social impact stuff seemed to fly over my head. She was in space and that was good enough for me. Sally Ride, Awesome American.

So I was sad when I heard of her passing this week. You are never quite ready for your heroes to go.

The Outlander

I had hoped I wasn’t going to have to address this, but I suppose I will.

Last week’s Niagara Falls Reporter piece by former alleged stalker and current bigot Lenny Palumbo managed to rightfully stir up enough voices around the internet locally and nationally to shout down and condemn the rantings of an angry white man who longs for the days where he could oppress others to placate his insecure and disturbed soul. It appeared to me that Palumbo and perhaps the Reporter itself was hoping for this type of reaction in the way the author tactlessly shoehorned anti-gay rhetoric into a meandering bitchfest about the Sabres - or at least the past roster - being pussies. Their latest issue has confirmed these suspicions as Palumbo doubles down on the hate and publisher Frank Parlato puts on his ten-gallon hat and climaxes to the image of a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag while reciting the first amendment at the top of his lungs. (Editor's Note: This is true, we have video) As a fellow proponent of the Constitution, I feel I’ll take a crack at exacting my right to free speech as well.

Lenny Palumbo is a piece of shit. He is weak, hateful, little man. As a man I am ashamed to share my gender with him and as a Western New Yorker I am ashamed to share my region with him. However, there is no changing these people. One thing about this region that so many hateful souls like Palumbo love is that they can completely wall themselves off from the world and live in their own version of 1950 where homosexuals are synonymous with “deviants” and minorities have to call every white man that addresses them “sir.”

(I will not stoop to Lenny’s level here and make assumptions that he is a racist. I will say that many of the people I have come across that hate gays also have no problem voicing their deep hate for anyone with a different skin tone than them.)

I APOLOGIZE FOR THIS POST. IT IS ALCOHOL FUELED, KINDLED BY FIRES OF HOMETOWN SENTIMENT AND LOVE FOR EVERYTHING THAT IS BUFFALO SPORT.

The Yachtsman (beware, hammered)

The first time I heard that word odious, my mother used it in reference to me having a particularly nasty spoiled upper middle class white kid episode somewhere around the 6th grade. Basically, I was given everything I ever wanted in life, and was never left hungry and/or cold. Somehow I still found a way to bitch about something I didn't get-probably an outlandishly expensive toy that only a little spoiled bag of cocks like me would make a scene about. I thrashed and thrashed and thrashed, probably stamped my feet, and said odious nasty little things only a shitty mouthed 6th grader  with no concept of consequences or morality could say (thank crap my parents sent me to State School for college, otherwise I probably would have been an odious little shit for the rest of my days). I don't remember the outcome, but hopefully my father gave me a fresh one across the back of the head to straighten me out. I took one thing from that episode: 

DON'T BE A SNIVELING SPOILED BAG OF COCKS.

The Outlander

If anyone’s been following us on Twitter throughout the last couple weeks, you likely know that I received media access to both developmental camp Wednesday and the scrimmage Thursday (not that the former mattered much, being free and all). I should reiterate that this was not one of those credential bread crumbs Ted Black throws out once in awhile when he wants to prevent ninety percent of the many Sabres blogs out there from voicing any criticism about the team or organization.

That’s a brilliant strategy really: spend a couple nights a year getting all the bloggers in the room, make them feel important because they got to see the pretty locker room carpet, feed them some dribble about paint schemes and announcer schedules and the sheep will be so grateful for the fucking opportunity that they’ll nary write a critical word again. I mean sure, the whole roster could be imploding on a nightly basis but Ted Black was just so nice to us undeserving wannabe reporters! So half the blogs end up being nothing but team mouthpieces and the other half end up avoiding swears and tip-toeing around any criticism because they’re afraid they might miss the breaking news when the team decides to paint the atrium beige. Well fuck that, and shame on you who do that.

(Obligatory disclaimer: I do like a few of the blogs, in writing, opinion and tone. But we have to admit this team has about 478 blogs too many dedicated to it. I also saw one actually saying that everyone invited to the last blogger summit should write about everything Ted Black said because “they accommodated us.” That sentiment is so offensive I could puke, so my larger point stands.)

That’s what brought me to the Deeg really, I DO like to swear. If you’re intelligent and have any discernible skills when it comes to writing, cursing brings language alive, gives it energy, and conveys the strength of your convictions in a way italics and corny exclamation points don’t always accomplish. It’s part of my cadence, part of how I convey my feelings and if you can swear in your writing without sounding like a fifteen-year-old boy, you damn well should. I feel we are an example of this and when you’re instead using language that brings me back to my years in Sunday school, I am immediately turned off. I can respect if this isn’t your cup of tea but odds are if it isn’t, I wouldn’t be your type of person either.

I guess my point is there isn’t a snowballs chance in hell that I, or any of us would be granted one of Ted Black’s golden tickets. When I was writing at my last outpost I didn’t get any access (presumably for using the same language) and certainly given our unabashed tendency to call a spade a spade (or in the Barrister’s case, call a team of pussies a team of pussies), it wasn’t going to happen here. This is what makes this week’s access that much more hilarious.

The Barrister

First off, I don't like Lindy Ruff. 

Revision: He's ok, but I want him gone.

Whatever I think about my fantasies for the head coaching position of the Buffalo Sabres, it's pretty cool knowing that the future (and some current) players of our franchise are training with Navy SEALS as part of the team's Development Camp. If you've been following the Sabres at all this week, you know about this story. The team, frankly, is pressing the shit out of it, as are many in the blogosphere. It may be a tad gimmicky, but - to a certain extent - any good coaching probably is. It's team building at its core, and beyond that it's rad as shit to imagine that even a sliver of a SEAL's heart and grit and determination would rub off on our squad. 

Whether or not its part of a public rebranding of this Sabres team (it is) that might raise questions about the total motivation for this experiment, I can't fathom how anyone could look at a team of players in a league that demands toughness and say that training with some of the toughest mother fuckers in the military is a bad thing. 

But, there you all are, the contrarian pockets of our fan base that choose to second guess so much of what goes on within the organization as if you had any true insight into how the team would react to something like this. There you are, claiming that this might rub some players the wrong way (as if that's a bad thing; Stafford could use some fucking wrong way rubbing, I say.... that came out so very very wrong... my sincere apologies), and that it affirms the Derek Roy-led meme that Lindy is too tough on his millionaire underachievers. 

A couple years ago, before my years in the Deeg, Yachtsman wrote about the need for the Sabres to play "out of character" if they were to have any shot at beating the Bruins in the 2010 ECQF. Yachtsman observed that the team's only win up to that point was the result of just that kind of out of character play - the kind where the team actually hits people, throws some bodies around and - you guessed it - stands up for itself. The Sabres did not manage to do that, if you recall, and that was the end of our Northeast Division Championship season.

Two years and a few months later, we're finally starting to see the Sabres have some kind of commitment to that mentality beyond token gritty-guy signings (Mike Grier, for instance) or half-measures (any physical response from Paul Gaustad, for instance). They've brought in guys for whom toughness is not an out of character thing, and now they're running camps which involve training with Navy SEALS - again, men and women for whom toughness is instinctual and pervasive. Toughness that is more than fierce checks in the corner, but that guides how one responds to crisis and adversity. Physical intensity, heart, self-determination and self-reliance... all the usual buzz words that we love to throw around when we talk about our ideal hockey player. That's one of the things we missed in 2010 and since, and one of the things we all should want going forward. 

So, unless you loved that 2010 team's lack of response to Boychuck hitting Vanek (or Ellis...) or last year's team's lack of response to Lucic's hit on Miller, quit your bitching about efforts to push a new mentality on the team by Lindy and his staff. So what if Lindy is tough on players and asks them to step beyond themselves, out of their comfort zones? Fucking deal with it. And if they can't, well... the sooner those hypothetical prima donnas speak up about how Lindy is mean and how they don't want to train towards team chemistry, accountability and perseverance, the sooner those hypothetical prima donnas can get sent packing off of my hockey team. 

Let's Go Buffalo.

The Scizz

I'm not even sure what I'm about to write here, and I sincerely apologize for any lack of consistency or salient points being made, but right now I'm giddy with excitement and want to spread the good word. I slept in until 8:15 am today, flipped open the laptop and randomly checked to see when Bills individual tickets went on sale (I little bug called the Yachtsman may have planted the idea in my head though). I then miraculously got lucky and saw that it was, in fact, 9 am today. Credit card in hand, I sat patiently at the computer waiting for 9:00 am to strike. When it did, I pounced, and now I have four lower level tickets to the Buffalo Bills home opener against the Kansas City Chiefs on September 16th. Am I excited?

Fuck to the yes I am.

You see, before this weekend there had been some chatter among DGWU Sports as to when we could possibly all make it home for a game this season. Sure, we will most likely attend the yearly debacle that is the Bills - Jets game in the Meadowlands, but this year we all really wanted to make it home for a game. But as always with us drunk lunatics, many a times it only ends up as talk. Not that we don't like to follow through with awesome plans, but when you work as many hours as we do, and have other minor things taking up your time like weddings and babies, not everything we want to do gets accomplished. And Buffalo Bills games are tough.

Making the trek to Buffalo for a football game is never easy. It almost always requires an extra day off on Monday to return to NYC (which is very difficult to take off in my field during the fall), or it involves an absolutely awful drunken/hungover flight that leaves you weeping upon arrival when you realize you still have an hour commute from JFK to get home, only to have to be up in 5 - 6 hours to actually perform at said job. So nine times out of ten, smarter heads prevail and we all decide to get drunk at McFaddens, or a random bar elsewhere, or Yachtsman's former man-cave (RIP). However, this season is different. I am more fired up for Buffalo Bills this season than I have been in a long time. Hell, just last year I wrote this post, talking about how I almost flat out didn't give a shit about the upcoming season. My morale had been crushed by Ralph's paper thin pocketbook and I was readying to just get drunk and watch the games with no level of expectations whatsoever. Yet, Bills fans are a bi-polar bunch, and so with the signing of Mario Williams and numerous important contract extensions that were taken care of, I can't blame Ralph for not spending money this year (although I will still blame him for tons of other shit over the past 12 years, thank you very much). All I can do is sit back, and get fired up for what I'm praying is great season of football. And I get to be there for the first two games of the season. One here in Jersey, and then my first Bills home game in five years. Yup. FIVE LONG YEARS. This year the difficult trip to and from the Ralph is worth it (screw that late Sunday flight, I gots Monday and Tuesday off, bitches).

Am I now VERY excited?

Double fuck to the yes I am.

All of this also means I have never tailgated in Orchard Park with my compatriots here at DGWU Sports. That's right. Can you imagine the levels of debauchery and insanity that will occur on this glorious day? Shit's gonna get weird.

Friday night we will haul ass to good ole' Western New York, hit the town in honor of the absent Derek Roy, and then mentally prepare for what could be one of the greatest days of sporting ever to happen. So get your Mario Williams jersey ready, get your Fitz beard ready, and most of all get those 30 packs of beer and soul-crushing expectations ready, because DGWU Sports returns to the promise land this September. If only it wasn't so far away....

Follow me on twitter @TheScizz. I'm a special boy.

The Barrister

With Yachtsman covering the bases yesterday with his mouth diarrhea gem of a post, you'd think I would consider the Deeg's coverage of Derek Roy's departure from the Sabres complete. Nay, good sirs and ladies, for I am hungover at work and can't possibly be trusted with actual responsibilities but want to feel like I accomplished something today. Count yourselves lucky, trust me.

Besides, this is really the only topic I can blab on about, since I can't possibly write about Dickey after Yachtsman threw down the gauntlet on that topic. I'm nothing if not spiteful, even if it does necessitate rehashing a topic that has certainly received enough attention this week. (Sidebar: Yachtsman's joke about me asphyxiating myself while watching Mets' games was both hilarious and accurate in its own way. I'll leave it to you to decide which way that is.)

One of my favorite things to do lately is watch the fans of Sabreland trip over themselves in a fury of anger and resentment at Darcy Regier, fueling a prevailing wisdom that tells us that he's simply incapable of making this team better. So when free agency approached and people stomped their feet about the need for a big splash and their assumption that such would not come, it set the stage for another moment of shock as Darcy inevitably did something. Maybe not the big splash we had hoped for - and that we still hope for - but a move that is terribly satisfying to all but the most homer of Buffalo sports fans. With Derek Roy shipped out, we learned - yet again - to chill the fuck out and let things take their course, and to never trust anything Paul Hamilton says, even if it affirms our belief that Derek Roy is an overvalued hack just like, well, Paul Hamilton. 

Roy being traded to Dallas, and the Sabres picking up two - TWO! - players in return is yet another reminder that Darcy Regier is, when he wants to be, a straight up wizard in the player market. Does he drug opposing GMs? Did he replace 2011-12 game tape with archived footage of the point-per-game Derek Roy from 2010-11? Is Darcy actually competent - gasp! - when backed by ownership with the desire and bank roll to make a legitimate bid for a Stanley Cup? Moments like Monday, when our shared desire for change suddenly came to light, prove that Darcy might not be the ineffectual villain we sometimes make him out to be. As a basement-dwelling, venomous blogger, this is a sad realization, as it's certainly more fun and satisfying to throw everyone under the bus as I commiserate over failed season after failed season. So sad that many of our brethren are, after receiving the Roy trade they've so long pined for, right back at the work bench, writing off Darcy's career in Buffalo and calling this move - as is any move post-July 1, 2007 - too little, too late. For me, though, things are not so black and white.

Neither, to be fair, was it black and white that Roy needed to go. As much as we like to rag on him for his white suits and Kangol hats and mandles and propensity for sexual assault (maybe?), the guy was also a key cog in the successful times of the past decade, such as they were. There was a time, probably about a year ago, when I thought we were seeing Derek Roy turn a new leaf. His production in 2010-11 was impressive, even accounting for his limited availability due to injuries, and - unlike the skewed stats of some others on the team who had brief stretches of absurd production in the midst of utter mediocrity (*cough* *stafford* *cough*) - Roy was showing us something night in and night out. History of diving and half-assing it down the ice aside, I was hopeful. Shocker, I know, for the Viceroy of Hyperbole, but it honestly seemed like anything was possible in this new town of Pegulaville, even an apparent prima donna finally earning his fucking paycheck.

Your guess is as good as mine as to where that brief glimpse of quality went. Last year we had what was arguably the worst version of Roy. He wasn't just bad. We was invisible. With an "A" on his chest, he seemed to wilt as the team's #1 center following an off-season where so much hype surrounded whether we even had a #1 center. Speculation - my favorite! - is that he grew tired of Lindy Ruff and maybe tanked his play to ensure that long-rumored trade. If that's true - and who the fuck knows if it is or if Roy had just had enough of the poon down at SoHo - he may be a great player after all, but he's also the worst kind of shit head. Good fucking riddance.

The obvious downside, to the extent I'm forced to concede any downside at losing a guy who seemingly exists only to take idiotic penalties and show off his sweet dangles, bro, is that we just lost our best center. This, as we know, is sad on multiple levels, not the lest of which is that our "best" center licked donkey balls like it was going out style. (Sidebar: donkey ball licking NEVER goes out of style. Just ask Aps. BURN!). Left to fill Roy's underachieving skates, then, are a bunch of centers who are young and/or unproven and/or apparently talent-less and/or already scared of Lindy. Not the greatest back-up plan. Though, if you want to be positive about a roster of players who missed the Stanley Cup playoffs again or who played on an Amerks team that got straight-up owned in the first round of the Calder Cup playoffs, I can accept that. I do hope, though, that you think before you open your mouth, because there's a fair chance you're a moron.

Of course, Roy's departure wasn't just about getting rid of our favorite whipping boy. Steve Ott, the returning player in the Roy trade, adds a lot of good things to the roster. He's a decent point producer for a player who fills the role of "grinder" - certainly better than Paul Gaustad for the same price, basically - and if you credit his WGR interview from Tuesday morning, he's pumped to be coming to Buffalo. (Suck on THAT, Dallas, what with your championships and gorgeous cheerleaders and oil money and... FUCK). Of course, no one has any clue whether Ott will perform well in Buffalo or whether we'll have another severe drop-off in play like some of the other recent acquisitions post-Pegula. If nothing else, though, even if he's not the answer to the Sabres dysfunctional roster and even if he never contributes half as much as Roy did, I'd prefer to have someone who actually wants to play as a Sabre than one who consistently demonstrated that he could just as easily quit in favor a long-overdue career as a hand model.

As for the other new faces on the roster (for now) - Adam Pardy, John Scott and, just this afternoon, Kevin Porter - the untrustworthy prevailing wisdom is that none of them are really fit to be a consistent presence on an NHL team. Porter, from what I've read in the 15 minutes since the news of his signing broke, won the Hobey Baker back in 2008 and has had only marginal success since he entered the league. John Scott, to his credit, is rumored to eat children and make Boston Bruins pee their pants, so I can't really see any downside at $600,000. And Adam Pardy, well ... he's pretty big and pretty tall and probably plays defense better than Mike Weber, so I'm ok with that as well. Worst case, they all get to have their pictures taken in the Andrew Peters Memorial Pressbox, right? (Sidebar: "Memorial" in reference to Peters' upside, which perished sometime in 2006; happily, Andy Bear the man is still alive and well).

Fact is, the Sabres probably aren't done, especially since so many people probably suspect that they are, and no matter if they're done or not, the roster is still filled with so many head cases that are being ruined by Lindy Ruff that none of it will matter and the team will flame out to another 10th place finish come April, 2013.

Or, that's at least what we'll keep telling ourselves, right?