KarateKen

Feel better Bob, we are all rooting for you

With only eight games left in the regular season, the Vegas Golden Knights have fired head coach Bruce Cassidy and replaced him with John Tortorella. Cassidy did a good job as head coach, imo, leading the Knights to the playoffs in his first three seasons, and was on pace to do that again this year. Cassidy helped the team win their first Stanley Cup in 2023. However, the struggles the team has had this season were enough to get him fired. Vegas has only had a franchise for nine seasons, and this is their fourth head coach, even though they have been in the playoffs in seven of their eight previous years, twice to the finals, and four times in the conference finals. Right now, Vegas is third in the Pacific, which is enough for the playoffs, but they have been inconsistent all year and without being in the worst division in hockey they would be out of contention. Vegas expects to be a contender every year, and they seem to have little patience when things are not going well. Maybe this will be the kick in the pants the team needs going into the playoffs. Or maybe it will backfire. We will have to wait and see.

Chuck Norris and Walker Texas Ranger memorabilia is flying off the shelves. Ebay and other websites are seeing a surge in people selling merch and autographs since his passing last week. The cost of the merch is up to three times what it would have been the day before his death. The demand and value of autographs go up right after a celebrity dies, and we are seeing that. If you are considering purchasing autographed merchandise please be careful, there are lots of fakes out there. Be sure that the autograph is verified by either PSA. JSA, or Beckett. PSA is considered the gold standard, with JSA and Beckett coming in just behind them. These brands have websites where you can check for authenticity. Any item verified by these outlets will have a sticker with an item number that can be checked on their website. They also often come with a card and/or a letter, depending on the item, but they all have a number. For non-autographed items I have seen a lot of action figures and clothing, including a Walker Texas Ranger jean jacket that was going for 1,000 dollars.

Connor McDavid has reached 800 career assists, an impressive milestone, but still far behind the Great One, Gretzky, who had 1,963 for his career, more than double what McDavid currently has. While 800 assists is a lot, McDavid would still need over 100 more to break into the top 20 all time. The most career assist of any active player is Sidney Crosby, who has 1,098.

Colorado and Dallas become the first two teams to clinch playoff sports this season. Vancouver and the NY Rangers are the first two teams to have been officially eliminated. More of each will be coming soon. Playoffs start April 18.

Photos being passed around the internet from Norris's funeral are fake. Some AI photos went viral, but they are not real. It's gross that people will create and spread false information to get some clicks, especially about a dead man, but that is the social media world we now live in. One of the obvious ways it was proven fake...his name was listed as "Charles Norris" on the casket. His name was Carlos Norris. So stupid.

The NFL is exploring the possibility of using replacement refs again in 2026. Did we all forget the Fail Mary and the disaster that was the early 2012 season?? There are even conversations about high school officials working NFL games this fall if the CBA lockout extends into the season.

The NHL Department of Player Safety is a joke. AJ Greer gets a mere three game suspension for his dirty and illegal cheap shot on Connor Zary of the Flames. A terrible hit from behind and into the boards against a defenseless player. As I said in a previous post recently, the NHL needs to take a long and serious look at making changes to the department of player safety. First the Austin Matthews hit, and now this one on Connor Zary. These are serious hits that can end seasons and even players careers, and the league continues to hand out soft punishment. The NHL should be ashamed. George Parros should be fired, he has been a disaster, and the league should do a complete overhaul of the department this offseason before someone gets paralyzed from a dirty play. They need new leadership and a whole new team who does a better job. Furthermore, the punishment does nothing to harm the Panthers franchise, who are out of any playoff hopes this year anyway. This is disgraceful. Here they had a chance to send a message and let it be known they are taking these hits more seriously, instead they botched it yet again.

Congratulations @Zaine on 20 years and member of the month.

One of the running jokes online has been "Chuck Norris passed away 15 years ago, but death was afraid to tell him."

Some sad news this morning. Chuck Norris has passed away at the age of 86. Details are not known to the public, but he was hospitalized on March 19 with a medical emergency and died later that day. The family posted a statement on Instagram March 20, noting that his death was sudden and he spent his final moments with family. Just nine days earlier he celebrated his birthday by sparring with his training partner where he posted a video saying, "I don't age, I level up," kind of a play on the old Chuck Norris jokes that have been around for decades. Perfect last words. He died in Hawaii on the island of Kauai.

How about a huge Karate tournament where we all fight each other? All kidding aside, 25 years is a long time for a message board. This site started around the same time I took my first MA class, which was in the fall of 2000. I don't have any ideas right now, but if I think of anything I will let you know. Unless you do want a huge Karate tournament where we all fight each other!

This goes out to @Patrick who lives in Los Angeles and @sensei8 who lives in Las Vegas. Hope you are staying cool in this crazy record heat wave that is happening where you are. Same to anyone else out there who is in the southwest, including Arizona where in Phoenix it has been over 100 degrees! Triple digit temps in March is bonkers, even for Arizona. I mean, technically it is still winter. Stay safe out there!

I've got a sheet of these now and have used a few. They are pretty cool. Bruce is doing a flying side kick on it.

I was in line for them during the PRE SALE and there were still 299,317 people in front of me! I gave up quickly

Without looking, who is in first place right now in Atlantic Division? It is the BUFFALO SABERS! The Sabers have had a lot of tough years but at the moment they have one of the best records in the NHL, second seed right now in the east with 90 standings points. It has been I think 14 years in a row without the playoffs for the Sabers, the longest playoff drought of any team in the history of the NHL. That will finally end this year thanks to some great defense and goalie play. Sabers will be in the playoffs for the first time since 2011. Let's see if they can make a run for the cup. Other teams in good shape for the playoffs are the Hurricanes, Lightning, and Canadians in the east, but it gets really tight after that with teams like the Penguins and Islanders ahead of the pack. Out west the Avs have 97 points, most in the league, and are 20 points ahead of the Ducks who lead the Pacific division. Wow, can't remember seeing such a large gap in points between the first and second seed. In the east the gap between the top seed and the 8th seed is only nine points. The Stars (94 points) and Wild (90) are going to get in, and both have a chance at winning the Presidents trophy. Utah is hanging in there with 76 points, as some teams in the Pacific are fighting it out with the Knights (77) and Oilers (76) very much in the hunt. Kraken, Kings, and Jets are still alive but are on the outside looking in. Teams who have had tough seasons this year and won't make the playoffs include the Panthers, Rangers, Flames, Blackhawks, and the Canucks are dead last, a mere 48 points, putting them 11 points behind the second worst team, the Flames. The Pacific has been the worst division in the NHL this year. Each team has about 15 games left, give or take, so we are in the home stretch, and the playoffs are only a month away!

The Chiefs have traded for QB Justin Fields, sending the Jets a 6th round pick. Rumors are swirling that the Raiders are interested in Kirk Cousins. Raiders are expected to draft a QB with the #1 overall pick, but might want a vet in there for the first year or two or the youngster to learn under.

Auston Matthews is out for the rest of the season with an MCL tear that he suffered against the Ducks on March 12. Matthews is the Maple Leafs team captain and arguably the best American born hockey play in the world right now. The injury happened as a result of a cheap shot by Ducks defenseman Radko Gudas, who collided with Matthews with intent to injure, according to the officials. Gudas was ejected and has been given a five-game suspension. Way too short of a suspension. Gudas has a long history of suspensions, maybe not Tom Wilson long, but long. This was not a hockey play; it was an intent to injure. Gudas should have been suspended for much longer, maybe the rest of the season, but no surprise the NHL department of player safety got it wrong, as they often do. The league should take a long and serious look this offseason for how they hand out punishments like this. Too often the offender gets off easy. It's time for an overhaul.

Maxx Crosby now appears to be staying with the Raiders. NBC Sports reporting the Raiders have announced Crosby is no longer on the trade block. Could it be that Crosby's failed physical made the Raiders believe he isn't tradable? Maybe he would have failed the physical if he had been sent to another team. There were options, the Bears had expressed interest, according to Yahoo Sports. I am guessing they are not the only ones who would consider trading for one of the best defensive players in the league. Srange turn of events. The Vikings have signed Kyler Murray.

The NFL is now considering adding a game on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. The change could be as early as this upcoming season. Hard pass. This is a bad idea for a few reasons. One is that the elements of scheduling it with short rest, and how that will work, since college football is still playing that Saturday. Are two teams going to play on Sunday then on Wednesday night? Or is there going to be a bye week before, and two of the teams coming off the bye will play? Or one team off a bye and the other off the Thursday game the week before? Where is player safety in all this? The NFL always talks about player safety but then they add games and shorten weeks. As usual, it is money before everything in the NFL. Even if all those questions had good answers, I still hope the answer is no. It's too much. We don't need an NFL game Wednesday night, three on Thanksgiving, then another game on black Friday, all in the middle of the week between full NFL days on Sunday's and the MNF game. The NFL continues to spread out the games over more dates and more different services. Network TV, cable TV, and multiple streaming services. It's simply getting too oversaturated for my liking, and too expensive. It is likely that if the Thanksgiving Eve game were to happen, it will be on a streaming service. Sometime in the next couple years the NFL will announce an 18-game regular season, with more games going overseas. The league has scheduled nine international games for 2026, with that number expected to grow in coming years. When the NFL announces, they are going to an 18-game regular season, and they will, it is possible there will be a push for a 20-game regular season, possibly eliminating the preseason all together. Why? Because the ratings and ticket prices for the regular season are much higher than preseason games. The quality of the product will go down while the revenue of the league goes up, which, in the end, is all the NFL really cares about.

If an event has tickets that are not selling, you can often get big discounts the day of the event, as you have experienced. A concert or game ticket that is going for 500 dollars at first, might be 50 dollars three hours before the show, if they are not selling. Ticket prices are flexible depending on demand, and since they can't be restocked, meaning once the game is over the tickets are gone, you can sometimes get much lower prices if you are willing to wait. Of course, the risk is that you miss the event all together, or the event sells out and the cost of tickets will be higher because the only thing available will be the resale market.

The high cost of Metallica tickets in Vegas has not lowered the demand. Ticket sales were so good that Metallica added more shows and most of their residency is already sold out, with the shows not even starting until October. Metallica fans from all over the world were trying to get tickets to The Sphere to see the band. That is why places like Las Vegas do so many residencies. Makes sense to the venue and the artist, and the fans are happy to go, and why tickets are so expensive. As long as enough people are going to pay for it, the prices will be what they are.

Now the Ravens have signed Trey Hendrickson just after backing out of the Crosby deal. Many people questioning the timing on that, saying it's possible that the Ravens learned they could get Hendrickson so used the physical as an excuse to back out of the trade. This way they get a star pash rusher without giving up the draft choices. You know how these online theories quickly pick up steam. Crosby recently had knee surgery, so maybe that was connected to the medical concerns the Ravens were having.

It is March 10th again, so another Happy Birthday to Chuck Norris, how is now 86. I don't know what Mr. Norris is doing for his birthday this year, but I will be watching an episode of Walker Texas Ranger tonight for sure!

I've run into some weird stuff. There was one place where the previous renter had allowed a pack of rats to live in the dishwasher. There was a place we went to look at, and when we got there, we were told by the owner it was off the market. They decided to rent it but left it on Zillow as for sale. Another time we went to see a place and the lady living there had no idea we were coming. We knocked and rang the doorbell, knowing there was a tenet, but no answer, so we went in, and a lady is standing there in nothing but a towel. She was in the shower while two strangers walk into her home unexpectedly. She was a relative of the owners who, for whatever reason, never communicated to her that we were coming to see the place. Other times the photos tell a different story from looking in person. There were two places we looked at where the photos looked good, but we got there and saw cracks in the walls, and the place was clearly not well maintained. My agent thought that one of them might have been used as an AIR B&B. One other note. A lot of people are buying up real estate as an investment. Somewhere along the line housing became less about buying a place to live in and more about maximizing profit. Problem is that when someone is looking to profit, they tend to do things on the cheap. They are not living there, and the goal is to make as much money as possible, so they cut corners. If the tenets trash the place, it is cheaper to replace the materials. Personally, I have no interest in real estate investing at all. It sounds miserable to me. Dealing with renters who don't pay on time, won't take good care of the place, ect. I hear nightmare stories from people who have had terrible renters in their properties and lost thousands of dollars because of it. No thank you.