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Your Tuesday Morning Roundup

By Kyle Scott

Published: Jun 10th, 2014 · 9:42 AM EDT

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Some bits and shits we (no longer the royal!) didn’t get to yesterday.

 

Where Hockey Grows Up

You’re not going to believe this, but I’m about to compliment Core Four-er Dave Isaac of the Courier-Post. Isaac, one of the youngest beat writers in town and certainly the only member of the Core Four young enough to know what the term longform means in a modern setting, wrote an article titled South Jersey: Where Hockey Grows Up. It’s expertly laid out– the kind of layout typically reserved for something like a New York Times feature, complete with parallax scrolling and everything. It’s the sort of thing the big-time papers in this town should be doing. Now, I would’ve chosen a topic with a little more punch than hockey is pretty popular in South Jersey… but it’s well-written and a nice change of pace for Isaac, who led the charge when beat writers got all bent out of shape when the Flyers used Instagram to announce their starting goalie last fall. And, somewhat impressively, Isaac managed to hold off until part three before mentioning Bobby Ryan, which has to be some sort of record for anything ever written about South Jersey hockey from a Flyers perspective. Appreciate the restraint, Dave. Sam Carchidi would’ve put Ryan in the headline: South Jersey Hockey: Where Bobby Ryan Grew Up.

 

Where Hockey Goes to Win

Mike Richards, Jeff Carter and Justin Williams combined for three points – Richards and Carter each scored – in the Kings’ 3-0 squashing of the Rangers last night. The Kings are now one win away from their second Stanley Cup in three years. The Flyers have won… carries the premature exit… one, one playoff series over that span. But it doesn’t matter, because Jeff Carter can’t score in the playoffs. He has 24 points in 24 playoff games (he also had five points in six games for Team Canada en route to their gold medal in the Olympics… but hey, who’s counting?).

Meanwhile, here’s an ESPN story about how much of a winner Mike Richards is… you know, if you missed Pierre McGuire slobbing his knob over his leadership skills last night:

Talk to Mike Richards’ teammates with the Los Angeles Kings, and inevitably the conversation moves to the conclusion that he’s a winner. He has won at every level.

He’s got a Memorial Cup, a Calder Cup, an Olympic gold medal and a Stanley Cup ring. When it comes to winning things, Richards is pretty much set.

But trying to explain what he specifically does that’s different from other players in the league, well, that’s where it gets a little more challenging. What makes Richards a winner?

This question was posed to Kings defenseman Jake Muzzin.

“Well, he’s won at every level,” Muzzin said. “When guys have been through experiences like that, they know what it takes to do it again. Won in junior. Won in minors. Won here. He knows what it takes.”

 

Netflix shaming

No doubt that Netflix has an interest in this, but I love how they are unabashedly shaming US carriers for their lousy, throttled broadband speeds. Yesterday, they released their latest ISP Speed Index and took particular aim at Comcast and Verizon:

Some large US ISPs are erecting toll booths, providing sufficient capacity for services requested by their subscribers to flow through only when those services pay the toll. In this way, ISPs are double-dipping by getting both their subscribers and Internet content providers to pay for access to each other. We believe these ISP tolls are wrong because they raise costs, stifle innovation and harm consumers. ISPs should provide sufficient capacity into their network to provide consumers the broadband experience for which they pay.

Here are some data points from the May update of the Netflix ISP Speed Index:

US: Charter has entered the top three ISPs while Verizon and Comcast both slipped in the major ISP rankings. Verizon FiOS is down two slots and now ranks behind DSL providers Frontier and Windstream. Comcast dipped two spots as well, while Verizon DSL is down one.

The chart:

In case you’re wondering, only one of the 14 carriers in Canada have an average speed below 2.27. None in Sweden, the UK, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland or Denmark. 10 in the US. Cable company fuckery, boys and girls.

And in response to a cease and desist letter from Verizon asking Netflix to stop telling its customers about how shitty Verizon is, Netflix took off the gloves in an email to the broadband provider:

To try to shift blame to us for performance issues arising from interconnection congestion is like blaming drivers on a bridge for traffic jams when you’re the one who decided to leave three lanes closed during rush hour.

A CHRIS CHRISTIE JOKE! Brilliant.

 

Drinks

A Philly.com article about Brazilian caipirinhas, the drink of the World Cup.

I make a kick-ass one, and this week, I’ll do it on video for you, the CB reader.