Archives for April 11, 2017

‘”I’ve been good. Feeling way better now,” Larsson said as the Sabres packed up their gear for the summer and had their final meetings of the season with the coaching staff. “It’s just going to heal a little bit. I just took out the pins and now I’m going to rest and heal for a couple of weeks and then it’s good.”‘

‘”I got the call like a week or so ago and absolutely I’m going,” O’Reilly said as the Sabres held their locker cleanout day on Monday morning in KeyBank Center.’

‘”I think overall personally I had a pretty good year,” Nilsson said. “I went in the year with a mindset that I want to be more consistent, be consistent through the whole season and I think I did. … It’s always tough to speculate and see what the future has in mind, but I felt good. I felt consistent throughout the whole season. I think I’ve played at a high level. I think I gave the team a chance to win almost every night. I mean obviously it’s a long year and you have good games and not so good games. Overall I felt good and obviously I would like to maybe play a few more games but my partner,” Robin Lehner “had a great season. He played great and so it was a good year, it was a good overall good year for us goalies but from a team perspective it’s disappointing. I think we have a team that should be in the playoffs.”‘

‘“Yeah,” he said in KeyBank Center. “That’s what a winning culture is, not being satisfied with yourself, not being satisfied with the fact that you’re losing. It’s important to realize that you can’t be satisfied with the fact you’re in the NHL.’

‘The Sabres averaged a 6.2 rating for their games carried by MSG and the NBCSN, which was down about 6 percent from the 6.6 rating the team averaged for games carried by those networks and NBC in the 2015-16 season. The Sabres didn’t have a NBC game this season.’

‘“We’re all hoping for the best for him,” defenseman Zach Bogosian said Monday. “He’s helped out every single person in this room, and we owe it to him and his family to help him out with whatever he needs because that’s part of being a team, part of being a leader.”’

‘There’s a school of thought you should fire Bylsma right now and not wait until next year, and it’s not unreasonable. If the team struggles out of the gate yet again and Murray decides to pull the rip cord on Bylsma around, say, Thanksgiving, the risk could be another season going down the drain.’

‘“I think guys want to win,” he said Monday, “but there’s a difference between saying that you want to win and actually wanting to win and putting the work in, dedicating your life to it.”’