All Activity

Nice...

Not a fan of these line at all. Moving Doan off a higher scoring line to accommodate a move up of McCleod to the first line is just asinine. We all know Ruff thinks Tage cannot play center, so I guess we need to break up the entire Tuch/McC/Doan line which has been consistently good. https://www.naturalstattrick.com/linestats.php?fromseason=20252026&thruseason=20252026&stype=2&sit=5v5&score=all&rate=n&team=BUF&vteam=ALL&view=wowy&loc=B&gpfilt=none&fd=2025-10-07&td=2026-04-16&tgp=2000&strict=incl&p1=8482659&p2=8477949&p3=8480802&p4=0&p5=0 The current second line will get crushed out there. Why not start Softie McSupple at RW? Not available? Maybe he’s trying a shut down line of Doan/Krebs/Greenway to play against their first line and sees more 5v5 minutes than either Tages line or the three yutes, but I guess we’ll have to see how they are deployed.

Dunne was the better player all preseason (and is the better AHL player, too). If anyone should've been the enforcer type to make the team, it should have been Dunne. And, except maybe his first game this year where he was a bit slow and took a bad penalty, he's been OK. That said, Greenway's return takes him out of the lineup as soon as the NHL guys return. He's behind Greenway, Malenstyn, Kozak, Krebs, and Danforth for 4th line minutes. Then, it's a matter of: if Ruff is dead set on Geertsen, then he's the 13/14th forward (depending on 3 goalies) and Dunne gets to go reprise his top-6 role with the Amerks. And if Ruff can be convinced to let his Geertsen go, then Dunne can be 14: but you'll eventually have to waive Kozak or Malenstyn who both bring a ton more to the ice in terms of PK and speed, or to make a trade.

Beat St Louis tomorrow -- then waive him after the 30 days -- and they're second in line to claim him (for NHL). They then ride their own Goalie Hydra for awhile -- until they waive Hofer. Sabres then put in a claim for Hofer in a couple weeks. Rinse and repeat.

He clears and goes where to play when?

I think Ellis will be waived as soon as the Sabres are healthy enough to need the 23rd roster spot. I think they have just been waiting for the 30 days to pass in order to increase the likelihood he clears.

Geertsen is getting about 4 mins a game when he plays, he is often a liability. Dunne can do what Geertsen does and actually play 10+ minutes of much better hockey for you.

Sure seems like Ellis tweaked something, he is not dressing. That is just how the season is going so far. We started with a bunch of defenseman dinged up, now its forwards, we are carrying 3 goalies, and for some reason are not playing the one we know very little about.

I guess I didn't verify personally, but Joe Buscaglia (Bills' reporter on The Athletic) was talking about it that way

Is it in the NFL? Serious question. And the reason for asking is that teams routinely change salary to bonuses during the season to free up additional cap space and it SEEMS to be pretty close to a $1 in vs a $1 out (minus the prorating of a hit that would fully hit this season now getting spread over 4 (or however long the contract is for) seasons giving $0.75 worth of relief for $1 worth of converted money. Don't recall seeing a team convert salary to bonus just before the deadline and becoming able to bring in a significanlty more expensive player with that newly freed cap space. Though don't pay nearly as much attention to the details of NFL cap transactions, so maybe that's just having missed some like that which have actually happened.

Agreed. No data on if he's been practicing since then, but he has not dressed for a game since then. Ruff does continue to say he's willing to play all 3 and will play whichever one on any given night he thinks will give them the best chance of winning. (And with that said, we haven't seen Ellis dress in about 2 weeks.)

A $15 million player would cost half that, since the season is half over. Obviously still more than $3 million, but the point is that the cap is prorated.

If you aren't going to give him St. Louis and the motivation of "You shouldn't have a waived me. Look at your crap goaltending now" then I don't know when he will play with the 3-headed monster. Goalie Hydra! Question: Has Ellis been practicing since he twinged his back?

Aw, did I hurt your widdle feewings? Do you need mommy to kiss the boo boo?

Samuelsson and Greenway have both been significantly more physical than they've been in past seasons. Don't know if it's due to Ruff harping on physicality ordue to guys like Doan, Dunne, Timmons, and Benson setting the example and shaming the others into playing more physical. Probably a bit of both.

Well, when you actually send pressure, there almost always is SOMEBODY open. The key is, to have that breakdown happen to the side of the field you're chasing the QB away from or at a minimum far down his progressions so that you get to him before he can look to that receiver. Would MUCH prefer they step up the pressure on Mahomes than play like they did on 4th and 17. 2 guys actually getting pressure and a 3rd doing jack gave Mahomes a week and a half back there and enough time for Rice to finally get open. They usually don't pressure Mahomes in the playoffs and they usually get 2 stops the entire game whether they needed those stops or not. They have Josh Allen. Pressure Mahomes and the couple of times that he makes you pay for not getting there, let Josh Allen go clean up the mess and get the score differential back to where it had just been.

Toronto and Montreal also achieved this in the Stanley Cup Final in 1951 with all 5 games going to OT, with Toronto winning the series and Cup 4-1

No Sabres had 5 in 2022 as well...see above...not sure if there are more than this

Yep. Granato was all about puck possession in OT and trying everything you could to get the other guys tired and then, and only then, taking a shot at actually scoring in OT. And it was a pretty successful concept. Ruff doesn't seem to care about possession as much as he has the skaters be more aggressive and go for the win when they can. So far, it's backfired in 4 of the past 5 games, and the only reason it didn't fail in the other game is the exhausted OTers did a good job of not allowing anything in close and UPL was lights out in OT. Take either of those away and we're likely looking at 5 points in the last 5 rather than 6 out of the last 5. And the skaters were more aggressive tha they'd been under Granato last year too.

That's not true, we TIED the team record. This also occurred in 2022 from March 10th-March 23rd.

Well, per UPL, YOUR expectation ain't happening, as HE expects to get the start tomorrow.

Here you go The NHL record for the most consecutive regular season overtime games is five, achieved by the Montreal Canadiens from October 27 to November 8, 1999. This is a team record, and since this is a relatively recent record, it is likely that there is no definitive individual record for most consecutive overtime games in a row. It's worth noting that the record for most playoff overtime games in a single season is 14, set by the Los Angeles Kings in 2013-14. We have tied the record... 1 more to take it.

Excellent. Everyone that has gotten tickets from me, please PM me the email address you want tickets sent to. I’ll reply with a question about your seating preference.

As expected. But it would've been nice for them to give Ellis that start against his old organization.