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Seen this so many times over the years. Loser team has that one good game but everything goes into it and they blow out the eventual winner who usually bounces back because the score run up like that just wakes them up for the next game. Next game should be low score and full shutdown and likely Florida ends it unless Edmonton gets lucky in some way.

No, not true. Edmonton has a mixture of high salaries and low. They have a massive street drug and homeless problem too. Edmonton neighbourhoods vary tremendously. Vancouver has high salaries too. Some very high. The cost of living, rent and real estate is outrageous too though which is why it ranks low in that list. BUT, Vancouver also ranks near the top of lists on best cities in the world. If you can afford Vancouver or inherit your way in, there is no nicer place on earth. The good areas anyway. Every city has it's slum or ghetto and Vancouver is no different. The lower east side is a garbage dump.

Well that thread was a real thrill ride.

The reason I moved from Los Angeles to Fort Worth in the 1980s was cost of housing. I could never buy a house in Los Angeles, period. Fort Worth used to be a pretty affordable market, and relatively speaking I suppose it still is. In the study the 60 Minutes report was based on, It comes in at Number 35, although it's lumped in with Dallas. It would be interesting to see where it would fall by itself. Houses here aren't "cheap" anymore, but they were for a long time. It's only the last 5-10 years that home prices started to jump locally (like, just when I bought my current home 6 years ago).

Well done gentlemen. It ain’t easy but it’s the greatest thing in the world.

You and SDS can compare strawmen in the morning.

Since the teardown of the old core, how many impactful trades has KA even completed? 1, maybe 2? He acquired Stillman at the deadline - Meh! He couldn't even make the team the next season. He acquired Greenway for a 2nd - good and an improvement of the roster He traded Lyubushkin for a 4th in 2025. Doesn't really move the needle one way or another except hurting our depth a little. He acquired Robinson for a conditional pick and that condition didn't kick in. Was Robinson a improvement during his limited stint in Buffalo. Not really. He has dumped Asplund, KO and EJ for picks in various deals - no impact there other than clearing dead wood off the roster. Other than Greenway, the only significant move was trading Mitts for Byram. Byram made little impact after his first few games and by trading Mitts, Adams left a gapping hole at center on the roster he now needs to fill. This deal didn't make the Sabres better last season, but if KA can find a good substitute for Mitts and Byram reaches his "potential," then this deal might work out. Doubtful, but possible. Adams is a crap GM so far.

I'm not sure it's something you hang your hat on.

Last year’s team had 84 points, the team prior to the Eichel trade-off had a prorated 54. Hope we’re slightly better next season too.

What's the average price of a house in WNY. It's gotta be getting up close to those numbers. Also, I'd guess the average NC or TX house is bigger than in WNY when more homes are 50+ years old. EDIT- just looked it up. Erie county is $275k. I compared it to San Antonio (~Buffalo sized city) which is $301k. However, Erie County is more per sq/ft. $183 vs $173.

I mean sure, you could move to a place like Wichita Falls, TX which is pretty cheap...and that's because every 5-10 years a 2+ mile wide F5 tornado comes thru and levels the entire city. I mean you could save a few hundred bucks on a month on your mortgage and hope you don't wake up flying thru the air at 3am one night tho. Also in the cities that are "more affordable" in those places, the median income isn't all that much higher than it is in Buffalo, and in some cases lower. In the areas that are actually higher income, the house prices are much higher. The average house price in all of NC is 353K. Average house price in SC is 388K. Average house price in Texas is 348K. In the bigger cities, you are talking average home prices approaching 500K or higher, easily.

Salaries and supply and demand of housing are the biggest factors, combined with good incomes. Edmonton has very good salaries and has developable land in 360deg around the city meaning a greater potential supply of houses. Cities in Texas and the Carolinas also have very cheap housing and very good salaries. I'm not sure how many people would call them undesirable places to live. Vancouver has very little developable land and lower salaries. That's why the article ranks it's 3rd last in the world.

Have they made us better? No. If they had, we'd BE better. You could assemble a better team with the people we have traded away I think. Traded or not re-signed that is. Some trades might not have been made if not for others (eg. Mitts for Byram) Off the top of my head, Ullmark backed up by UPL. Montour on D makes Byram unnecessary. McNabb. McCabe ERod and Foligno on your third line Carrier and DesLauriers on your fourth line. Eichel, ROR, as 1 and 2 C. Reinhart. Kane. Right there we look a lot more like Florida don't we? I don't know where you are drawing the line, but if it's just the big 3 Adams moves only Tuch has impacted the roster so far. He was a good addition, but nothing else has impacted yet. They might, but not yet.

Well, it's not quite as affordable as it once once. My house has close to tripled in value since I bought it in late 2005...not sure how that compares to the rest of the country, I am sure some places have done well more than that, but it's nothing to sneeze at either. There is a reason Zillow ranked us the hottest housing market of 2024 and it isn't because of the "gloom and doom" people want to believe in that hasn't been true for the last decade or so here even tho they desperately want to hold onto it.

Affordable correlates with less desirable though. That's why prices are lower. I'm seeing Edmonton on that list, and it is definitely "affordable" compared to other Canadian cities but there are reasons for that. Edmonton is a sh#thole. And it hits around -40 at times in the winter. I don't know much about Buffalo in the last 30 years but there has to be reasons why it's "affordable".

Depends if you decide to work a dead end job or if you have a job in fields that actually pay well. I live in WNY, work remotely and make well into 6 figures as a senior software engineer. WNY is becoming a fairly big tech hub as more and more companies move their tech hubs here and more and more successful startups continue happening with the help of 43 North and companies like ACV and Helix Intel making waves. The Doom and Gloom era is over here and any still wanting to wallow in that need to take their ass somewhere else because we don't need them here anymore. They are a part of the problem as to why it became that in the first place and the sooner they take that attitude somewhere else, the better.

I love hypotheticals like these. For consistency, lets undo ALL GM Sheevyn's trades, instead RFAing folks he had under team control. Draft standing/season outcomes remain the same. Granato is the coach and we're still operating under EEE principles from up top. Adams never traded MoJo for Staal (MoJo leaves in UFA) = no Josh Bloom, Riley Stillman, or Viljami Marjala. Jonas Johansson never traded for the pick that became Novikov. Brandon Montour re-signed but UFA this summer (no Sardarian). Hall and Lazar leave in UFA (no Kisakov, Bjork, or Gicewicz acquired). Rasmus Ristolainen re-signed (no Hagg, Rosen, Wahlberg, or Gustav Karlsson). Sam Reinhart extended but UFA this season (no Levi, Kulich). No Future Considerations for Will Butcher (leaves in UFA) (no Vsevolod Komarov). Jack Eichel still captain (no Tuch, Krebs, Östlund, or Greenway). Erik Portillo signs 3-year ELC (no McCarthy). Rasmus Asplund extended (no pick that became Eric Robinson). Lyubsushkin is a UFA this summer. Cederqvist is in Rochester. Casey Mittelstadt, Kyle Okposo, and Erik Johnson are UFA* this summer (no Byram). The Sabres still have the potential for Rastricks if Asplund stays in the NHL. Stronger center spine, but still operating Sheevyn-level goalie batteries. The Amerks... have... nothing. The trades have completely re-stocked the farm: Novikov, Rosen, Wahlberg, Levi, Kulich, Östlund, Komarov... The lines going into 2023-24 would have been: Buffalo Skinner - Eichel - Reinhart* Peterka - Thompson - Quinn Benson - Mittelstadt* - Cozens Girgensons* - Jost - Okposo* (Olofsson*) Dahlin - Montour* Power - Jokiharju Samuelsson - Clifton/Ristolainen (Lyubushkin*, E. Johnson*) Can only sign one of Clifton/E.Johnson last summer Luukkonen Comrie* Rochester Murray - Biro - Rousek Weissbach - Asplund - Mersch Neuchev - Jobst - Cederqvist Warren - Kozak - Giroux (Nadeau, Richards) Bryson - R.Johnson Clague - Prow Cecconi - Metsa (Davies, Jandric) Portillo Johansson Tokarski

As a very casual observer of Buffalo house prices (from the Canadian side of the border), I feel like it's not even close to as affordable as I used to think. I used to find similar houses to the Canadian side of the border were maybe a third to half of what they are here. Now they're about half to two-thirds. Then there's some of the highest property taxes in the US on top of that. Is it that salaries in the WNY area have climbed that much higher, or is this another bunk listicle. I'd think Texas or the Carolinas would be the cheapest when factoring good jobs, low taxes, and cheap homes. Is that right? Edmonton sounds about right for here in Canada.

So, should the Sabres have traded other players rather than the ones they did?

It would be better had they not been in the position they needed to, or rather, felt they needed to, move those players. The returns themselves are ok to reasonable.

But obviously we're built to start winning when our young core continues to mature. It's not about our record to this point with the trades, it's what will happen in the coming years.

If you look at the win/loss record pre and post trade time for 3 of those players, slightly better. Of course, I don't blame these individual players. After all, they didn't build the team around them, nope. The management did.

In the last couple of years, Sabres management has traded away some of our best players: Jack Eichel, Sam Reinhart, Rasmus Ristolainen (?), Casey Middlestadt, etc.. My questions is, have those trades made us better? We still haven't made the playoffs, so if the object of trading players is to improve the team, I don't see that that has happened. There may be other reasons to trade away players, but it all boils down to making your team better. At least I hope it does. The question is, are the Sabres a better team now, or would they be a better team today if those trades had not happened?

As a father of a 33 yr old, 31 yr old, 25 yr old and 20 yr old I started a tradition for father's day decades ago. Road trip with child lock safety windows in the vehicle, stuffed hot banana peppers with baked beans, lots of baked beans, an hr or 2 before the road trip. No, I don't get the fancy dinners like mom, but I also don't get the phone calls asking for a ride somewhere. This Dad made his own peace 😉

But he folds