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Interesting times. I wonder if the NG will be conducting law enforcement operations or if they're be working with ICE in a supporting role.

Interesting points. Leave it to Larry Quinn. The St Louis arena was built in 1994 and Buffalo's was built in 1996. In every aspect I can think of the St Louis arena is superior and it is still in great condition today. The main level corridors are wide with an open and comfortable feel, and they have more restrooms and more concessions. They also have more suites, they have more room walking room and concessions on every level. Most important is the seating is steeper, like the old Aud, so you seem to be closer to the ice even in the 300's. The place is extremely loud when the crowd gets going - I never looked at the ceilings to compare them- I attributed the loud and intimate feeling to the steeper design. We were in the first few rows of the 300's and my wife commented that it reminded her of her tickets in the Aud - that was a compliment, she loved the feel of that place and the overall experience. The last time I was there I was amazed at how much nicer it is than Keybank, especially since they were built in the same time period. Since a new arena in Buffalo is not in the near term plans they should fix up what they have.

https://www.facebook.com/BuffaloBatHabitat/videos/1025967066117751/?mibextid=rS40aB7S9Ucbxw6v

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd7yperjxneo "Despite declaring the Washington DC mission a success, Trump said that he is considering declaring a national emergency once the deployment's 30-day deadline expires. "If I think we're in great shape here, that's one thing. But if I don't, I'm just going to say it's a national emergency," he said. "If I have a national emergency, I can keep the troops here as long as I want."

1. Goalie, and I assume UPL will be back on track to start the season. The question is how long will he keep it together, what does it take to break him again? 2. and 3. Kesselring and Byram. They will be paired with Power and Dahlin and get over 20min each every game. Kesselring is new to me, I just know he is big, shoots hard, but is unexperinced. Byram is a great puckmover that had a hard time on defense last season. He finds himself out of position way to often and I have wanted to see him traded for a player that has defensive positioning in the DNA for two summers. If Kesselring and Byram can show us a defensive game at a level of a top4 D wingman. And UPL is back on track to play at his best. Then we might be playing meaningful games in April.

I think they have improved and will be better, how much better is hard to predict, we'll see. Just as an example, what I think made Montreal a playoff team was that they had better match-ups, they had players that would give StLouis the possibility to have a player like Laine on the ice and use him on PP, even if he was a disaster 5v5. I think they are worse there this season and it will be very interesting how it affects on Habs overall play. I don't see Habs as improved as many other, just because of that. I sure think Sabres look more like a Ruff-team now, I am just not convinced that they have the experience and disciplin to play as he wants them to. And talking about Ruff, I expected him to be better to adjust his coaching to the material he had to work with, that was a dissapointment.

Roslovic (and to some extent Gryzlyk) still not signed by someone is a little surprising. Do they have kids playing hockey? Maybe we should tank for their draft year? 🙂

So is the short version you agree with me that Norris and Tage should play together on the top line?

They'll probably superimpose pictures of fans on the seats soon.

The Cult will be at the OLG stage in Niagara Falls in October. But you’ll be paying re-sale prices if you don’t already have tix.

His potential is really interesting. I'm not sure he ever becomes a 70-80 point player but I think he's one of those players just below the known names that are extremely hard to find. My guess is he'll be one of those players that's so responsible, you need them to win.

The sparkle in your eyes keeps me alive.

Maybe. He played Briere at C for years even though he was better suited as a W in his own end. Expect the preference is to keep Thompson at W, but could see him move back in a pinch. If he does move back to C would expect to see him teamed up with someone like Tuch that is defensively responsible and oftentimes is the 1st F back into the zone. Similarly to how Briere played with Hecht and then as a Phlyer with the one we try not to speak about here.

4th youngest as a 2nd year player. That’s insane.

Unless Lindy Ruff gets fired, Tage isn't going back to center.

How about instead of gold, red, blue, and orange they go with gold, red, blue, and black? Not sure where you'd have the 100 level split between red and gold; but expect black works better than orange and it fit with the historical blue & gold and red & black.

A very simple thing that would've been nice would be renaming it the KeyBank Aud. Also when they redo the seats do them up in the old colors/pattern of the ones in the Aud, I'd rather that than a clean but drab design that is done these days

The beauty about this staring at a piece of paper is that you can comfortably say each player is a good, probably above average option in their slot.

The takeaway in reading this thread is that there are many combinations that make sense. My preference would be for Tage to be 1C, Norris the 2C and McLeod the 3C. It’s also going to be interesting to see how our forwards get slotted for the top three lines. Currently, my first line preference is Zucker/Tage/Tuch. Needless to say, this is subject to change. This is going to be an interesting camp.

Bite your tongue. Foligno was BORN a Sabre. He hasn't been there 20+ years yet, it just SEEMS that way. He'll always be a Sabre IMHO. Even though his brother was never officially a Sabre, will give him partial credit as one too. That whole family is Sabres. Even their sister is a Sabre. 😉

Am slowiy coming around to being optimistic about Norris and Thompson being paired together. Still not sure about how having the 2 shoot first players together will gel, but they will likely predominantly have Dahlin on the ice with them, and that is one very good playmaker that could be feeding the puck to either.

Part of the reason the building has always been a bit on the quiet side, even when it was packed and the fans were into the games, is the ceiling is REALLY high up relative to where the seating bowls stop. IMHO, a big part of the reason for this is the same company that designed the old Staples Center in LA with its 3 levels of luxury boxes also designed the MMArena. It was a cookie cutter design and came cheap - a hallmark of Larry Quinn's direction. And the original horrible color scheme in the building is courtesy of Dougie Moss's girlfriend. The current color scheme is actually a significant upgrade over what they started with, sadly. As for whether there will be upgrades or not to the building, know for a fact that they were looking at some very radical revisions to the building back prior to covid hitting. How serious they were about the revisions, don't know. But they did spend money on the studies. Would agree that a new building likely isn't in the cards anytime soon. Caveat to that belief, if the pipe burst is indicative of the overall state of the plumbing (and maybe even the electrical, HVAC, structure, etc.) in the building, they may have no choice but to do a new building sooner than later. Thaaaaaaannnnnks, Larry. But hey, you got the buidling constructed on time and under budget. Who cares if the darn thing falls apart within 40 years? Heckuva job there, Quinny.

That’s the Peterka deal and the debate about Benson replacing him in a nutshell isn’t it? I know people hate +/- but it shows Tuch +16 and McLeod +13 won their battles, Cozens -13 Quinn -18 did not while Tage -2 and Peterka -1 were a draw Switching to xGoals %, The Sabres had 4 lines that were “good” 2 of them had Tage and 3 had Benson. Maybe these are the forwards who create winning matchups and the ones who should be seeing the toughest ice time? Not sure exactly what you are envisioning here, but agree coaches and fans need to take a harder look at lines in terms of how they match up. I also think some of the moves they’ve made are based on Lindy wanting players who better fit what he wants to do.

Thanks for the response. With respect to the football stadium in Orchard Park, from everything I read about it outlived its life span and the cost of upkeep wasn’t worth it. It was better to apply the upkeep money to a new facility.

I think Norris is smart enough and fast enough to take advantage of the holes Tage creates offensively and help the line in its own end. He reads the play at a high level. Hes just not a creative puck handler and a distributor in the Mittelstadt or Connolly mould. Thing is Tage doesn’t need that type of centre. He wants to be the guy on his line carrying the puck. He’s a bit of a unicorn in the way he creates offence for himself. There’s a reason JJ Peterka went from 22 assists to 41 last year. Jeff Skinner had never topped 30 assists in his career. Put him with Tage and he suddenly had 47. Norris can have a career high in assists without changing a thing about his game simply chipping pucks in Tages direction.