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With the seemingly positive developments recently as far as how the team has been put together, I'm becoming more and more hopeful that Adams is now in a position where such a stupid decision could be "vetoed."

That’s not the question. Nobody should need more looks at UPL to see what he can do when he’s already played a number of years here. We already know what he is capable of and yesterday was it.

Dogfight might mean wildcards come from the Metro this year. In that scenario you'll have to actually finish ahead of some of last year's teams like Florida or Toronto.

For one thing we don’t know if Ellis is better. Maybe the coaches see it in practice but games will tell us more. I think they need more looks at Ellis before moving UPL.

So if the idea is UPL looks no different then why would anyone say he needs more looks? We already have multiple seasons worth.

We know exactly what UPL is at this point, barely even a backup at the NHL level so let's see if Ellis is any better than an AHL Starter/Backup. To force feed UPL because we overpaid him is terrible which is probably why Adams will start him.

I don’t understand why he was given the start unless the staff doesn’t trust Ellis for some reason. To the point about trusting Ellis: It’s impossible to trust any of our goaltenders at this point. I don’t trust Lyon to handle a starter workload. While I recognize he has so far been a bright spot, he’s never played a 50+ game season in net. He played 44 two years ago in the NHL and then you need to rewind to 16-17 for the last time he even played over 40 (47 in the AHL). He might be able to do it, but I don’t trust that he can. Colten Ellis has played one NHL game. Granted, I thought he looked good and, despite being very active in terms of motion, he was seemingly controlled in all of his movements and his positioning looked excellent—a promising sign considering his rookie status. That being said, I would have made the same statement after Levi’s first few games at the end of 22-23. Ellis is simply an unknown. It’s not even just one NHL game. He’s only played one full season as an AHL starter. So who knows? UPL can’t be trusted. It’s impossible to know which version is going to walk out of the locker room for the game. Even worse, it’s impossible to know which version we’ll get from one period to the next. When UPL is good, he’s properly good, but he then turns around and looks awful for no apparent reason right after. It has to be mental. I have no other explanation.

It has to be this. Like it or not, due diligence requires that they look at all of them to decide on the 1/2 goalies. So let’s try to still achieve the playoffs while also conducting tryouts during real games.

So, he'd only cost THAT number against the cap??? Why TF aren't they doing it, RIGHT NOW!!!

Package him with Power. Position it as "an UpPer echeLon blue zone Power-house" package.

Wow. Would've guessed all of the others combined were a smidge less than his contract. Because even Lyon is well under $2MM/year.

Not a direct answer to the OP’s question, but a UPL contract buyout would cost $1.58MM for six seasons. Not ideal, but also not that bad. It would be less than 1% of each year’s cap to move on from the mistake of the contract. If no improvement this year and a trade is not possible, this is my angle.

The Sabres have 5 skaters on their current 23 man roster (Bryson, Metsa, Dunne, Geertsen, Östlund) who can be waived/sent to Rochester, as the injured get healthy. I guess you could say it’s 4 skaters, as one of Bryson or Metsa stays as the 7th D. So, they pretty much need everyone back, including Norris, and keep everyone else healthy, before they would need to make a tough decision. As Lyon has never started more than 44 games in an NHL season, it’s quite possible we will need another goalie to step up for a stretch or two. Keeping multiple options, at least for now, seems prudent (I’m assuming no team is trading us a 3rd line C for UPL right now; if the Flyers want to give us Noah Cates, then do it). UPL’s best season kinda came out of nowhere after Levi faltered and Comrie was injured. Hopefully Lyon just stays healthy and rolls, but I don’t hate having UPL around for the if or when.

No, he looked like he always does.

The irony is the six other goalies in the organization salaries combined are only 883k more than UPL.

He makes me not want to buy tickets to games. There's a real chance we can get back to packed buildings again if Terry swallows the remaining $20mil on his contract.

Can you honestly say UPL, sans being "ready" looked any different vs. UPL being "ready" ? He looked like the same, $hite goalie he's ever been; minus, that fluke 20 game period of yesteryear...

With UPL's body of work, you'll either get a skilled/fringe player, OR a banger with marginal skills UPLs history (injuries/$hitty play), combined with that contract, is not going to command anything significant in return..... unless, Adams is somehow the GM for the team that is trading for UPL 😁 The team taking UPL will be doing us a favor, so ANYTHING coming back would be considered a bonus

Make him the most overpaid BACKUP AHL goalie in history, while adding ANOTHER mark of embarrassment to Shevyn's already dreadful resumé

He looked v good but in all fairness they were playing vs a statue who was down big a lot of the game and had to pass

Helps explain why they were the league laughing stock pre-AFL merger.

Run the theee headed monster long enough to be sure of the top 2, then make a trade. Might take a few weeks for the top 2 to really become clear. I don’t trust Ellis any more than I trust UPL. We need to verify which is going to be last man standing.

He is going to make an appearance again and soon whether we like it or not. Adams invested big $ in UPL (as usual after only one good season) as part of his "rebuild plan" and he's going to try to make the failed investment work. Sorry but that is the truth. The best we can hope for in the short term is that he craps the bed again and forces Adams' hand.

Those throwback jerseys are from their inaugural season in 1933. Apparently, there was far less fashion sense 92 years ago.

Package him if necessary, but some team will bite on a trade for him. Established nhl player in return, either in a package or stand alone. edit: oh and can that nhl player have skill both with the puck and the meat mittens please?