Taro T

Except he lost control of the puck before it was over the line. Unfortunately, upon review they made the correct call. And that's the risk of dragging the puck in behind yourself; if you lose it, you lose.

Reminds of the old joke. A young couple is thinking of getting married, but the young woman tells her soon to be fiancee that her parents are old fashioned and she wouldn't feel right agreeing to marry him if he didn't ask her father for her hand in marriage. So, the young man agrees to meet her father and ask him for his blessing of his intention to ask her to marry him. After he tells the father how much he loves his daughter and how he'll also be true to her and support her and love her and all that other rigamorole, the old man responds saying how he does see how much the young man loves his daughter and he'd like to give the couple his permission to marry, but first he needs to tell him that there's something he might not know about his daughter and it might temper the young man's enthusiasm to marry her. The young man assures him that there's nothing he could tell him that would make him change his mind about the love of his life but he does ask what this thing he should know about her. The old man says, sadly she has acute angina. The young man breathes a sigh of relief and shoots right back, oh, I already know that sir, and she has great tits too!

But, can we at least not get Boucher calling Phlyer games? He's been making Jack Edwards seem balanced with his takes calling a Bruins game.

Bet'cha that Ellis himself would take the blame for the 2nd goal. Yes, it was deflected, but it was rolling in slow and he was basically where he needed to be. The others, not a whole lot he could've done. You'd like to see him find a way to steal maybe the 4th or the 5th one, but this team is just awful tonight.

Personally, really like him in the Thompson role on the SECOND unit. Hate having him on the 1st unit. And they should be able to run Power (Dahlin), Doan (Zucker), Quinn (Thompson), Byram (Benson/Norris), Tuch (Norris/Benson). Which is a respectable/good personnel grouping for a PP. IF they could finally eliminate doing dumb things. Don't do a drop pass to enter the zone unless it's setting them up to have multiple guys skating with speed when they actually enter the zone. Don't exclusively bump the puck from point to sniper in the FO circle endlessly. DO get a lot of player movement to go with puck movement. DO have more than just 1 guy working towards the net. Do overman loose pucks (having multiple guys open for a pass does you absolutely no good when the other team wins an easily winnablle board battle and forces you to regroup 180' away from where the puck battle occurred. Etc. Etc. As for his play this year; realize breaking his stats from only 24 or so games into even smaller segments leads to all sorts of distortion due to small sample size, BUT he was NOT good in October; he was better in early November but still not "good;" and he actually looks the part since Zucker came back. Would be interested to know if the analytics validate the eye test, or if they've been pretty consistent across this nearly 1/3 of a season that he's played to date. And, as for personal bias in this analysis, was one of the few that expected him to have a bounce back season this year but figured that expectation was totally off-base a month into the season and was ready to give up on him. If not for so many injuries essentially forcing them to keep him in the lineup, expect he might've played his way into a 13th F role; and was still ready to have him come out of the lineup until he started playing with Zucker. So, pretty sure that by now, whatever he's doing on ice is being viewed through more or less bias-free lenses; but maybe there's still that expectation that he'd bounce back that is making the evaluation seem a bit rosier than it should be.

At some point, they'll actually play the game they need to play on the road and get themselves over NHL 0.500. Why not tonight? They normally save their stinker home games for the ones that are sold out/ close to sold out. But they played very well in their last few home games (even though on the scoreboard they were destroyed by Joisey). So, if they can get that monkey off their backs, why not get the road monkey and the can't crack 0.500 monkey off their backs too? They came back from behind to win in their last road game. No better time than the present to get it in your head that you WON'T stick it back up your arse just because you're still flexible enough to do so. 😉 Maybe the Sabres are ready for that next baby step?

There aren't many teams fitting that bill, but there are a few. Filly being 1 of them. Think Briere would do the Sabres a solid?

You make your own luck. (So, yes, the Sabres are unlucky.)

They're at NHL 0.500. They have 6 teams to leap frog to get into the playoffs. NHL 0.500 only gets you to 82 points which even in a weirdly low points total season will still miss the playoffs by a wide margin. The "real" 0.500 doesn't have any bearing on whether they make the playoffs or not. Get to NHL 0.600 and they'll be in. Regardless of whether they end up with no additional OTLs or get 16 more.

And if he pans out in his next stop, well, good for him. Just don't see him ever being THE guy in Buffalo.

No, the CBA actually isn't clear on what happens when a player would be eligible to be returned to the active lineup from IR and another player goes out sick at the same time. The situation isn't particularly addressed there. The team WOULD be allowed to bring up an AHLer under emergency conditions should 1 of the 6 D-men on the active roster be unable to play on a particular night. (Teams with less than 2 healthy goalies, 6 healthy D-men, and 12 healthy F's can make emergency substitutions of them provided the move keeps them cap compliant; they can also replace them if it makes them cap uncompliant but there are extra hoops they have to jump through.) They would not have to send a player down to Ra-cha-cha to get back under the 23 man limit while they only have 5 healthy D available (even if the 6th one has a 24 hour bug, or a very minor injury that would only keep him out of the lineup briefly). Again, the situation isn't directly addressed, but just like the AHLer called up in the emergency would have to be returned when the emergency is over, should they be able to activate Kesselring to fill the emergency, once that other player were able to play again, the Sabres would have to waive someone else to get to the 23 man limit. And it seems that the rule of thumb for whether something is possible that hasn't been specifically addressed by the CBA is yes, it is possible because it isn't specifically prohibitied.

Not so sure about that. They definitely kept Greenway out longer than needed and they seem to have been able to get Norris back sooner too, but with both guys they wanted to err on the side of caution about possibly rushing them back too soon. And even now, Greenway is getting spelled games while he works back from the surgeries. So, expect there's a good chance that Kesselring could play now if the absolutely needed him. But they're happy with what Bryson has been doing. We'll know either way tomorrow as they aren't likely to travel to Filly without a 7th D-man available, whether he's on the 23 man roster or not.

After last night, no. If he plays 50 games for the Sabres this season and 65+ next season, very possibly. There was never question as to whether Norris is a good player. He has been and is. The question has always been, can you get more than 50 games out of him and more importantly, could you get 70-ish games out of him consistently. They've now had him in the lineup for 5 games and on IR IIRC 47 games. There's still a long way to go to make that trade a W for the Sabres. That IF is the $8MM question.

When Norris 1st started skating, thought Östlund's play dipped a bit realizing that he was now in Rosen's boat when Greenway came back into the lineup. But Östlund has picked his play back up the last couple of games. Kozak gives the team more flexibility for the games that Ruff wants to give Greenway a game off. Dunne fits better into the role on the 4th line that Greenway fills than Kozak does. But again, Kozak gives more flexibility to roster construction and is a better player. So, expect Dunne gets exposed to waivers, unless somebody decides they REALLY want one part of the 3 headed monster and meet Adams price.

Can hope for W's in all of them, but can't realistically expect a W in Edmonton or Seattle. Edmonton, because they're rested, at home, and a tough matchup without the last line change, and the Sabres rarely win out there. Seattle, because until the Sabres actually beat them, they haven't done so and there's little reason to be expecting that 1st W. Calgary should be an almost automatic W, because they're really bad and for some reason the Sabres play really well in that barn. Could see them getting the W in Winnipeg, but after playing so horribly last night, they'll be looking to make up for getting embarrassed. That'll be a tougher game to steal than it should be. Could see them winning in Vancity or Filly, but can also see them laying an egg in either or both. Won't be what they need, but am expecting 2-2-2; maybe 3-2-1 with the 2nd OT loss turning into a SO win. And if Winnipeg is determined to make up for yesterday, 2-3-1. (And combined with the Minny game last week, would give them a 7 game stretch at or above 0.500 on the road. Which could give them a huge boost of confidence to at least do close to that on the road moving forward.) The wildcard is how much of a bounce do they get should Norris stay healthy through the whole trip and play like he did yesterday.

Expecting we'll get a better feel for what that line will really be bringing tomorrow night in Filly. Hoping Norris is the PPG player that was billed as his ceiling, but he had to have adrenaline out the wazoo yesterday finally getting to play for the 1st time in 2 months and getting to play against a team that simply didn't have anything in the tank. The very 1st game LaFontaine played for the Sabres, they looked like the best team in the league (they weren't, at least not that season). Thornton's 1st game as a Snark was one of the very few W's that team got in Buffalo and they might've been able to beat an all star team made up of the '77 Habs, the '82 Aisles, and the '85 Eulers that night. And who was the scrub the Sabres got from SJ that got 2 goals in his 1st game as a Sabre and then nearly never scored again for them. That wasn't Norris' 1st game as a Sabre, but considering his health issues and how long he'd been out, it kind of felt like it was. If he gets a goal and an assist tomorrow, we could have something special (at least for the 40 or so games he plays each season).

Would expect him to be on the trip, but not activated unless there is an injury/illness. Would have to relook at the rules, but believe he could be activated on an emergency basis should a D go out due to illness or injury in warmups, as they'd be below 6 healthy D on the roster. (Haven't looked at the details on that in a long time, so that might not be allowable, but pretty sure it would be.) But that would only help with the roster crunch for a day or 2.

Kesselring is listed as day to day. And he's been skating for about a week now. Danforth is listed as week to week. Kulich is listed as month to month.

REALLY hoping they don't decide to showcase UPL again in that one. The D won't likely be as solid as they were tonight because Ruff won't get the matchups he wants. Would much rather see either Lyon or Ellis between the pipes. But, guess it'll be whatever it'll be. Would be cool if they got a 3 game winning streak working with each goalie getting one of the W's.

The part about limiting and controlling rebounds was going above and beyond what he's typically done this season. (Realized after rereading it, that may not have been stated as clearly as it should've been.) And, yes, the team played very well in front of him. But will give the devil his due when it's earned. He came very close to playing a complete game tonight. (And hopefully some opposing GM saw the effort tonight and believes his coaches can wash the Sabre stink off of him.)

PLAYOFFS?!?!?!?!?! Umm, PLAYOFFS?!?!?!?!?!?!?

UPL was, once again, kinda lost early. But, as is usually the case when the team limits chances against him early, he got into a bit of a groove as the game went on and actually started limiting rebounds and doing a better job of directing the ones he couldn't control towards teammates (and not only teammates in the slot surrounded by 2 Jets, either 😉 ). Would like him to have kept his stick on the ice for the point shot from Morrisey; had he done so, he gets a SO. But, it's tough to blame a goalie on a shot that's tipped just outside the crease.

And Norris didn't even hurt himself throwing the hat over the glass to the kid after the game. Woo Hoo!!!!!!

His best game of the season by far.

That works.