Taro T

Umm, the guy that used to have Thompson's job before Tuch and Krebs became Sabres?

At least until '89 when the Iron Curtain fell, Russian was the 2nd/3rd language for the people over there. Guess it would depend upon which part of Czechoslovakia the person was from whether Slovak or Russian was the 2nd language. The Russians made sure the citizens of all of their satellites could speak it. Though the people there hate Russia (understandably), it might still be their 2nd language today. (Much like most French people can speak English even though they dislike them even more than they dislike Germans. (Still pissed over them not sticking around to get slaughtered at Dunkirk when the Brits decided to live to fight another day.))

Except for your 3rd pairing, that IMHO looks like what they'll start the year with barring additional moves. Personally expect the 3rd pairing to either by Johnson - Jokiharju (more likely, Granato loves him some Jokiharju) or Johnson - Lyubushkin. Though Stillman is the only lefty of the bottom 4, he's also IMHO by far the least talented of the 4 (presuming Johnson hasn't fallen off a cliff this summer). Could also see them flipping Okposo and Rousek if that's just too much youth to saddle Krebs with. Expect he'll be able to handle that assignment, but if not, that's the likely other switch up. Would also rather see Comrie as the backup than UPL (higher floor, lower ceiling; but UPL's lower floor becomes scary bad when he scrapes it) if those are the ONLY 2 options; but expect they will run with UPL like you expect. Comrie does a great job at covering the bottom of the net (ridiculously long legs are a benefit here) and hopefully he won't get into enough games for teams to figure out that bar down is his kryptonite. Ironically, expect that Quinn being out of the lineup ends up keeping Olofsson out of the lineup more often as either Krebs or Mittelstadt (more probable) fills in for Quinn and Jost draws into the lineup as the 4C; whereas if Krebs is 4C and Mitts 3C they could be rotating Rousek and Olofsson depending upon the opponent and Jost is either the full time 13F or in Ra-cha-cha if they run with 8D. And will be interesting to see if any of Kulich, Savoie, Benson, or some wild card has a better camp than Rousek and knocks him out of the lineup. Have Rousek pencilled in right now, but could see somebody else step up and steal his spot.

True. There's a very good chance somebody else will be out then. Don't know that it's fair to expect it to be a LT injury, but somebody will likely be out. But shouldn't Kulich be ready for his look see on the big club by then? Expecting the Sabres will have better options to fill that void than the only #1 OA pick born just a couple of miles from the MMArena.

Without any other moves, he's absolutely getting the 1st chance to grab the 4 spot. Even if a move gets made for Pesce or someone else of that reputation would expect that guy to get 1st look at replacing Samuelsson on the top pairing to see if the more talented guy could develop the same sort of chemistry with Dahlin as Muel has displayed. And Muel Lyubushkin or Muel E. Johnson should be one of the best if not the best 3rd pairing shutdown D tandem in the league; and Muel Jokiharju would still be a respectable 2 way 3rd pairing (and one of the top 2 way 3rd pairings in the league).

And therein lies the rub. He doesn't really bring anything the healthy forward grouping doesn't already have and he's expected back too late to be bringing anything they might be missing with Quinn out of the lineup. And the veteran forward who likely stuck around 1 year too long slot has already been claimed by Okposo. Not sure what he brings that the team as currently constructed is lacking.

Paetsch is a very logical choice. They've seen him in action on the development side of things, so expecting he'll be a good fit in this new role. Prospal is a very intersting choice. Always liked him as a player. Hoping he's as good of a coach as he was an NHLer. On paper, both look like very good additions.

HockeyDB says he was born in Fort Erie, but am seeing other sites like yours saying he was born in Buffalo. Never once heard anyone from Buffalo claim him as their own, so presumed he actually was Fort Erie. It seems (and will not bother to confirm it one way or another) that he was born in a Buffalo hospital to parents that lived on the other side of the Niagara River in Fort Erie. So, you were right. Sorry for doubting you. 🍻 (Though still don't think of him as a Buffalonian. 😉) (PS, would definitely include Stempniak as being from Buffalo. West Seneca is the town directly adjacently east of South Buffalo. It's actually the town inbetween Orchard Park (where the Buffalo Bills play) and Buffalo.)

Just spitballin' here, but he probably likes to collect hockey sweaters and by wearing them while he's making his videos he can write of their cost as an expense of doing business. 2 birds, 1 stone. 😉

From February 1 through to Levi signing with the Sabres he certainly wasn't helping the cause. 2-6-2 in those 10 games. If you want to look at penultimate stats rather than the "ultimate stat" he had 2 games with a sub-0.750 S% and gave up at least 4 goals on 7 occassions. You SURE he wasn't holding them back?

Fix the goaltending and you will have fixed the PK. Bringing in better PKers was a good thing. But right now, Levi is their best PKer. And because he is back there the Sabres can implement the Canes PK (at least when he's in the net). Will they implement it? Expecting they will, or a variant, and if not, somebody needs to be canned yesterday. Will they implement it should Comrie or UPL (or Tokarski) be between the pipes? They haven't in the past. Remains to be seen if they will if any of them end up between the pipes.

In fairness to Power, Dahlin never had to drag Jokiharju up and down the ice that year. 😉 There has to be some sort of correction factor they can apply for that. (Power would look much better playing with Montour, Bogosian, &/or Scandella and McCabe too. Don't believe Dahlin got stuck with Ristolainen too often that year. (Hoping that's not simply a memory fog kicking in.))

The 2 go hand in hand though. Really believe (well hope more accurately) that the reason none of the AC's got canned this spring/summer is management believes when coaching the PK and also team D the coaches were coaching with the proverbial 1 hand tied behind their backs due to the goaltending that was behind them. The PK was passive and that doesn't work anymore. It leaves too much time and space for the PP to find holes in the box/diamond. If you pressure HARD it takes away time and space and forces bad passes / blocked shots (and weaker shots too, nobody is getting a full on slap shot off if they're under pressure) which results in turnovers and zone clears. But, if the PP manages to get two quick passes off, they will have a high danger opportunity because your PKers are not out of position. Your goalie has to bail them out. If you don't trust your goaltending to beat the odd man opportunity from the house; you CAN'T run that attacking PK. You will get burned. You need to go with a passive PK and hope that you can slow the PP down and get them sort of mesmerized looking for a pass through rather than simply letting it rip from up high or go with the Sabres PK kryptonite, working the puck below the goal line and wait for the D to become impatient and come down low leaving room for a F and a D to both be in the slot with at best 1 defender trying to cover both which this year was pretty much an automatic goal. You can end up with similar issues at 5v5 if you don't trust the goalie to make a save should your pressure come too late or you simply get beat. You will necessarily not be as aggressive trying to force the turnover that will let you get out of the zone. Combine that with Granato's willingness to let a F cheat out of the zone when it looks like the D or his linemate will gain possession and your defense doesn't work in front of goaltending you don't trust. They trust Levi. Should he be backed up by Comrie or UPL hopefully coming into this season fully healthy and with an additional year of understanding how Bales wants them to play will result in the team trusting whichever one is the backup and they won't go back to the same old habits they kept returning too far too often after the Ryan Miller game. (They may have shown they could play team D on brief occassions before that, but that was the 1st game that they played well over 30 minutes doing so.) Personally was frustrated by their inability to do so for more than about 3 games at any stretch even down the stretch. Expect they will be playing team D better this year, but it still remains to be seen by just how much. Because they are not going to go full shutdown mode; this is a fun team to watch and a fun team to play for. Guys will still be allowed to get creative without fear of repercussion but they are going to be expected to understand when it's worth taking the risk and when it isn't. (And will drop this now before going any further onto a tangent.)

Especially when Samuelsson ISN'T a true 2 (though he could be someday) but he looks like one when paired with Dahlin; having Clifton play with Power could very well have him looking like a legit 4 (especially when you look at his strengths/weaknesses and compare them to OPs). And then you can come up with a 3rd pairing using 2 of Johnson/Jokiharju/Lyubushkin. They all should be quite solid if not downright good in a 3rd pairing role when not forced to drag a 7, 8, or 10 around the ice with him. And that presumes Adams is done working on the D which may or may not be the case. As long as Clifton plays like a legit 4 when playing next to the kid, does it really matter if he's a 4, 5, or a 6? He's definitely (IMHO) an every day NHL D-man so he's at least a 6.

Based on how he has played at every other level and the fact that he was asked to be the better player on his pairing 90% of the time absolutely don't expect him to suffer a sophomore slump as there isn't much they can add to his plate that he hasn't already been asked to do. Whether he takes a small step forward or a big step forward is the big question and expect it will come down to how much muscle he puts on over the summer. And really expect the things you both are looking for to be added to his game will come down to how much strength he adds in the off-season. Am absolutely convinced that he didn't believe his shot was hard enough to beat an NHL goalie unless in very close and he couldn't disguise it well enough to try it anyhow against an NHL goalie. Add some zip to the shot (and perhaps alter his release a little to make sure it isn't telegraphed except when trying for a slap shot (no friggin' way in the world to disguise that)) and he'll shoot more and start getting involved in more scoring plays too. Add some muscle to give him the confidence that he's not a skinny kid going up against a man (and maybe even help him lower his center of gravity to help there as well) and expect we'll see him play more physical. Doubt we'll ever confuse him for Ramsey or McKee, but he can definitely step that up to another level or 3.

And, as you are well aware, correlation is NOT ncessarily causation.

As soon as he said he considered the player to be a Hab and a Blue along with being a SC champion in the 80's suspected it was Lalor. But didn't remember ANYONE talking about him being a Buffalo boy. So, checked him on HockeyDB and figure he must be the guy @dudacek was talking about because he played for all those other teams that were mentioned as well.

Pretty sure the reason nobody got his name is he was born in Ft. Erie.

Does it actually? Or is it just more noticable because there's less actual hockey talk to relegate it back to the level of background noise? Expect it stays pretty consistent but there is a real seasonality (another insight from the No Schlitz Sherlock department 😉) to the level of hockey talk and new subjects within that category that we get to talk about.

Would never work. You'd never be able to get the plutonium.

No we aren't. The replies merged.

Marcus Foligno was mentioned but not Nick? That seems to be an oversight. Todd Marchant too.

What about Timmy Kennedy?

Nah. Already know (or am reasonably certain) he's never been in my kitchen.

What if we have no f'n idea who he is? Do we need to open the thread in that case?