Taro T

Thing is, though the Bills "only have $2 MM in cap space" there are still probably 6 contracts that could get reworked today to free up at least $15 MM right now IF the right player were sitting there ready to get picked up. And they'll be able to open up literally 4 times that if necessary in any future year where the rosters aren't close to being set yet. And, don't have a problem with having 1 DT under team control for 5 more years (this year and the following 4 years that the new contract covers) especially when he was a top 10 selection and IIRC only 21 when he was drafted. Haven't seen the details of Oliver's contract but heard it only averages out to ~$11MM/year which shouldn't cause any problems over the life of it and also expect right now that final year can get punted with no/almost no dead money. (Again, haven't seen the particulars yet, maybe that take isn't a good one, but that's the expectation.) Oliver's shown flashes, but Frazier's bend don't break base nickel package asked the line to think contain 1st and then penetrating to the QB. Expect that McDermott will be letting him actually wreak some havoc when he explodes through the line. Hoping Jones and Ford can stay healthy, because rotating those 2 big boys in at the 1T will really let Oliver attack. Edit: The $11MM/year is the guaranteed amount. It averages out to $15.7MM/year which will still be cheap by the time the contract is done IMHO.

Isn't he the lead singer in REO Speedwagon? Or maybe that's his grandfather.

The "Cap" in the NFL is ridiculously maleable. It is nowhere close to as hard a cap at the NHL's salary cap. It will eventually catch up to teams in theory, but having a stud QB on a "reasonable" deal seems to keep it from ever catching up to those teams while that QB is there. The Bills are one of those teams. As long as the cap keeps going up, and it seems it will continue to do so, teams will be able to absorb the dead money at the very end of a guy's deal. And as long as the team can do it, there is no harm. Back when the Bills were a "cash to cap" team, the others were spending way more every season than Buffalo was spending. Now, Buffalo has actually joined the rest of the league.

Nope. The Sabres "host" the Winter Classic every 10 years whether it be 10 miles outside the city limits or 1,000 miles away. Fully expect them to be the home team for the 20th anniversary Ice Bowl.

Umm, how can it not happen? The Bills will still be using that stadium in early January. They aren't going to play the last 2 weeks of the year on the road to allow for the rink to be set up. But absolutely agree the Sabres will be the host team for that one. The only question will be which "suburb" will the game be played in. Gut feel is that one will be in a true Buffalo suburb - Boston NY MA. 🤬

With him getting to line up next to a true 1 Technique DT pretty much all the time between Jones and Ford, them having a legit outside pass rusher (hopefully) all season between Floyd and Miller (with perhaps Rousseau stepping up too) and ALSO playing a more aggressive D than Frasier ran am expecting him to have a big year. Don't forget, he played with a high ankle sprain almost all of last season. He was looking very good prior to the injury. Am really looking forward to seeing McDermott call a more aggressive defense. They have Josh Allen on the other side of the ball; play aggressive and get the ball in his hands. If you get them to go 3 & out or 5 & out, he gets a short field. If you gave up a big play, well, you have Josh Allen and he can get those points back.

No. Goober was the consolation prize that year. Babdick was the guy they wanted.

Yeah, game 2 is important (and sometimes you don't even get to game 5) but game 5 sure seems to typically be the most critical 1.

Yeah. Adler is probably 1 of the 3 best in the league and on occassion has a better game than the other 2 guys would put slightly ahead of him (Irelan and Baptiste). Winning the vast majority of faceoffs helped the Bandits work the strategy they had for this game. Rather than going primarily to a fast break game or working the ball to one of their stud shooters (primarily Byrne, Nanticoke, or Smith; secondarily Fraser, Buchanan, Cloutier, or MacKay) for a quick shot the Bandits worked the ball around a LOT and didn't take the bait of the 1st open shot which Ward was well out of his crease to shut down. The Bandits were patient on offense and worked to good shots. Even though Ward was stopping the lion's share of them in the 1st half, that plan wore the defenders and also Ward himself out. He started leaving holes open and the Bandits shooters were able to capitalize. Patience on offense had a secondary (and even a tertiary) benefit as well. The 2ndary benefit was that the D were able to stay fresh and after about Colorado's 3rd trip into the offensive zone the Bandits defenders (especially Priolo and Bomberry) were winning the majority of loose balls on the occassions where Colorado was even able to get a legit shot away. There were a lot of occassions where the fresh D were able to simply keep the Mammoth out of the scoring lanes and with their strength (the Bandits have some big boys on D and working the offensive transition) they were able to shrug off the Colorado attempts at picks. That 3rd benefit is the Bandits stayed out of the box. They had 1 PK to kill (and were unsuccessful at, Colorado has a REALLY good PP) and had 1 other coincidental penalty. That kept Colorado's PP off the floor and Colorado simply didn't have the talent to take it to the Bandits at 5v5. Went to the opening playoff game vs the Kin-ig-hit Hawks and as impressive as that win was (and the 2 wins over TO Hamilton too) this was far and away their most complete game of the season. Cudos to Tavares and the rest of the coaching staff for changing the game plan. They spent the week working on moving the ball around with their backup doing his best Ward imitation coming out high in the crease; and it was successful. Was complaining about them not changing to this last year against them and also in games 1 and 2 and wifey pointed out that the W's in game 1 of both series likely left them believing they didn't need to change their style of play until it was way too late. There's probably more than a grain of truth in that observation. And this is one more Pegula owned team that is consistently one of the best teams in its league. Should the Sabres ever get there, they should be able to keep it going for a long time. (And the Sabres seem close to getting there too.) Though it may take the Pegulas a long time to find the right people to run their teams, once they've found them they do seem to turn them loose to do their thing.

At least Mississauga is an ACTUAL suburb of TO rather than a completely distinct city about an hour away. It's a MUCH larger Orchard Park to TO's Buffalo.

They were. But you still didn't get 40-35 games like you would with outdoor nets being used indoors.

Not positive, but always figured it was because the field is so much smaller than an outdoor lax field along with a much smaller net so that there are way more opportunities for shots and the goalie blocks way more of those shots with his body than an outdoor lax goalie blocks. Outdoor goalies make most all their saves with their stick; indoor goalies tend to have the saves come more of a 50-50 split between stick saves and body saves. And if the goalie didn't have so much padding or the net were any larger, each team would be scoring into the 30's each game. It wouldn't be lacrosse, it would be basketball.

Had the score been remotely close, the refs likely would've gotten the call right. But at that point, with so little time left in the game they thought it better to give Colorado a CHANCE to come back rather than just shut the door on them. The Bandits scoring right off the next faceoff made up for that error in judgment.

1st off, his foot might have been on the line before he even got the ball. (TV never reshowed that far back.) But the ball didn't cross the line until MacKay falling into the goal knocked the goal behind the goal line which came WELL after not only the shooter's foot hit the crease but his other knee hit the crease too. The overhead view showed that NO part of the ball fully crossed the goal line (much less the entire ball) until well after the shooter had stepped in the crease.

He's kind of right. From the 2nd period of the Miller game, the Sabres had moments (sometimes a period or 2, occassionally a game or 3) of actually playing what the rest of the league (minus the Loafs & Eulers) consider playing actual team defense. The D would box out forwards trying to get to the crease and the F's would actually take time and space from the F3 and the D. But they'd then revert back to their earlier season defensive zone coverage for a few games at a time. Could never figure out the rhyme nor the reason for the regression to October hockey for them. Because believe they actually were preaching (teaching?) playing that tighter defensive zone play.

Way behind because watched the Bandits championship before switching to this. But how did Staal become quick enough to score on a wrap around after being the slowest guy on an entire bad Sabres team 2 or so years earlier?

Took 7 ####ing games, but the Bandits FINALLY figured out how to beat the friggin' Mammoth. (Yes, they beat them twice before in those 1st 6 games, but that's simply because they're so much more talented than them.) Pass the ####ing ball and get Ward moving and also setting back in his crease. And don't take dumb ####ing penalties because Colorado's PP is deadly. From the very 1st goal with Josh Byrne drawing 2 defenders to him to set Naticoke clear to go in 1 on 1 on Ward through to MacKay cleanly stealing the ball to run out the last 28 seconds; this team played disciplined clean lax. Matt Vinc had a mirror image season to last year - last year he was unbeatable to start the year and became a relative sieve (compared to the normal Matt Vinc) by the time the playoffs rolled around. And this year, he couldn't stop a beach ball in the 1st game against Albany and wasn't much better the 1st quarter of the season, but he found his game as the year went on and set a record tonight for the fewest goals given up in a finals game - 4. Stinks that this team had 2 championship chances stolen from them for Covid, but this team is REALLY good. And so cool that MacKay got to hold the ball to the final whistle. That guy has meant so much this year at both ends of the field especially with all the injuries to the forwards they went through this year. Let's go Ban-dits!

Hated the idea of losing on purpose and '13-'14 was an absolute horrible year. Thought the tank was a horrible idea and said as soon as Darcy promoted "suffering" he should've been canned on the spot. But had 2 choices in '14-'15, could've walked away from the team because 2 years of trying to support that ####show knowing management had actively stacked the deck against them would've been too much; or could hope that they actually managed to get the ####tiest team in the league that year and laugh at the joke they'd made of themselves because had they finished 29th there is no doubt that Murray would've selected Dach at 3. Never rooted against them in the building. (There were plenty of other games for them to lose over 82.) But otherwise was ok with the losses because AT THAT POINT there was no point to meaningless wins; that team was built to lose and as stated earlier the options were hop out of the car before it hit the skid and walk away forever or steer into it and hope it only ended up a sideswipe of a Fiesta and not a full on head on collision with a semi. Hopefully they never do that again. Will walk away if they head INTO a season wanting to lose. Taking a step back at the trade deadline because things aren't working is one thing; taking a step back at the trade deadline and then getting rid of everything else of value for 2 more years can't happen again.

Presuming you mean as a FA or a trade for the player's rights where that guy is the primary target of the other team. And that you don't mean somebody wanting to grab one of these guys a couple of weeks into July to fill out their AHL rosters. Pilut could find himself as an NHLer on a team with a very shallow pool of NHL D-men. (Even shallower than Buffalo's to start the year.) Like him and he's great at the AHL level, but he simply isn't any higher than an 8 at best on a team with reasonable NHL D depth. Would be surprised if any others except possibly Murray got any interest from other teams for actually playing in the NHL. Could Cecconi or Davies have an outside shot at NHL interest? Can't see that one personally, but maybe possibly sort of. Don't see Weissbach as an NHLer or any of the others as NHLers unless a team has a rash of injuries. The Sabres have a few guys in the AHL that could or will become NHLers. But really don't see any of their AHL vets nor AHL-NHL hybrids (except Pilut) having any legit shot at the NHL next year. Karmanos and the rest did a nice job of assembling the Amerks and they could bring most all this squad back as there doesn't seem to be a Dixon Ward (vet that should've been in the NHL but wasn't due to circumstances and promptly got back to the NHL) on this roster.

Pre NLL.com it is.

Let's hope he plays like he was before he was injured and not how he played against Colorado last year. That 1st Josh will be very hard to defend against and might help the Bandits to get that D to open up some. The 2nd Josh might as well be on the bench; Cloutier who hasn't been effective this round will be more effective. And hopefully @Eleven's intel about the OTA channel is correct for those in Buffalo wanting to watch. Otherwise, to watch in the States, you'll need ESPN+.

That team had been trash LONG before Stevie Wonder showed up. Why pick that year as your demarcation point for suffering if you aren't limiting it to your own personal experience?

That's the way the CBA reads, but the way it is enforced in practice is if the team is cap compliant with the BF-LTIR guy being "off the books" then it is considered good on the opening day of the season. So, at a later point in the year, IF the team can either dump enough cap or get enough cap to the BF-LTIR they can get that player activated in the regular season. But yes, it is more likely that he'd end up coming into the lineup after the playoffs begin. Remember, the team may not get to use the entire cap with the player going onto BF-LTIR if they weren't at the cap prior to putting the player on BF-LTIR. Their effective cap of the other healthy rostered players will end up being what the team was at prior to the player going onto BF-LTIR. And putting a player on BF-LTIR to get to the cap floor is counter productive. That player would simply be on IR. BF-LTIR doesn't come into play until a team needs to replace that salary and find a way to stay UNDER the cap. You can have as many players on IR as you happen to have injured and the entire salary of ALL of them not on BF-LTIR counts against the cap. Boychuk 2 years ago and Bishop last year never were placed on BF-LTIR though they both qualified.

Jokiharju is a 2 way defenseman that has strengths and weaknesses at both ends of the ice and in transition too. He is in the mold of Toni Lydman. Hopefully with a couple more seasons under his belt he becomes that player. He'll never be a legit top pairing guy but could top out as a legit 4 on a good team; but with the 2 1st overalls the Sabres have, that could be good enough in a couple of years. (Remember, though Lydman was a 4/5, he was 1/2 of the best D tandem this team had seen for nearly 20 years since McKee Warrener.)