Taro T

Yeah, only 7 of 8 on the road, not 8 of 9. Actually knew that the 1st roadie was only 3 games long; amazing the power of what we hear vs what we read (especially when tired). And guess the Black Friday game will have to suffice for getting a holiday leftover meal. As to your earlier question, have seen that once or twice in the NHL, but not for a long time. More frequent an occurance in youth hockey.

Good post. Should things continue the way they have these past 2 games, yes, Adams should be feeling heat. (He should anytime they're short of what expectations are, but sample size is a thing.) Winnipeg is another team like Buffalo with a better road record than home record. The Blackhawks are still bad, but the Sabres had better not overlook anyone right now. Get those 2 W's and a split with the Caps and Pens and they've officially come away with the 6 points they need ALL season per 5 games to get to the dance. Don't like their chances minus both Thompson and Tuch, but it's Mittelstadt's and Cozens' opportunities to step up. They both consider themselves to be leaders (and the folks around here agree w/ Dylan); so they need to treat this as an opportunity. Have been fine with keeping Kulich in Ra-cha-cha, but they need help in the top 6 w/ 1/2 of it out of the lineup and the 1st kid asked to be a replacement also out. The coaching staff MIGHT have faith that streaky Olofsson will go on one given time on whatever is the 2nd line & top PP w/ all that firepower out, but would hope they don't. Will be interesting to see if there's any fire to the Hannifin rumblings we heard this weekend. He would be a huge addition to the back end and would allow them to come up w/ pairings that make sense throughout all 3 pairs.

Heard the comment about pulling Levi in the car. Wasn't sure if the comment about having considered pulling him earlier was about doing so at the period or after an earlier goal or as part of the 'we were letting Uupi get his gear.' Either way, it was disappointing that from top to bottom nobody in the organization has much of a feel for how to run the goalies. And they didn't wait until the Sabres scored to pull Levi to let UPL "get his gear." They did it to try to not call notice to the fans that the goalies were switched. (Not saying you don't know that.) Which is something even most Youth Coaches aren't going to worry about. (And expect that the change would've come at the next TV timeout minus Olofsson having his coming out party in a game that was already hopeless.) We'll see about the Winnipeg game. This team has found ways out of funks in the past and actually started playing well after they do. Why not start it there. On the radio they said 8 of the next 9 are on the road (2 - 4 game road trips sandwiched around the Pens on Black Friday). Road trips are this team's bread and butter. They need to make that happen again. Would be nice if they could finally get off to a fast start. Don't recall the last time that's happened.

Well, that was less than satisfying. They did do a very nice job with the pregame ceremony. The Sabres in rink staff have significantly upped their game on those the past few years. Levi did not have a good game. Not sure what Power had against him tonight, but he did not help matters. Tying up Heinen's stick OR clearing the puck after the bad rebound might've kept the game scoreless a little longer but that was not meant to be. Not much Levi could do on the 2nd nor 3rd. Clean cross ice pass to their best goal scorer alone for the 1 timer and then a 3 on 1 with Clifton not taking anyone letting the cross ice pass get through to Pasternack who tapped it back behind Clifton for the full tic-tac-toe. Would've pulled Levi after the 1st, not that he was playing particularly bad, but to be able to rip into the team for not doing anything on Captain Okposo's big night and for not helping this goalie, maybe they'll consider playing for the other goalie. But Granato left Comrie in for 10 goals against last year; no way he was using a goalie change to try to change the momentum. Not sure how there was an assist on the B's 4th goal; looked like Power passed it directly to the goal scorer. Clifton did set a nice screen though to help his partner. That 5th goal, Levi never saw but it was beyond time to make a change. Not sure when Tuch is coming back, but now that Thompson is out it can't be soon enough. Tough game for Tage; between the leg injury on the non-called trip in the 1st and the messed up wrist from the PK blocked shot it was a very painful night. Never heard why Jokiharju didn't play. Whatever the reason Clifton and Power were not a good pair tonight. Still would be interested in seeing if Samuelsson could help settle Power down some. Don't want to break up Dahlin-Muel, but maybe some combination of playing Ras with Henri &/or Johnson the Younger could be good enough to let Muel - Power become a thing for a bit. Just a really blah game overall. Except for the little scrum after Dahlin checked the Rat Faced Git where Cozens nearly ripped Pasta's head off, not really much to get excited about. The hit Samuelsson threw late in the 2nd was fun too. Wonder if scoring 2 goals tonight help Olofsson get his head out of his bippy? Would be nice to see him get going for a bit so that maybe Adams could get something for him. What a lousy way to start the week for Buffalo sports fans. Anyway, on to Winnipeg. Road trip is coming at a good time for them. Really need to win that one. Hoping they take 'no 3 game losing streaks' as a serious sub-goal this year. And how painful watching Ullmark and Levi in the same game. That should've been the Sabres 1 & 2 this year.

And would hope that this would be another rule they experiment with in the AHL before bringing it full time into the NHL. There certainly will be a lot of kinks to get ironed out. Let the farm teams deal with learning how to work with it and then if the idea is workable, THEN try it in the NHL. And again, would prefer they either simply do away with OT altogether or play 5v5 for 20 more minutes and if the game is still a tie, so be it. But that ship sailed years ago and barring major transportation issues making missing a scheduled flight becoming a real concern we're never going back to the way the league modified play to keep teams getting onto their trains in time to get to the next city back during WWII.

There is ONLY a penalty if the team that just let the puck get back over to its side of the red line continues to play it or shoots it down the ice to force the other team to start deep in it's own end. Do it EXACTLY the way they do in lax. It keeps the play flowing quickly. As mentioned above, not sure that an errant shot should result in that over and back as they don't want to discourace actual attempts to score; but if a shot can be regathered from the team's own side of the redline it will get used as a dump pass. A team could take the puck back over the blue line without repercussion, but they'd need to be onsides to control it back in the zone and would lose the puck if it goes back over the red line. That SHOULD result in more turnovers as will not being able to take the puck all the way back into a team's own D zone. If you look at them making the rule to be similar to the lax rule it's much easier to wrap your head around it.

And personally, because it's the NHL and almost nothing they do works out like they expect, would not be at all surprised to see the net result of this rule change being more games get to a SO, as both teams' skaters will be closer to the same level of exhaustion as the other througout more of the OT. If that's the case, there'll be more scoring chances in OT but likely lesser quality than we currently see.

Expecting they'd turn it into a lax-style over and back. If, once you've brought the puck over the opponent's blue line, the puck goes back over the redline without the other team controlling it then the other team takes over at that point. And playing the puck when you've lost control of it results in a 1 minute penalty. Not sure if that should apply to missed slap shots as well or not. Because expect we'd see a lot of intentional misses when a team wants to regroup if they can't just skate it out of danger.

Considering they AREN'T going to get rid of SOs nor gimmicy OT, am ok with this rule change. Will make OT closer to what they envisioned when they went to it. They wanted to see teams trading chances w/ end to end rushes. They didn't want to watch one team control the puck for 3 minutes swapping out their players until they finally get to a point where the fresh guys create a 1 on 0 chance vs the gassed guys on the other team. It already is significantly different than regulation play (and thankfully from playoff OT), one more difference from them both isn't going to be the straw breaking the camel's back. That camel's been in Stephen Hawking's wheelchair for years.

Well, the records are identical. 0.500 at home. 0.500 on the road.

It's kind of hypocritical for Sabres fans to curse Carolina for limiting where tix can be purchased from and to then applaud when the Sabres do the same thing. If you want more Sabres fans in the building, win more games at home. They'll buy the tix before the marauders can. And agree, some of the most fun games to have been at were ones where a whole bunch of Loaf or Habs fans were leaving early to sounds of "Go away, away, away, away, go away, just go away."

Guy that was the OC at LSU running the offense of arguably the best college team that's played in this century. Unsuccessful as Carolina's OC. Expect he learned from that experience. (Plus, they were a bit of a train wreck overall that year IIRC.) Probably should've been the OC from the get go rather than the QB Coach.

Have speculated before that the Sabres new policy of only selling tickets to games that visiting fans tend to outnumber the Sabres fans to those from worthy zip codes might cause those tickets that would normally get sold via Ticketmaster on the 2ndary market place to be sold via other ticketing sites. This seems to be another game that will be lightly attended that had those ticket selling constraints. Will be very interesting to see if later this year or (more likely) next season that tix start showing up on other ticket selling platforms.

Will be interesting to see what the crowd looks like tonight. The Moe-ray-all crowd was last year small. If they're trying to goose ticket sales with gimmicks like this, expecting tonight's crowd will be similar. Maybe, just maybe, that brilliant plan to keep marauding visiting fans out of the building was a bit short sighted? Said earlier, and will say it again, believe it is better to have the building nearly full with Sabre fans outnumbered than to have a 60-40 edge in a less than 50% full building. And these are the 2 games so far this season that meet that limitation on sales by purchaser's location. The others that didn't have that constraint weren't that poorly attended and some games were actually very well attended.

And for those that want it directly from the source:

And a HORRIBLE GM.

Confirming what Porous said above.

Good call on Okposo having a great game tonight. If memory serves, Pominville had his best game of that last year of his on the night of his ceremony and then was a shell of himself afterwards. (Had been a bit of a shell before it as well.)

No, he didn't call a time out on the FG attempt. He called his last timeout after the 2nd down. But, they SHOULD'VE anticipated the kneeldown on 3rd and everybody that was coming off the field after 3rd should've known they were coming off and everybody that was supposed to go on should've known that as well. Absolutely inexcusable.

THAT really just happened. We are ####ing cursed.

Literally feel ill right now. That was just surreal. How do you possilbly have 12 guys on the field?

Ho-lee-fack! Cook dribbled the ball for a 40 yard run.

Skinner - Thompson - Tuch Greenway - Mittelstadt - Peterka Quinn - Cozens - Benson Girgensons - Krebs - Rousek Jost - Kulich spares. Doesn't include Kane sliding into the top end; doesn't include a vet 4C coming aboard. Rosen the 1st player called up if they need more offense. Jost the spare for the 4th line just because that will likely be more of a defensively responsible line. Might Cedarqvist or one of the other Amerks earn a look in that role? (Haven't watched the Amerks at all yet this year, so no idea on who, if anybody, might be ready for a 4th line role next year.) Leaves 7 D w/ either Jokiharju or Clifton being the 7th presuming either E Johnson comes back again or a Hannifan-esque player gets brought it. Maybe a Hannifan-esque guy is brought in for Jokiharju & Krebs/Savoie + a pick. Which could open up a space for Metsa or one of the Russians to be the spare/ 1st call up depending upon whether the Big Johnson is back. It could also open up a spot for the vet 4C that would've been nice to bring in this past year. They really are getting close to the point (if they aren't already there) where they need to start moving some of the forwards out of the system. They at least need to be cognizant of who starts aging into losing their waiver exemptions. (Haven't looked closely at ages / experience of these guys, but that will start cropping up in the next couple of years.) And that's total spitballing. Hadn't looked at next year's lineup too much.

Personally, at this point like the idea somebody had here ( @dudacek maybe?) of having a rotation of those bottom 3 or 4 with E Johnson getting fewer bumps out of the lineup than R Johnson, Clifton, & Jokiharju. Maybe have a 3 game rotation of RJ2, Clifton, EJ/Henri, lather rinse, repeat w/ the 3rd sit being Henri/EJ this next time through. And when an injury inevitably hits, then you've got your 6.

They should've known Ruuttu and a couple of scrubs wasn't worth arguably the best F in history. He and a draft pick was the going rate for the best GOALIE in history. Sheesh, they were SOOOOOOOOOOOO far off. 🤣