Taro T

And again, Dahlin and Tuch were the guys that were sent to talk with the STHers on Saturday. Pretty sure they and Ruff know what's up. It just simply isn't getting announced publicly yet. And Ruff very possibly hasn't settled on who's getting the A yet. He's been a part of all of 1 practice with his team (well, 2 by now); why not get to know the team a bit 1st?

He looked fine on Saturday.

He's not just the only one to still be playing that has scored in the playoffs for the Sabres, he's the only NHLer to have played in the playoffs for the Sabres. Not many NHLers w/ 14+ year careers.

They've had exactly 1 practice under Ruff. Wtf should it "be done by now?"

Might open up a playoff slot in the East if he pulls a Nylander. And could force Adams hand to sen Levi to Ra-cha-cha to keep the B's from snagging Reimer.

Yes, Ruff will select the captain(s). Honestly not sure that the players have ever had final say in who the captain is. It wasn't the players that took the C off Schoenfeld and gave it to Gare.

They absolutely 100% will have 3 goalies on the trip to Europe.

Pretty much all the F's were where the ended the year (not counting the new ones obviously) so it's very possible Ruff was merely having guys play w/ who they were with last year to keep up the fast pace of practice. Will be interesting to hear what the lines are tomorrow.

Yeah, Chicken Hat Guy had it right. The biggest photo at the top was him in a Sabres Slug.

Makes sense. GR was fading in & out so didn't hear Hammie's comments on it. But apparently Levi is running w/ old school brown pads. (Makes sense. If he goes down, the Sabres pads look out of place. Smart kid.)

Ooooh, 1st page. What a day; what a day!

Well, at least on day 1, Krebs is 9th (7th?) and Kulich is the only AHLer skating w/ the NHLers. So, it does appear that they aren't too worried about Rousek's feelings.

Mildly surprised Krebs is penciled in at 3C. Hopefully not TOO many heads explode over that. Will be interesting to see if he can hold onto it. There is a logic to the D pairings. Hopefully it's just a tweak keeping Dahlin out of practice today. (So tired of not being allowed to have nice things.) Sounds like they skated hard today. Ruff mentioned how he felt bad for the guys in the 2nd session as this is the 1st time he ever started TC with the NHLers & AHLers segregated on day 1, but due to heading to Europe camp is compressed this year. Ready for them to start playing for real.

Based on today's practice (UPL & Levi w/ the NHLers) and Ruff's comments it sounds like Levi will start the year as a Sabre and if he doesn't get into enough games then they'll swap him and Reimer. But it seems he has the inside track to be the #2. (And it doesn't sound like they'll have 3 goalies up by the time they play the Kings.)

8/7/87 to be specific.

Put this elsewhere but guess it should go here instead: Kind of surprised they have 7 goalies in camp. Wonder if they're planning on loaning #5 to a different AHL team, #7 to a different ECHL team, or God forbid bring back the 3 headed monster. Maybe 1 or 2 of them are still Juniors eligible?

Kind of surprised they have 7 goalies in camp. Wonder if they're planning on loaning #5 to a different AHL team, #7 to a different ECHL team, or God forbid bring back the 3 headed monster. Maybe 1 or 2 of them are still Juniors eligible?

Nah, it'd be Thorns or Thorner.

Yep. His issue in Buffalo was his GMing, not his coaching. But 1 clarification, he was GM in St. Louis briefly.

It is. But it is right in line with what the presumed 11 and 12 are getting. Still expect the 13th guy on any given night to be determined based upon matchups with the opponent that night.

Good for Krebs. Still see him as the 13. Will be interesting to see if, when the team is fully healthy, the top 12 are static or if the 13th guy changes based upon opponent. Expecting it'll be more dynamic than a simple case of the 13th guy being there until somebody gets injured.

Per a Sabres Mailbag article on their website, TC opens on the 18th. No data if that's the day they report or the day they hit the ice.

McGill - Wexler

Missed most of the Kids Q&A which had Biron moderating McLeod, Byram, and Thompson. In the B&GI session, Marty had said all 3 said beer was their favorite beverage, so Munich in October could be interesting. 😉 There wasn't as much meat in the B&GI session as in the past. A lot of the questions were more geared to how Dahlin and Tuch spent their summers. Ras spent most of it in Sweden with some time spent working out with teammates in Switzerland. He's been back in Buffalo for about a month skating with teammates. Tuch got married and usually starts skating in July but started at the beginning of summer in June this year. When asked specifically about their off-season training regimens, Ras mentioned he works hard on condiditioning and nutrition as he wants to play every minute of every game. (So, don't be shocked if he still ends up playing 24-27 minutes each night.) Tuch talked about how he added pilates to his regimen. There was a Q about the PP and Ras said he felt a big part of the problem last year was that they were VERY focused on the X & O's and getting to set plays at the expense of letting guys with high hockey IQ's just play. They knew everybody knew they were working towards getting Thompson the 1 timer, but that was still what they were getting coached to do. Both made it sound like under Ruff the goal was going to be getting pucks to the net with a lot of variety in how they do that and that they're expecting Tommer to have a bounceback on the PP as they'll be doing so much other stuff that 1 timer will actually open up again. It also sounds like Tuch could be either the bumper or the net front guy so nothing new on that front. They expect to do a lot of planning and video work still to get off to a quick start. Both are expecting Ruff to make the season fun but with expectations that the players will put in full efforts. And if somebody isn't giving full effort nor doing what is asked of him that there will be consequences in lost ice time. "You have to earn everything you get." They expect the practices to be hard but expect the work will pay off in the end which will also make it fun. There were a few Q's about leadership & accountability. IMHO, the responses made it sound like they're going to be co-captains. They both spoke to last year being a learning experience for the young team and how between going through that, being a year older, and bringing in guys with playoff experience that they now understand how much they have to work and not just work but work within a structure. It isn't enough to just go out and play hard. There needs to be a purpose within each shift. Other teams hadn't game planned them 2 years ago but did last year and talent alone won't beat a quality opponent with a focus. The "structure within the game is something that is so important" you can't just "feel the game" to win. You need to rely on the team game and not just the skill. They were asked about goaltending and both raved about UPL (Tuch - "he's already underpaid this coming year;" Ras - "everybody loves him because he works so hard;" etc.) and never mentioned even in passing either of the other 2 goalies. So, really am personally coming around to the fairly common thought around here that Levi will be starting the year in Ra-cha-cha. A bunch of other stuff about favorite restaurants and golf courses. But that's the meat of it. Nothing terribly earth shaking. The slam of Ellis (without naming him specifically) was mildly unexpected. The slam of no plan / system last year was not unexpected. No mention of Levi at all was mildly unexpected, but Ruff had responded pretty much the same way a couple of months ago, so it was only mildly unexpected. And again, sounded like we're going to have co-captains. Will know if that was an accurate read in a few weeks at the latest. Didn't end up seeing any of the other player interviews on the main stage outside nor in the rink. Those were (or at least seemed to be ) on kind of going on a bit of an unstructured schedule unlike the stuff you were supposed to need tix for. Overall, most of the fan fest is geared towards kids (as it should be). And, realiizing there are single game seats on sale, so some seats are officially not available for seasons, but even with just looking at seats available for quarter season packages there are well less than 2,000 seats available and maybe even less than 1,000. (Which puts the STH base (in equivalents) somewhere a bit above 12,000 seats. (Which is getting close to the old 14,000 sth seat cutoff. Expect they'd have a full STH base had they not spit the bit last year. As much as people want to consider Buffalo just a football town, it really is a hockey town too. They just need a team that is actually putting in a real effort to demonstrate it.)

Yeah, he does look like he'll be a good one when he gets adjusted to the NA game. Because of all the time in Sweden, see him being about 1 year behind where Kulich is right now. Meaning, expecting Kulich to be a full time NHLer by the end of the season and expect Östlund will be there 1 year later.