Taro T

No fun in that. And not even remotely Sabres-ey.

If Miles Wood has as much as a 1 team NTC, guarantee Buffalo is on that list. Randy was not happy about the way his departure went. Yes, but if he's replacing Samuelsson, Byram doesn't HAVE to be dealt.

Would disagree that the D-men CAN'T play D. Wtf knows whether or not they can play D? They've been coached by Wilford (and Girardi IIRC, but primarily Wilford) the entire time most of them have been Sabres. Desperately wanted to see Wilford and Appert at a minimum punted into the sun this off-season. Having some coaches that know how to teach a system would go a LONG way towards fixing the hockey problem this drinking town has. Would that in itself fix it; most likely no; but it would make the other fixes much more likely to be successful.

Would rather they give up 9 for Rust than 9 & Helenius for 12 & Rust. Helenius is going to be a very good one.

It's coaching. The last year Bob Woods was in Buffalo, the team had a great PP. The next year it had the same personnel but Woods was gone. And it stunk. Midway through the year, O'Reilly lobbied to change it up to what they had been doing the year before and it got very good again. HOW you play is how those dirty opportunities get created. And since Woods left, except for the latter part of '17-'18 and that 6 or so week period when the Sabres figured out Thompson had a deadly 1 timer but nobody around the league figured that out for themselves, it has been hot trash. BRING BACK BOB WOODS.

Yeah, hate the idea of Kulich being anywhere above the 3C (which on a well built team is actually McLeod's role) unless he flat out takes it from somebody else. Stop pencilling the kids in at the top of the roster before they've actually earned.

He a RH shot, but always thought he (and Peterka too) looked better on their off wings.

Have said personally expect Quinn to have a bounce back year if he's still here. He probably couldn't train like he normally would last off-season and definitely didn't they year before. Throw that on top of trying to learn to play in an actual system with the same assistants that didn't teach you one the 2 previous years; and maybe there was a reason that early in the season he looked like he was both thinking on the ice and had no idea where he was supposed to be nor which outlet was the one he was supposed to use so instead he just let the other team take the puck from him or make a bad pass. This contract makes it look like he's likely going to still be here. They likely will really need that (him bouncing back) to actually happen. Here's to hoping.

Leave it to the Sabres to have Johnny and Robbie go to One Bills Drive to make their big announcement (or go to whereever the heck Bettman and Daly are at) only to say, thanks for coming guys but we aren't picking today. THAT would be awesome!

And didn't vote in the poll because honestly think we need to wait at least untll July 4 or 5 to see what else happens. It's like deciding whether a team drafted well on Canada Day. Wtf knows if they did or didn't. All those ratings evaluate whether the team agreed with the rater on what value draft picks had. That tells us ABSOLUTELY nothing but gives the draftniks something else to discuss for a few weeks. Again, my 2 cents.

Am HOPING the reason for this is that people are still (for whatever reason) expecting that this will be part of a series of moves that end up netting the Sabres a better team. Getting 75-80% value for Peterka is not good. IF that extra $5.5MM in cap space gets used and the team actually improves, well then its one of those "don't like the piece, but like the whole" sort of situations. And MAYBE with Kekalainen in house, Adams finally does work a series of moves in conjunction that all end up netting the Sabres a better team. But personally won't believe it until that $5.5MM saved gets spent (and not just leaving the Sabres at $8MM under the cap again, am talking about having them spend that AND $5MM of that other $8MM) on players that improve the Sabres AND some gets spent on the guys Adams has been saving that money for (read Tuch, McLeod, and maybe somebody else, but not sure that anybody else is at the point that their contract is up in the next year AND they're at a point where the long LT deal makes sense (of course no more 7&8 year deals next year, so maybe you still give some of those out because you can and after next year you have to start dropping to 6&7 year deals)). Because only if that money gets spent will the team actually be widening the margin for error they have. They have intentionally cut it razor thin after Adams 1st season. And it bites them in the bippy every single time. Widen the margin for error and give yourself some runway to actually get this thing off the ground. Staying ridiculously young (and somehow with this trade they got younger) and staying ridiculously below the cap only go to narrow that margin for error. But personally am leaning towards 'no' on the deal with what happens in the next 2 weeks having a huge influence on how THIS deal gets viewed. How do we criticize Adams for looking at all deals as individual pieces with no true rhyme nor reason to them and then intentionally go and view each one as a one off on its own? We CAN do it; we aren't getting paid to be here or to make the team better so we can do wtf we want; but IMHO it doesn't make sense to evaluate it entirely in the vacuum it currently resides. My 2 cents. YMMV.

Not necessarily. Am envisioning it as a scenario where one guy pulls up a little lame in practice or the team's had a flu raging through the roster; it the team says one of the 2 isn't at 100% (or whatever 100% actually is come early March) the team can have the guy up with the parent squad. Would also add wouldn't be shocked if they'd let a team that's going on the road for an extended road trip to take the 3rd goalie with him as well if the backup hasn't played in a long while (kind of a reverse "conditioning" assignment. They already let Buffalo and Joisey do that last year on their trip to Europe. But would expect that only to be for road trips extending beyond a set # of games and maybe not even at all unless the backup has been particularly inactive. Which upon further thought might be the real way this plays out. It doesn't make any sense to be forcing a team to keep a 3rd LEGIT goalie up with the parent squad (essentially making the roster 24 man rather than 23 man). You now aren't going to be having the 2nd and 3rd guy get enough practice time and definitely won't get enough game time. If they go full time to 3 legit goalies, then they're doing 2 things the players and their farm clubs won't like. The players will be dividing their RS pool by 24 players rather than just 23 and the farm team will be losing its best goalie for stretches when he still isn't going to get into any games. As said above, am really interested in seeing what the actual language of the new CBA is on these tweaks. Can see a few different VERY convoluted ways for them to try to work this. And won't even hazard a guess at how convoluted the BF-LTIR playoff eligibility rules will be. Just am expecting an adverb to work with how convoluted they are to be "very."

Good thing wasn't drinking while reading that. Would definitely have been up in the sinuses and that can be painful. Almost as painful as the next week will likely be.

Expecting it'll likely be the team's top AHL netminder who will be allowed to be called up without having to reclear waivers to go back down if either NHL goalie is sick/injured. And wouldn't be surprised if they'll be allowed to bring up as many as are injured at the NHL level.

Would be surprised if there is, but maybe. Players that have been drafted can always play in Europe for a time if the NHL team that holds their rights doesn't want him OR if the player agent knows another team does want to sign the player the agent can help facilitate a trade. Not seeing what is in the team's benefit to bury a player they liked enough to draft that is good enough to get signed by somebody, but maybe there's a reason. The player thinks he deserves a bonus laden deal but the team doesn't agree, so it's actually the player holding off on a deal? That could be 1 reason. Expect there's a few others, but isn't the point of having a rookie wage scale to keep their share of the pie low so the other established players that have "paid their dues" get more. Really looking forward to this new CBA becoming official to see just how these tweaks are to be implemented.

Hmm, big LHD. Wonder if anyone with any potential ties to the owner fits that description. 😉

Do the Rags fans still randomly chant "Potvin sucks, Potvin sucks?"

Efficient economical, & excrement.

Wow. Having the next deal in place more than a full year ahead of the due date. Did NOT see that one coming.

The trade seemed to have Buffalo receiving less value than Utah received. The difference in value of what was going out vs what was coming back in would seem to be ~a 2nd rounder or a swap of top 10 picks. Something of that level. Though the Sabres didn't get that, they did end up with about $5.5MM in more salary cap space this season than Utah ended up with. So, that would seem to be where the Sabres saw the value equalling. And if Adams uses that extra cap space to help bring in players that can help now or extend say Byram and Tuch or use that and the other $6-10MM other cap space they'll have barring any other significant moves, well awesome. They should've been using their full cap space every year because cap space is like a fish you caught or a newspaper. Once it expires, it is expired and worth even less than the expired fish or newspaper is as it is now officially in the ether and doesn't exist in this reality any longer. You can't even use it for fertilizer or wrapping the next day's catch. But for years now, they've let cap space simply expire. And until they use this newly found cap space, have no reason to believe they won't just let it expire too.

Good. Keep Dahlin, Tuch, and Thompson happy. (Zucker too.)

Heard Micah Parsons is unhappy about his contract situation.

Well, sure. In a year or 2 he gets reunited with Levi. 😉

Phyllis George?!?!? Hated CBS's NFL pregame show back in the day. Jimmy was the only nearly redeeming feature of that. Brent, Irv, and Phyllis were all completley insufferable. AFC all the way for this kid. MNF too. WAY better football and broadcasts. Besides, never owned a VCR until the day before the Greatest Football Game Ever PlayedTM.

Yes. And seemingly either a swap of 1st rounders or an additional 2nd rounder for $5.5MM in cap space. Been fooled at least twice and counting trade deadline time about 5 times about them planning on using that cap space to improve the team. When that cap space actually gets used, will believe they are going to use that cap space to improve the team and not 1 second before then.