Taro T

Doubtful. This was game 1 (remember how Luke Wilson looked in game 1 last year?) against a QB who didn't take a preseason snap and has only 5 games of film in the last nearly 2 years. And, their best defender was lost in the 1st series. They adjusted at 1/2 time & took command. If not for the kick return, the Bills win this one going away.

The refs were inserting themselves in the game, but not for 1 team or the other. They were just really bad. Like Sean Hocculi or Jerome Bulger bad. Unlike those 2 though, they blew calls both ways. And would rather have several other crews than the one we got; but they were at least better than those other 2 crews as they had no clue but didn't have a horse in the race.

Everything they touch sucks, except their NG holdings, the Bills, the Bandits, the Amerks, the Kin-ig-hit Hawks, and their tennis playing daughter's career.

Could very well see the delay on getting a deal worked out for him being based on another deal in the works that has not been finalized yet. And the team that is looking to get him as part of the package wants to be able to set his contract. Would expect him to be part of any deal for a 2W (2C?) coming in and that his contract will be signed within a day or 2 of a trade happening. And if Adams can't work out a deal that Pegula signs off on, then he'll sign right before the team leaves for Europe.

Though it's a contrarian opinion around here, don't honestly believe that Adams has a directive to not spend the Skinner savings. But do believe he has a directive to not simply spend it to spend it. Wouldn't be shocked if we do see a move during camp. Wouldn't have money on it, but won't be surprised either. And, rightly or wrongly, and we'll know about 8 months from now which it is, Adams is sticking to his plan. Would be really nice if he can get that 2W deal done; would add a degree of wiggle room to what needs to happen to make this season successful.

'Bout as serious as your trigger warning. 😉

Yup. The Bowman is strong in this one.

Don't see any way the PP isn't at least good (top 12 in the league) and could be very good (top 6). They have one of the best set up men at the point; a great shot at either side, at least one of which is a reasonable set up man; and at least 1 more good set up man at the bumper who can also shoot; along with another really big power forward to be battling for loose pucks and working screens. And they still have solid offensive talent on the 2nd unit as well. Getting Skinner off the PP, and not having a set entry that even Squirt level coaches wouldn't want to implement, along with increased movement of players and the puck, along with a willingness to have players not named Benson within 15' of the net when the puck is on Dahlin's stick will all enable the PP to be a strength of the team.

Difference in the 2 situations being there was a very good chance KC still ends up with Worthy even if the Bills don't trade with them. Bills still got the guy they wanted and took a midround pick out of KC's arsenal. Had the Bills not traded with KC, Mahomes almost definitely ends up somewhere else.

Ummm, WHAT? 4 prospect D-men are relevant because Mittelstadt was traded away but 4 prospect C's aren't?

Again, yes, they traded a top 6 F for a top 4 defender. But getting hung up on LH / RH on the D is silly in this particular instance. Dahlin prefers to play on the right side. Power has played effectively on his off-hand and IIRC so has Byram. You can say that bringing McLeod doesn't fill a hole, but he does. Even with Mittelstadt on the roster, the team did not have a "true" 200' 3C. Have said REPEATEDLY that this kid personally is NOT a fan of the Mittelstadt for Byram trade (because of their relative ages and where they are each on their development curves and the Mitts/Byram trade realistically being focused on what the team looks like in '26 not last season nor this) but Byram does NOT have to be better than Power to make the Mittelstadt/Byram and McLeod/Savoie trade end up a 2 holes filled (3C + 4D) for 1 spot with depth (2C) situation. Byram merely needs to be better than Jokiharju for that to be the case. And, really truly don't see how you can say prospect forwards are "irrelevant to this entirely" when at least one of them will, barring incredibly few injuries at F over the course of the year so none get an opportunity, be a Sabre by the end of this season and then follow that with a list of prospect D that are all further away timelinewise from the NHL than Kulich is.

Disagree that he was top 5. Now, if you want to argue Bergeron was top 5, you might be able to make a case. But probably not. He was top 10.

Yep. McLeod and the brand new 4th line allow Cozens to no longer necessarily have to be pencilled in to playing against the other team's top line when the coach doesn't want to run L1 v L1 (or gets forced into it on the road). They're really well set up with the other roster moves to let the Cozens - Quinn - ??? line fill the old '06 role of the RAV line. But if Mittelstadt were still in Buffalo, rather than McLeod, would that Cozens line still be able to be the young sheltered bunch? Don't believe they would be because the Mitts line would need more protection than the McLeod line will. (And personally thought Mitts was actually much better in his own end than most people here believed. But he isn't as good back there as McLeod will be.) Also expect (maybe it's more hope than expectation, but semantics, whatever) that more than a fair portion of Byram's issues last year is it was likely the 1st time since Squirts that he played on a team with so little defensive structure. He was really good his 1st 3 or so games and then he stopped just playing and trying to fit into the system. He could be one of the guys getting the biggest boost from having Ruff behind the bench. Especially as it seems that Ruff will likely have him pencilled into the 3D role with either Power or Samuelsson typically filling the 2D role. And stil hate the Mitts deal because it was trading a player that was entering his prime for one that will be hitting his prime in the Quinn-Peterka-Kotalik-Power-Levi timeline. But right or wrong, Adams did stick to his plan and timeline. (And really believe that Mitts being more of a top 6 style F than a middle 6er (much like the other 2C's up in the top 6; with none of the 3 showing a REAL affinity for strong play in his own end) and Krebs showing no affintiy yet for strong play in the opponent's end so more of a bottom 6er than a middle 6er was the driving force of using Mitts as the piece to acquire the top 4 D-man that Adams coveted.) And at the end of the day, the team now has a true 3C on the roster. And that position was filled at the price of one of the myriad prospect F's. People are arguing that the Sabres traded from a position w/ little depth to one that has too much depth now; but am not sure that's the case. (Especially on the stinking timeline that Adams seems to be working on.) They went from 3 - top 6C's and 2 (or 3 depending on whether Samuelsson is included as one) top 4D and 0 3C's to 2 - top 6C's (with Kulich, Östlund, Rosen, and Helenius in the pipeline still) and 3 (or 4) top 4D and 1 - 3C today. Personally would say they did lose 1 position of depth but filled 2 holes by doing so. Isn't that what GM's are supposed to do?

Pretty sure that though the people on this board are overall fairly down on the team, people in WNY (and on the NP) are generally happy with getting Ruff back and view last season as a bump in the road on the upturn. Mentioned how few seats were marked as being available for STs at the B&G I with Ruff and Adams and it seems from looking at maps of available seats that they've even sold 500 - 1,000 more ticket packages than had been sold then. WNY & the NP are true hockey hotbeds. Will remain to be seen if the people that continue to come back will be proven right or wrong, but the ticket base rose once again.

We had tix to that game but weren't listening to GR nor WNSA on the way into town. Stopped off at a Mighty to grab dinner and a few kids sitting at the table next to us were talking about how LaFontaine was dead and the game had been postponed because of it. We brushed it off as sometimes kids have really weird senses of humor. But when we got downtown, traffic seemed REALLY light for a game night. So we're wondering if those kids were actually serious. Walked towards the rink and when we got about 1 block away a cop told us the game had been cancelled because the scoreboard crashed. Managed to talk wifey into listening to the pregame when we went to the games after that. 😉 Ended up going over to my cousin's house and watching whatever game Empire broadcast instead of the regularly scheduled Bruins game they were planning on showing.

Funny. But actually one of the pulleys failed or a cable snapped (ottomh don't recall which it was; want to say pulley failure, but not positive) when they were raising the scoreboard back up into position and the sudden increase in load on the pulleys next to the failed one caused most of the rest to fail in a domino-like chain until very little of the scoreboard was still hanging where it should.

But all those guys in "Sabres Years" are 47-59. 😉

Umm, don't they now have a legit 3C - McLeod? Isn't the issue finding either an upgrade at 2W or at 2C allowing Cozens to slide to 2W?

Close. Pretty sure MySpace is the Matt Ellis of video conferencing platforms. 😉

Still say the big key THIS year is does UPL finally believe in himself even when there is credible competition on the roster. IF he finally does, and what he did from January until Levi was back in B&G full time, is the real UPL then the GTing will be quite good enough. He pushed through some serious mental hurdles last year as we saw him get to a point he trusts the hips enough to go post to post aggressively and still keep himself rather large. So, he's shown an ability to push through hurdles in the past few seasons and especially last season when he was horrible in camp but started playing larger & doing a 1/2 crease slide under control when he finally got an opportunity to play in the fall. It's the 1 test he still hasn't fully passed. If he passes that test this year, the Sabres might've gone in just over 2 seasons from arguably the worst goaltending in the league to a top 5 situation and arguably even better than that as they can be looking at having a tandem with both goalies in the conversation of who are the top 10-15 goalies in the league by the time playoffs are rolling around. Obviously, am really pulling for him to finally get all the ghosts that entered the machine w/ the double hip surgeries out of it. Not sure if that's the most important question to be answered or how big of an effect will Ruff have on this team; but get them both to fully break our way and the Sabres should be playoff bound.

Except there are very limited situations where "performance bonuses" are allowable. And a player signing an 8 year contract after his ELC deal is NOT eligible for them. EDIT: but yes, a player old enough to qualify for performance bonuses can end up having them count against the next season's cap if there wasn't room in that season's cap to cover the bonuses. If there is room for them to come in under that season's cap, the bonuses count against the current season's cap; but if that would exceed the cap the overage counts against the ne t season's cap.

If somebody defers $60MM into a 9th year, there are going to be some seriously large cap hits in years 1-8 when the player actually earns that money. Again, much ado about nothing. And if some player wants to defer $40MM out 40 years, then he has a horrible fiscal representative.

Am not looking at their contract details at 2AM, but you are likely wrong about that. Presumably they retired while still having years remaining on their contract. With them retiring while having a signing bonus that hadn't been fully realized against the cap, that outstanding amount would have to show up on the books that next season. Because if they had deferred bonuses that they received after the contract ended, that money would already have hit the cap when it was earned. And yes the deferred payments count against the cap when those payments are earned. So, it doesn't show up against the cap nor the players total compensation when it is actually paid because it counted against both when it was earned.

So, as said earlier, all the hand wringing over him getting over $60 MM nominally over 9 years was for naught. He doesn't even earn the originally speculated $7.5MM/yr.

Yes. Because apparently that is what the total value of the contract is with deferred money prorated back to the season in which it is earned. (Presumably THIS season as that gives the Canes the largest discount on the cash to be paid in the 9th year.)