Taro T

Not sure if O'Reilly has anything left in the tank but these 2 could help shore up the Loafs major deficiency. Me no likey. Would much rather have seen them get Patty Kane.

Yep. Whoever the top 2 are, they'll be the ones given the keys. Granted it isn't a direct comparison because Miller had the '04-'05 season leading the Amerks to a long run and Levi hasn't left college yet. But nobody expected Miller to start on October of '0405. He was too young, too inexperienced & Biron was still there and though he'd been mainly a backup he'd even the starter the previous 2 seasons & Noronnen was another former 1st rounder who'd nearly taken away the starting job before the lockout. But yet Lindy & Corsi trusted what they saw & after a so-so start, Miller & the team caught fire after he came back from the thumb injury. They made the right choice even though it would've been easy to not go that route. And if we have a 3 headed goalie monster for a bit at some point, so be it.

But it wasn't going to happen. Kind of like Copp going anywhere but Detroit.

Soooooooo close to being the Mugwumps. 😉

Wrre it South Buffalo you could've been hanging on & hanging out with Timmy Russert back in the day.

That's true. But he has treated the players as humans & not just expendable assets on at least 3 occasions when a player's role was significantly diminished. When Power was about to come on board, Adams traded Hagg for a small return rather than ,are him sit in the pressbox regularly and he had several communications with him about where he stood as that process advanced. He let Sheahan walk & void his contract when the team got healthy in November. He also attempted to trade Hinostroza rather than simply send him to the Amerks when the 3 headed goalie monster was born. He's been upfront & as Okposo said, players know their roles and where they stand. A guy like Asplund may not like it, but being treated like an adult has to help with the mentality of it. So, when it's time to move on from a "glue" guy on the room, not expecting it to have a ripple effect, but who knows for sure how that'll play out.

Welcome to the club. The dues are quite reasonable & we rarely have meetings. Though when we do, beer & wings ate served.

Could be. But having good assistants is part of being a great head coach. Ruff openly talked about how much he appreciated getting to coach at the ASG & as part of Team Canada's crew because it was a great opportunity to talk to other top coaches and pick their brains.

And a 3rd round pick.

The thing that's tough to evaluate is, the team has generally improved its defensive play as the season has gone on though that improvement has come in fits & starts. The wings have played better along rhe boards after we got out of October/ early November. The D has, in 2023 on occasion boxed people out. It pretty much didn't do that in 2022 this season. But, the 2nd goal scored by the Ducks, the Sabres most physical defender didn't do anything to remove the screen from in front of Comrie. We don't get to see them work in practice, nor are we in the meeting rooms when the concepts & game plans are discussed and reinforced. So, though we see what they're doing we don't know what they were supposed to be doing. We also still don't see Granato match lines much. Will he when we're beyond development as a co-goal? (Development is no longer the only goal.) Hope he will, but until he does, we're just guessing. The other thing that makes it tough to evaluate is the goaltending still leaves much to be desired. How much better will the D seem when we get to watch a quality NHL starter? The thing that is troubling is, the PP us a serious 1 trick pony and teams have figured that trick out. Can he & his coaches get the PP clicking again? Am cautiously optimistic that Granato is the real deal. At a minimum, he IS an NHL caliber HC and will likely find another HCing job when the time eventually comes for him to move on. That hasn't been the case since Ruff left. And that in itself is reason for optimism.

He was a huge behind the scenes part of the Sabres in their formative years. Apparently he was a very generous & helpful person too. Maybe he'll finally get to pull some pranks on the Knoxes again. RIP Mr. Weiland.

Didn't know they yell checkmate, either. 😉

Good point. On the flipside & supporting @dudacek's post, Okposo also is on record in the Athletic extolling Granato's (& Adams) virtues.

Potentially being the key/operative word. With no information on how the unpaid rights fees are distributed across the 3 leagues mentioned (plus wouldn't there possibly be unpaid rights fees to other leagues/sports carried by those RSNs included in that lump sum total) we don't know that the NHL teams will necessarily be taking a big hit this year. Expect that the unpaid rights fees skew heavily either towards baseball (whose season is just about to get underway) if the rights fees tend to be paid in advance or towards the NBA & NHL if they're on a pay as you go basis w/ 1/2 the season over. Next season would likely see the bigger potential hit, but the teams & league can begin right now looking for alternative RSNs. Could be, in a ripoff from Demolition Man, in the future all RSNs are MSG. (As long as they ain't friggin' NESN.) The league and Sabres survived the implosion of Empire & WNSA (and Adelphia).

No, actually he didn't. There were 2 better options and even you have acknowledged explicitly WITHIN THIS POST EVEN that there was 1 better option.

He is good. Well, very good actually. He has "it." That is all (for now). 😉

Yes, Reinhart would've been a better choice, but with the constraints YOU set that was not an option, Rodrigues was the 2nd best C of the remaining players on the roster.

As a matter of fact, yes, Rodrigues should've been the 2C and by the end of the year even Housley had twigged onto that. But a 19 yo rookie 1 season removed from HS hockey should not have been placed in that role. It falls under the category of being set up to fail.

@Curt, where did your post go?

Have never seen the agreement between the NHL & the CHL, but a reading of the CBA says NHL teams have to offer their 18 & 19 year old CHL signers to their CHL team before loaning them elsewhere. And that is due to the CHL - NHL transfer agreement. And the rule is in place to keep from watering down the CHL by moving guys that would be at the top of the CHL into the AHL. CHL squads agreed to not force kids that are good enough for the NHL to stay in the junior ranks, but those guys that are too good for the CHL but not good enough for the NHL are stuck where they are.

And Housley, in his infinite wisdom, never played Mittelstadt at W again. But, he did have the good sense to not only typically play him as his 2C, but even as the 1C when Eichel 1st was absent injured. Yeah, sure, it was Krueger who put Mitts on the road to purgatory.

Nice post. The only tweak it might need is, pretty sure we are already watching Krebs & Jost flip spots from being the 4&3 C's to the 3&4 C's. And the question becomes are we going to see the lines from last night for a while or are Mittelstadt & Peterka going to flip spots w/ Asplund spelling Peterka periodically? Or will Quinn & Olofsson flip flop again?

Well, Granato was the one playing him at center with Olofsson & then either Asplund, Krebs, Hinostroza, or at the very beginning of the year Quinn IIRC. They both wanted him at W but Asplund & Krebs forced him to C w/ 3rd and 4th line talent while the Kids Line developed. So, is it the Granato effect or simply putting him in a role he can excel at? Which, btw, Krueger was the 1st one to play him at W and his play appreciably was better than it had been prior to his stint w/ the Amerks. And considering it was the addition of Jost that allowed him to slide to W, so maybe it's the Kevyn Adams effect? 😉 (And full disclosure, this kid thought he'd be more effective at C than W. D'oh!)

Give them 1983 equipment & the college kids don't come close to competing. Particularly, the goaltending would be very suspect. As stated earlier, there was a reason there were almost 0 butterfly goalies in that era. It wasn't because they were too dumb to use that style, it's because their bodies (particularly their knees and hips) wouldn't survive the abuse they'd suffer going into the butterfly w/ the leg pads of the day. And the Golden Golfers don't have a Devon Levi on their squad.

He HAS to be offered to his CHL team by the Sabres 1st before getting loaned anywhere else. If the Ice aren't going to let him be an Amerk, why would he get to play in Sweden? Matthews got to play on Switzerland because he wasn't under contract to play anywhere else.