Taro T

Not exactly drafted by the same team, but Gordie Howe played with both his boys in Houston and with the New England/Hartford Whalers. Would be surprised if there are no fathers and sons that were drafted by the same team.

So is it fair to say the negoitations have been fairly cordial so far? They REALLY need to have a regular negotiation that doesn't result in lost chunks of season for once. Not counting the MOU negotiations which extended the life of the current CBA it has been a stupidly long time since that has happened.

Am OK with getting stuck with an extra RS game if we finally get rid of paying for a PS game. Absolutely despise having to buy PS games. And to those saying the season is too long already. Yes, but this more or less doesn't change how many times players hit the ice. It knocks 3 or 4 days off camp and adds 3 or 4 days to the actual season.

So, now it's safe for Botterill to draft CHL players outside the top 10 selections?

Canadian?

Anybody have the Class of '70 being the league's dumpster fires in '25 back oh say 15 years ago? Me neither. Yet, here we are.

PLEASE let it be quiet competence.

Isn't that (sadly) enough?

Really can't discount the PSU factor nor IMHO how the owners had ties to Chychrun and the GM chose Nylander's kid brother instead way back when. Have often wondered how much Alex busting and Chychrun being a really good player factored/factors into the perception that Pegula thinks he knows more than the "experts" know. If ownership wants him, that's this kid's expectation for who goes 9.

Bellicheat came off as smart because he won the division about 15 times out of 18 and added a handful of SB trophies when he was hooked up w/ Brady. He ALWAYS came across as a jackhole in his interviews.

So it's not so that it's easier to hang out at Karmanos' place? (Honestly don't know if it's quicker to C-Bus or Buf'lo from the 'Burgh. If Buf'lo is closer, well, as Emily Lutella used to say, "nevermind.")

Not sure that he's definitely asked for a trade directly. Indirectly, very likely, in that a statement such as "this is what I want in a LT deal, this is what i'd take in a bridge, if you won't get there I'm sure there are other teams that will give me that, maybe you'd be better off trading me" could very well have been made (through the agent at a minimum). And with Adams having said "we only want players that WANT to be here" then the onus goes on him to either keep his word and trade him because he's only ok with being here not living and dying with that opinion or to keep the good player that is still improving but get called a liar by all the local media and all the people on X and BS. Pretty sure it's easier (definitely more expedient) to simply say "I'm not going to divulge the content of private conversations", after divulging content of the exit interview which also would seem to be a priviate conversation and leave it at that. He still gets flack and gets to reinforce that bunker mentality that @dudacek described but at least he's not a "liar." Which, IMHO is something that Adams is very concerned with. Not sure why, but "honesty" is a significant buzzword for him and he does seem to try to follow it though it does put him through some serious contortions to be able to do the job (sort of) and stay true to keeping "honesty" as one of his guiding traits. Guess that, at the end of the day, it's one of the things that let him (or not) sleep at night. And again, not sure why, but it is probably the most recurring theme of his interviews; even more so than "we only want guys that want to be here."

Ahh, yeah. Was focused on the annoyed part of the post.

Umm, Zito?

Thanks, Jabba. Thank you for bringing in the Swamp Cats as the parent to the Amerks when they were what the Sabres are now. Thank you for killing a very vibrant hockey market. Too bad for you, you only essentially killed pro hockey in the area. Youth hockey is thriving and one of the local rinks is even adding a new sheet this summer. Go fork yourself, Donner the Hutt.

Interesting. TIL. Honestly thought the Pegulas had sold that team about 1-1/2 years ago. Didn't realize they still owned and ran them. Guess they just put them up for sale 1-1/2 years ago. Oops.

Yes. But the Sabres don't ALWAYS have to be the team giving up the best player. What's the point of having too friggin' many prospects to ever have them all in the lineup if you aren't willing to use some of them as the proverbial sweeteners to actually be the team giving up quantity for quality.

There is ALWAYS a spot for another top 6 winger. It might be on the 3rd line, but that is a 1st World problem that would be a very nice problem to have.

They ended up getting a kid in THAT one too. One more similarity to this squad.

And that same someone wanting O'Reilly gone is a substantial portion of why this nightmare won't end. Don't punt O'Reilly, don't give Reinhart more time to think about how good it would be to be elsewhere, and then Eichel doesn't ask out of here. You'd still have Dahlin to go with them. Give Ullmark a LT offer at the time Reinhart should've gotten one and he likely doesn't bolt either. That's a nice core to be building around. Oh well. Maybe this next try with only altering the players and not those choosing the strategies they'll be attempting to implement will be the charm. (Is it already February 2 again? It seems like it was just yesterday that it was here. And the day before that. And the day before that. And ...)

For the cap, no. Because while stuff like this is pretty easily determined, you can get gray REALLY quickly and once you start trying to say well THIS counts against the cap but THAT doesn't, you get counter examples that look similar to A but were treated like B and it likely ends up ugly. Way easier to just say, we'll figure it out at the end of the season provided you don't have more potentially earnable performance bonus money in total than is allowable and we'll figure that out when you submit the contract to the league for approval. For escrow, yes. So that 20 game bonus will be likely be factored into the escrow calculations pretty early in the season whereas the SC bonus won't factor in at all as all regular salary will have been earned or expected to be earned by the time the last escrow estimate is made. And ALL of that will get factored into the final disbursement back to the players (or from them if the calculations were REALLY off) next summer.

Toews is a special case. He's over 35 and coming off injury. Notice the contract is only for a single year. There are 3 classes of players that can sign contracts which include performance bonuses: Players on ELCs who are allowed to negotiate bonuses for certain listed achievements. (Though the actual bonus itself can be negotiated as long as the total of bonuses if all achieved doesn't put the total earnable salary in any single year of the up to 3 year long ELC years above the rookie cap of ~$3.8MM. There's the rookie salary cap (minus bonuses) and then there's the rookie salary CAP (including performance bonuses.) Players 35 and older can sign contracts with performance bonuses provided the contract is for a single year. Veterans (players w/ 400+ NHL games credited towards pension earnings) that were on IR for at least 100 days in the last season of their most recent SPC contract are also allowed to have earnable performance bonuses in their contract provided the contract is only for 1 season. As long as the player contract doesn't put the player outside an allowable contract (can't be for less than the league minimum without meeting any bonuses and can't put the player over the individual salary threshold should the bonuses be met) then there are essentially no limits on what non-ELC performance bonuses are allowable. (Said essentially because the total of all earnable performance bonuses for those players qualifying for non-ELC performance bonuses can't cause the team to exceed the cap by more than 7.5% of the SC. (This is the team's "performance bonus cushion".)) And if the achievement of bonuses put a team over the cap, they don't get dinged for them in that season they're earned. They count against the team's cap in the next season. E.g. a team with $1MM in cap space has a player earn $2MM in performance bonuses. At the end of the year, the 1st $1MM counts against the cap in the current season and the other $1MM counts against the team cap the following year. (Similar to how when a team buys a player out, the cap hit doesn't all hit in the 1st year of the buyout.)

We shall see whether Bryam still as runway to grow. Byram JUST turned 24 a couple of weeks ago. Personally expect him to still improve this year and likely the next year or 2 as well. D-men usually seem to hit their peak around 26 and then stay there for a while. Which goes back to my big complaint about the trade of Mittelstadt for Byram. We traded Mitts away right at the point in time he was coming into his prime for a player that was still 2-3 years away from his prime. For the love of all things good an holy, Buffalo, stop being a friggin' development program.

And if they keep the pick to try to backfill for Östlund or Helenius, cool. But if they keep the pick and all their prospects, then what is the game plan? See what they can get next off-season when Dahlin and Thompson throw in the towel? Wasn't that the point in the movie where Bill Murray drove off the cliff with the groundhog to see if he could make the nightmare end?

Have said MANY times, personally don't want Peterka traded. BUT if he is going to be traded, bringing back a player that's actually better than him NOW would make it acceptable IMHO. And Robertson IS a better player than Peterka NOW. Will he still be better than him when the Sabres are actually ready to rejoin the NHL? Wtf knows. But if they decide to try to do that this year, the answer will be yes, he still is.