Taro T

True on the coach. (That one seems to be happening on both ends of Cassidy's move, unfortunately.) They aren't staying at an 0.900 pace. And wouldn't be shocked to see them drop below an NHL 0.600 pace for a month or 2 about a week or so after all the stars are back. Not enough to drop out of contention, but enough to make them beatable.

We're also a year or 2 away from seeing guys that could be in the NHL cooking down in the AHL an extra year or 3 because they can't beat out the guys that are ahead of them. We might actually be on the verge of having the Ra-cha-cha Marlies in our back yard. Which will be fun as well.

They were. But wondering how much of the great start was the lesser guys knowing that the studs would be back soon, so they just need to find a little extra while the studs are out, which while it isn't sustainable over 82 games can be over 15-20. IF that's the case, we should see them drop back a bit when their top guys do get back as everybody else will relax back to their normal games (or even lesser for a bit as they've got to be getting close to spent). Seen it happen often. A team hits a run of bad injuries but stays strong as their remaining guys find that playoff intensity for a bit & their opponents have ever so slight a let down not having to get 'up' to play against somebody they know they have to play hard against or get embarrassed by. Hoping that's the case. ;)

The Comrie Anderson stats are kind of an updated version of Edwards Sauve. Sauve's stats were better on the surface, but he got the Detroits & Rockies/ Devils while Edwards got Moe-ray-all & the B's. Sauve wasn't better than Donnie. Anderson hasn't been better than Comrie. Anderson wouldn't have given them as many w's in the other games had the usage been adjusted. MHO. YMMV.

Good news, but not surprising. Granato said before the past couple of games that Lyubushkin has a tremendous pain threshold and did not willingly come out of the lineup. Will be interesting to see if he's back in the top 6 at tomorrow's morning skate. And if so, is it Pilut or Clague that sits. Pilut got more ice time late, so would guess Clague is the odd man out. But who knows. The bigger story IMHO is Hinostroza is still the 13th man. Which would imply the "they're all equal, nobody sits because they need to sit, but everybody needs to play" era may be coming to an end.

To answer the question, probably. The start is comparable to last year, but w/ 2 big differences. 1. The goaltending seems sustainable. We knew (or strongly suspected) Anderson & Tokarski wouldn't be able to keep it up all year. 2. It's been infrequent for them to be flat out dominated for 50 or so minutes. Yes, they gave up a ton of shots to a few teams, but the majority of those shots weren't really high danger and they gave up very few rebound chances. They need to clean up the odd man rushes & should to a degree when the 3 return. But, though breakaways should be significantly reduced getting Samuelsson & Lyubushkin back, doubt they'll do much more than cut the 2-on-1's & 3-on-1's down 30-40% (significant but nowhere close to eliminated) as when they are always attacking, an oops (which is inevitable) necessarily can't be fully covered. As others have said, this is the point in the year the the wheels have fallen off for lesser Sabres teams. (They sometimes get through November, but they always fail in December post-"suffering.") If they're still on a playoff pace when the calendar flips, will believe. They were ahead of it through October (as is typical), they seem different this year, and they just might be able to keep it going. Not to be too greedy, but really hope to see 7 points through this next 5 game stretch. It would go a long way towards maintaining the momentum of October & would contine building to stay ahead of a playoff pace.

Samuelsson is only injured. He's still on the team.

The officials were bad. It worked both ways.

They'll figure it out. ;)

Not sure if it's just because it's been so warm the last week, but the ice crew has been squeegeeing the ice after the Zambonis are through. Shouldn't have to be doing that w/ the fancy laser-levelled Zambonis they have. So, yeah, the ice is bad.

Literally. And they were pounding the whole 4 hour trip.

It would've. But like somebody said in the uni thread, these reverse retros are substantially the reverse of the black goatheads done in b&g. Those unis had black pants w/ black sweaters & socks. Though if they could go w/ blue helmets, they definitely could've gone w/ blue pants.

Just hoping we can avoid having Power & Bryson on the ice together. Bad things seem to happen in the brief time they've been together. Surprisingly, Clague settled in pretty well next to Owen in the Detroit game.

Really? Guess that story only seemed to be told 150 times after he became a Sabre.

The '74-'75 Caps have brothers in the White Pants Club. Who did the equipment staff piss off over at Adidas?

Their ENTIRE starting 6 left (for varying reasons, but at the end of the day they were all gone). Those weren't the only guys not returning. It most certainly was a tear down. Not all tear downs result in last place finishes. Sometimes they are actually effective. The Bills in '17 & '18 were in a tear down and it was successful. The Sabres were in their 3rd in about 8 years in the end of '21 & through that summer. So far, it looks like it will be successful, but that is by no means a given. A TANK means emptying the cupboards. A tear down means replacing (a significant portion of, or in this case all of) the guys that are getting the significant minutes and are what's identified by pretty much everyone not affiliated with the team as the key people. Would you say what happened in '95 wasn't a tear down because Hasek & LaFontaine weren't punted when pretty much every other vet was? If so, you're pretty much the only one. And if you agree that was a tear down, how is it in any way significantly different than when Muckler was told to work with an austerity budget rather than the 3rd highest salary in the league?

1st one this kid is missing. Some Pens fan (presumably) decided they wanted to go this one REALLY badly. At the price they were willing to pay, had to oblige. Will be watching this one from home.

Good for him. He seems like a decent enough guy but was never going to get the usage he needed to be successful in Buffalo. Could be one of those trades where both teams get what they need out of it.

Welcome to the Lake Wobegon Conference.

You honestly think Asplund in the lineup gets the team past Moe-ray-all? The Sabres problem that game was nobody except Skinner was getting caught dead near all the loose pucks Montembealt was dropping in front of the crease. Standing in front of the goalie is not Asplund's game. Really doubt that was THE difference and also expect the players themselves took ownership of that loss. Heck, Granato blamed the loss on the Sabres not being aggressive enough. Which sounds about right. Asplund over Krebs or Hinostroza doesn't appreciably change that IMHO. YMMV. Girgensons & Okposo were benched? When?

One thing to say in favor of it is, and it's only a 1 game sample against a team that did NOT bring it's A game, is the hope was that the team would be at a point sometime this year when they'd have 12 guys playing well enough to make Hinostroza legitimately the 13th man & a healthy scratch. All 12 played better than Vinny last night. It's still his turn to sit vs Pittsburgh, which is good because not 1 guy played his way out of the lineup. And Vinny is a legit NHLer.

You are missing a ####ton of externalities and focusing on only one in an apparent attempt to ignore them all. Which is ignoring the intent of the post you are kind of responding to. And you are completely messing w/ the timeline. There's no keeping Bogosian & Kane off the roster. BUT, rather than dump the Selke candidate, they COULD have dumped those 2 (AND the idiot coach that led them to a last place finish). And if they were both excised only 3 years in rather than just 1, why couldn't their effects have been mitigated? Especially if they had a coach w/ his head out of his bippy (which given the GM, could very well have been an unrealistic expectation) and still had O'Reilly because that team would've been much better than what they had. Not sure why you're imagining having Adams in his role at that time when looking at the merits of the O'Reilly trade? Remember, this team would actually have had TWO elite C's in '18-'19 as Eichel became a better than a PPG player that year which probably wasn't enough to get into the playoffs but they should've been able to at least get into the mix. Heck, the team they actually iced had a 10 game winning streak. And that team was significantly worse than what they could've iced w/ ROR. And if they're in the mix &/or improving over what they were Housley's 1st year, a lot of the toxicity can be mitigated. People that aren't constantly failing aren't nearly as miserable as those that are. Also, it wasn't Adams that dumped O'Reilly. It was his predecessor. It was Adams coach who had the idea to move Thompson to center. NOBODY else saw that, including Tage himself. Without that move, the trade might very well have turned out to be a Selke candidate for two scrubs, a 3rd/4th line winger and a late 2nd round pick FIVE years later. That was setting up to be a disaster. Fortunately, it's shaping up to not be on the ice four years later. But that's a lot of wasted years to get to this point. Adams didn't come into the picture until 2 years after the trade. Not sure why you're making the hypothetical into stuff 5 years before he stepped into the role. He would NEVER have gotten the job then as he was an assistant coach (and pretty sure at the youth level, no longer at the NHL level). Again, by dropping O'Reilly for nothing and a good player 4 years later (because they lucked into Botterill falling on his sword rather than gutting the scouting staff enabling a GM that could identify a good coach to take over) caused a lot more losing than was necessary and it seriously hosed the fan base. The people looking at the trade only as a shift of the timeline are ignoring all of that and the Sabres and their fans bought all of that with the trade.

One thing being neglected in this entire discussion is that by re-retooling Botterill laid the foundation to having 5,000 paying fans in the building last night. Yes, the team now seems to be on the right track, thankfully. But how much of the negative intangibles that have been pervasive around this team could've been avoided having all of Eichel, O'Reilly, Dahlin, Reinhart, & a recovered from his injury Okposo? Expect a lot of it could've been avoided if the Sabres had actually brought in a quality coach rather than dumping a Selke candidate for 2 futures and trash. Of course, that supposes that Botterill could identify a quality coach - not exactly a given. Three, & arguably 4, fully lost years are the other thing the Sabres got in that trade. It shouldn't be discounted when evaluating it. That trade was NOT Niewendyk for Iginla though revisionists might try to cast it as such.

Pretty sure there's tickets available for the Yotes game in a week if you're in town. Might have an even sparser crowd. You should be able to get your old man all around w/ no issues for that one.

Wasn't anywhere close to the 9,600 announced. Probably 5,000. Seems all of the mini pack holders were not interested in this one as at least 1/2 of the "good" 100 level seats were empty & there were at least 7 sections in the 300's that had 30 people or less in them. Darn shame, those fans dressed as empty seats saw the Sabres lay a whooping on the Wings.