Taro T

And Cozens gets talked about at W too. The team might have 9 legit C's 3 years from now or 2. The people that hate this deal are really looking at it from an '22-'23 perspective rather than when the deal will be in place and aren't merely expecting him to drop to typical 2C #'s (which is possible, though IMHO would be a bit of a surprise) but rather back to 3rd liner results. Which would be a surprise should he stay at C. It's a 2C deal and might be setting the F contract level/value until the cap begins to skyrocket in 2-3 years. Waiting a 1/2 year or a full one was the greater risk IMHO.

Which is why it was silly for a handful around here to be worrying about Ra-cha-cha's ability to dress 20 players every night back when the off-season began. The Amerks were ALWAYS going to be able to ice a full team by the time mid-October rolls around. And likely one that is both competitive & developing the youngsters.

Remember that they also have another team's worth of salary cutting into the players' share. Yes, there is more HRR, but the denominator for calculating the cap went from 31 to 32. It's also very likely that the players haven't finished paying the owners back for the excess share of revenues they got during the lockdown era. Until that money is fully paid back, the cap will remain relatively static. After the owners have been fully repaid there will almost definitely be a large bump to the cap.

Second likely plus, though definitely not a given, is that Dahlin will likely still be a good player on the contract after this next one. (He fits the type to have a better chance than most to play into his late 30's or even 40's.) That age 31 contract will likely be bad but not horribly so and at 38 the AAV will be down from an age 36 contract. That age 36 one would likely be a killer. Looking at the SERIOUS long game. 😉

Still say they keep 8.

No fears. 20-0 baby. They got their loss out of the way last week. 😉

Yep. He'll be good-ish if he only plays 20 or so games. If he's expected to play much more than that, he'll wear down. Expect he'll be ~0.905 S% if he plays 20 or less. ~0.895 if he plays significantly more than that. Will be surprised if he doesn't spend at least a couple of weeks on IR.

Had picked him to get 60 points earlier this summer, so will stick with that. Not sure if he's C or W this year, but expect him on the 2nd line & 1st PP.

There is IMHO a lot of this in that stat. The majority of the players get put on their "strong side" in youth hockey & never really get as much opportunity on their other side and end up more comfortable there. My teams tended to have at least 1 kid playing on their off-hand as we usually only had enough kids for 5 D rather than 3 pairs. But even then, most of them were on their strong side. And the primary reason was typically for being able to keep the puck in the zone. Way easier for a kid to hold the puck in at the boards on his forehand.

Can we chose from all 3? Expect he'll be top 9 at the beginning, get hurt fairly early and by the time he comes back the kids will have earned his ice time & he'll become the 13th when all are healthy. (As if that would ever happen after the 2nd week of the year.) He is what he is & if he can get bumped in actuality to 13 rather than just on paper/theoretically then this could be a good season if Comrie pans out.

Good thing they had your e-mail. Could see where that could be a fun show.

After the 12-6 drubbing of the Ruskies, the Sabres were VERY popular in Scandanavia at least though the '80's because many there hated the Russians. Though that was before Z's time, could easily see his dad instilling a fandom of the Sabres in young Zemgus as can readily see a hockey fan from the occupied Baltics not having any love for the Russians either.

More often than not, it was bad decisions in that 17 year stretch. Could've listed waaaay more bad picks than just the 2 that were highlighted as you well know.

It's trade offs. Everybody pushing the lefties play LD rightness play RD always hype that keeping the puck in at the BL puts the D- man on his backhand. True, but he also has better shooting & passing lanes from there which is why D almost always play off-hand on the PP (in the traditional 3F, 2D formation; obviously not in 4-1). In zone, yes, the clear along the boards is on the backhand as @French Collection points out. But, for battles in front of the net, the D's stick is towards the center of the ice rather than the boards and he can defend more of "the house." In the neutral zone a D either needs to open up to make the cross ice pass which telegraphs it a bit or backhand it, of course a bounce pass off the boards to the winger breaking that way opens the ice up more. The D-man is longer when Mohawking to forwards skating as the attacking F comes in close when playing their strong side, but he can throw a cleaner hip check if he closes the gap quicker & doesn't need to transition to forwards skating on his weak side. @SwampD has this one. It's tradition which leads to that distinction, as there are pros and cons at both ends & in between.

Interesting question. Which brings up another one. If the team's personnel department is coming up with data & metrics which cause them to make worse decisions than those that don't have that info and would cause others that previously didn't have that data to make decisions just as poorly; wtf are they chasing that data in the 1st place? The idea is to attenuate to useful data, not lose it in the chafe. If your scenario is/was in fact the case, whomever chose the metrics to track should've found himself a resident in that Native American cemetery next to the stadium at worst or on the 1st bus to Jacksonville or Detroit or Flushing or wherever the NFL likes to reward its incompetents at a minimum. But suspecting that there is no amount of info in the universe to make John McCargo nor Aaron Maybin a good selection. 😉

Vaguely recall having seen that when somebody pointed it out but not seeing it now. But am noticing a little song bird shouting out around the eye when that logo is inverted. Could make a great party game or maybe a psychoanalyst's wet dream , rather than staring at clouds or ink blots & looking for shapes, turn the goathead around and find everything that's hidden there. (Really scary thought, that seems like something @PASabreFan would come up with. Must need a vacation. Long durn month it's been.)

True. And it does look like the front office does have it's act together. Again, here's to hoping that's the case. 🍺 But, playing devil's advocate, just because guys are paid doesn't mean they should be. There are some Bills fans that would've waaaaaay outperformed the Bills scouts & GMs at the draft for most of that 17 year playoff free run. Don't necessarily discount the fanatical hobbyist as just out of touch. (It's usually the safe play, but not always. 😉 )

Seems a good choice. Anybody have any thoughts on whether his stats are unduly influenced by punting in Mile High?

Well, there IS that.

Could additionally be that as well. And always saw that. But once you've seen the buffalo head in the shirt shirt design it can't really be unseen. Like the arrow in the Fed Ex logo.

League minimum went up THAT much? Wowsers. 😉

Shouldn't you already be at the show if you want to see it if it's at Art Park? (Somebody, maybe you(?), was talking about how they crazily oversold a show earlier this summer.)

Takes away a lot of the effect. When the arms are outstretched the sweater itself is a buffalo's head charging straight ahead. Would expect that's here to stay in some form.

Will try to take your comments to heart, but did want to speak to the bolded directly. Believe you are correct that the bolded behavior happens. But it happens to pretty much everybody regardless of tenure. A thought gets expressed and not really noted and then after the 5th or 6th mention of it, somebody actually notices it and responds back to it and that response is what actually draws the attention to that thought, not that post to which the respondent is responding. MHO. YMMV. So, would suggest that if you feel you've said something noteworthy that we should react to, try saying it again in a slightly different way. (Not suggesting going on a crusade, but maybe the point simply didn't resonate and coming at it from a different place might get it to do so.) Thank you for bringing it up. It's good to get the perspective of those that are new/newish here. Though a place populated by PA, 11, Inky and the rest can't by definition be an echo chamber; there is a certain familiarity that is bred. Good to get reminded of that on occassion.

You have the idea right, but the mechanics are off a tad. Some clarifications below. When the end of the '19-'20 season was effectively canceled and much of '20-'21 was played in front of no crowds, HRR plummeted. The CBA is set up to give owners and players an exact 50-50 split of those revenues after all receipts have been audited. The players do put some of their salary into escrow (IIRC ~5%, maybe 10% and the actual value is revised a couple of times in season during normal years based on estimates of actual to date revenues) which is held until the final auditing, but there was nowhere near enough money in escrow to cover the actual revenue drop. Had they kept the 50-50 split for '19-'20, players would've been forced to cough up huge portions of money that was already in their pockets at a time when nobody knew if they'd even be able to earn any money the next year. Forcing the players to keep their end of returning the excess over their alloted 50% would've quite possibly destroyed the league. The players and management worked out a system where they'd be overpaid for that previous season & the likely upcoming one. But they would repay that money over the next few seasons. And that's the biggest part of the MOU tacked onto the previous CBA - how to make finances work in the locked down world. (The MOU still to this day hasn't been finalized into a true revised CBA, doubt it ever will either.) The cap was left essentially (actually?) unchanged for '20-'21 rather than get adjusted to reflect anticipated actual revenues because many teams would've been forced to buy out players to get under what the cap should've been under the previously agreed formula. The cap is set to get player costs to roughly 50% of anticipated HRR and avoid the players from owing too much of their escrow at the end of the year. The league & players agreed that the players would likely be overpaid again that year (getting over 50% HRR) and that in future years they'd be underpaid with the excess they should've/ would be actually paid being used to repay the owners the monies they forewent in '20 & '21. We're currently in those underpaid years and when they're through with the repayments, the cap will grow significantly as it will include a few year's worth of HRR growth. 1 additional point for those not familiar w/ the details of the CBA. Players don't ever receive exactly what their contract says they will because players split a set pie (whether it be 50% of HRR or what's called for in the MOU) amongst themselves and if the total face value of all contracts counting towards all teams' caps is less than that target they all get the same percentage increase over the face value of their contracts and if they all combined would've earned more than that number they all take the same percentage cut to their earnings. And 1 final point, while Vegas & Seattle did increase total HRR (more games, more concessions, more merchandise, & 2 more local TV deals) they also added 46+ more players to split the players 50% share of HRR so expansion didn't/ won't increase the cap as much as 1 might expect at 1st blush. And the owners don't share expansion fees with the players because those expansion fees in theory cover the existing owners reduction from 1/30th to 1/32nd of leaguewide shared revenues (national TV contracts, NHL.com revenues, leaguewide sponsorships, international tournaments, etc.). That's what they told the players and the players bought it, so that's the official position.