Taro T

Sweet. Hopefully there are no full NMCs in it, just in case down the road they decide they want to move him. Guess this puts to rest the concerns that UPL didn't want to be here.

They DO use player comparables to determine what the player should receive in arbitration. E.g., this player gets so much ice time, scores X goals, gets Y shots, sets up Z plays, etc. etc. which is comparable to so and so who gets A, so and so who gets B, and better than so and so who gets C. And both sides have to tell the other side which players they are going to consider comparables to the player in the arbitration hearing. (And the player has to be in a comparable situation career-wise to be considered a comparable too. So a UFA who signs somewhere for $10MM wouldn't likely be a comparable to a player that still is an RFA for 2 more years because the player isn't a UFA yet.) What they can't do is say, for example were this the previous off-season, well he's more valuable to the Sabres than Skinner is because he did this and Skinner only did that so he should get way more than Skinner's $9MM. (Especially when the player in question is UPL and though he is more valuable to the Sabres, he plays a completely different position and Skinner would never be a comparable player to him.) And they couldn't say, well the team needs to make sure they're over the cap floor and the only way they can guarantee it would be by paying him so much. Likewise, the team can't say, well we already have to bury Stone on BF-LTIR next year so we can't give him more than $2MM even though on a team without cap trouble he'd be worth $5MM.

Nah, it's the same one he wore to Tim Horton's funeral. You can tell by the wider than currently in style lapels. Heard he was pretty proud of it still fitting after all this time.

And again, you are COMPLETELY discounting how much better the PP would've been had somebody besides Skinner been on the ice to retreive loose pucks, win battles along the boards down low, and not make lousy passes once he had the puck. But he scores at a higher rate than these other guys that aren't stationed at the front/side of the net. Cool, never would've thought that being stationed nearer the net than the other players on the ice might help him score more goals. Again, but how many goals WEREN'T scored by the Sabres because Skinner was the guy in the role of the garbage man? There is a reason that the vast majority of points that Jeff Skinner has scored throughout his career come at 5v5. Other players on his teams have skill sets better suited to being on the PP. Granato needed to knock him off the top PP long before he did (and he also needed to relieve Matt Ellis of that portion of his duties) and MAYBE he would've still been the coach of the team. Btw, Girgensons had an EG/60 of over 12. Maybe they should've kept HIM for the PP too. 😉 Look, personally didn't want Skinner dumped this year as IMHO it made more sense from a cap perspective to cut him next season (or even the one after it). But there's no doubt that Ruff didn't want him here. So, he's gone. And also btw, when Eichel and Reinhart were in Buffalo, 5 players had P/60 on the PP of greater than 5.0 and 2 more were about 4.0 and another 2 were within 0.1 of 4.07 this season. You know, when the PP actually didn't stink. And Skinner wasn't even in the top 10 for P/60 on the PP; he was 13th.

Well, we'll never know, but it is very possible that the owners didn't want to hand O'Reilly the C when the very 1st thing he did after signing with the Sabres was drive his truck into a Timmy Ho's. It definitely soured the owners on him. The question is to just what degree did it sour them? There are times that it REALLY seems as if this team is cursed. (Realize it isn't; but those that want to claim it is can make a persuasive case.) Hopefully, we're finally watching them get back onto the right track. Time will tell.

And, again, how much of the issues with the PP were due to him being on it? Maybe, just maybe, the PP would actually have been better with him NOT on it. And, if memory serves, the PP did actually get better when he was off it. (Of course, the PP was so bad, it having been better might merely have been a case of it getting luckier.) Additionally, as he was typically the 1st player to get swapped out for the 2nd unit when the team went back to regroup after the puck got sent down to the other end of the ice once again; might it be possible that his playing less time on the PP than most anyone else on the top unit could account for an increase in his pts/60 on the PP? (Reducing the denominator makes the overall fraction greater.)

How much PP productivity got killed when Skinner was unable to win a battle to keep control of the puck or made a pass that was nowhere near the target. One of the shortcomings about analytics is you have to start getting into the really granular and subjective to be able to quantify the effects of things like that. How much better would the rest of the PP's #'s have looked without him doing stuff like that? Those sort of things tend to be addressed better via the eye test. And, merely for clarification, you aren't trying to say Skinner was/is GOOD on the PP are you? Don't believe you are, just trying to confirm. Because there's a reason that he tends to get most all his scoring at 5v5.

Like Meatloaf used to say "2 out of 3 ain't bad." 😒

Cool. Now get an agreement with UPL. (Then make a trade for that mythical additional 2W and we're cooking with gas.)

To the bolded, w/ all due respect, no, he wasn't. He still had a lot of pieces that as it turns out, and several here argued, were actually pretty good hockey players. He decided that he didn't want players that didn't yearn to be Sabres and because of THAT decision he ended up "more or less stuck with this model." But he could have judiciously added to the key players that were Sabres. But he'd come to the conclusion that the core was rotten and if it wanted to be elsewhere he was fine with accomodating those pieces. He also decided that with very few exceptions (Tuch being the prime example) he didn't want to bring back players in their prime for those assets but rather he wanted prospects and picks for them. And he expected the team would be competing for a playoff spot ~last year (and because the East was so screwed up, they "competed" for a spot a year early, though finishing with 91 isn't exactly competing in most years and that sure seemed to affect how he and his former coach approached last season) and presumably making the playoffs this year and being legit contenders in a year or 2. He might turn out to be correct that the team will be legit competitors a season or 2 from now; but if he isn't right about making the playoffs this year, there's a good chance that he won't be here to find out if he was right about when they'd be legit contenders.

Probably. (Narrator: It wasn't.)

How old or how drunk?

Well, like Jeff Allen says "Happy wife, happy life." (Know he didn't come up with it, but that has kind of become his trademark.)

Umm, isn't that what happens every time you fire up the grill? Or does your wife expect that possums possess some magical germs that can withstand several hundred degrees of heat over an extended time?

Personally, (barring a trade for a 2W) expect he's coming into camp as the presumptive 13th F; but can see him in a bit of a rotation with Greenway and Aubel-Kube (and maybe 1 or 2 others) depending upon how Ruff wants to work the matchups. Also see him as being the injury slot in for any of the bottom 6 positions ahaed of Rousek (who'd appear to be his backup in that 13th F role). And, depending upon just how much Ruff wants to have Briere & Drury style lines as his most deployed (with 1 or 3 guys that can be defensively responsible going against the other team's top lines while still having a scoring punch) and letting a young primarily scoring line w/ not quite as much defensive responsibility take advantage of mismatches against the other team's lower lines could see Krebs on a wing on any of the 4 lines (because he actually had some chemistry with Tuch when he 1st arrived in Buffalo & expect Tuch will be Ruff's new Dumont and the RW on the top scoring line). Would guess that comes down to how defensively responsible he appears in Ruff's eyes. (Not saying him moving to top line is expected; it isn't, and do expect he's nominally the 13th F. And in a jumbled lineup would expect when he dresses he's still somewhere on lines 2-4 as a W, most likely 3 or 4. But don't consider it'd be a head scratcher should it happen.)

Would be so on brand if it was a former Sabres turn with the chalice. (Yeah, you win, but you don't get the spoils of victory; just because.)

To the bolded, not necessarily. Or, more precisely, whether he'd faltered would depend upon the baseline. If the baseline is the UPL we saw in January and February, it would almost necessarily be due to him faltering, because that UPL was getting into Vasilevskiy territory and would necessitate having Levi playing like Saros. But, if the baseline is where UPL was at the very end of the season, could see Levi playing better than that but UPL remaining at that level. (And that would almost definitely still be better than the sum total of what the Sabres got from the position last year.) And if UPL stays at the level he ended at, don't see how it could be called "faltering." (Semantics, but IMHO words & their meanings matter.) And if they got oh, say, 76 games of at least the end of the year UPL out of both of them with a handful of stinkers thrown in; that likely would be good enough. (Especially if they add the 2W that Adams seems to be looking for.) To the rest of your post, agree. It doesn't matter which goalie plays at a legit starter's level as long as at least one of them gets there. (And if it's Reimer doing it, fine. Who does it doesn't matter (ST, it matters greatly for the LT); but that the Sabres get it absolutely matters.) And if they don't get that level of goaltending, Mr. Adams might be looking to the employment section of the newspaper next spring. (PLEASE don't let that be the case. REALLY don't want to have to see another attempt at a rebuild.) @dudacek has said it before, and it's accurate. Don't know if Adams will get it (playoffs) done this year; but the thought of the team not doing it is seriously depressing because it means these guys aren't as good as management believed/believes they are. And that augers more "suffering." We've had too dang much of it already the past dozen years +.

Because they'd gotten their prospect goalie for THAT year in the Reinhart trade. Would also have rather had them choose a goalie with that pick they used on Rosen and expected at the time that they would use it on 1 of the 2 1st round talents still available, but pretty sure they probably feared they'd scare Portillo away if they brought in two prospects in the same off-season. (Not commenting on whether it was a good decision or not; merely taking a stab at the "why" of it.)

Bob Newhart passed away today. IMHO he was the funniest human alive. What a sad day. Unfortunately the Button Down Mind won't be striking again. RIP Dr. Hartley & Dick Laudon.

Good questions. Been a long time since looking at the bankruptcy documents from the criminals' era. The answers to your Q's would be in there. (Golisano assumed the lease and then it transferred to Pegula with the sale.) Not intentionally putting you off, but with it having been so long since looking at that stuff would be afraid of posting "fake news" at this point. @Brawndo could likely answer your Q. If you haven't gotten a good answer by Sunday evening, I might try to track them down.

And he DID actually stick with UPL. Yes, UPL was bumped down to 3rd on the depth chart, but he was not bumped down to Ra-cha-cha where he could've been lost for a $500 claiming fee.

When 1 or 2 guys play a perimeter game, it's heart. When all but 1 or 2 play a perimeter game, it's coaching/strategy. It was the worst of the Patrick Roy Avs "we're a puck possesstion" team right before he got canned there. They held the puck but never scored because they never shot & never worked towards high danger shots. Granato added a focus on cutting down on goals against "WITHOUT changing the system" (his words). That gets accomplished by not forcing the puck into the slot where it's going to get turned over a lot (it's also going to result in less high danger scoring chances, which is not a good thing). Let's see how these guys fare under Ruff before declaring most all of them heartless. Maybe?

True dat. But it was cheaper than adding additional escalators. Heck of job there, Quinny, heck of a job. And, because of the congestion at the escalators (which is even worse when you have to come from the penalty box side of the rink after being used to coming from the other side) we've always taken the stairs back down to leave the building.

Yes, Levi went into camp last season as the presumptive starter, but it wasn't entirely a case of Adams and Granato handing him the job. Go back and look at how he, Comrie, and UPL played at the end of the previous season. Yes, UPL had been playing pretty well in January of that year, but he wasn't consistently doing so by the end of that season. Comrie was what he was. And Levi looked good down the stretch. In training camp last year, UPL did NOT look good at all, Comrie was Comrie, and until the Penguins game debacle (which in hindsight was a huge red flag) Levi was playing well there. So, yes, Levi was given the opportunity to take the #1 slot, but neither Comrie nor UPL did anything at all to take it from him. And, actually, Levi ended up taking the job from himself in October. Neither Comrie nor UPL took hold of the job themselves until around the flip of the calendar when UPL really grabbed the reins.

The question wasn't who is your FAVORITE team, as posited in the OP it was who is your SECOND favorite team. (And, it really is most likely a reflection of which team do you dislike the least.) But how many people buy merchandise for their SECOND favorite team? Merchandise sales would be a reflection of who fans' #1 team is, wouldn't it be? (YOU might have Bruin and Sabre gear, but personally doubt many others here have a whole bunch of merch for teams other than the Sabres. And expect that trend would be similar across the league and across sports.)