Taro T

Not even 86.2%? Sheesh.

Ummm, how does exposing F Bjork protect D Borgen?

Because Dahlin & Samuelsson played a ton of minutes & Mule would've had more had his stick not broken. And Jokiharju & Power still got regular Granato-level 2nd pairing usage. Actually expected that Bryson had even less ice time than he ended up getting. Bryson was only out for 1 PK IIRC and din't get any PP time. That's ~16 minutes of actual game time taking overlaps into account.

Thus the "slightly odd choice" comment. 😉

One other thing about the in game presentation. The ads & spiels from the PA announcer, RJ & the rink girl (can't think of her name at present) are now being closed captioned on the upper ribbon board in the corners of the rink. Guess they figure after they deafen everyone then they'll still be able to communicate w/ their patrons. 😉

Don't know if it was a 1 off or if it'll be a thing this year. Slightly odd choice, but it's a decent song. The Rick James tune was a good choice IMHO. Considering the tribute prior to the game found it slightly strange that Rick James was replaced by the Goos last night.

Thought the tribute was fine. Personally, really liked that they had the Otters & the refs too skate out to CI with the Sabres.

Thoughts on the game & in rink experience in no particular order. (Well, rink experience 1st.) PITA connecting up to the WiFi entering the building. Probably took 5 minutes to finally get on it. (Wouldn't be a big deal except tix are on the device that uses the WiFi. Grrr.) Others were also having the issue. Remember to take your game day program coupon to Moe's for 50% off an entree thanks to Dahlin's goal. Minor problem. They didn't give out programs for the game. D'oh. They really didn't need to ramp up the PA system's volume to an 11. With makeshift earplugs in, it was still louder than the Nick Mason concert last Su day. Not sure why, but the shot clocks apparently used gray #'s on a gray background. Had no idea how many shots were taken until they told us Anderson had made 35 saves when he came out as the 1st star. They finally had most of the garbage cans in the 300 level not sticking out into the aisle ways. When they stick out, they make passage almost impossible. Especially in the 1st intermission. Not sure why, but EVERYBODY leaves the seating bowl at the 1st intermission. Instead of Rick James "Give It To Me Baby," the song played after the W as the crowd cleared out was the Goo Goo Dolls' "Broadway." Hopefully we find out Saturday if that is this year's thing. As for the game ... It was obvious this was the 1st game for both teams. LOTS of missed passes. Wonder if there was an event in the rink the night before because the ice seemed bad. Lots of guys falling down & lots of bouncing pucks. Anderson came to play. Counting partial breakaways, believe he faced 7 and stopped them all. Definitely deserved the 1st star. Granato seemed to not care about line matching at least in the 1st & the 3rd. The Otters coach was rolling his lines out late & seemed to be doing what he could to have Tkachuk's line against Cozens in the 1st. He got that matchup at least 3 times in the 1st & got a goal from it & nearly a 2nd but Power & Krebs combined to get a rebound out of harms way. Never saw Tkachuk's line vs Cozens in the 2nd (might've been a function of all the Otter PPs) but it happened a few times in the 3rd again. Seemed the Norris line was usually against Thompson's line. Power had his weakest game as a Sabre but wasn't bad & seemed to settle down as the game went on. Overall thought the Sabres outplayed the Otters, but the Otters didn't give up 97 breakaways unlike their opponents, so let's call it a draw. Dahlin seemed just a tad off most all game. His passes were just missing the mark & guys were missing him by 1/2 a mile. The shift he scored on, he's been involved in at least 4 errant passes before that incredible effort & it seemed he'd simply decided enough of this ####, let's make something happen & he did. Simply incredible. Krebs was a turnover machine most of the game, but he got the puck back to Dahlin on the goal & that was a glimpse of what he can be once he finally figures out what can get by an NHL D-man & what can't. Quinn looked like he did in the AHL playoffs, but expect he'll come around. Just needs to get used to these guys being a bit bigger & faster than what he's used to. Expect he'll figure it out sooner than later. Mitts & Tuch we're working hard. Liked the Asplund line. Solid effort. The PK was great. Samuelsson & Lyubushkin are definitely the 1st pair & Cozens & Asplund the 1st F pair w/ Mitts & Tuch the 2nd. Hopefully they can continue using those young legs to let Okposo & Girgensons stay fresh for 5v5. [Edit: Girgensons took the 1st 1/2 of the 5v3 & Thompson & his long reach finished it out.] Lyubushkin brings a mean this D hasn't had in quite some time but he'll take himself out of the play a bit & will end up w/ dumb penalties like his interference call. Bryson looked better than remembered, but he did get out muscled on 2-3 occassions. Granato didn't mess w/ the lines much except to get guys on the ice after PKs/PPs. But Quinn was bumped from the Mitts line to get VO his goals at the end. Both PPs were bad (PP1 was beyond bad). The stupid drop pass to the trailer forcing EVERYBODY else to be standing still at the blue line doesn't work w/out an Eichel. Once they started dumping it in they actually started to gain in zone possession. (And that isn't an ideal entry either.) Cozens & Peterka worked well together. Liked Cozens' game in the 1st & after the beautiful set up got JJ his 1st NHL goal really liked the confidence JJ played with. Though had he actually shot the puck the next time he was in front of the net might've had another one. Didn't think the Thompson line played bad, but Norris - DeBrincat - & Stutzle is a very good line & they were normally out against them. And late in the 1st we saw why Skinner chose the goal song he did as his dancing had the D-man tied I knots & should've drawn a penalty at minimum. Seemed everybody was working hard, but as said earlier, REALLY sloppy game. They have to clean stuff up or tomorrow's game could be ugly. Fun game to be at. Seemed to go quickly once they finally got through all the pregame ceremonies.

Interesting you mention that. Granato said post-game specifically that they hadn't shown the guys any post-game video in the preseason because there was no point to it when it wasn't against NHLers. But that they would be reviewing a lot of stuff from this game with everybody. Also, at least to me Interestingly, each player post-game gets a video customized to his own game to review. There is a staffer that keeps track of when everybody hits the ice comes off it & the events & that log gets correlated to the game film so they can pretty much give those to the players almost as the game is ending. They've had that in place since at least the mid-00's. Would be interesting to know how much additional details they get now that the league does some degree of bio-monitoring.

Nowhere near that few in the building. The place holds close to 19,000 (the exact # seems to change every couple of years depending on whether/how many seats they need to block off to be ADA compliant; thanks Larry) & there was absolutely no way the building was 1/3 empty. Expect there were at least 14,000 in the building, likely 14,500.

There were ~14,500 in the building. (15,360 tickets distributed) Except for the 2 RJ games & maybe the Eichel that's the best attendance since prior to the pandemic.

@steveoath posted a tweet w/ it back on page 4 of this thread.

Neither really. Haven't pulled it out of the bag but a few people had pulled theirs out and it looked like it was 42-48" wide & ~30" tall. It'd be a nice item to throw on the wall.

Would be great, but that's highly doubtful. And Anderson did play like this in October last year. The Bolts game being the most obvious example. He couldn't keep it up at that level, though he did play well late in the year, too.

Pekar has earned falling out of the top 4 lines. Back in Europe next year?

Disappointed that neither he nor Comrie has one. Was in the building when Noronnen "scored a goal." So, it isn't impossible.

???

Hope UPL is up to facing a lot of shots. That D will help the offense generate shots but will also likely give up a ton of shots too & unfortunately a lot will likely be high danger.

The Kings - This Beat Goes On Or might go off the board with The Men - The Church of Logic, Sin, & Love (The chorus of that one, starting w/ "This is real ...", not any the verses though they are very good but too understated.)

Good question about the rough patch, but expect the answer will be to let him power through it. At most all his stops except Buffalo, they've sheltered him at first, briefly, but he's simply played his way into bigger roles. Just don't see him having a huge questioning himself spell but could see him run on fumes towards the end of the year. And expect that having Dahlin on the roster will be a great asset for him to battle through it (you thought it'd be power through it again, didn't you, kind reader 😉 ) so not expecting him to seem as weary towards the end of the season as Ras tended to (Ras' support wasn't nearly at the level Power should wind up with) his 1st couple of years.

Will agree it was a popular song. The Venn diagram circles of that and good don't really have as much overlap as we're led to believe. 😉 And, will be dropping this now, as nobody is changing anybody mind here. Have spoken my piece.

Fair enough. But that song causes 80's flashbacks, not 90's. 😉

We'll see. Could see him stepping up into the regular rotation after Christmas, but expect he'll have enough on his plate leading the 2nd 5v5 pairing & QBing the 2PP without adding PK to it on a regular basis. And yeah, believe Bryson got some PK time because other options were even scarier. When Fitzgerald is in the line up he could get an odd shift or 2 on PK as well.

Which is perfectly fine. You do you. But having been subjected to '80's pop through that entire decade, have really heard enough of it to last at least 2 lifetimes. Easily the worst decade for pop music of the 1st 6 decades of the rock era.

Nobody (should) sing along to the only woman who was more full of herself than Mariah Carey. My 2 cents. YMMV.