Taro T

Really wish it was the other way round (Krebs to Quinn). And Krebs now centering Peterka & Quinn. Laaksonen & Alt are the D out w/ them.

Good PK. They killed it w/ only 1 shot against. Quinn passes to Krebs on a 3-1 and Primeau snags it & freezes it.

Need to keep up the solid play & get the momentum back again.

And Amerks w/ another PP. And Peterka gets a penalty for playing the puck w/out his helmet. The ref that called it is a Koharski.

Peterka! We're tied! Beautiful feed from Krebs. Prow w/ the 2ndary. Not even 2 minutes into the 3rd. They're bringing it.

Brett Murray. Down by only 1. And Jankowski draws the PP.

Well, it's not over, but it will take a Herculean effort to get this game back under control & into the win column. Just don't see them having it in them.

The game is way more entertaining listening to the Laval feed.

And 84 represents a bad team. Not even a kind of, sort of, average team. Topping THAT was good enough to be in the playoffs. 😉 (You don't have to be better than the 8th best team; you need to be better than the 9th best team. If you're the 9th best team, by definition you can't be better than yourself, so you need to get somebody else into that role if you're going to get in, but it's always the 9th best team that is controlling. And is why the Caps, or Pens, or Bolts, or whomever only needed to be average to get in. None of the bottom 8 were even that good.) The mean, BTW, was just under 92 this season. So, all but 2 teams league wide that were above average by that definition made the playoffs. And the top 16 teams by record all made the playoffs, so all above average teams by your definition made them and all below average teams missed them. (More an anomaly than anything else, but it is what it is.) So, kind of like how back in '86 being exactly average wasn't good enough for the Sabres to make the playoffs, being even a modicum over average was good enough then and

You sure about that? 8 below average teams missed the playoffs by a mile. Every team that was average or better made them. Ordinary would've gotten the Caps in w/ about a week's worth of games to spare.

Prior to seeing what moves happen, the former definitely can't be said & it's still a minor leap to expect the latter. Though w/ adequate to good goaltending the latter (average, aka in the playoff hunt, if not actually in the playoffs) becomes a very reasonable expectation,

Considering he needed 2 guys to get him from the far side of the ice to the bench because he couldn't keep his legs under himself right after his head hit the boards, pretty sure it was a concussion.

That would be a nice add, if he's ready to go again.

It's encouraging. Of course, the flip side is that if the Pegulas are willing to suffer through empty buildings for 1 more year "to do things the right way" we may not see the Sabres fix the goaltending as well as we might hope this year because the FUTURE is bright. But 22-23 might not be as bright as we hope, but it won't be the feared final nail in the coffin. Personally, hoping they aren't willing to suffer through that bad of losses intentionally. And back to the topic: go AMERKS!

No, when he said "there will be suffering" he meant exactly that. He was about to ice a team that was going to be horrifically bad for at least through the McEichel draft. And, the day he said that was the day he should've been fired. (Well, technically, the day he agreed to that plan was the day he should've been canned, but close enough.)

It could also promote a very good lax team or a very good football team.

The weird thing about the news item is the Swamp Cats are from Miami. It's not exactly like they're on break from Ottumwa, IA.

Let's hope that was his own cheek. 😉

No, but what IS VERY debatable is that it was that lack of a pipeline that kept the team unsustainable in the wake of the C's walking. That pipeline-less team went from losing their 3 top C's and missing the playoffs to division champ within 3 seasons. It was the wild gyrations that killed the team's chances this past decade. Not the pipeline, though that didn't help. MHO. YMMV. Edit: and the original comment was in reference to the comment that it was the pipeline that killed the team post- Black Sunday. The record doesn't seem to bear that out.

But, there seems to be a confluence of different issues all getting lumped into a lack of pipeline. Black Sunday was 7 years prior to the 2nd full-on tank season '14-'15). The team won its division in the 3rd season post-Black Sunday. The prospect pool, or lack thereof, wasn't the only issue and, in fact, wasn't enough of an issue to keep the team from being competitive even relatively quickly after Black Sunday. And that's WITH Regier having to live w/ Video Scouting. Thanks, Larry. And, will agree that the biggest thing the Pegulas could've done day 1 was invest a #### ton of money into having the best scouting department anywhere. But a bigger issue than the prospect pool was the whiplash caused by switching directions every 2 years after new ownership took over. FA''ll fix it. No, tanking. No, accelerated rebuild in the LA model. No, re-retooling to the Pittsburgh model. No, FA can work this this time. No, develop our own. Well, we're now entering year 3 of the newest direction. (Or, year 2 if Adams 1st year doesn't get included.) Hoping they stay the course, as this SHOULD be feasible if they fix the blankety blank goaltending.

Is it? On a certain level removing context it is, but what team has had a pipeline strong enough to allow their 3 top C's to walk at once? Was there ANY GM that had built up such a deep organization to be able to come through that sort of a debacle unscathed in a newly salary capped world? They finished 10th in the Conference the 2 years after watching their THREE top C's walk in FA, but then won the division the next year only to fail in the playoffs after Boychuk intentionally took out Vanek's knee and then the next season were in 1st in the division the day Lucic showed the world the team had no heart. By the end of that season, the Pegula era had begun and their most recent trip to the playoffs was completing. And to follow on to the Q's from the 1st paragraph, does it say anything at all about the pipeline to see the team back at the top of its division a mere 3 years later? Realizing that's a far cry from challenging for the best record in the league which is where they were prior to losing their top 3 C's, but still that's fairly impressive in its own right IMHO. Video scouting definitely hurt. But the pipeline didn't force the decision to tank and that decision didn't lead to swapping the picks & prospects obtained at the price of the tank for players that were obtained on overpay nor the subsequent selling of those players for pennies on the $ which got us to where we were when Adams took over.

FTFY. 😉

Agree to a degree. The thing we haven't seen yet is we haven't seen teams recognize what the (a) effective strategy to shut Thompson down is. Yes, teams realized he was a threat, but this is a copy cat world, and IMHO while he was shut down on occasion, the "book" on how to do so hasn't yet been written. It likely will be this season & how Tage adjusts to THAT adjustment is what we need to see next. He seems to have a pretty good "hockey IQ" (never thought that'd be the case watching him tear up his shoulder, but hey, things change) so he should be able to do so. And reality is, hockey is such a fast chaotic game that even if the book comes out on Tage that he still will be able to find his spaces, just he'll have to work harder to get them (or his linemates need to take advantage and force teams to not be able to focus on him; they did a good job of it last season & should be able to continue to do so). And, let's face it, while teams by the end weren't taking the Sabres lightly, they weren't putting the same resources into studying their tendencies that they were doing to take on the Bolts or the Canes. This year, they'll likely put in a bit more effort in preparation. Will that matter? Who knows, but it'll be interesting to see if it does.

One of those times they weren't in the Semifinals was the year they had one of the best RS's ever but got swept by the BJ's.

(Realize you're joking, but...) Had Reinhart not gotten his goal in Game 4, they never get the opportunity to get smoked this round. Course, had the attempted empty netter just before that glanced off the inside of the net frame rather than the outside, he never gets THAT opportunity.