Taro T

The locker room comment was the final straw; but he wanted him gone because darn near the very 1st thing he did after signing a mega contract to be a leader of the Buffalo Sabres rebuild was get drunk and use his truck to create a new drive through at a Timmy Ho's.

Was it Adams' fault that Ruff didn't get to choose his assistants and Seth Appert was named the X & O's PP coach? And the corrolary, was it Adams' fault that Wilford was still running the D and PK? Was it Adams' fault that nearly all the eggs were placed in UPL's basket (will actually say that one is to large extent on Ruff, he was fully bought in on UPL on Day 1)? Was it Adams' fault the roster was the youngest in the league? Yes, this team MIGHT have everything come together and make a run to 100 or 102 points and an opportunity to compete in the playoffs. But, (and realizing a lot of stuff COULD happen at the draft, in FA, and through the off-season; and SOME changes will be made; that said) it looks like they're going to need goaltending to play much better than it did last year; Norris to stay healthy the majority of the year; Dahlin to stay healthy nearly the entire year; not lose Thompson and Tuch at the same time Norris is out; Kulich, Peterka, and Benson at a minimum to stay on their upward trajectory; Greenway to stay healthy; Zucker not to hit the age wall; bounce back seasons from Quinn and Samuelsson; AND Power not to be set back from the leg injury. All that happens and they get some puck luck (i.e., no game costing kneed in goals by a team you're chasing for a playoff spot) and they're in. Easy-peazy.

Minor quibble on the Bandits. Bandits were pretty bad in '16-'17. They got Josh Byrne with the #1 overall pick that year. They missed the playoffs again the next year but drafted Ian MacKay that year too. Since then, they've been a machine (barring a few mid-season stretches when either Vinc was out, they didn't have a guy to take faceoffs, &/or the D has been decimated) going to 5 consecutive finals and it likely would've been a streak of 7 straight but Covid cancelled 1 playoff tourney and 1 entire season after that.

No, it ain't awesome. But am tired of using the :cry: emoji.

This is SOOOOOOOOOOO ####ing depressing.

Aisles would've gotten the 2nd pick in that scenario. The Snarks would get pick 1. The Fighting Mormons get 4 and whoever started out at 2 gets 3.

Personally expect that's a little bit more than most fans are thinking.

Not by himself, but Adams was "on screen" for pretty much the entirely of the 4th ball's draw along with the others that still had a chance to win.

They did. But it would've been more dramatic seeing a huge chunk of the logos going black on the 1st draw and then fewer going away each time (though a greater percentage of the remaining #'s going away). They could've had a separate screen (or maybe the corners of a board like the Sabres one) keeping the teams still alive lit up (for those too lazy to look through the big matrix to see if their favorite team was still alive) too. They once again half-arsed what could've been sort of fun. And Buccigross being forced to feign excitement only raised the cringe factor. Yes, yes they did. The Sabres were one of 4 or 5 teams that still had a chance on the 1st lottery's 4th draw and they had each of those GMs shown in a Zoom meeting sort of layout. (Tuned in late; don't know if they showed all 16 GMs to start the thing.)

Still believe it could've been made better if they'd've used the jumbotron somewhere (MSG, or whatever they're calling the new MLG in TO would be obvious choices (had they held this on a night the Loafs weren't hosting a game at least)) and had 1000 small team logos and a "draw again" on the last combo on a big board with each one lit up (and the jumbotrons are big enough they should've been able to at least have small visible logos for all 1,001 permutations) and then as a ball is drawn then all the no longer possible combos go black. (Maybe do it in a cascade effect so as to build the drama a bit?) After the 4th ball is drawn 1 logo remains lit and they "grow" it until it takes up the full screen. Redo for the 2nd draft, but now the 1st lottery winning team's logos are replaces with "draw again" as well. WAAAAY better than what they actually did.

If he was doing that in game, it would explain SO MUCH about last season. 😉

No, the G was for Graduated. 😉

They should. And hopefully it'll be a current player as this pick ends up part of the package for him. (If not, fork it, take Martin. Roll the dice on a possible Peca.)

Forking #9.

Believe the Sabres would end up 3rd if they won the 2nd drawing and the 12th place team won the 1st one. (Only way the Sabres could get 3.) So, yeah, they can't end up 11, but they theoretically could also end up 3.

Expecting he either got a C or an F as well. Tough graders at SHKIIIP. 😉

But you need at LEAST 4 people to cover Bills rookie & invite minicamp. Just how many people do you need to cover THE draft lottery? The Snooze thinks, and proably agree with them, that it doesn't warrant a reporter's full output. Plus, they still have Harrington to opine about it. Do they really need an entire journalist to opine about such a weightedy matter? Probably not. No idea when the Sabres will make whatever changes Friedman hinted at official. And the draft isn't for another month and a half. They can probably pull Lance back into the Sabres beat for the day when the 1st occurs and should have somebody else in place by the latter.

Not really, Reimer and UPL graduated. 😉

Holy ####! They gave Dahlin a D!?!? They must've really held that 10 game injury absence against him. 😉

That's pretty much how its worked for all of the lotteries after the Crosby lottery. 14 numbered balls popped into the machine and then 4 are taken out randomly. Those 4 balls can be randomly drawn into 1,001 different permutations (not counting which order they're drawn in; so 1-2-3-4 is equivalent for this exercise to 1-2-4-3 and 2-1-3-4, etc. etc.). They leave 1 combination as a redrawn; this year that is 11-12-13-14 per your Puckpedia article. So, there are exactly 1,000 winning combinations. Depending upon how the league wants the odds divvied up, teams are randomly allotted 10x that number of 4 number combinations. So, if they wanted the last place team to have a 10% chance of winning they'd assign them 100 random combinations and if they wanted them to have a 20% chance of winning they'd get 200. The Sabres have a 6.5% chance of winning so they were given 65 winning combos. And interestingly (or not) the Sabres have 1, 2, 4, 5 as one of their combos. Watch this to be the year that the balls are drawn 4, 2, 1, 3 so the Sabres will miss it by the just about the slimmest possible margin (1245 vs 1235 vs the winner 1234). And for the 2nd draw, they use 14 balls once again and the remaining teams all keep their original combinations. But now instead of just 1 redraw combination, there are now x+1 redraw combinations with x being the number of chances the team that won the 1st lottery had as those combinations now no longer are valid as winners.

And then shortly thereafter Vinc had probably the save of the season. Vancouver worked a great back door play and Vinc found a way to get his stick onto the shot towards the nearly empty net.

PSA Reminder: Bandits go for the 2 game sweep in Vancouver tonight at 9PM Eastern. ESPN+ will carry it in the States. TSN/TSN+ will carry it in Canada. Saskatchawan killed Halifax in Halifax yesterday 15-7 (maybe 16-7, lost track of the score with all the idiotic penalties the Mad Dog 2020's kept taking at the end of the game. The Rush had at least 3 penalty shots at the end as Halifax insisted on taking more penalties after they already were 2 men down. A win on Friday night or Sunday night and they'll face the winner of the Bandits series. A win tonight gives the Bandits a week off to get even healthier waiting for the winner of the other series.

Hate how they never bother to interview any of the horses. They talk to LITERALLY everybody else with any kind of connection to the race no matter how tangential. (Due to the fact it's a 5 hour show covering a 2+minute event.)

This place just isn't the same without Dwight. The jockeys are heading out to the paddock and not one single word about this (apparently since 2024).

Would hope both would. Expecting Swayman will bounce back.