Taro T

Guess not.

Kicking motion?

Oh, Tokarski! We're not worthy!

That Miller goal shift to start the 2nd explained WHY Sullivan was trying so hard to keep Crosby away from Cozens. IF the Sabres end up in playoff hunt we can directly look back to the moment they headed there. The moment that Granato had finished studying Cozens' body language upon hearing he might line up against McDavid all night.

We drove in for that game not knowing the game had been postponed. Stopped at Mighty on the way into town & a couple of kids at the next table were joking around about no game tonight because LaFontaine had died. Huh? What? Ignored that. But when there was no traffic as we were walking to the rink we started wondering if it was true? Asked the cop near the rink what was going on & he gave us the actual story. Was quite a while before we didn't at least catch a few minutes of the pre-game on the drive in after that. 😉

For 2 shifts. Since then Sullivan has been trying to get Crosby out vs R2 Rou2. Punk.

Not that odd for '80's, though they would typically paint over the old uni for guys that got traded in the off-season. The very odd card was the Buffalo Sabres Jacques Lemaire card. Al McAdam & Bernie Wolfe ending up on each other's card was also weirder.

@nfreeman, after 10 games do you have 12 points, if yes, you're on a playoff pace. If, no, get cracking. Same logic, after 20 games, do you have 24 points? And you can break the season down into 5 or 10 game segments to see how you're doing. In the last 5 games, do you have 6 points or more? Yep. You're currently playing on a playoff pace. If you only got 5 points, you need 7 in the next 5 games. Easy, peazy. 😉 And, if you look at the NHL's website, that mysterious column to the right of total points actually tells you the point percentage. So, you can actually tell how the team you're interested is doing without worrying about whether they've played the same # of games as their division & conference rivals and without even needing to be able to add. (Which is necessary to determine the DeLuca one. 😉 )

So, it's actually autoincorrect, right? 😉

What the matchups are will be very interesting to watch. Don't have a good feel what what Sullivan will try to run with. Will also be interested to see which pairings get which lines. It seemed Granato was trying to keep Miller-Bryson out against the top lines and give Boucher-Hagg the easiest ones. Wonder how well he'll be able to make that happen on the road.

Technically, they are "day to day." But in the same vein as when Stephen Wright says "everything's walking distance if you have the time." 😉 Would be awesome if Mittelstadt's injury is a "bone bruise" with no actual break AND no additional soft tissue damage. The biggest part of his game are his Mitts. Having a fracture or soft tissue damage that affects how all those little bones interact w/ each other would be just about THE worst case injury for him to suffer.

NHL 0.600 is the key. If you are at that or better, in this era of loser points, then you are in. Under that, you might be in but likely aren't.

No selling off of JAGs to create space required. After the trade deadline roster size is only limited by the salary cap. The JAGS don't have to go anywhere to see what the baby Amerks / NCAAers can do. But before we worry about deadline moves, this team needs to be better than 0.250 on the road. Hopefully they can be, but until they are, they aren't. And of they can get close to the hunt, or even in it, wouldn't give up anything more than a single 2nd on one rental. Would show management believes in the kids, but even more so that they believe the future is bright & don't want to short circuit it.

... somebody else will be injured. R2 Rou2 should be saved by that & likely 1 of Caggiula or Bjork. Hayden to the farm & the other odd man out JAG to the pressbox.

Had UPL played like he has the past 3 games the entire year or for at least 1 month, would absolutely give him a chance to show he's ready for bigger things. But he's not been a tire fire for only ONE single week. The odds of setting him back getting shelled in Pittsburgh is just too great. IF he excels this week again on the farm, would consider bringing him up for the BJ's game or letting him travel to Detroit the following weekend.

True. But not 3 years.

Be interesting to see if this is just a flash, he finally feels comfortable with the hips, Samuelsson is the goalie security blanket, Dell brought bad ju ju for him, or if it's due to something else. Hoping it's that the hips finally aren't bothering him.

Couldn't they have flown to Joisey & then have the players lick everything just because? 😉

They recorded the attendance on a tickets sold basis, but could've sworn they used to announce attendance over the PA by actual attendance back in the day before Rigas & Moss had gotten involved w/ the team. Could very well be misremembering that or simply mistook the tickets distributed counts for the actual attendance. (Was only at a handful of games back when the original sellout streak was active really only got to go to about 5-10/ year after that before Adelphia got their hooks into the Knoxes.) That is precisely how it was done. Not 100% accurate, as somebody might spin the thing through again after passing through it but they'd have to have nobody right behind them and do it intentionally, but they were pretty close.

Even if it's a LHD, if he's clearly the BPA then take him. Just because Botterill could never convert any of his abundance of D-men into anything better than a 4th round pick doesn't mean the new regime will necessarily suffer that same strange affliction. But yeah, if it's close, they have enough LHD for the foreseeable future.

With all due respect, there was not even close to 7,000 at that game. 8,000 was the ANNOUNCED attendance. To have 7-8,000 in a building that holds close to 19,000 would mean the building has bodies in 2 out of every 5 seats. Not sure that even the 2 center ice 100 sections were above 60% capacity. But when the ends in the 300's had ~25-40 people in each section (8 sections total) & no other sections came close to 50% with many of the "prime sections being at ~25% full; there is no way they were over 5,000 paying customers in the building. They haven't even had bodies in every seat in the front row of the "good" 300's sections in at least 3 of the 4 yours truly went to. To, the 2nd comment: 🍺 PS - and dating back to at least the criminals, announced attendance is distributed tickets, not turnstile.

They are. Nobody is disputing that. They actually are trying to improve the things they can. Which was the point of proving examples of things that are finally being done well & some others that are still works in progress about the game day experience. Having not decided to go for another retool would've helped in the ST. Hopefully that decision works out, but there are still a lot of decisions to be made moving forward & a lot of players still need to be developed properly in order for it to work out. As much as people dislike ownership & in spite of the influence their hiring decisions have had on reaching this point, were they not as deep pocketed as they are we could be at risk of losing the team. Really doubt that's even a contingency thought. The decisions that got us here are in the past. They need to be better moving forward. And really, getting people back in the barn is dependent on 1 thing primarily & 1 other 2ndarily: Adams has to be good at this - he might be, jury's still out & Canadians need to be able to get in on a regular basis w/out jumping through tons of hoops. Remember, there are already a few thousand people that have paid at least 50% of next year's ST packages. Without any changes, attendance reaches non-embarrassing levels. Keep playing entertaining hockey at home & it'l get goosed more.. My 2 cents.

The 4,000 is off reports of people such as yours truly that have been eyeballing the attendance. It's ball park. But there is no way in Hades that they've significantly topped 5,000 in any of the Habs, Yotes, Bolts, or Eulers games. Can't speak to the other 3 but would be surprised if any were significantly different based on the crowd visible in the various shots.

And again, Detroit isn't as precise an analog to Buffalo as you keep insisting it is. The greater Detroit metropolitan area population is a smidge over 3.5MM people. The greater Buffalo metropolitan population is ~1.2MM. Might Buffalo be expected to double their attendance if they had 3x the population?

True in today's NHL. In the mid-80's & 90's when he came up, not nearly as often. Lemieux was relatively huge when he entered the league relative to the competition.