Taro T

It seems a high likelihood that the Pegulas reasoning as to how to handle the surgery situation was influenced by the doctors & insurers that were speaking with (or their proxy, Adams was speaking with). They were told it was novel for a hockey player at this level & that there was another procedure that was less cutting edge that their experts recommended. Considering both Eichel & Adams (& the owners) all agreed that the relationship was coming to an end, can see non-malicious reasons to not allow the surgery & then have him try to re-up his trade value in recovery as a Sabre. It's still a procedure THEIR experts don't recommend. They also have no reason to want him playing for the team when they all agree it'd be a ST thing as he can disrupt chemistry, take a job away from somebody they actually are trying to develop, & create more questions than the side show is worth. Namely, what happens if Eichel being back causes them to win a bunch of games & what happens if the disruption to chemistry results in them losing at an even more prodigious clip & lastly & maybe least likely but most importantly what happens if he has a catastrophic injury during this league wide audition? Lots of reasons to throw shade at ownership for the course of the franchise since they bought it. But this is not one of those reasons IMHO.

Actually, they had to rebuild in 2014 because they'd consciously decided to send away at least Kotalik, Leopold, Pominville, Regehr, and Sekara ~2013 and let Hecht walk out too. And then traded Vanek & his replacement Moulson (who then came back as a FA) as well. The spoils of "video scouting" just left the cupboards even barer. But it wasn't the driver of the tank. Impatience was the driver.

And when he was playing against the Pens, he had a ton of confidence from his stint at the WJC's. And pretty sure it was the Pens that LITERALLY beat his brains in. Right now, he's gripping the stick way too tightly. Don't want to see him have to face McDavid nor Dreisaitl anymore than necessary given the confidence level. And the Same goes for TO's big guns. To try it in Pittsburgh, there is a stronger argument for it IMHO. Again, really not a fan of setting guys up to fail. Which putting him h-t-h w/ McDavid is setting him up to do.

The Pens decided 1/2 way through that year to race to the bottom because they only had 1 legit competitor for that title. But race to the bottom they and Joisey definitely did.

And as a follow on, the only reason the '04-'05 Pens didn't finish DFL and "earn" the rights to Crosby is because they didn't get the opportunity to do so. They'd been DFL the prior year & 2nd to last by a single point WITH Crosby & Gonchar added to the lineup coming out of the lockout. Had they played that year, that selection was most likely theirs. The reason they had that 3rd lottery ball like Buffalo & IIRC the Rags (or was it the BJ's?) for Crosby is they'd been DFL the previously played season.

They most certainly did tank. They sold the bulk of the players off (other than Jagr who was jettisoned earlier than that) 4 years after declaring bankruptcy and dropped their team salary the year after drafting Fleury ~$12MM than what they'd planned when coming out of bankruptcy. They did it to force the city & state to build them a new barn & to cut them in on soon to be arriving gambling revenues. They knew attendance (& therefore revenues) would crash with the sell-off, but they knew they'd either be able to move to KC or Windsor or actually get the new barn in the Steel City. You can say they lost on purpose for other reasons, but it doesn't change the fact they lost on purpose.

Hoping Eakin is capable of playing the way he did prior to crashing into the net in practice. Because Girgensons & Okposo will need help trying to minimize the damage the magician will cause.

Not sure what your point is. You said they didn't tank. They did. There was no editorializing about whether tanking has a high probability of being successful. Would argue that it has a very low probability of being successful and also that the low probability of success makes it unlikely that it will be worth it in the end.

The rationale was different, but the result was identical.

No, but they did to land Fleury & Malkin. (And yes, the Pens moved from 3 to 1 for Fleury, but they'd already cleaned house to get down to 3.)

Would agree that a reduced term is effectively lowballing the offer, which is the reason for insisting that doing either will leave the team on the outside looking in with the particular player. And find it disingenuous to claim that they really wanted the guy and tried to land him when it was highly likely the offer would be exceeded rather significantly. And a 4 year term when the one prospect that's playing professional hockey & presumably close has looked like trash at the higher professional levels and the other 2 are still lowerclassmen in college is not excessive at all. Had they signed Ullmark, there was a VERY real possibility that he'd be the starter for at least 3 years rather than just the 1-1/2 - 2 years they planned/ hoped he'd be signed for. And if they lucked out & all 4 would be NHL capable by year 3, well that's a good problem to have. It helped SJ stay in the mix as they traded away good goaltending prospects. Sabres could've traded Linus & a respect if they truly had a glut when the time came. And if they really were willing to go to $5MM, considering where are capwise at present, that should've been in the offer to dissuade other teams from making an offer. And only going to 3 years was a mistake as well. This wasn't Hutton being brought in to start for a single year w/ the expectation that he'd be claimed by Seattle in year 3 because there wasn't a single Sabre worth taking after the handful of guys that were worth protecting & needed to be protected were. Ullmark had already performed well in the A and he was ready to be at least the backup. There are a lot of things Adams seems to be on the right track about. Finding and landing goalies that are ready to be THE guy today is not one of them. (And the offer he made to Linus adds support to the idea we're watching a stealth &/or mini-tank.)

He said he never worked out until he was 15 or 16 which might have had something to do with being a late bloomer.

Why? Because he signs elsewhere if you don't offer term. If you actually want him as your starter the next 2 years & Adams said he wanted him back, then you give him a legit offer. Not one that will assuredly get topped. You need TWO capable goalies. IF somehow in year 3 or 4 of the deal there're 2 kids that are both ready and better than Ullmark, then you trade him to fill a different need. He was reportedly offered a 2 year deal. There's no way a guy that expects to be the starter who has been in your organization for years and has never Sen more than a glimmer of hope you can get the shop righted is going to take a 2 year deal unless the money is outrageous.

They DIDN'T lowball him. But they absolutely offered him a ridiculously short term. You can't do either if you actually want the guy to sign. Hopefully Adams learned that lesson.

OR the lesson should be DON'T lowball &/or give a shorter term than the going rate for the guy you've identified as your Biron to hold the fort while waiting for your Miller to develop.

The Wrong Way

Hard to say - small sample size. The bigger Q is is UPL turning it around? His game before his last he wasn't a tire fire & last night he looked good. Had a lot of work, but he didn't really face many really tough shots. Before that he was literally playing himself back towards the ECHL.

Early '90's it happened at IIRC an Aisles game. Person in the oranges landed on somebody in the blues. Didn't know about it happening in a Braves game as well.

Surprisingly, only recall that actually happening 1 time. Wasn't at that particular game. Welcome to the board. 🍺

Soft schedule plus a lot of home games getting the matchups Granato wanted all helped with the start. Will be interested to see how they can do at home over the full season. (The road games won't be as interesting as there are only a handful of teams that the Sabres can simply be fine against w/ no consideration to matchups.) Expect they could still end up an NHL 0.600 or better at home. But that 71 or 72 point season will be built on going ~0.250 on the road.

With all due respect, the "minimum," aka the floor, for these 3 are bottom 6ers. They likely each will end up solid 2nd liners & their ceilings are 1st line. But each & every one of them MIGHT fall short of being 2nd liners. (And, like your optimism & wouldn't bet against any of them reaching their base midpoint projection. But each could fall short of what he appears to be headed for.)

Totally am missing the correlation of the events that occurred on 7/1/7 under 1 ownership group & the decision to tank ~6 years later. Especially when the team won a division in the interim & was leading the division again the following year until the Miller-Lucic "incident."

IMHO, the issue isn't so much people being on unemployment, it's a combination of both people retiring early / staying home due to health concerns about being in the public & the minimum wage having gone up (practically, even where it hasn't officially). The latter is likely the bigger driver of the phenomenon. And there could be other issues as well which come into play to a greater effect than randomly collecting unemployment. People that were living on $10-12/hr and getting by now find themselves making $15-17/hr with more than they've needed to get by so a portion of them end up having some additional flexibility that they didn't have prior. Some that were working a full time job & a parttime job can now get by on just the full time job. For some of those working only 1 job, they find their personal utility is optimized by working fewer hours. Know anecdotally of several retailers & manufacturers having very high numbers of workers taking time off as sick time or whatever. These manufacturers & retailers still need to get those hours filled & now need additional workers to cover the gaps. And, yes, with literally millions of jobs unfilled, there appears to have been something that structurally affected the labor market.

Agreed. And it's why it's a good return given all the parameters affecting the decision to make the trade & the trade. Caving a bit on the quality of the 4th asset is a far cry from caving on the top pieces. (And personally, expect the decision to not retain was a good 1 considering the Skinner albatross contract runs 1 year beyond Eichel's & there will be kids needing raises by then.)

The problem is, especially for the offensively gifted players, the players claim that having gloves w/ full wrist coverage affects their stickhandling ability. And the issue goes back at least to the mid-90's. Lemieux missed playoff action due to a slash across the wrist similar to the play on Mittelstadt. And since playmaking & scoring is what gets guys paid, unless somebody invents a wrist protector that doesn't seem to perceptibly affect movement or the player safety committee forces the wearing of gloves with the longer wrist collars like they did w/ helmets & then visors; nothing will get done.