Taro T

Worked out in the Sabres favor, but yeah, the review process for offside plays is seriously flawed. Thing is, if they adjusted the review procedure to ONLY overturn OBVIOUS errors by doing something like only giving 30-60 seconds for the review and the play can only be slowed to 50% speed at MOST, we'd probably see leaguewide goal scoring go up (even more than just the now non-called back goals) because linesmen will be more willing to err on the side of letting a close play go rather than calling it back because a guy MIGHT have been in early.

This isn't on UPL. He hasn't given up any UPL Specials. But, on the flip side, except for the PS which the guy surpisingly didn't try to make a move on, UPL hasn't stolen anything. On Wednesday, when the Sabres were getting a push in the 2nd Ersson put that horseshoe firmly up his arse and robbed Doan with the skate blade save after giving up the monster rebound. UPL doesn't give the Sabres that. And a team with 0 regulation wins on the road two full months into the season that has only even gotten to OT on the road 4 times REALLY NEEDS the goalie to get one or 2 of those horseshoe up their arses saves. He got the 2 monster goalpost stops, but was cleanly beaten on both and teams don't get a boost from the other team hitting the post. Not like the boost they get when the goalie absolutely robs the other guy. 10 scoring chances against through 2 periods. 2 of those bounced off posts (and 1 needed to do the reverse 5 hole to keep from then going in after hitting the post) so UPL gave up a goal on 3 of 8 high danger chances (at most) that were actually on net and was cleanly beaten on 5 of the 10. He's played fine so far. But, there was no true "big save." And a team that stinks on the road, sadly, needs more than fine. Maybe you let him get the majority of the home starts because fine is actually fine the way they're playing at home but give most of the road starts to the other 2 guys who have on occassions given them the "big save" on the road.

Lucky bastage. 😉

Personally, wouldn't like to see teams get an extra timeout, but do agree a coach should be able to have 1 challenge when nothing too onerous happens should the challenge be wrong. Would go with, you can lose 1 challenge without getting a bench minor. IF you still have your TO, you lose it for a failed challenge. If you don't, then no harm no foul. Yeah, it might seem unfair, but unless a team has been REALLY bad early on, everybody is going to have their TO until at most least 5 minutes are left in the game. So, a 1st failed challenge will typically result in a lost TO, but not always. Who cares that all 1st failed challenges aren't identically onerous. Hockey GAMES aren't equally valuable - some games are worth 2 points and some are worth 3. A 2nd failed (and any subsequent) failed challenge is still a bench minor. And would have the league or an off-ice official review all plays that are close in the last 2-5 minutes in a game (not sure just how long). Personally would also like to see something to keep teams from calling a timeout and THEN challenging a call. That seems to be outside the spirit of the challenge.

Tonight's game will be interesting. Expecting UPL to get the start. Which will only be his 4th game on the road and only his 3rd start on the road. Both of the road starts, his SV% was well south of 0.850. In the Avs game, he only gave up 3 on 30 shots. Overall, he's 4-1-0 at home and 0-2-1 on the road. The Sabres as a whole tend not to play well on the road (well, no Schlitz, Sherlock). And just as they've fared slightly better at home with him bettween the pipes vs the outcomes with other 2 goalies, they've fared slightly worse on the road with him between the pipes vs the other 2 goalies. This is a game that will go a long way towards either showing the people that believe he is the best of the 3 (some even saying CLEARLY the best) are right or that those that believe he's at best in the mix with the other 2 and likely worse than either are right. Hoping for his and our sakes that those that believe he IS good (and not just that he may be good in the proper circumstances) are the ones that are correct. And if they shy away from giving him the start, that could be telling in itself as well.

Reasonable views of how they'd be deployed in both scenarios. But we all KNOW that Krebs will be the 4C and not Kozak.

This assessment is quite fair. The killer is, if you swap having 1 really good (like able to be in end of season awards conversations if the team had better coaching and could get into the mix of playoff teams) D-man and lots of Q's at G with having 1 really good G and lots of Q's at D; you'd be describing fairly accurately what the team was back when the current owner bought it excepting for the fact that the FO at that time had gotten the team to at least the semis on 4 occassions in about 16 years which was light years ahead of what their successors have done. So, 13 years have been thrown away to be exactly where they were when they decided to tank for a generational player who'd be available in the draft after the 2nd year of the tank. Kids that weren't alive when the decision to tank was made are now teenagers and there is not one single thing to show for having done so all so many years ago.

Oh, yes, the game reinforces the immaturity of the team and how, once again on this night, the coach made some inexplicable decisions which ended up playing into that immaturity. Which, yes, it can be read into, unfortunately, quite clearly. Meant to be more specific as to how, and how much, adding Norris will affect the trajectory of this squad. Just like we shouldn't be (and nobody around here is/was, not even remotely implying anyone was) assuming that the Sabres will be one of the best teams because of how good they looked against the Jets with Norris in the lineup; not sure that it's fair to expect them to be just as awful on the road as they have been without him. The way how the whole thing snowballed, would say we still don't know how much Norris will improve this roster. (Providing, obviously, if he stays healthy for a significant portion of the season at a minimum.)

Thompson reminds me a lot of a kid that was on my one son's teams very often (was a very good kid with a really nice family, so always grabbed him when he was available when picking our team); he was big and a little lanky like Thompson and had good speed and good hands. He was almost always our best F and he always wanted to play C, but oftentimes played him at W because ALL he thought about and cared about was scoring. He wanted nothing at all to do with coming back deep into our zone and that was one of the C's 1st assignments - take care of our end and you'll get plenty of chances at the other end. Thompson says he doesn't care if he's a C or a W but he definitely typically seems more engaged when he's a C than when he's a W; but he's better in the Sabres zone at W. If he's playing with a guy like Tuch who oftentimes takes the C's responsibilities in his own end, no issue with playing him at C. Maybe if they keep Norris with Tage, they can list Tage as the C but try to get to spots where when they're lining up for FOs it makes sense to have the lefty at the dot rather than the righty. Not fully ready to break up the experiment of Norris with Tage and Benson, but wouldn't give them too long a leash either.

Was wondering how much of the incredible play on Monday had been due to the overall team adrenaline from getting Norris back finally healthy after so long and how much of it was getting a true top 6 skater into the lineup. Hard to read too much into last night's game because of the way how that 2 minute or so streak of horrible decisions and a bit of bad puck luck torpedoed the night. But, though Norris did have a hand in the PP goal (didn't he get the 2nd assist on the Zucker goal?), his line didn't look special even before the wheels fell off and the Appert appears to be stronger than the Norris as the PP didn't do squat after they got that 1 PP goal and it was poor play by Thompson on the PP that started the ball rolling downhill. They moved the puck well on the PP that worked. They did a lot of standing around waiting for Dahlin or Byram to get the puck to Thompson or Norris for a 1 timer outside of that. Again, the Appert is strong with this crew. Tomorrow's game will be a better indication of what they'll really get with Norris in the lineup. Am wondering how long it takes before we see Ruff's revised original plan for how to deploy the lines with Norris in the lineup. (Aka Thompson and Norris each centering their own lines.)

Well, if home wins were 4 points and road wins only 1 point, that might get them pretty darn close. They have to have one of the better home records to go with the league worst road record.

Calgary. (Might even surprise us with the regulation W in Winnipeg too.)

Except he lost control of the puck before it was over the line. Unfortunately, upon review they made the correct call. And that's the risk of dragging the puck in behind yourself; if you lose it, you lose.

Reminds of the old joke. A young couple is thinking of getting married, but the young woman tells her soon to be fiancee that her parents are old fashioned and she wouldn't feel right agreeing to marry him if he didn't ask her father for her hand in marriage. So, the young man agrees to meet her father and ask him for his blessing of his intention to ask her to marry him. After he tells the father how much he loves his daughter and how he'll also be true to her and support her and love her and all that other rigamorole, the old man responds saying how he does see how much the young man loves his daughter and he'd like to give the couple his permission to marry, but first he needs to tell him that there's something he might not know about his daughter and it might temper the young man's enthusiasm to marry her. The young man assures him that there's nothing he could tell him that would make him change his mind about the love of his life but he does ask what this thing he should know about her. The old man says, sadly she has acute angina. The young man breathes a sigh of relief and shoots right back, oh, I already know that sir, and she has great tits too!

But, can we at least not get Boucher calling Phlyer games? He's been making Jack Edwards seem balanced with his takes calling a Bruins game.

Bet'cha that Ellis himself would take the blame for the 2nd goal. Yes, it was deflected, but it was rolling in slow and he was basically where he needed to be. The others, not a whole lot he could've done. You'd like to see him find a way to steal maybe the 4th or the 5th one, but this team is just awful tonight.

Personally, really like him in the Thompson role on the SECOND unit. Hate having him on the 1st unit. And they should be able to run Power (Dahlin), Doan (Zucker), Quinn (Thompson), Byram (Benson/Norris), Tuch (Norris/Benson). Which is a respectable/good personnel grouping for a PP. IF they could finally eliminate doing dumb things. Don't do a drop pass to enter the zone unless it's setting them up to have multiple guys skating with speed when they actually enter the zone. Don't exclusively bump the puck from point to sniper in the FO circle endlessly. DO get a lot of player movement to go with puck movement. DO have more than just 1 guy working towards the net. Do overman loose pucks (having multiple guys open for a pass does you absolutely no good when the other team wins an easily winnablle board battle and forces you to regroup 180' away from where the puck battle occurred. Etc. Etc. As for his play this year; realize breaking his stats from only 24 or so games into even smaller segments leads to all sorts of distortion due to small sample size, BUT he was NOT good in October; he was better in early November but still not "good;" and he actually looks the part since Zucker came back. Would be interested to know if the analytics validate the eye test, or if they've been pretty consistent across this nearly 1/3 of a season that he's played to date. And, as for personal bias in this analysis, was one of the few that expected him to have a bounce back season this year but figured that expectation was totally off-base a month into the season and was ready to give up on him. If not for so many injuries essentially forcing them to keep him in the lineup, expect he might've played his way into a 13th F role; and was still ready to have him come out of the lineup until he started playing with Zucker. So, pretty sure that by now, whatever he's doing on ice is being viewed through more or less bias-free lenses; but maybe there's still that expectation that he'd bounce back that is making the evaluation seem a bit rosier than it should be.

At some point, they'll actually play the game they need to play on the road and get themselves over NHL 0.500. Why not tonight? They normally save their stinker home games for the ones that are sold out/ close to sold out. But they played very well in their last few home games (even though on the scoreboard they were destroyed by Joisey). So, if they can get that monkey off their backs, why not get the road monkey and the can't crack 0.500 monkey off their backs too? They came back from behind to win in their last road game. No better time than the present to get it in your head that you WON'T stick it back up your arse just because you're still flexible enough to do so. 😉 Maybe the Sabres are ready for that next baby step?

There aren't many teams fitting that bill, but there are a few. Filly being 1 of them. Think Briere would do the Sabres a solid?

You make your own luck. (So, yes, the Sabres are unlucky.)

They're at NHL 0.500. They have 6 teams to leap frog to get into the playoffs. NHL 0.500 only gets you to 82 points which even in a weirdly low points total season will still miss the playoffs by a wide margin. The "real" 0.500 doesn't have any bearing on whether they make the playoffs or not. Get to NHL 0.600 and they'll be in. Regardless of whether they end up with no additional OTLs or get 16 more.

And if he pans out in his next stop, well, good for him. Just don't see him ever being THE guy in Buffalo.

No, the CBA actually isn't clear on what happens when a player would be eligible to be returned to the active lineup from IR and another player goes out sick at the same time. The situation isn't particularly addressed there. The team WOULD be allowed to bring up an AHLer under emergency conditions should 1 of the 6 D-men on the active roster be unable to play on a particular night. (Teams with less than 2 healthy goalies, 6 healthy D-men, and 12 healthy F's can make emergency substitutions of them provided the move keeps them cap compliant; they can also replace them if it makes them cap uncompliant but there are extra hoops they have to jump through.) They would not have to send a player down to Ra-cha-cha to get back under the 23 man limit while they only have 5 healthy D available (even if the 6th one has a 24 hour bug, or a very minor injury that would only keep him out of the lineup briefly). Again, the situation isn't directly addressed, but just like the AHLer called up in the emergency would have to be returned when the emergency is over, should they be able to activate Kesselring to fill the emergency, once that other player were able to play again, the Sabres would have to waive someone else to get to the 23 man limit. And it seems that the rule of thumb for whether something is possible that hasn't been specifically addressed by the CBA is yes, it is possible because it isn't specifically prohibitied.

Not so sure about that. They definitely kept Greenway out longer than needed and they seem to have been able to get Norris back sooner too, but with both guys they wanted to err on the side of caution about possibly rushing them back too soon. And even now, Greenway is getting spelled games while he works back from the surgeries. So, expect there's a good chance that Kesselring could play now if the absolutely needed him. But they're happy with what Bryson has been doing. We'll know either way tomorrow as they aren't likely to travel to Filly without a 7th D-man available, whether he's on the 23 man roster or not.

After last night, no. If he plays 50 games for the Sabres this season and 65+ next season, very possibly. There was never question as to whether Norris is a good player. He has been and is. The question has always been, can you get more than 50 games out of him and more importantly, could you get 70-ish games out of him consistently. They've now had him in the lineup for 5 games and on IR IIRC 47 games. There's still a long way to go to make that trade a W for the Sabres. That IF is the $8MM question.