Taro T

People said that about the Bills too. And it was true for about 18 or 19 years. But it isn't true anymore. Get the team to start winning (making the playoffs and actually winning at least a round) and players will want to be in Buffalo again. Until they start winning again, no, most players will not want to be in Buffalo.

He can. And he will be on the Amerks roster on deadline day (whether he's actually there or it's just a paper transaction remains to be seen). Personally would probably have him taxiing back and forth getting a couple of days in Buffalo each week facing the tougher shooters and having access to better equipment, so he can get a game every 4-5 in Buffalo but having him in Ra-cha-cha the bulk of the time. (Which will have everybody on the board mad. 😜 )

NO. 5 clicks plus scrolling back to the "submit reply" button. (6 counting the period.)

You asked a question. The answer to the question was 'No.' Wtf do you need the answer spelled out in a post, when the reaction allows it to be answered with 2 clicks? Well, to answer your question, NO we do not know how serious the injury is. Truly doubt the Sabres even know yet as you usually don't do MRIs / ultrasounds until a couple of days later after swelling has gone down. Happy?

Without knowing what they're going to do with Mittelstadt's next contract, that'd be a 'no.' Knowing Mitts is locked up LT, the answer becomes 'maybe' but still leaning towards 'no.'

Not QUITE the same as what you're asking, but the Bills hosted the Jints in both teams' 1st preseason games back in '90. (And Jints went 4-0 in the preseason and the Bills went 0-4. Preseason is SO important.)

Give them Savoie and this year's lottery protected 1st. REALLY wanted Jiricek when he came out.

Not suggesting Kulich get called up, but if he is called up, he probably ends up on one of the 3 offensive lines taking a regular shift but then gets 2 shifts tops in the 3rd if the Sabres have a tight lead. So, it likely doesn't affect his linemates' ice time at all.

For the love of all that's good and Holy, PLEASE do not put Thompson and Olofsson on the same PP. You've come up with the best way to ensure the PP is even MORE stationary than it currently is.

Why he went down wasn't PTR's Q. Why he shouldn't be brought back up again at any point this season was the Q.

So THIS is why Adams was looking to get Kane in. It wasn't to cover for Quinn's 1st injury, it was for his next injury. 4D chess indeed.

The ####ing extra skater situations are ####ing killing them. They have only 20 PP goals the entire season. They have all of TWO 6v5 goals for. (And 1 of those PP goals came with the goalie out, and was not included in the 6v5 stat.) They've given up 9 SH goals. So they've netted only ELEVEN PP goals through 47 games. And they've given up 3 6v5 EN goals. (And like w/ the PP goals, 1 of those SH goals came with the opponent's goalie out, and wasn't included in the 6v5 stats.) Why don't they even get to OT (where they're only 2-3-1 and 0-1 in the SO) anymore? Would say that a complete lack of being able to score with the extra attacker is a HUGE part of that. And the PP was an issue last year. Hate that they didn't upgrade the coaching there. Along with ALL the other issues hurting them this year, that is the single biggest in why they aren't legitimately in the hunt at the ASB.

Why? Because he was injured coming into/at the begining of training camp and there have been at least 3 games this year where he's noticiably pulled up at some point in a game and then his skating was a shell of itself from earlier in the game. There have been a handful of games where his skating has looked like it did in most all games last year. And he missed time in December with a LBI. Put it all together ...

Good game. Hopefully Quinn's injury isn't serious. Anybody else notice that for once they weren't sneaking out of their own zone 2 forwards as soon as they got the puck nor were they doing the stupid get the puck over the BL and then curl it back towards the BL looking for a teammate to pass it to? Yes, the Snarks are horrible. But they weren't playing this way against them 2 weeks ago. If UPL hadn't pitched the SO in that last game they'd've been in BIG trouble. This game, his D man set a perfect screen and then a different D man had a perfect tip against him and they were down 2-0 but never really missed a beat. Play THIS system EVERY game. They were coming through the neutral zone with speed and bodies. It was most noticable with the Kid Line, but they all were doing it. They were under more control in their own end, though they still had some scary moments back there. But, more often than not, staying positionally sound in their own zone yields good things.

Would wager he's been dealing with a groin injury or a sport hernia the entire season. Not bad enough to shut him down, but it is noticable when he pulls up and then can't get that extra step he had the past 2 seasons for the rest of a game.

Because sheer chance says they should be able to have 3-4 4 game winning streaks throughout the season. Nearly 50 games in, they're still looking for their 1st 3 game winning streak. Get a couple of 4-0-0 stretches around an 0-2-0 or 0-1-1 stretch and it APPEARS doable.

Article 18 covers supplemental discipline. While it's always been a puzzle why the NHLPA never seems to stick up for the safety of its members rather than sticking up for their wallets, expect a fair amount of it is a distrust of management and an expectation that if they don't hold the line always pushing for less severe punishments that they'd then end up seeing the league fining players excessively like the NFL has been doing this past season. That, plus it always seems the guys that "played on the edge" like Chelios tend to have an oversized voice within the PA. The PA cares about the star players getting huge $ contracts (nominally, because at the end of the day, the players all split the same pool of money and discounting covid reclaws it will always be 50.0% of HRR) which work against the interests of the rank and file (again, because the players split the same 50.0% of HRR and every on paper $ that the players are paid gets put into the denominator of that scaling factor to bring total player salary to 50.0% of HRR) and also keeping the goons from getting suspended out of the league (which also works against the interests of the rank and file, because its the rank and file getting injured by the goons which shortens the careers of those rank and file members). Not sure which union is worse, the NHLPA or the NFLPA. Neither seems to focus on what this observer believes they should be focusing on.

Aren't meh whales natural enemies of sharks? This could work out. 😉

AHL.tv is free today in case anybody wants to check the Amerks game out. Apparently they've got all 32 teams playing today to celebrate the 50,000th AHL game ever.

Having sat through the last 4 games of the recent homestand, personally believe a big part of the reason their play seems slow is because when they have the puck they rarely challenge the defender to get past him. Rather they curl back away from the defender looking for a teammate moving into a play. It's very methodical, very much different from what they were doing last year, leads to a lot of standing around, and oftentimes results in a turnover with no real scoring chance from a play that had the Sabre pushed the envelope he could've forced some of the chaos that @LGR4GM is always raving about in prospects he's fond of. It seems they're taking a page out of Patrick Roy's last 2 years coaching in Colorado when they'd have a ton of puck possession but couldn't score any goals because they were too busy controlling the puck to bother actually working it to a high danger area and shooting it. The play seems slow, because it is. But that seems more by design than because the players don't have wheels. Having guys like Tuch working through LBIs too doesn't help with the team speed either.

Chose Chara because he was well known for hits to guys heads that he routinely got away with throughout his entire career including those years as an Aisle and an Otter long before he ever wore the spoked B and he still did get away with after he moved on from them. He also destroyed Hamel's knee when he was an Aisle with a dirty hit and he famously nearly killed Pacioretty with one of the dirtiest hits ever. He was dirty and he nearly always got away with it. Though he DID get a fine for a cross check on the aforementioned Gallagher. No suspension, because how could he get that, he wasn't a repeat offender, he officially pretty much never was. (And think how giving a star like him a suspension would look to the children.) Given his history, believe it was an extremely apt comparison. But, go right ahead excusing him; guess that's because he was a B.

Pretty sure he's not in the way guys like Chara weren't repeat offenders very often at all. Everytime he's gotten a questionable hit, they decided there was no supplementary discipline due because he wasn't a repeat offender and then then next time it happened, and it happened often, that there was no supplementary discipline due because he wasn't a repeat offender. Lather, rinse, repeat. But Gallagher is ALWAYS pushing the envelope.

Better: Girgensons (though, due to the need to let the leaders that are in their primes begin to own the team, believe he needs to move on (which stinks, REALLY wanted him to get to experience the playoffs as a part of this roster)) Better: Mittelstadt (though now that Cozens is in most people's dog houses, most have come around to liking Mitts too) Better (at least ST, probably not much more than others LT): Levi Probably better: Tuch (still believe a lot of his "lazy" play is due to fighting through whatever injury he came into camp with) But, in general, personally still really like this team's players. Even guys that were truly disliked when they were on other rosters (referring to you, Skinner and Clifton) like on this squad. And even the guys that Granato misuses by giving too much responsibility to (referring to you Jokiharju and Okposo) personally like. The only guy that should absolutely 100% be punted to the moon is Ellis but most everybody has come around to agreeing he isn't even the Matt Ellis of NHL AC's, so don't believe he's viewed less favorably in this household than he is in everybody else's. Because most of the guys that might be earning their way into the doghouse (your examples of Cozens and Power being the prime examples), personally believe that they'll look a lot more like people expected them to look when they have a more reasonable defensive assignment (Cozens) or when they're finally beyond their sophomore season (Power). And personally believe Thompson is just now finally starting to get past the limitations his injuries have put upon him, so am probably with many of the rest of the fans in cutting him some slack.

The team has size. Personally believe corrections in the coaching staff goes a long ways (if not all the way) towards fixing grit and 2 way ability. Gracefully move on from the current leadership and let the leaders that are already here do their thing. They probably, again w/ different coaching philosophy, already have close to, if not, enough fighters. But Krebs and Skinner are pretty much it in the rat department and neither can get under the skin of opponents nor be nearly as effective as the B's Rat Faced Git. Could definitely use more of that on the roster. Would be perfectly fine with bringing in one of the true NHL studs in net, and it never hurts to have more good prospects on the way, but the goaltending combo of 2 years from now is already here. Just too darn soon. Fix the x's and o's of how they actually go about trying to accomplish what they're trying to accomplish and expect we'll find out there's a lot more talent on this roster already than the results indicate they have.

That's bad. But considering this is a Sabres-centric board, don't believe it tops Roy for Malkin straight up.