Taro T

Didn't say HOW we got them. Have to subscribe to get the story. 😉 (Where's the D'oh! smiley when you really need it.)

To the bolded, 100%. Shockingly, the 800 or so players that actually get to the highest level of the sport are all (with maybe 1 or 2 exceptions and even they are in an elite, just not quite as elite, company) within the top 1,000 or so players in the world.

But still no playoffs? 😢

Follow-up - everyone got gravy boats. (Butter dishes, too.) For what they did with them, you'll have to subscribe to the Only Fans page.

The Sabres SEEM to have fixed their play at home, PROVIDED they aren't playing a team they are too immature to take seriously prior to puckdrop. Fixing that taking opponents lightly thing is the next thing that needs to be fixed in their home play. On the road, they've still had too many stretches where opponents get the matchups they want and eventually get the goals they need to keep the Sabres road records one of the worst in the NHL and so bad even playing 0.750 at home since the 3rd home game and better than 0.64 there overall can't get them over NHL 0.500 which is a low bar to cross. MAYBE getting healthy will allow them to be better at avoiding the killer matchups against. Pittsburgh would be a good place to start that. They need to continue getting strong goaltending on the road or even better matchups won't help them enough.

Personally am expecting Norris to get Benson and Zucker, with McLeod getting Quinn and Greenway. But who knows. Ruff is on record as saying Norris with be the #2; if that's the case, he'll get Zucker and then one of Quinn, Benson, or Greenway pretty much in that order (which is a direct contradiction of the previous sentence because am not sure if they'd have Benny as the 4th W or Quinn as the 4th W. Quinn is better at finishing; Benny has a more all around game) as expectation of who he gets and McLeod would get the other 2 guys. Doan being able to skate with Thompson and Tuch has opened up some additional possibilities. And all of this is with Kulich on the shelf. When he's back, he could move to wing, or if Norris has already broken become the 2/3C depending upon whether Ruff wants McLeod focusing on D or more 2 way/offensive play.

At home, after the 1st 2 awful games they started the season with when Benson was out of the lineup, they've gone 8-2-2. Yes, the 2 regulation L's were awful embarrassing losses, but even with them they've taken 18 of the last 24 points in their own barn. Which, if they could continue on at that level would enable simply getting to ~0.450 on the road be good enough to get to the dance. So, they actually do it quite often at home, but not even remotely often enough on the road.

After the game, Ruff said they're bringing him back slowly from his off-season surgeries (radio wonked out briefly, but pretty sure Ruff said he'd had double hernia surgeries) and so they'll give him a game off here or there depending upon how he's doing strength and conditioning wise. Sounded like he could've played but they've got him on a ptich count for now. So, Dunne got into another game. And if that is actually the case, would expect Östlund to be the one getting sent down when Norris comes back if nobody else is out injured as it would be an offensive guy out for an offensive guy in. Prior to hearing that, would've expected Dunne to be the odd man out as he was the press box sitter on Friday.

McLeod, Zucker, and Quinn got a ton of ice time down the stretch. Ruff also mixed up the D a bit down the stretch pretty much stapling Bryson to the bench protecting the lead. Had Dahlin and Power together some.

0-69-69 He's not going to end up above a ppg; or are you anticipating playoffs? 😉

- Stephen Wright

What isn't?

Most teams that work the drop pass (and the Sabres are not in this grouping though they work it way too often) are looking to have at least 4, if not all 5 guys hitting the blue line with speed which opens up a lot of possibilities to control the puck in zone. If the D stacks 4 across the line, you dump it in and have one of the guys with speed retrieve it; if they try to take away passes and play a little deeper the puck carrier can simply enter the zone and then skate in, pass it, or curl back towards the blue line while others are going deeper. Etc. etc. But the Sabres dump it simply to dump it. They dump it too far back and they do it from too close to the offensive zone; they also usually have 2 guys already sitting at the opposing blue line so they're standing still when the puck retriever gets the puck back near the faceoff circles. And that results in 4 of the 5 skaters being stationary when the puck carrier gets close to the blue line. Heck, and even worse, last week on at least 2 occassions, they took the puck all the way to the blue line and then sent it back towards their own blue line. They really don't understand that play. A dump in isn't an option because nobody except the puck carrier is in motion. There are limited passing options. And very often, the puck ends up at the boards above the circles with nobody down low to try to chip it down low and they simply lose the board battle and get to regroup again.

If you couldn't watch the Calgary game, the reason could be as simple as ESPN forgot the Sabres were playing that night. Seems farfetched, but the Sabres didn't remember either, so maybe.

No longer in last place in the division. (Blow leafs blow.) And only SIX teams to pass to get to a playoff spot. (Of course, that could be different by the time they play again on Wednesday, but for now, they did advance today.)

Expecting he goes to the 2nd line as the Doan-Thompson-Tuch line played really well yesterday. Plus it sounds like they now would like to keep Thompson at C so Norris will be the 2C and he'll need someone good on his line and it sounds like he's going to be back quickly. Benson-Norris-Zucker until Norris breaks should be a good complementary line to that Tommer line. And IF by some miracle, Norris stays healthy long enough for Kulich to come back, then they could either have Benson-Norris-Zucker or Benson-Norris-Kulich as the 2nd line with McLeod getting the one that doesn't play with Norris and there's several options for McLeod's other winger. As for who sits, would expect it'll be either Rosen or Östlund rather than Kozak. Kozak brings an energy Ruff seems to like. (He isn't the only one that's liked Kozak's game this year.)

How bad is THEIR goaltending that Georgiev is considered to be an answer?

Weren't those plastic? (If they were porcelain, will definitely have to hit E-bay looking for one for wifey.) Am expecting since they're giving vouchers to people as they enter tomorrow rather than the butter dishes themselves that they'll be porcelain. (The butter dishes, not the vouchers.) And expect, if they are porcelain that quite a few would be broken before the game ends. No sense creating problems that are foreseeably avoidable.

Well, typically, there's 4 of them.

Depends on whether playing him is likely to raise or lower the interest in said player. 😉 Remember, Jacksonville never played Rob Johnson after he got that 1 start against Detroit (pretty sure it was Detroit, maybe it was somebody else, but pretty sure). There was limited tape on him, but it was great. His playing more could only lower his value. And they played Butler to a tee.

And you of all people, the guy that nearly constantly rails about how the Sabres don't follow analytics anywhere nearly often enough, often with more than adequate cause; are now going to argue that had Savoie been playing in the Q, or anywhere that his path wouldn't have crossed Benson's, that the Sabres still would've taken Benson when they did? Will have to agree to disagree. Expect they don't put nearly enough weight on analytics to have been willing to overlook the size/speed (or more specifically the combined lack of each) when he was on the board and they were on the clock if they didn't already know him intimately.

No, they don't have a size bias. That is beyond obvious. BUT except for Benson, they have a HUGE speed bias when it comes to smallish/undersized players. Heck, they have a bit of a speed bias for larger guys too typically. Have a very hard time believing if they didn't have the inside track on getting to know Benson before drafting him that they would've been willing to step outside that bias for speed when he was on the board. I really doesn't matter either way; they DID draft him. But again, expect that without having drafted Savoie, Benson wouldn't have been that high on their draft board. The reaches they make are almost always burners.

The thing that has changed, and it's very arguable whether it's changed enough and whether it won't revert back to where it's been much of the last decade +, is they are generally getting NHL level goaltending so that even in games where they've given up more than 2 shots in the 1st 15 minutes they aren't automatically trailing and they aren't getting those motivation killing bad goals when the score is still 0-0 or 1-1. They also are, again with 2 glaring blaring exceptions, playing very well at home since the Otter game. They were better at home last year than on the road though still nowhere nearly as good at home as they needed to be. This year, they're generally very good at home. Can that carry over to the road? It hasn't so far, but they've also been missing a lot of important players for a significant portion of those games which makes it much easier for opponents to get the matchups they want. IF they get tougher to outmatch lines when they get healthier, maybe they can get to a point where they're winning about 1/2 of their road games (or getting enough OTLs that they pick up about 1/2 of their available road game points).

It means, if they hadn't had significantly more exposure to Benson because of their relationship with Savoie, they wouldn't have drafted Benson. They'd've followed the same logic the teams before them used to convince themselves that though he was incredible in Junior his lack of worldclass skating would, when combined with his lack of size, keep him from having the sort of success you hope for in a pick taken towards the top of the draft. For once, luck was on the Sabres side, and they'd lucked into him being a teammate of their previous year's #1 pick, so they got a much better look at him than others did and they knew (or had a great expectation) that the intangibles he brings would outweigh the issue of being short without all-world skating. It's OK and it's actually a good thing. They may have lucked out with Ellis being available right when UPL was broken and Georgiev was proving he's no longer an NHLer too. If UPL hadn't injured himself in the off-season, there's no way Ellis is a Sabre today.

There's a reason some of these giveaways are via voucher redeemable AFTER the game. 😉 Minibat give aways at ball games are handled that way too just for that particular reason.