Taro T

In that Miller retirement night game, the Sabres played very solid D the last 25-30 minutes. Some of their best of the season. The loss they had was the Hudson Fasching nope, didn't look like a kick to us in the league office Game. So, they very easily could've been 3-0 vs them (and actually in the playoffs). See no reason for them to lose tonight if they play hard and smart.

Is it: Barrasso Housley (Turgeon - given) Reinhart Eichel Dahlin Cozens Plante Girgensons Cyr (Benson - given)? Maybe Sheppard if one of those is off.

Am going on Tuesday. Can't make Thursday's game. Tix sold pretty quickly for that one for our seats. A big part of how easy/hard it is to sell is the location. (Gee, thanks for that tremendous insight, never would've come up with that, Sherlock. 😛)

Last year they won the 1st one at home, lost the next 2 in our barn, then won the next 3 there but then when they came back from the injury inducing road trip the wheels fell off. Stinks that they lost this one, but the goal is 3 W's out of every 5 games. Not winning every single game. (Ask the B's how making winning every single game the goal works out when looking at the bigger picture goal of winning Lord Stanley's Chalice. 😉 ) Win tomorrow & then take the home games against the Bolts and Flames and that next game is gravy. Hoping this game was good prep for Saturday night's game as presuming the Aisles aren't totally changing their stripes with the new coach they will be playing a similar trapping style. The Aisles are a worse team, so again, hopefully having played the better team has them ready beat the lesser squad.

Overall it wasn't a horrible effort. But there were issues last night that cost them and those same issues were there last season. 1st goal against: Jokiharju has to either maintain position on Lafreniere or at least tie up his stick. He did neither and the Rags were content to stay in their 1-3-1 after that. The STs are (and this is only marginally hyperbolic) trash. They were trash last year (minus a roughly one month span where the PP was the best in the league by a wide margin) and it is still the case. Couldn't understand why there weren't changes made there over the off-season and still don't understand it. Granato still doesn't line match nor take advantage of in game opportunities to get his best guys out against the opponent's bottom 6 and bottom pairing. Early in the 3rd, Mittelstadt's line got the Rags pinned in their zone and to ice the puck; during that play the Sabres started to roll to the Krebs line. Rather than put the Thompson line out against a tired Rags 3rd line, he kept the Krebs line on the ice and what could've been a very strong scoring opportunity simply fizzled. But, the Rags are probably the 2nd best team in the conference and there is no shame in losing to them. And still expect the Sabres to win their next 3 games. It's just frustrating to see things that needed improvement last year still needing the same improvements.

Woud be really nice if they went with their backup tonight. Yeah, we all know it ain't happenin' but still it would be nice to see. This should be a great game as the Sabres and Rags both bring back most of last year's teams and they played each other tightly last year. Granato usually has his troops ready for the Opener. Hoping that holds. Can't wait!

What do you mean by "now?" 😛

Not saying it is a factor, but is Kim Pegula's health issues part of what is generating this recent round of upper level instability? It seemed there was significant instability back in the Russ Brandon days but since he was let go things seemed to settle down. It's been a little over 1 year since KP's event. It seems like most of the new wave of transitions have occurred in the past 3 months presumably after the indications are that she would not be able to resume her full schedule any time soon, if ever. So, adjustments have been made. Were they as fully vetted as other moves post Brandon have been? Don't know those answers, and if the impression that things had settled down post-Brandon is incorrect, well then as Emily Lutella used to say, "nevermind."

If he's really going Backstreet Boys, guess it's better they didn't announce it.

Good Q's. All 3 likely will trip most people up as they think of someone more famous that could be the answer but aren't.

Who own (owns, owenssss) the Phlyer? Answer that, and you'll likely answer your Q.

WTF doesn't Quinn's goal song get announced? He'll need it this winter.

He wasn't the prior year when they only gave him a 1 year extension.

According to Puckipedia both teams have 8 D on the roster. So, there's a 7th D-man available who's getting paid either way. Maybe that site is incorrect or maybe the spares all got banged up in preseason or practice, but that seems unlikely. Vancouver is only running with 12 F's, so understand why with one banged up they only used 11. But guess they didn't want to dress a 7th D planning on not using him even if he was dressed. Watched some of that game, but missed the beginning of it so didn't hear the announcers talk about why the teams were undermanned.

1st off, the partner doesn't have to play 25 minutes. Even when pairings are kept extremely constant, there is overlap of pairings as guys change on the fly and also as STs dictate different deployments. So, that isn't / won't be a driving factor. When McNabb was playing "1st pairing" with Doughty, he was 5th in minutes for the Kings. There will be some overlap of the 2 during games, and as mentioned above, we'll be seeing that as a pair at the end of several games regardless of how the pairings round out. Maybe Granato will follow the Chicago model and have Dahlin and Power be his Keith and Seabrook. But personally expect the Anaheim model will be better. Samuelsson and Dahlin pass the eye test though the analytics guys seem not to like it. Expect either Power Jokiharju will become solid or Johnson the younger will step into Henri's role. And Samuelsson Johnson hopefully can become a very good PK pair easing Ras' and Owen's loads a bit. And the kids will be able to be easily integrated in regardless of whether Ras and Power are a thing or not. 24 minutes for each, 6 minutes of only 1 D due to PP, 22 minutes for Muel, 19-20 minutes for the 4 leaves about 12 minutes apiece for the 3rd pairing. Ras and Power have both gone to 28 or so when necessary, Muel can step up more too. Too much ice time for the 3rd guys isn't an issue regardless with those minute munchers in house.

Of course those 3 each got to open against a team expected to be a bottom feeder this year. And 2 of them had real games on their hands. (Not sure about the B's game. Knew Chicago scored 1st, but didn't see it past 1-1.) Tampa still needs to address goaltending while waiting for Vasilevskiy or they'll have a real hard time making the dance.

Expect we will but only situationally. Pretty sure that Granato learned last year that it's better to have nearly 60 minutes of a high end D-man being on the ice rather than having 25 or so minutes of them together with a significant step down in talent from the other pairs. Using them like Anaheim used Pronger and Neidermayer just makes so much sense on so many levels. When they're at their primes, can see the 2 of them taking 60+% of the ice time in the last 5 minutes of close games with neither leaving the ice in the final 2 minutes. After each having controlled the ice separately for 20+ minutes separately.

Interesting that neither team saw a point to running 7 D-men.

The flip side of it is if he doesn't come close to his ceiling, his floor is still probably Tyler Myers who's a $6MM D-man. If the worst you're sitting at is $2.35MM of an overpay with no other retained money or buyouts cutting into the cap, it doesn't really hurt. The potential upside of this is way higher than the potential downside IMHO.

"ever" being relative. (Meant to add a caveat to the post your excerpt came from but got distracted.) By "ever," meant within the next 5-6 seasons. No idea how much the landscape will have changed by then, but it is quite possible the Sabres won't be getting the same quality of prospects entering the system provided they aren't able to flip some of the existing players / prospects that don't fit the LT plan for 1st rounders. If they can pull some of those Bruin style trades off, then they might still stay out of the UFA 1st day frenzy because they'll still have 1st liner/1st pairing quality guys moving up and ready to step in when the existing ones are getting long of tooth and ready for 2nd line / 2nd pairing usage. If they can't replenish the high end stuff w/ up and comers; well, UFA frenzy / deadline deals of picks for high end guys that do decide to re-sign will become part of the picture.

And they'll have the goaltending covered for $3MM on top of that. The top 2 C's are just over $14MM combined. Yeah, Skinner is at $9. Leaving close to $36MM for 2 D + a spare or 2 & 10 F's. Pretty sure Adams can make that work. 😉

See your point. But, doubt that Adams is ever going to go seriously into the deep end of the UFA pool. So, other teams being able to go nuts won't really effect the Sabres personnel moves directly. But he wants to be able to find, develop, and keep great players via the draft and under the radar signings. People have been pointing out that it won't be very long until Adams will have to start making some hard decisions on who to keep due to the cap. These signings allow him to not have to factor the cap into the equation as much as he'll have to factor the 23 man roster into the equation. That gives him an extra degree of freedom in trying to keep the RIGHT guys, not just the ones that keep everything below the cap. (That's obviously the hard constraint. But with the top 2 C's under contract for just over $14/yr and 3 key D under contract for ~$25MM (don't recall ottomh what Samuelsson's deal is, so that's likely off a bit but it's ball park), they'll be able to keep either one extra really good player or a couple of good players. Hopefully Levi follows this same path of performing very well at an early stage and wants to stay here LT and settles for a LT deal that seems extremely fair to both sides.

FTFY. 😉

Watching Habs Loafs. Forward passed to Brodie at the point who lost an edge and ended up just sitting down at the point with the puck just out of reach. 1 breakaway later, Habs 1 - Loafs 0 3 minutes into the game.

Next 8 years. Both are on their old contracts this season.