MattPie

This is the way I lean too, although if using those lists above, if there's a deal to trade for young a Tuch-type player at the cost of one of the second list players and a pick 28OA or later, I'm at least listening. Only place I see that happening is a player that I team that has a lot of money tied up big contracts already and needs to shed some mid-level salary (someone like Toronto or Vegas).

Wonder if he has a Stars sweater. 😞 He might just get a whole set of 32 at this point to be prepared.

What, return them to the level of funding before the 80s when all that was cut and people were left to fend? Realistically, my pet theory is it is hopelessness. This isn't different than various third world nations where young men (predominantly) are facing 60 years of the grind with little hope for at least a modestly comfortable future. Yes, they can beat the odds, and yes we shouldn't have to, but in a state of hopelessness it's easy to attach to anything that puts the blame on someone else and not yourself. Make it easier to be prosperous, give a person something to lose, and they won't throw it away in a blaze of glory. And if not gun control, gun registration and criminal liability if your gun is used in a crime. It's not a 100% solution but "they'll just get illegal guns" will be a higher hurdle if someone is on the hook for not keeping track of their weapons.

That's the hard-nosed old-time physical hockey, what's the big deal? /s

Do they get out the Jacque-boots and march around?

Not sure, Eichel has never played NHL hockey in May, I believe.

Similar: I was OK, never fast or athletic but could kinda hit. Took a pop fly in the mouth practicing at 7 and knocked out a couple baby teeth. Never could bat again, always pulling away from every pitch because it was going to hit me. Won a couple local league championships at EMW being the token terrible kid on a stacked team. Quit not long after as I wasn't having any fun.

Now that it's done:

While we do a bunch of AirBNB, never really paid attention to the fees. It's interesting to see people getting back to hotels, hopefully that'll burst some of the housing bubble with people/corporations buying up houses to rent out.

I suppose if we weren't hockey fans, we could just call them "Final Game" or "Knockout Game".

I bop, we bop, and they bop.

Was that not the case before? Didn't HR hitters often have rather low hit numbers, vs. players that could hit singles all day? Also, Zzzzzzz has described almost every baseball game I've watched. 🙂

That's a great point. I don't think this analysis takes in the results from the picks, though, right? Just the pick trading. That'd be some interesting analysis to see if trading down from say 2 or 3 to a mid and late 1st (or whatever) has better chances to net a really good player than just picking and putting your money on the guy. Wearing the hindsight-o-matic it's fun to speculate as to what trading our 2015 #2OA pick would have gotten. 😉

I think if they won the second draw, it'd still be 6th. Winning the second draw moves up 10 spots, or to second overall. Can't think of a way they'd move up 9 spots.

You might even see bubble teams do a minor tank at the end of the season to miss the SC playoffs, but play in the TB tournament. That sounds crazy, but there are two pros for management: 1> You have a good shot at a really good pick. 2> the owner likely sees more home games if you expect to go well into the TB tourney vs. getting blown out the first round. The players and coach obviously won't be on-board, of course.

Juju has it. In two draws without the odds changing, you just add the probability winning if you only care if you win once. In this scenario it is more complex because the first draw changes the odds of the second, but it's still in the neighborhood of 10% that the Sabres win one of the two. If it were 5% each draw, after 20 draws (5 * 20 == 100) you'd expect that you'd win one of the draws. If you're using the 6-sided die, each number comes up 1/6 of the time (16.6667%), so if you roll the die 6 times you "should" see each number come up, even though any particular roll the odds don't change.

Related: lawns, especially large lawns. It takes me around an hour to cut the lawn here (maybe 3/4 acre of actual grass). I can't imagine wanting more than that and having to think about a riding mower and the time to take care of it.

Whatever. 😉

I doubt it, I think people are just thinking out loud. I suppose if the Sabres really said, "no no, you take the pick we'll take next year" Vegas would happily agree, but #6 this year is more desirable than something between 15-30 next year (most likely).

I'm going to pin this so someone can dig it up in five years if you're wrong.

You're presuming a top pick is going to require the most money. Sure, Matthews, but are the top guys going to say, "well, Buffalo (2011-2021) offered me $8, but Tampa Bay offered $5, I gotta go with Buffalo". Some of them will avoid bad teams no matter what the offer. Maybe if it was a straight bidding war with the player not involved... But, I don't think the draft or lottery is that broken to begin with. It's relatively fair without massively encouraging tanking. Sure, tweak some of the parameters with percentages and max up/down movement, but otherwise it's not the worst thing in the world.

Vegas may be worse next year, but seems really unlikely they'd be pick 6 overall bad. They take the pick at 6 this year every time. If nothing else, might give them a cheap NHL-level player (or not really but pressed into service anyway) to help them with the cap.

I think I said this during the original goal song discussion, but this feels just a appropriate for the Sabres skating out now (starting at 1:36):

Ahem, Stanley Cup Champion Ruhwedel.

There's a very similar poll floating around on this.