darksabre

Wow

I think that's a weird read. Krueger speaks knowingly about the challenges of being a young, developing player in the NHL and it seems that he recognizes that Casey is, reasonably, in need of some guidance. That's just good coaching and doesn't speak negatively to the player at all.

Sorry, there's no "there" there. You're just projecting.

I don't think that's true at all. A big part of the Ralph Krueger approach seems to be getting to know his players one on one. I assume everyone is going to be talking to him quite a bit.

I gotta agree with liger here. I don't hear anything in Krueger's comments that sound negative about Casey. If anything it's that his expectations are high for Casey given his raw talent.

The opening night roster isn't really the goalpost. Now, if this team looks largely the same at the end of October...

Reasonably AHL roster from Toronto as well. I wonder if the teams coordinated rosters for this and tomorrow's games?

McCabe-Jokiharju could be interesting as a potential 3rd D pair.

I think I'm glad I'm missing this one tonight

I assume he'll play Saturday given that it looks like Saturday will have most of the regular players.

per the Sabres: Here is Buffalo's roster for Friday: Forwards 12 Kevin Porter 15 Jean-Sebastien Dea 17 Vladimir Sobotka 21 Kyle Okposo 25 Arttu Ruotsalainen 27 Curtis Lazar 37 Casey Mittelstadt 42 Dylan Cozens 43 Conor Sheary 49 C.J. Smith 72 Tage Thompson 81 Remi Elie Defense 3 William Borgen 10 Henri Jokiharju 19 Jake McCabe 38 Zach Redmond 44 Brandon Hickey 58 John Gilmour 78 Jacob Bryson Goaltenders 35 Linus Ullmark 36 Andrew Hammond

This has gone too far

The incompetence of Nationwide as a company knows no bounds. In a continuing trend of them screwing everything up when I call them, they literally failed at cancelling my policy last month and tried to bill me again. Luckily I caught it and stopped the automatic payment in time. But what the hell?

I need to see Cozens against real NHL players. Hopefully tomorrow against the Loafs.

I hate the idea of sending Mitts to Rochester after he battled his way through a whole NHL season. But a new coach = a clean slate and if he's not up to Ralph's liking then I don't see another option.

Heck yeah it is. Yessir, it sure does look that way.

The Sabres are probably not going to be a physical team, but they should at least be a quick one. Nylander for Jokiharju makes sense in that light. You want guys who are tenacious even if they aren't particularly offensively gifted. Which I think the Sabres have a number of. Rodrigues comes to mind. It'll be interesting to see if other slow players find themselves headed out the door. If you aren't scoring you need to be back checking and drawing penalties.

I think the goal for this year should be to use that good defense to drive the team speed and draw a lot of penalties. I don't think we have the roster to score at even strength, but I think we could put a good defense-driven power play together. That seems like a realistic path to winning some games.

In this general vein, I've been thinking about these kinds of trades where the Sabres move a number of guys out and bring a number of guys back into those same spots. On paper it would look weird, but it makes sense if you're trying to get this team to do *any one thing* really well. Because that's what I think this team's biggest issue is. There are plenty of good teams that have areas of deficiency. There aren't really any perfect teams. I can't think of a single thing the Sabres are particularly good at. They're kinda bad, or at least mediocre, at everything. Shuffling a handful of players in and out might at least wake one facet of their identity up.

?

Allentown is the mediocre white suburbs.

I was thinking the same thing.

I watched the Hawks game last night and the one thing that stood out to me about Nylander is he still looks really slow. If you can get him in the right spot to set him up for a shot then all is well and good. But he's still pretty one-dimensional and doesn't look like he brings much else to the table.