darksabre

Entertain me you cowards

You have to build a team, and you need money to do that. Teams overspend on the wrong positions often enough that it's become crystal clear to me that the only place you should spend the bulk of your cap is on forwards. Dahlin's future salary could pay for two perfectly good defensemen if he ends up getting something like 11 million per. That's just too much for one defenseman. Guys like Weber, Suter, Subban, Karlsson, what are they really worth?

The fans.

I found a hidden stash of Genesee 12 Horse at Wegmans the other night and bought 5 cases. Should be enough to get me to Genny Kolsch season with a little help from Genny Bock.

It's pretty bad! Frankly, they should try to trade Burns.

I love how the Sharks, who have $32 million in cap tied up on defense (the most in the league), have one of the worse goal differentials in the league.

I think what gets me about our friend Duane here is that you can hear him calculating whether or not he wants to be the guy who calls in and raises his voice on a sports radio show. He's very clearly trying not to be "that guy" at the beginning of the call; he's self-aware. He's probably listened to plenty of sports talk where guys call in and rant and he knows those guys usually sound foolish. He weighs it out in real time. You can feel it. You can visualize him throwing his hands up in pure, honest frustration and saying "screw it". The hangup is what seals it. He knows as soon as he's done that he's crossed a threshold he never wanted to cross. You can hear the shame in his voice. He shouldn't feel bad about it, and he probably doesn't by now. But in the moment you could tell he did. And that's what makes it so genuine.

This is what is most frustrating. The team is close enough that making maybe ONE move some time between the summer and today might have made a huge difference. Add ONE player who can play on the second line and this team is better. You might lose a trade to do it, but the ROI for the team would have outweighed it. But apparently Botterill decided that flushing this whole season down the toilet was better than paying whatever that price was to make that one move for that one player.

I feel that dude. This year has been really hard on me, not just as a hockey fan, but as someone who plays and loves the game in general. The Sabres being miserable combined with my having had a couple injuries this year have put me in a spot with the entire game where I feel like maybe I need a break. I feel like Ryan O'Reilly talking about losing his love for the game, because that's how I feel right now. I think I'd be fine moving on to something new. I'm tired of sitting down and watching, I'm tired of putting my bags in the car and driving to the rink at 9:00 at night.

Catherine Bell in JAG was my, uh, awakening

We probably wouldn't even be having this conversation right now if Botterill had bothered to pay the price it cost to bring in anyone better than Sobotka to play on the second line at any point between last February and today.

I still don't think the Jets are ideal partners unless the Sabres can work a deal to send picks from Winnipeg to another team for a real player. I think Winnipeg would take Miller but they wont give us anything we need from their forward corps in return.

Yep. Trading Jack is out of the question. He's developed into a likeable player who will be an All Star for years to come.

At first blush the entire premise of this thread made me recoil. But then I took some time to think about my beliefs about how you build a team, use your cap, etc. I don't want to trade Dahlin. But, there is going to be a point where I might not object, and it's going to be when he signs his first major contract. I generally believe a team shouldn't spend much over a quarter of its cap on defense. Teams that do don't tend to win Cups. If Dahlin is going to get paid 10mil/yr at some point in the next couple years, I'm not sure I have the stomach for that. If he's going to get 8 I'd feel better. It's really going to come down to what is best for this team. Right now Dahlin doesn't cost much of anything so there's no reason to trade him. You can spend on forwards for now and hope you sign Dahlin for the right price. If the price is too high though, I move on. I don't think a franchise d man is as valuable as having good forwards. Look at San Jose right now...

Like Doohickie says, he'll have to play at some point unless Botterill makes a trade. Hutton isn't playing 13 games in a row. I would expect him to get one or two of Colorado, Detroit, and NYR. Colorado is probably an L on Tuesday night out of conference, so no big deal if he plays that one. Detroit is bad on a Thursday night but in conference, so maybe we hope Hutton plays well and we get a W. NYR are bad AND it's on the road, so maybe road barn away from the sour home fans is a good place to throw a rookie goalie in. Colorado and NYR are the games I'd look for him in.

A little more than I expected, but not by much. Dislocated kneecap or something.

Ullmark is an upgraded Robin Lehner and he's already a "true #1" in the sense that he can probably play 60 games a year for any team in this league. I don't think he's going to be "elite", but he's good enough.

I'm terrified of what he could do with all that cap space.

Welp, guess we're sellers.

That Ullmark injury was identical to what I did to myself in a game a few weeks ago. Looked like his knee just went doing a mundane push. I'd bet it's not serious and he could come back in 2-3 weeks.

I'm not worried about either of those things. Getzlaf gets to play on a better team and Miller is a rental for a few months. He can go back to Cali in the off-season.

I gotta be honest, Flagg, I don't see anything interesting there. N/A just won a Cup with the Blues lol