inkman

What? I can’t hear you. You’re on moot.

Well…the leagues tries to make money at the draft. Their execution leaves a little to be desired. It’s pretty hard to sell a product that no one will have real access to for 3-5 years. After the top 5 or so picks, these guys will become nameless, faceless into the abyss that is hockey minor leagues, juniors or college. But hey check out our new just hitting puberty draft pick that may be a star or may never play in the league you are here supporting. The NFL is drafting grown men you’ll almost certainly see on Sunday’s in a few months. The NHL is like BYU or Russia. You’ll see your guy in 5 years, if he survives.

🤷‍♂️

This seems a little out of left field. What makes you think it’s a real possibility?

His partner is on a different team. Send him there. Because he’s gettin traded

I thought Mattias played his way off th stop two pairs? How much ice time did he get with Rasmus last season? If Samuelsson is on the top pair to start the 2025-2026 season, the Sabres will be vying for the top pick once again.

In war, yes. In professional sports? It’s the goal but clearly not the only thing that matters. It may be what matters to you personally. To the league, the teams, the players? It’s a job. A great job. Earn enough for generational wealth. Winning is fun, it makes everything better. It’s also not always easy to do. The Sabres being example A. Leagues set up their pay scale to promote parity and give seemingly everyone, a perceived equal chance of success. No one team can hoard all the best players in a salary cap system. The Sabres have found a loophole for continued failure. Put people in change with no reprecussions for job performance. The players and GM have no recourse for poor performance.

brah just kill me now

Dallas will need someone to play D?

Which lends itself to this question: Are most of the Sabres players afraid to fight? I mean none of them are very good at it, meaning there is a good chance they’d get Dylan Cozened. Only Tage, Tuch, Greenway and Muel have the size to overcome their lack of pugilistic abilities. I’d suspect it’s true. No one wants to come out and say it as it’s about as damning of a comment you can make about a hockey player. These guys are concerned they are going to get KO’d, lose chicklets, or just get plain embarrassed. It’s the only explanation. It’s not like these dudes haven’t been playing hockey their whole lives where dropping the gloves for a fallen teammate isn’t exactly what happens every time on every team other than the Sabres. They know what to do, they just don’t want to do it because it’s frightening. I get it, not everyone is Rob Ray. You just can’t make up an entire roster of players that cannot and will not do what is necessary in those situations. *****, go hug someone and hold on for dear life. You’ll get 1000x the respect rather than staring blankly at the ice wondering what you are supposed to do.

They are ripe for the pickin. Just keep adding things until they say yes.

God a competent GM could do this: Robertson - $7.5 mill Marchment - $4.5 mill Dumba - $3.75 mill Lyubushkin - $3.25 mill Removes $19 mill for Dallas 9th overall Krebs $1.45 mill Kulich $.89 mill Rosen $.89 mill Clifton $3.3 mill Stars only bring in less than $7 mill I know it’s not going to happen but something has to get me through the doldrums of summer. I know I didn’t address the Sabres salary cap issues after the moves but I’d just do it and figure out the salary stuff later.

From the Stanley Cup winning Panthers? Any and all of them. From the rest of the league? Anyone who knows what to do when your teammate is lying unconscious on the ice. Essentially, almost all North American hockey players not playing for the Sabres. That’s who I want. Anyone but the guys we have that isn’t a giant *****.

I’d be mildly surprised if anyone of significance is removed from the Panthers roster. Certainly no one that wants to come to Buffalo. I mean no one actually wants to play hockey for the Sabres not even the guys we have despite what Adams and the players say.

What’s to like about the Staal hire? He quit or never bothered to show up here as a player? Did that endear him to you?

Yeah a decade or so too late. They need the adult versions of these guys in the roster now.

I’ll be shocked if those draft slots aren’t occupied by the softest players on the board. It’s what the Sabres do.

Well we need to get the dirt bags quite frankly. That’s why JJ, Quinn, Muel, Power can all find new homes with their replacements being slightly less talented but 1000 times scummier and dirty. We need the guys you mentioned or someone akin to them. It should have been done with drafting. It’s not hard to find a kid with daddy issues ready to extol his problems onto some chumps face. Instead we get draft picks like Karabacek or Kisakov. Stop trying to find the next Kucherov and starting banking on one of the multitudes of dirtbags you drafted to pan out and become Marchand. Helenius is a nice start. Some of the later round guys the last couple of years could turn into what they need but they need them now. Give Bennet or Marchand $10 mill per.

You can envision Tage being a physical menace?

I think people would have a much easier time letting go if the team did anything to rectify their toughness issue. It was a problem 15 years ago. It’s a bigger problem today. Every player with an ounce of aggression and toughness has been jettisoned like they took a dump on the logo in the locker room. Even the mildly tough guys we’ve brought in, like Lafferty, Malenstyn, Clifton all play with a significantly less amount of aggression once they don the blue and gold. The roster needs to be gutted. It’s a sign these guys a) don’t really care about their teammates and b) don’t have the proper character this team desperately needs. You can’t have a roster entirely built with snipers, danglers and offensive D. They’ll get eaten alive by anyone giving two shits. Mediocre to bad teams like the Bruins still laugh at and toy with the Sabres. They are taunted right to their faces. They get treated like children, in part because they are. The roster needs an infusions of grown ass men who don’t need to be told to stand up for your teammates. I want guys on the roster who see one of their own laying unconscious on the ice and start committing assault on every opposing player. Even if their line mate tripped and fell, start swinging and ask questions later.

I’ve lost hope indefinitely. I just don’t see anything getting done that needs to get done. They need to flip half the roster. Zero chance of that happening so…

I don’t know if all the smoke means there’s a fire but it’s hard to ignore. I’m usually the most skeptical person on Earth when it comes to to hockey rumors but it’s coming from a bunch of different places. It might be everyone is just glomming off the original BS from the Rangers but if the Sabres can be the beneficiaries of a bidding war, I’m intrigued.

It turns out my wife has an issue with bag policies at stadiums. Gotta see if my brother is down to Smoke Two Joints.

It’s actually a young @darksabre