nfreeman

Awesome.

I like the 2nd one but not the first. It would make power plays even more important than they currently are, which IMHO would not be good for the game. The offside nuance I'd like to fix is this: when entering the O-zone, I think the puck currently needs to be all the way into the zone -- i.e. it cannot be on the blue line -- before the skater enters the zone, or else it's offside. I think if the puck is on the line, it should not be offside. Separately, other changes I'd like to see are: 1. OT in the playoffs goes to 4-on-4 after the 1st OT. 2. Significant reduction in the size of goalie equipment. 3. Match penalty and suspension for head shots during post-whistle scrums like the one Dahlin got concussed on last year. 4. Helmets off in the shootout.

What a lovely piece of friendly hockey talk this is. Maybe get some exercise.

Well, I agree that KA -- like all GMs, I would think -- has valuations in mind both for his players and for outside players, and doesn't want to make a deal that departs too far from those valuations. I also agree that he wants the team to develop primarily via homegrown talent. But he still brought in 2 defensemen from outside this summer presumably to be lineup regulars (I think he expects E. Johnson to be in the lineup), and it's pretty well confirmed that he's attempted to bring in goalies a couple of times as well. What he hasn't done is been willing to part with, say, JJP and a #1 for Hellebucyk or a similar rich price for Hart. I agree with those decisions, but I still think that if goaltending is a problem again this year, he's accountable for not finding a solution.

The talk about Comrie and UPL begs the question: what happens if, as seems reasonably plausible, UPL looks pretty meh in the preseason? Would they still waive Comrie in that situation and gamble that no one claims him? And Comrie were to be claimed -- are they just going to start the season with Levi and an uninspiring UPL? I think Levi is going to be good, but still.

Great thread. I met Danny Gare at an autograph session in one of the local malls when I was a kid. He was really nice. Then, in the late 1990s, I went to my first Sabres game in Buffalo in forever. We went to a bar downtown after the game, and there was Gare, pretty sauced, big grin on his face and having a great time with anyone who wanted to chat with him. A few years later, I was on vacation in Florida during the week of the NHL all-star game, which the Panthers were hosting, and I ran into Miro Satan at a hotel. I almost bumped into him, looked up, recognized him and reflexively said "Miro!" He looked up, I said I was a Sabres fan and wished him luck. He was pretty nice too. Never got to meet Rico, who was my favorite player as a kid. I did see Perreault once in the late 1970s picking up takeout food from a restaurant on Maple Road as I was entering with my family. We didn't talk but he obviously knew he'd been recognized and smiled.

There is only a small handful of Sabres publications who get into a projected backup goalie level of detail, they are generally small shops and I'd guess they all follow each other on twitter. Those writers are going to see MH's tweet, know that he's issued yet another snide putdown towards them from his TBN pedastal and think to themselves, again, "what a DB Harrington is."

Yes, but in so doing he insulted -- quite nastily -- the outlets that the tweet was disagreeing with.

And there's ray of sunshine Mike Harrington again. Does he not realize that every one of these petty insults reduces his chances of gainful employment a bit more if and when TBN includes him in an inevitable wave of layoffs?

If you like sci-fi, I highly recommend “The Expanse” on Amazon prime.

I too have always liked Tarasenko’s game and would’ve been psyched if KA had signed him on this deal. But it’s far from embarrassing. Your 2nd sentence is just gibberish. Again – don’t waste other people’s time like this. I agree on the PT and opportunity factors, and would also point out that Ottawa has 2 Russians on the roster while the Sabres have zero. EDIT: I forgot about Loobie! I agree with most of this, but I don’t think KA is a yes-man so much as he just knows how to manage his boss. I also don’t think that TP’s reason for hiring him was that he thought he was getting a yes-man. This is a great post.

I think most great players aren't threatened by other great players, but rather want to play with other great players, on great teams, and win a lot. I also think that Power and his agent know that TP will pay him extremely well if Power has the goods -- and that they all think he has the goods. If he stays on a star trajectory I would be very surprised if he left the Sabres before age 30.

I have a good feeling about this kid.

Well, I agree that the kids are defenseless in this situation -- they've been thrown into a pool with a bunch of sharks. But I also think the sharks themselves (i.e. the colleges) are a bigger part of the problem, and the government, by guaranteeing many student loans, is effectively encouraging the kids to jump in and encouraging the sharks to gorge themselves. And the kids and their parents need to wise up, realize that they are on the menu and stay away from the pool.

So I finally saw Interstellar last night. I gotta say -- I didn't like it at all. Long, tendentious, weepy, redundant and filled with gibberish. And I like scifi!

Those loans are also not dischargeable in bankruptcy, unlike pretty much every other kind of loan. It's a racket.

Very well stated. I've been through the college admissions (and payment!) process a couple of times in the last few years and have been left deeply cynical about the entire system. I believe it's a fundamentally dishonest and corrupt racket designed to create comfortable, secure, high-paying jobs for a bunch of grifter administrators at the expense of the kids, far too many of whom graduate with a mountain of debt, heads filled with crap and zero ability to earn a living and repay their debt. College costs have risen by more than triple the rate of inflation in the past generation, to the point where it's now over $80K per year to send your kid to college (and they all cost pretty much the same, other than state schools in the kid's home state). This is insane and obviously unsustainable. There are very few jobs available in the economy that enable college graduates to pay off this level of debt -- and that number drops to zero for many of the courses of study promoted by the colleges. The increase in cost has been largely driven by the availability of easy credit and the myth, which has been internalized by the public, that a college degree is a ticket to a good life. The colleges have zero incentive to hold costs down because they have no skin in the game -- it's not their problem if kids graduate and are unable to repay their loans. This is one of the core issues, and I don't think we'll see any improvement until the colleges are required to eat, say, 50% of the losses on their graduates' loan defaults. Bottom line is that the kids and their parents need to distrust the colleges, realize that the colleges do not have the kids' best interests at heart, shop for the best deal among the colleges in the same way they shop for a car among car dealers, and not commit to anything without a clear understanding of the situation and a fully cooked plan that is designed to enable them to make a living and repay any loans quickly following graduation. It's a disappointing state of affairs, but it is what it is.

I really enjoyed it.

I checked this on google maps -- wow. How far up that highway are you going? (Even if it's not very far, that is still really far North.) It's interesting that the utility company is spending money on installing fiber optic cable in such a remote and sparsely populated anyway. In any case that looks awesome.

Does he have an official role with the organization? I don’t think I’d heard that.

I think this lineup is by far the most likely scenario. I also think there is almost zero possibility that Joki isn't in the starting lineup, that the top line is reshuffled or that Mitts doesn't slide up to Cozens' line to replace Quinn.

Maybe. It's not impossible that RR retained the right to cause a sale at a given price or under a given set of circumstances, that he exercised that right and that TP wasn't happy about it. Or maybe RR is getting an employment or consulting deal with the buyer as part of the deal, and TP isn't happy about that. Either way, and I hate to add fuel to the raging TP fire in @PASabreFan's loins, it has to be said: TP sure chews through a lot of senior executives, innit?

Do you think saying not worthy of a new thread is the same as saying it's not OK to post it?

Actually, I think that outlet stinks, but posting it is fine, as it was to post the other one. Are you OK with someone not liking the same stuff you like?

@Buffalonill -- so, to be clear, the current beef is that they didn't go out and get a top-6 FA forward to replace Quinn? That's not a one-year patch. That's a 3- to 5-year deal at $4-5MM+ per year. Freaking ERod got a 4-year deal ($3MM per year). The FAs you can get to sign the one-year patch deal, at least at this point in the summer, don't offer materially more than what the Sabres have in the system. If Tarasenko decides he wants to play here for 1 year, or if Bertuzzi wants to choose the Sabres over the Leafs? By all means. But those are highly unlikely outcomes.