nfreeman

Maybe. If one were being pessimistic, though, one might divine a plan to spend another year at or close to the cap floor and stay far away from spending any money to bring in any real reinforcements. Hello @PASabreFan.

So we're taking on $4.9MM in cap space for 1 year. I doubt we get more than a 4th-round pick for that, and perhaps less. Doesn't really inspire much excitement.

That sounds good indeed. I'm hesitant though because PK looks older, heavier and slower, to me anyway, than late-career Teppo and Patrick did.

Interesting. PK is an RHD UFA who just turned 33. His production has been in decline for the last 4 years, and his ice time dropped last year below 22 min per game for the 1st time in his career -- all the way to 18 min per game, 5th among Dmen on a crappy Devils team. Overall, my impression of him is that he's close to out of gas. In terms of team spirit, I haven't had the impression that he's had problems with his teammates or coaches. I can see KA giving him a one- or two-year deal that could represent good value if he still has something in the tank. It seems unlikely that anyone will give him a rich contract.

One of my all-time favorite Sabres. I have his jersey.

I saw it at a drive-in theater tonight. Kinda cheesy but very enjoyable. Great action scenes.

I don't like soccer at all. Even my kids' games were mostly boring -- whereas I absolutely loved my daughter's basketball games. Having said that, I saw FC Barcelona, with Messi, win a Spanish league game at Camp Nou, and West Ham win a big EPL game at the Olympic Stadium, and really enjoyed it both times. The scene and the excitement of the crowds made all the difference. I'd gladly attend another big-time soccer game, but I don't think I'll ever watch it on TV.

Very tough response by TB to dig deep and pull that win out.

It sure seems like the Sabres would’ve had to have beaten Boston’s offer to keep Ullmark — i.e. they would’ve had to have given him a five year deal. Do you think they should’ve done so? Well, I think Chicago really fell apart when they panicked after losing in the first round in 2017 and treated away Panarin and Hjalmarsson, both of whom were excellent players. They haven’t been nearly the same since then.

This is an excellent article about how 2 distinguished former Sabres took over Slovakia's national hockey program in 2017 -- Miro as president and Ramsay as Coach -- and have accomplished great things, including a bronze medal at the 2022 Olympics following wins over the US and Sweden. https://theathletic.com/3322998/2022/05/20/craig-ramsay-slovakia/ Slovakia, part of the country formerly known as Czechoslovakia, is a nation of about 5.5MM people and has been independent since 1993. Miro played 7 full seasons for the Sabres, plus 12 games in the year they acquired him from Edmonton (1997). In his time here, he was a pretty good player and a good goalscorer -- probably the only good goalscorer they had during the Dominik era -- although certainly not a physical player. He had seasons of 40, 33 and 37 goals here, and only 1 season with fewer than 26, and never played fewer than 79 games in a season. I was in Florida on vacation one year when the NHL all-star game was going on and I randomly ran into Miro, who was representing the Sabres that year. I was pretty surprised at how skinny he was. Miro's last season here was the pre-lockout season of 2003-04. He went home to Slovakia for 2 seasons, then returned to the NHL for 3 years with the Islanders, then 1 with Pittsburgh and 1 with Boston, before leaving the NHL for good. He then played for 3 seasons in the KHL and 1 in Slovakia before retiring in 2014 at age 39. Rammer is remembered well by those of us Sabres fans of a certain age. He was a great 2-way forward who played his entire 14-year career here and at one time had the 2nd-longest consecutive game streak in NHL history. He was an excellent skater, scored 20 goals 8 seasons in a row and won the Selke trophy. The Luce-Ramsay-Gare line is perhaps the 2nd-most famous line in Sabres history. I always hoped he would get a shot at coaching the Sabres, but it didn't happen. I'm 100% certain he would've been a major improvement over DDB, Howie and Kruger. Anyway, I'm glad for both of them.

It's worth noting IMHO that TB took the 1st 2 games on the road without Brayden Point, their leading scorer.

Fantastic. As an old friend said to me: it's the hardest thing you'll ever do, but also the most rewarding thing you'll ever do. The next 10 weeks or so will be rough, but it gets much easier once they start sleeping through the night. In the meantime, stock up on diapers, wipes, laundry detergent and dishwasher detergent, and buy a lightweight, well-made, collapsible stroller that folds up and fits in the car easily and has a spacious and sturdy cargo basket under the seat. Getting out of the house will be really good for all 3 of you. And only have company in your house if your wife is 100% on board with it. Good luck!

So I was curious about the whole 2nd round/3rd round thing and looked into it. The AHL expanded its playoffs this year to 23 teams, meaning that only 8 teams didn’t make the playoffs. 9 teams got 1st-round byes, while the other 14 teams played in the first round, which was best-of-3. Rounds 2 and 3 are best of 5, and rounds 4 and 5 are best of 7. So the Amerks will have to win 3 against Laval.

Fla is 0-25 on the PP in the playoffs.

Bergeron is also a much better player today than Chara was when the Bruins let him go.

Well, here's a somewhat non-schadenfreude reason to care: if Eichel really is bad medicine, then KA made the right call in identifying him as such and sending him away. That would reflect quite favorably on KA's judgment, as well as on his guts in seeing it through, since the conventional wisdom would be to hang on to a guy with Eichel's talent. And it would be nice to know that our GM, for once, is pretty sharp.

This is reasonable, but at the same time, this is a thread about VGK firing their coach. It's also reasonable that in a thread about the fallout from a disappointing VGK season in which they traded for the Sabres' former franchise player, who left here on bad terms and then criticized the fans when he returned, and for whom the franchise stupidly threw away a decade, there will be some speculation about whether that player is bad medicine.

You are certainly right that proving a negative is tricky to impossible, and that many here have an ax to grind with Eichel. And as others have noted upthread, the Sabres were highly dysfunctional for Jack's entire time here, so it's unfair to pin everything on him. But still -- there's more than a little smoke indicating that he's not a great team guy, and Vegas' record got significantly worse immediately upon him joining the lineup, and when he's on a team, coaches get fired. And we're here on the internet in the offseason speculating as to whether he's a big problem for his teams. Is it really unreasonable to ask whether anyone's seen any positive indicators about his team spirit?

I wouldn't do this, as the owners are essentially defrauding Airbnb -- and if they are unscrupulous with Airbnb, they will conduct themselves similarly with others.

Serious question: is there any evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, that Eichel is NOT a destructive, toxic presence? I know a number of his former teammates have spoken in support of him, but I kinda think they're just following the rules, and there are also plenty of his former teammates who have spoken negatively about him. Has he ever been part of a positive team situation? For his 1 year at BU, he led the team in scoring as a freshman and they made it to the NCAA title game, so presumably that was a great season. Does anyone know whether that was regarded as a close-knit team? He put Eichel's face on it though -- so he improved the meme.

I don't think it was obvious, or conclusive. Separately: brutal loss for Pittsburgh, which led this series 3-1, and had 2-0 leads in games 5 and 6 before losing both. They also led this game in the 3rd and were 6 minutes from advancing, but the Rangers tied it and then won on a PPG in OT. Still, I'll shed no tears for them. Sabres fans of a certain age may remember losing to Pittsburgh in OT of game 7 in the 2nd round of the 2001 playoffs, Dominik Hasek's last game as a Sabre. The Sabres led the series 3-2 and were winning game 6 late in the 3rd, but then Mario Lemieux, in his first season back after missing 3 seasons with Hodgkins disease (a type of cancer), tied it with less than 2 minutes to go. Pittsburgh then won game 6 in OT to force game 7. The Sabres led that game in the 3rd also, but Pittsburgh tied it with about 11 minutes left and then Darius Kasparitis won it for them in OT. Hasek forced a trade to Detroit that summer, and the Sabres missed the playoffs for the next 3 seasons. The 2004-05 canceled season would've been the 4th season post-Dom, and then the Sabres returned to the playoffs in 2005-06. The best team in the NHL that season was Ottawa, whose goalie was...Dominik Hasek.

TB going full Alamo mode. Vasilevsky is playing great.

TIL that Jim Lorentz's grandson, Steven Lorentz, is a 4th-line winger for Carolina.

So Carolina was up 1-0 close to the end of the 1st, when Taylor Hall took a really dumb 4-minute penalty: Carolina scored on the PP early in the 2nd to make it 2-0. Smart play, Taylor!