ska-T Palmtown

The ticket prices make me sad. My wife and I did a trip to Prague, Vienna, and Budapest in 2018 - Prague and Budapest were 9/10 would absolutely visit again.

The bold. 1000% is what I was thinking, but you worded so much more betterly.

The Sabres have some really good players. Overall, more than they have had at any one time in a long time. When I look around the league, though - there are so many elite players out there. As much as I love Dahls, he is our only player close to elite and I don't quite think he is there. Thompson thought about it last year, but for whatever reason this year he is barely even really good. Last year even opposing arenas would buzz when he touched the puck. Every home fanbase overvalues the players with whom they are familiar because we see every play and think "gosh with a little luck that guy would be scoring as much as kucherov", but I bet if you watch all the TB games, you would see "all the little plays" Kucherov makes that don't result in points and realize nearly every Sabre does not make even half as many little plays. I think the confusion is that the Sabres have the talent to be a playoff team, they do not have the overall talent to consistently beat the 1-4 seeds in a playoff series. I wish it wasn't true, but I think it is. The only outlier would be if UPL went on an absolute heater and carried the team for 8-10 games.

Up too late last night, can't make it tonight. Go on, leave me ... just bring me that sweet 'W' in the morning!

The Sabres zone entries on the PP give me actual physical pain.

Those last few minutes were not so bad.

Now lookit what you did!

Dammit, now i have an overwhelming desire to eat incredibly thin pancakes stuffed with delicious things that practically make them dessert!

If the Sabres manage to defy the odds and pull this off - I wanna be there! Happy as hell, whooping it up!

To be fair - I don't really think Gus has looked that outta place on "Line 1" either ... At least he finally gave that line some of that magical 'net front presence' they needed.

#Hero.

That is a pretty good point! I kinda get blinded by the three decimal places, but that third on is really just there for the ride.

I threw this in the Around the NHL thread: Obvi, it does not account for what teams will be giving what levels of effs when you play them, but does not paint a particularly rosy path to 8 for us.

remaining strength of schedule:

She really runs the spectrum for me ... As an entertainer and business person, she absolutely slays. (I think I used that correctly?). As a singer, she does not do it for me. Very middle of the road - which is obviously 1000 levels better than me, but on the radio - it is meh. Songwriter - two or three years ago, I pretty much dismissed her. (Not that she or any of her fans would care) - it felt to me like so many of her songs were just retreads of previous breakup or jilted lover songs. Her latest stuff, however, shows signs of evolving and has a good deal of lyrical interest. To me, at least.

If everyone but Buffalo plays 0.500 points % hockey from here out (not actually that big of a stretch when you look at how inconsistent all these teams have been), the Caps would top out the group at 90 points (for WC2 ... TB seems to be running away with WC1), lowering Buffalo's magic number to 20 instead of 22! Woo! Let's hear it for the mediocrity of the WC teams in the East!

So tonight we cheer for the BJs, Hurricanes, and ... NJ? Pitt? Anything but OT? (After being lazy, I looked - I think we cheer for NJ. If they win, they are still 1 pt behind us with same games played. Pitty, with a win, would be same points with a game in hand pending the outcome of our game.)

lol - you know he's clicking on the "you've been quoted" notice 🤣 No one ever stays away when they say they will.

Anyway, I have a 10pm (central) game myself - so odds are I don't get home in time to see much of the game. I look forward to all the Sabres goal memes from @Doohickie (hopefully none, or at least very few "welp!"s)

Haven't you learned that the Internet does not like nuance? lol. You cannot possibly think Adams did a bad job during the offseason, but also cheer for the team, AND also be willing to say that if they make the playoffs this year, that this year was a success (on at least some level). Preposterous! Heresy! You have said (I think, but go with me here) that Adams botched the goalie sitch this past offseason, so you are not allowed to be happy UPL/6k is doing well this year. This is how it works! /s

To me, little old me, I think there is HUGE gap between you, Mr. Thorns (and those of your general ilk) and those that I find insufferable. Yet, I don't begrudge The Insufferables their natural birthright and civil duty of bitching on the internet. I don't like living in bubbles/silos/echo chambers ... I really like knowing about, and attempting to understand, the point of view of others. I don't personally understand the point of just coming to the forums to constantly bad-mouth the team ... but again, those who chose to do so are free to do so and as long as it is well thought out, I probably read it. (lol, as if they care ...) 🤷‍♀️

It is in my nature to be generally positive. (As a very youngest child, I developed some excellent coping mechanisms which include finding the joy in little things) - but I can see how venting online to a group of people who have a far greater than average appreciation for this particular sports situation may be helpful to some people. In the last game thread I asked about the ignore feature - added a few people who did not add anything of value, to me, to the discussion and am quite happy about it. That said, I am the guy that says "Hey, if the other team hung 5 goals on us in period 1, nothing says we can't hang 5 on them in period 2." I don't say it here, cuz no one wants to hear it, lol. So, until the math says "nay" - I say "yay"!

asking for a friend ... where is the ignore feature again?

So, I did some initial simple math, got sad, and stopped: The Sabres have 15 games remaining; 3 outcomes per game means 3^15 possible scenarios ~=14.3M different W/L/OT combos. In only 46189 of those scenarios does Buffalo earn 24 or more points (93 pts total) ... that is 0.3% By contrast NYI earns at least 21 points in its remaining 17 games a whopping 26.2% of the time. (In a blast back to HS math, did anyone else realize there are 61880 ways for a team to go 12-3-2????? I had to look it up, it is factorials and all that fancy statistics math.) I would not even begin to imagine how to account for the 16 games the 6 teams in contention play against each other ... I am guessing it helps the Sabres somewhat by cutting out swaths of potential scenarios that cannot coexist.

I wanted to do the actual math - or at least run every possible point scenario for games that matter between now and the end and see in how many of those the Sabres make the playoffs ... alas, there are 1.33E+39 possible point scenarios just involving 6 teams 😞 Tomorrow alone has 324 different, 5 games with 3 each (although when any of teams play each other, there are 4) is 3^5. So, there are 82 games of interest, so 3^82 ... and that number is low because it does not do 4 for each head-to-head. I am guessing that either the professional folks use either full brute force and say in 3.2% of those 1.33 duodecillion (new word! how fun!) scenarios, Buffalo squeaks in? *or they have fancy probability models that look at other factors to greatly reduce the computing power needed. Maybe I will try the next two days, lol.