thewookie1

I’d say option 2 if the game count were less high. I ended up with option 1 due to that as I’d say he’s a regular if he plays 70 games. My best guess is he starts as a regular but is overtaken by Peterka as the year goes on. However he continues to be a top tier sub for injuries all year long with 20 to 30 pts based on his usage

Why has he lost favor there? He was solid for them

Not bad, while I would of been prone to wait a bit into the season I had said I’d accept 7x7 as a deal and seeing as that’s pretty much the deal, great. TNT Giraffe man is a Sabres for 8 more years!

Watch Vegas screw him after 6 games

Women's hockey is a true oddity since it is certainly less quick and far less physical than men's hockey but it still works unusually enough. It's akin to College hockey level play minus the hitting. I just hope this doesn't go the way of the WNBA which is honestly an affront to sports in general due to it being marketed akin to a Major 4 when its nowhere near that. Women's hockey seems to understand its place better and markets accordingly.

Hmmm, why would Kane give a hometown discount to a team that wasn't his hometown team.

My guess is Cozens overall will end up being something akin to a lesser ROR with Peca's tenacity but never surpassing a 2C level offensively on a consistent basis. That being said he'll be a fan favorite for his entire career and will likely be the player who "wins" us the Cup. This year I think he ends up with 45 to 55 points with approximately 20 goals. Where his impact will be felt even more though is in his general play and ability to come up "big" in the clutch. My hope would be he embraces a center-version of Tuch's game with some additional defensive skill.

I'm still going to accept Larsson being the target based on the timing being too on the nose. My guess was Buffalo gave an offer to Larsson near the UFA opening then backed off when he "signed" with Pittsburgh; after R2 chose not to stick around they re-approached him about signing back here but Larsson was non-committal. Perhaps he even mentioned a family related issue making his decision harder. With that information Buffalo calls Sheahan's agent and inquires on his interest in returning to Buffalo. Sheahan probably liked it here so with little else to do just waited to see what would happen barring another team offering him a better deal. Larsson decides to go home and thus Buffalo immediately contacts Sheahan and signs him. Sheahan's style is much more akin to Larsson than it is to R2

My guess is that he's mediocre most the year. 15 to 20 goals and about the same in assists over 65 games. Next year however he'll take off. His career can be summed up as this pattern. Year 1 Juniors: Mediocre Year 2 Juniors: Great Year 1 AHL: Mediocre Year 2 AHL: Great So I see no reason why it wouldn't continue that way.

Would I have made the trade, sure However Monahan may have been unwilling to come to Buffalo to begin with. Additionally I’m unsure where we’d line him up. At his best he was a 1/2C but hasn’t been at that level in a few years. He’d potentially be better than all but Thompson at center but he could also be worse than all of them. He’s looking to save his career and that would require biggish minutes on a 2nd or 3rd line that we really can’t provide without stripping a youngster of the same opportunity. Immediately trading him would of been a potential answer but with his value being so negative; would even 50% garner anything? Technically we could of bought him out at some point as well but that isn’t a great look to be honest.

Well I’m not all that shocked; compared to how 20-21 went, anything somewhat interesting would of been better. I have more hope than confidence, I think the team is going in the right direction finally and Adams definitely seems to be at least a good manager of people which is certainly a huge upgrade from the prior two GMs.

My guess is they'll give him a few games and see if he can fit in; otherwise they have a European team for him to play for and continue to slow-cook

Supposedly CGY is sending their 1st with Monahan to MTL which honestly ticks me off a bit; granted Monahan has a 10 team no trade and it would be very easy to cause trade issues with that.

Czechia knocks off the US.... but at least Kulich had a great night with 1 EN goal and 2 assists.

I think he’ll continue to play like he did last year as long as he’s healthy. His production may drop as some of his PP time is reduced however. I’d offer him the captaincy and a one year extension. We are not in a desperate need of lesser assets to need the flexibility to trade Okposo or Girgs. (I highly doubt we’d even get a 2nd much less a 1st barring a production explosion) If I’m choosing between a 3rd, 4th and 5th in the latter part of each round or keeping the team whole; I’m keeping us whole.

Even if Adams was interested in Copp he went home on a lucrative contract. I’m unsure if any contract would of interested Copp barring absurdity/

I guess a better question would be how many certifiably #1s are even in the league at this point?

Rosen was out there the last 25 seconds and had a chance but the puck was shuttled into his far skate

Really shows we certainly weren’t resting on our laurels with our picks. We tried moving up from 16 to 7 and 6 separate times from 28 to somewhere between 17 and 25. We got lucky and you could see their excitement that Kulich somehow fell to them at 28. My best guess is Ostland got the edge at 16 for being a natural center man.

Craig who? Rivet, Anderson, Ramsay, Slist?

He’s significantly better than Eakin from an analytics standpoint and played well for us 2 years ago.

Jankowski and Lazar have already signed and to me Eakin is a non-starter in a vet 4C

I think he gives us a solid boost in comparison to last year. I don’t think he’ll be a 1A but a solid 1B.

I took choice two however my honest guess would be far more convoluted. I see UPL starting in Rochester, playing ok for the first two months or so then getting a call up due to an Anderson minor injury. He looks solid in Buffalo for a couple weeks but gets hurt himself, as always, and ends up back in Rochester for much of January and February dealing with his typical highs and lows. In March KA brings him up again with Anderson needing “IR” time and again shows to be a solid goalie in Buffalo but gets hurt yet again and finishes the year in Rochester. Comrie has a good to very good year and brings the much needed moderate goaltending level we require. Anderson does fine, nothing special, but sits on “IR” during UPL’s stints. He’s old and easily could classify as IR due to his age related cramps. UPL leaves us and KA wanting more but unsure of actually what to do with him. He’s average in the AHL, plays better in the NHL but can’t play more than a handful of games before getting hurt. Devon Levi has a solid NHL start in April and is slated to be our AHL starter for 23-24. Sabres enter 23-24 with Comrie and UPL while the Amerks have Levi and either Portillo or AHL/NHL tweener like Subban or even Houser. If Portillo signs, we actually skip Levi and Portillo for our ECHL starter for a call up in case of UPL’s injury for bench roles while Levi/Portillo would fill the actual Backup starts. To sum it up, my guess is UPL is what he is; a solid NHL talent goalie that rarely can stay healthy and thus never accomplishes taking the starting role for any reasonable time. Eventually Levi and/or Portillo push him out of Buffalo where he bounces around for a few years with much of the same results before going back to Sweden. In later interviews he looks back at Buffalo fondly but feels he left so much on the plate and can’t blame the team for moving on. In his 40’s he partners with a few Swedish doctors to work on new exercises and rehab techniques for goalies which becomes a huge boon for future goalies. His reasoning being that he doesn’t want another goalie to have his career wrecked by leg problems like his was.

We’ll likely sign a vet Center to a PTO so that they if one of the youngsters looks flat in camp we’ll have a guy ready for use