thewookie1

Quick addition based on this list. Ehrhoff and Lieno weren't acquired for culture and never added any anyway. If anything Leino poisoned the well. Moulson was a good his first couple years but as his play tanked and then GMTM called him out on the radio which soured him. ROR is a tough one, he's certainly a great competitor and a leader but his biggest problem seems to be his own ego and overwhelming desire for the "C" If he doesn't get what he wants he becomes a child. Kane & Lehner were varying levels of headcases and only hurt the culture. Lehner, as he is now, however would of likely been helpful. Okposo is one of the few positive cultural players we've brought in; the guy is just overpaid. Skinner is an interesting player, I have no idea how he effects things. Montour was likely neutral. Staal was supposed to be positive but ended up either being mostly neutral or even a negative. Hall, instead of inspiring everyone to play better and to get places seemed to instead to add more poison to the well.

Pretty much; the problem would be finding a couple vets who are willing to help instill it here and can still play to a degree. Gionta and Gorges were one of the few things GMTM did to try and foster a culture but idiotically thought that Gorges could be their #2 Dman. Had Gorges been our #6 and Gionta just been our 3rd line winger; both would of been able to keep a respectable role/output. Instead Gorges got caved as a top pairing dman and was looked at as a joke by some of the younger players. I do believe Adams had hoped Staal could help with that here but instead he mostly pouted for 2 months and was sent packing. I'm honestly curious if Staal's lack of care hurt Adams personally due to their prior relationship.

I'd let him have the surgery if he'll waive his 1st year of NMC in writing. Then he can have his surgery and we don't have that NMC hanging over our head.

If that’s the case, the league would have to have some compliance buyouts or else the league as a whole would run into a problem. Lets say the league stays around 82mil until 2025. As the team’s presently with cap begin to vanish. The league would eventually run into a crisis of 3/4th of league being cap strapped and everything would dry up with so many teams incapable of resigning players and making trades.

Wow, this is absolutely absurd

After looking it over myself I was also rather disappointed, scratch my prior inclination from the records.

I would honestly hope the Pegulas decline the Leafs specifically playing in Buffalo. Want some good will, don’t let one of our most hated rivals host games on our ice with their logo.

I see no reason to believe Hall in these circumstances. It isn’t in his best interest to tell fans league-wide that he outright refused other trade offers. By saying such a vague and generic statement; he’s effectively trying to remove that stigma from his story. After all, the old boys club wouldn’t like that, and it would give his agent difficulty in getting any NMC in the future.

Was he not director from 2014 to 2020? So shouldn’t we be looking at that time period over prior times?

We have better be, Colorado is honestly Top 5 in drafting in the recent history.

In theory if you had 9 NMCs excluding goalies the league would of likely adjusted the protection numbers. Let's imagine 5 Fs and 4 Ds. In that case neither option would be possible as you would be over the 8 skater option and with 1 too many dmen for the 7-3 version. The other way the NHL could attempt to remedy the situation is by telling the team to convince a player to waive although that is unlikely to work. Lastly the league could theoretically force the team to lose two players instead of one after protecting the 9 NMCs.

Then we can't trade him

As an individual movie it wasn't bad but in the greater scheme of the prior 7 movies it was horrifying bad both from a lore perspective and a consistency perspective. For starters, right off the bat they had the movie start almost immediately after Episode 7. Thus creating an absurdly short amount of time between Rey learning of her Force powers and being masterful with them. Even liberally Episodes 7 & 8 took only about 2 weeks in-movie time. Secondly was the character assassination of Luke Skywalker; there were many ways to make the long time fans happy while still having a grumpier Luke. The mere fact that, by all accounts Luke, the guy who held out hope for his father who had massacred millions could be saved, tried to kill his nephew based on a few dark thoughts and then upon his Jedi Academy being destroyed outright gave up. Seriously.... Maybe if more were to have happened prior I could forgive it but as of now that is all it took to literally break Luke. Thirdly was the continued destruction of the original cast and almost callous treatment of all the classic characters. Admiral Ackbar dies in the first 15min of the film and gets a sentence on his death. Instead we get some pink haired lady who quite literally caused 3/4th of the problems by refusing to outright give a hero of the resistance even a clue as to what they were doing. Leia gets the most respect, but never physically interacts with Luke, barely talks to Han and then sadly dies. (Sadly in real life) Why did they need to destroy the characters we loved from the past with having Han and Leia being married-in-name only, Luke never marrying and then going edgy, and Chewbacca (well he was fine) Legends at least gave them all semi-happy endings with kids and multiple further adventures. One could argue this was more "true to life" but why suddenly pull that card out for the old characters while still maintaining this "hopeful" galaxy angle. There were many ways they could have made the Sequel Trilogy its own thing while still paying respect to the originals and their many fans. They tossed them all out the window and then demonized everyone for disliking the new characters who quite literally just supplant the originals. *Rant Over*

Rather talk about someone else's disgruntled young captain than our own.

Eichel, Reinhart, Ristolainen, and our 2021 1st for McDavid, Kassian, and Neal. Still doubt it would work but it certainly looks nice on paper.

05-06 is why many of us hate Carolina.

Technically all you would do is build around the stadium. Also the Bears did a retrofit where they stripped it down to the studs and then rebuilt it. They could do the same thing only adding size to the concourses thus adding enough surface area to easily support a roof. Also, I personally would leave the roof open for snow and only close it for rain 🙂

To be honest I just don't want a downtown stadium; the city doesn't have the space for tailgating or the infrastructure to handle the influx of people and cars the games create. Not to mention the parking prices.

Yes, many PSE employees are now above the Labatt House. PSE has been in part have been trying to clear out some of their office spaces on the main campus of 1 Bills Dr.

One caveat with this however is that playoff hockey differs from regular season hockey in this regard. During regular season games stacking one line can work wonders. The playoffs however inspire players to do much more to actually lockdown a line making a stacked line more of a detriment than an advantage. Effectively, in the season you can do well and even make the playoffs on the back of one high end line and a combination of good goaltending and a couple solid Dmen. Whereas in the playoffs, depth is absurdly important to a degree that is almost immeasurable. Its also where the whole “need of a superstar” question is raised. However you do need a superstar or two; but said players must be completely willing to sacrifice their own personal success to win in the playoffs. Stars carry you to the playoffs, depth and goaltending advances you through the playoffs, and your overall cohesion wins you the Stanley Cup

Im unsure how’d they build a new arena since the Harbor Center connects to the present one. I could seriously see retrofits on both the Bills and Sabres homes however. Modernize Rich/Ralph Wilson/ etc Stadium with a retractable roof. As for the arena they could remodel the whole interior and potentially move the Sabres front office into a newer built add on.

I don’t really fault McDavid much for Edmonton’s failure. When your coach pairs you with your team’s only other game changer then you are going to literally be put into a defensive vice anytime you’re on the ice. We’ve seen it this year and last year that if you can neutralize McDavid w/ Draisital; it’s rather easy to beat the Oilers in a series. They needed their other 3 lines to play better but also split up McDavid and Draisital. It’s more difficult to lock down two separate lines than a single “super” line

Is this becoming some kind of common phrase now or something?

Even our tank teams had 20 goal scorers....

Probably wouldn't go that far; we'd end up effectively the same as Edmonton is now with the Best Player in the league along with little to nothing else. If you acquire McDavid for Eichel you have to keep Dahlin in order to assure you're in a better place than Edmonton is presently.