thewookie1

Oh I know, he'll chime in eventually. It's not necessarily even an excuse for Adams; just a matter of fact in terms of circumstances both actively and inactively created around the team.

I would feel terribly depressed because a large part of my desire to see the Sabres win the Cup stems from that they are in Buffalo and would bring an end to Buffalo's moniker of a loser city. I was happy when the Blackhawks won their Cups and NY Giants won the Super Bowl twice because as my father's favorite team they fall into 2nd place but neither ever make me anywhere near as happy than if a Buffalo team pulled either off. The one exception is baseball; Buffalo never had a team so the SF Giants have always been my team and as such hold similar sway to the Sabres and Bills. So for me, the fact we have a team in of itself is part of the basis to my fandom. To lose them would but a large hole in my heart that I doubt I'd ever recover. Plus I'd root for the leagues to fold just in spite.

No there is a major difference regardless if you wish to see it or not. A bad team, no matter how bad can still have good days and even good seasons. No team, is just that, no team; you cannot have the happiness or even the chance of it.

While I agree with the statement in general; there are a couple issues for Buffalo in particular. Established teams tend to have approximately 17 NHL players that stick around year to year; and 6 free spots that get either re-signed, promoted, or signed UFAs. With Botts, we filled those spots with primarily JAGs or worse. Adams tends to skew far more to promotions and re-signings. The general issue is we can't coerce solid vets, more often than not, for a number of reasons but one of them is quite frankly that their job is at risk from Day 1 and most vets signing here don't want that. We are already considered a bad team nowadays; so the mere thought of being overtaken on Buffalo would effectively equate to retirement. Why would a vet sign in Buffalo if you already know you have 5 younger guys already biting at your heels as well as the team itself kind of wanting to see those youngsters too. You only do so if the money is enough to effectively protect you from waivers. Simultaneously, we have a plethora of prospects with high ceilings but few places to actually put them. We have 1 AHL team and fielding a roster of pure rookies isn't exactly reasonable. Juniors is great but only to a point but also creates issues with 18/19 year old's who are far better than most JR talent and you don't want them picking up bad habits because of their superior talents being unneeded for stretches. Sending players to Europe only works if they are European, 95% of the time, and the North American game is slightly different which requires further adjustment to be done. When you have the number of picks and prospects the Sabres have; you effectively end up with a log jam somewhere on the track. Effectively that is where we are at this time; more prospects than we have spots to put them while also not being in a great position to get max value for them via trade. When we make a trade for a more veteran player though, it puts us in a roster bind because we already have a full roster with no spots available to squeeze someone new in without potentially taking further losses via waivers or breaking consistency in line formations. Likewise, trading any existing roster players is far more likely to hurt the overall roster than help in regards to in-season moves. Plus fool-hardy moves to get immediate gratification rarely help our team's image as being a feeder club to the top teams. So a trade involving a Cozens or Quinn would almost be a certainty to be a major loss in the long run and perhaps even the nigh-immediate future. The 3rd line has been one of our most consistent lines when composed of Zucker - McLeod - Greenway and upgrades would be highly unlikely to be available midseason. Lastly the 4th line is effectively the energy line; you don't deal high end prospects for 4th line grinders and energy players. Plus their impact is hard to properly measure since values can vary when it involves more judgement and gut based categories like grit and leadership. Theoretically you could have an analytical trainwreck on a team who also adds leadership, grit, and a plethora of behind the scenes types of attributes that no analytical gauge can measure but actually makes others on the team better and thus overtakes his own shortcomings.

Source on the Boston coach has not been confirmed yet

Strangely in this system I don't believe they are allowed to do to their non-controlling clauses. Essentially you can't band together votes if you don't have votes to begin with.

Quinn is secretly injuring guys to preserve his spot

Ceci isnt good

In the last minute Cozens made two great plays and two boneheaded plays in quick succession. I say a bag skate is in order for this effort they gave for 55 minutes.

Benson is becoming Marchand

Where’s the slash?

Ugly game

That has never been the deciding factor before. Plus he’s in the crease by 6 inches and doesn’t touch Binnington until he’s pushed back into him and even with that you see him trying to escape. There is zero reason to overturning the call on the ice for that.

High stick to Benson, no call

Absolutely asinine as Buffalo gets screwed as usual

Bad period, I can’t yell too much about the 3rd goal only because it was an extremely unlucky bounce more than any bad play specifically.

More than likely; at very least in regard to trades and pro scouting. I will credit them with rather solid drafts though.

AHL is only possible if we were the sole team to make a claim; otherwise I'd guess Levi goes down or we carry 3 goalies with Muel on IR presumedly.

Depending on the price, certainly.

I have no interest in a block buster trade to be honest; we have little success with trades these days and I just don't feel like watching another player leaving Buffalo to win a Cup

That's rather sad, RIP Claude

Can't blame Dan for that one; it should of been blown dead when the ref raised his arm and it was in front of two officials and Rob so his attention was split at the time.

Luuuuuuuuuuuuukkkkkkkkk

You can make mistakes as long as you can clean them up Byram with the clutch clear to bail his own idiocy out