Weave

For too long I watched excellent but expensive players like Vanek, Pominville, etc get traded away from us for magic beans. I have no loyalty towards the magic beans we are now in possession of. Some of them will shine, some will not be all we hoped. Some will wither and die. I’d gladly consider a couple of our magic beans as partial payment towards a legit high end player that improves the team. No hesitation. $10M per year though. KA would have to have a solid plan regarding how to manage that impact. I suspect it would mandate that at least one of our decent non core players be moved for nothing immediate to accommodate Meier’s contract when Dahlin, Power, Cozens come due.

2006 had nothing to do with a lack of prospects. Given the age of our core 4, for the next several years we would be fine with 3 mid career vets on short contracts. It’s not like we’ve got an aging group with a short timeline for replacement. Thats not saying that I don’t want D men drafted. It’s just a statement that with our current core, I’m not worried about what isn’t on the farm today. If Power were anything but a 1 overall, we’d be talking about him as a prospect, not an NHLer. And Mule beat the normal timeline for 2nd round picks as well. We have the pool we’d have normally. They just graduated early.

I think this is the totality of it. He’s a serviceable upgrade over the borderline NHL talent that was there previously. He’s veteran enough to have expectation regarding what is going to happen on the ice. He has sufficient talent to keep up with the game. He wasn’t considered a core player of an excellent Col team, and didn’t work well enough in Min to get playing time. Its hard to argue statistically that he’s a better player than Hinostroza. But he seems to fit better, which makes him more effective, for whatever reason. I like what we’ve gotten out of him to date, and certainly wouldn’t complain if he were resigned, but I still consider him one of the more replaceable players on the roster right now.

I don’t see saving a roster spot for a once per week player being viable when this team is under expectations to win.

I’m not sweating that at all given the age of our 4 core D.

Baby steps. It’s late January and the season isn’t written off yet. Hopefully the games continue to matter.

Hopefully they are peaking too soon. No way I want to hear about Boston when the weather is warm.

I’m gonna lay out a different vibe. Thank you again, Bills. Hell of an entertaining season. It has been a very long time since I was so emotionally invested that I had to ration my watching because I was still wound up come bed time. I can only hope that I get the same feelings again regarding the Sabres some time soon.

Yet less than Botteril, who doesn’t have that reputation.

Interesting. Something Ill need to look into.

I may go as well

I think this is probably an accurate take. Jack was much closer to he ceiling when he arrived in the league.

I’m not sure I agree on the strength side. There is a lot of physical maturing still needed on this roster. O agree with the rest. I think the mental maturation would be sorely helped by adding a couple more “been there” guys like Tuch.

Fixed.

See one post above yours.

I don’t think we did in Buffalo. There wasn’t a coach here who dared cross him.

Given the shackles he wore, Darcy may have been the best GM in Sabres history. I still won’t forgive him for being the tank architect.

I can’t envision it being a bad thing to be a potential destination for an in demand player.

And nothing for 6 yrs after.

We won’t have any evidence of this until high value FAs and players with NMCs start showing up on the Sabres roster.

This is one of the reasons I chose to go back to being an individual contributor again. Being the guy that delivers life changing decisions was too stressful for me to continue to do it.

There is no fun to be had as sellers.

Week 4 for me. It is tailing off finally.

Hopefully in another thread.