TheAud

Yes, right in front of the ref. It appears that legal now.

I feel worse about Larsson over ERod

Whenever I see UBI my brain wants to sub in UTI. Out with a UTI. It could happen. That would be a real pisser.

I have no first hand knowledge of any of this...but...I happen to know a former Sabres (and Bisons in the old Rockpile!) organist who is also a professional musician and music teacher. He got a chance to see the new organ recently and was unimpressed. His description of it was that it was "fine" and basically the type of thing you could buy in the mall. It surprised him that for an NHL franchise they didn't invest in a more professional piece of equipment.

He fills the required role of "dude who can play some hockey and can legitimately drop the gloves and throw down" pretty well when he is healthy. As opposed to say, Jordan Nolan who failed on the "can play some hockey" attribute.

The line is OK. We're only happy about it compared to 4th lines from recent years.

RPI Engineers! Before my time there though.

Sobotka winning some face offs

Hutton not looking confident

Years of atrocious hockey takes its toll on a fan base. Gonna take time to rebuild trust. Yeah, ok *****

Asleep

Stands look like a Canadians home game

None of my friends or relatives have ever won a Grammy so far as I know. But the company I work for did win an Academy Award.

Correct me if I’m wrong but don’t ENG’s count towards +\- and hence should always count?

Pominville still knows how to do it....nice finish by Skinner

Is it just me or is Bogosian looking like a beast since he's back? I mean, physically. Just tossing guys around in these fights.

At least they play Rush before faceoffs in Anaheim. Kudos for that.

I don't think it would be going any better with Ullmark in goal so far.

MIller looking sharp tonight

Berglund plays like a 4th line talent, but rocks 1st line hair.

No one can manage a cigarette while singing back-up and slinging a mean axe like Ronnie Wood can.

I caught a little more than a period of the Ducks - Vegas game last night. Anaheim couldn't carry Vegas's jock from what I saw. Given how badly the Golden Knights manhandled the Sabres, it should be a good contest tonight.

I'm not going to use Lehner from the past two seasons as my example of anything ongoing, knowing what we know now of his state of mind.

I Just went back and found the section of the book. Pages 222-224. It wasn't the central point of the chapter at all, more of a side note so it's a summary of several published studies. Of course I went to look for the key study they reference but it was on War-on-ice and that appears to be more or less defunct now. The main point was that a somewhat famous study showed save % for goalies who played both ends of a back to back dropped about 0.2% but later studies found that was more a fluke of the season studied. One of the seasons was the lockout season which had a weird compressed schedule anyway. So a later study (2015 War-on-Ice that I can't find) apparently looked at every season since the lockout 2005 through 2013-14 and found that the initial study looked at the two seasons with the largest decrease in goalie save%'s in back-to-back's, but in looking at other seasons they actually found three years where goalie save % was higher in the second game of a back-to-back where they played both games. Whereas some other studies apparently conclude that teams playing back to backs are "5% worse at attempting close shots and 6% worse at allowing close shots." (Another War-on-ice blog post, both of these are from a guy named Andrew Thomas). Nonetheless, intuitively it seems that playing a second day in a row would be harder than playing when fully rested, due to fatigue. I guess if a "hot hand" effect actually exists for goaltending and your goalie is playing well, it might make sense to play him on the 2nd night as well. Alternatively if you have a goalie really struggling, you might be better off starting the other guy both nights. In the Sabres case although Ullmark has certainly played well I am not sure if he is truly a hot hand per se and I don't feel Hutton is struggling, so I'd start Hutton tomorrow.

Interesting you say that. I just read a book that claims to debunk this. I'll have to go find the exact reference. (Book is called "Stat Shot"). I believe they conclude that the poorer performance of goalies in back to backs is not so much the goalie plays worse but rather the team in front of them is tired and gives up more quality chances. Something like that.