TheAud

Sal Maiorana wrote a book about this era. "When Buffalo Sat Atop the Sports World". It's on Amazon. I was a few years behind you so this era was sort of on the edge of my consciousness as I got to a few Braves games but I was very young, I saw OJ live a couple times but again, I was a little kid. The book really helped put it all in context.

The article was useless. Didn't list prospects by team, just sort of breezed over each team. The Athletic has much better content on this. It's not great but even The Hockey News is better.

Would you consider an internal salary cap (i.e. lower than the league cap) as meddling too? I mean, as a fan it would piss me off for various reasons, but I also believe it's within Pegula's purview as owner to set those guidelines. Then KA has to live within them. To me this is not what we mean by meddling. I don't see the scenario you describe as much different. A trade offer could come that would put the team over the internal cap. KA would have to decline (or come up with some other way to fund it through another trade, etc.) But that's not the same thing as Terry saying "I don't like that player." (which I think he used to, and may still, do) In my experience, when there are financial constraints, such as the one we think may exist within the Sabres organization around not taking on dead cap, it's not always impossible to get around them. The manager (KA in this case) needs to come up with the right value prop and selling points to get the owner onboard. No one said it's easy. Although I do tend to agree with you that Pegula has likely mandated this constraint, it's also possible that he hasn't and all we are seeing is KA being a dumbass. Our data is all implicit at this point.

To me there is a difference between setting business rules for the organization, and meddling. Telling KA that he doesn't want to take on dead cap is a business rule, within his prerogative as owner (not saying I like this at all, just that it's not 'meddling') Whereas telling KA to draft or not draft a certain player, or sign or not sign a certain FA is clearly meddling in hockey matters. Using that definition I don't know if he's 'meddling' or not (it would not surprise me at all if he is) but deciding to not take on dead cap isn't proof that he is, in my opinion.

Watching Nathan McKinnon and the Avs vs. the Wild now. McKinnon is really on another planet. It’s like watching Jordan in his prime.

Great urgency there at the end. Imagine trying that hard earlier in the game?

It’s just pathetic

But they can’t sign any real NHL centers to replace Jost or Krebs because they would block…Östlund?

Philadelphia may have lost 9-3 tonight but Eric Johnson with 2 assists! Serious veteran leadership.

Blatant holding the stick not called

Hah! 20th goal on that soft sh*t! Awesome!

Finally, ‘no goal’ vs Dallas

I expect Dallas to administer a beating to the Sabres tonight. I've seen them a few times recently and they are playing at a whole different level.

Indeed. But South Carolina looks like an absolute machine. Will be tough for Iowa to overcome.

Caitlin Clark with 18 in the first quarter. Switch to ABC.

Of course I truly hope Bryson is OK. On the other hand less Bryson is good for now.

Gotcha! Did not realize that.

I never thought about the dominant hand on top aspect of it. I guess as a basketball player who was striving to be as ambidextrous as possible (Short of shooting jump shots left handed) that logic wouldn’t have occurred to me. But I was mainly just a street hockey player. i always felt the naturalness of being right handed and shooting right due to the similarities of using the torso to generate torque and speed like one does in swinging a bat or a club. But again, I played a ton of organized baseball and no organized hockey.

Blake Wheeler, Dan Boyle

T shirts to the first 15,000 fans on Fan Appreciation night next Thursday. I wonder what they’ll do with the 7,000 left over?

Collins is just a camp body. Has nothing to do with Brown. More like a hedge on Vandemark really being ready to be the swing tackle.

To be fair, he has a nice side too.