LTS

I'm not sure if I admire my son or not. He stayed in his room last night streaming the Sabres and Bills games simultaneously while I only watched the Bills game. He was very excited early on for the Sabres (even though he is sick of them always losing and having never seen a playoff game). He hates my realism about the Sabres and as I kept not getting excited about a lead or Quinn scoring or anything. He hates when I talk about how "we'll see what the final result is". Sadly, once again.. my realistic view was right. I'm done with this team. This should be the last GDT I post in simply because I won't have any knowledge of what happens. Even ESPN does not update me with the final score of the Sabres game because they believe its better if I simply do not know. I appreciate their consideration for my mental well being.

No. they did not. They banned people inflating them and blocking the view of others. There was an article on it. https://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/42857217/buffalo-sabres-clarify-stance-fans-inflatable-palm-trees

You can create new threads... like this.

One of my favorites.. Then again, why celebrate when most of your runs were more entertaining than any celebration you could pull off?

I'm so glad you called this out. I had a post earlier today about it but deleted it. I have a hard time taking anyone seriously if they can't be bothered to get the names of the players correct. People on here were ripping on the Sabres staff for messing up the 8 on Kozak's sweater.. but then we see egregious errors like calling this guy Couzins, Cousins, Kouzens, etc. or that 6'6 defensive phenom Owen "Austin" Powers is it? Anyway... I sometimes feel bad critiquing any player on this roster because as soon as they leave they seem to win. So, sometimes I wonder... is it not the player and is it something else? Then I just get around to "We're still losing, who cares." and I am fine.

I feel like you are making the case here. He's the 4th most used defense player on this team. He's on an expiring contract. I'm not establishing value, just that he'll be moved. The Sabres gave him a 1 year deal to get him to UFA status. I don't think they did this with the intention of keeping him longer. This is even more reason he will be traded. He may be traded as part of a package deal, which I would expect actually. I believe he'll be packaged with a rostered forward and perhaps even a pick to obtain a difference making player for this team. Notice I am not saying that "we all know that". The Sabres are already sellers. Who on here believes this roster is going to make the playoffs? Either they make moves now or they make moves later, but they're going to have to make moves.

I think they'll eat salary.. it's not like they are using it for anything else. 🙂 Perhaps, but then as we continually lament, players from the Sabres roster perform better once they are out of Buffalo. No reason to think he won't. Hell, the joke is that acquiring a Sabres player helps you win the Cup, so using that logic he should be in high demand. I think he'll get traded.. it might not happen, but I think they'll do whatever they can to move out UFAs.

Yes, he can be called up. But not always on game day. That's my point. If the Sabres have 6 healthy defense on the roster and Gilbert takes a puck to the head in warmups, what do they do? That's the factoring that goes into why Johnson stayed up and Kozak went down. I also think they want to see what they have in Johnson before they make a trade. Is he ready to be depended on to fill Jokiharju's skates? We all know Jokiharju will be traded this season at some point.

Yes.. I agree Gilbert should be in the lineup, but it still only left 6 healthy defense on the roster. That's why they kept Johnson, whether he played or not. It was to have an extra defense on the roster to protect against a last minute injury or illness. It's happened where players get injured during warmups or fall ill before the game. If they don't have Johnson they are only dressing 5 D and then 13 forwards.

I liked Greenway and Benson. I could tolerate NAK, McLeod, Zucker, and Malenstyn. Byram had his moments and for the last 10 minutes of the 3rd period I felt like I saw a side of Owen Power that we've been waiting to see for awhile. No moral victories however. The Sabres continue to be what people thought they were. They haven't hit "F it" yet.

I wouldn't expect anyone from the Sabres organization to call ROR a headcase either. Organizations will say nice things even if they are not true. The Blues can say whatever they would like but they ultimately dumped him in his UFA year to Toronto who then let him walk to Nashville where there's not much winning going on. As miserable as the Sabres are, Nashville still sits in the basement with a team that has Saros, Josi, Forsberg, ROR, Stamkos, and more. I mean.. looking at Nashville I almost want to feel good about the Sabres. But not quite.

I get the sentiment but the Sabres had to return either Kozak or Johnson to Rochester right if they wanted to activate Samuelsson from IR. With them not being entirely certain on Samuelsson returning from injury I think they opted to retain Johnson for insurance. If Samuelsson was still a few more games away from returning then perhaps they retain Kozak. If they play Kozak then they'd have to choose between Quinn, Kulich, and Cozens on who would be scratched. Do you put McLeod at 2nd C and put Kulich at 3C? Maybe? Ultimately it didn't matter because Johnson gave them the flexibility on defense covering for Samuelsson in case he could not go and another member of the D suffered an injury or illness unexpectedly.

Yeah.. the kind of "do-able" that spawned phrases like "beer goggles" and "walk of shame"

I've reached the point where I can't even muster the energy to make snarky comments. I'm going to turn this game on tonight and then I'm going to hate myself for doing it.

ROR would never come here. He'd probably retire if the Preds tried to trade him here and I am sure Pegula would not allow it anyway. He lost his love for hockey in this city. No chance he wants to come back. Personally I wouldn't want him on this roster, even for free, he's a headcase and this roster has too many of those already. II think the only thing the Sabres do will be to package two roster players for a 26-29 year old roster player from another franchise who is under contract for at least 2-3 years.

How much of it is him trying to force his way off this roster? I'm beginning to wonder how much of it is for quite a few of them.

I don't blame any player with a choice for not wanting to be here. How could I?

The Bills D has been their weakness all season. It has not been able to stop the run and they've struggled against the pass. It's been said they've been built to allow yards but stop opponents from scoring when they get to the red zone. It makes sense given how many yards they give up but generally rank well in points allowed. That said, it's a crap strategy and it showed. They currently play to outscore the other team and any team with good offensive talent can beat them. And to think, but for the blocked punt for a TD they actually did execute on the outscore the opponent strategy. But, they need to get better on defense and they need a front 4 that can shutdown a running game and coverage personnel that can cover.

Here's what I know. The Sabres have not made the playoffs since Pegula took over. Anything they try to do, fire Adams, hire a POHO, change coaches, trade players.. anything, I am going to welcome it because the current path does not put this team in the playoffs. That said, changes, while welcomed, will not be met with any level of hope or positivity on my part while this owner has control of the team. I've seen nothing from Pegula that says he knows what it takes to operate a successful NHL franchise. He's had multiple iterations and failed every time. I don't care about the Bills and their success. That's the NFL and it's a different situation. The point is, the NHL team has not been successful. He's not gotten it right and I'm past the point of putting faith in him to get it right. So, change away, I hope it works, but I won't be surprised if it does not.

Yep.. about how I feel.

Yep. They only way forward for them is own the situation that they have created. Pawning it off to taxes and insulting the city itself is not an appropriate answer at all. It's 100% not the city. It's 100% the franchise in the city. But for them to say that acknowledged that they've done a poor job creating an environment that professional hockey players with a choice want to play. As far as the taxes and palm trees, he should have let the media ask that specific question and then responded with "It's not my position to guess what motivates players with regards to those items. I can't control NYS taxes or the location of the city. Buffalo isn't as big as other cities but it has a lot of great things to offer players. You'd have to ask players what motivates them." In the end, 14 years of losing and 5 straight under the GM only paints one picture. They've not created a winning team that would interest players who are looking to win a championship. Bottom line.

So, his name is Power, not Powers and he's 22. Why do I bring this up? Try learning who the players on the team you are blindly supporting are. So we should be grateful that someone has owned the Buffalo Sabres and made them the laughing stock of the NHL? I guess I set my standards a bit higher than setting the record for futility. It seems that is your goal. Also, the Bills can't get a Super Bowl, but clearly you haven't read enough to know why they cannot. I'm missing some of those NHL main events. As far as I know the only thing in Buffalo is the combine. The Sabres were in the inaugural WInter Classic, but that predates Pregula. SInce then, under Pegula the Sabres have been in two additional outdoor games where they were considered the home team, neither of those games were in Buffalo. This is a forum. A blog is something completely different. I figured I should point that out since you wanted to point out how someone spelled defence. Which, of course was ignorant in its own right since defence is a perfectly good spelling of the word just not commonly used in the US variant of English. Defence however is specifically how Canada spells it when referring to their Department of National Defence and it's origination from the UK who spells it that way. Curious how you missed that information in your READING. Ahhh, the fans chased Eichel away. That's rich and spoken as someone who is truly a sycophant for the wealthy and famous. But, unfortunately, the fans did not chase Jack Eichel away. That's been covered ad nauseum and I won't go into it. You can try that READING thing you love so much. One final note, see how I included all of your inane responses into a single response? You can do it too, it's called multi-quoting. You simply hit the plus sign next to the quote and it queues all of the posts you want to respond to into a single response. It's an amazing technology that you should use.

Are you secretly Rob Ray? 😉