LTS

Really? What do you call a guy who gets knocked down and just sits there looking at Foligno and does nothing about it? The entire team watched one of their players get knocked down and not even a shove at Foligno? Why? It's cowardly. The only other word I could possibly use would be uncaring, but this team is soft and they don't want to engage in playing a physical game. They care enough to try and play skilled, so uncaring is not right. So I would use cowardly. They are afraid to play physical either because of the physicality itself or because they are being coached to avoid it.

I heard he's over rated though. 🙂 That clip is the perfect embodiment of Josh Allen. He's a big kid playing football. He's goofy as hell but when it's time to go out and play he plays his butt off and puts his body on the line for his team. I can understand why players talk about him being a great leader.

Well, I have no job, so I have no money. It's cold outside, so I don't want to be outside, especially when it's dark out. So I guess I will turn the game on. I hope they play well enough that I don't want to turn the game off. That's as positive as I am going to get right now.

Yep. Granted I am in Rochester so there is SOME additional effort to attend the game but no thank you. Right now my effort to watching Sabres games is that I will multi-task during them. Soon I might not even multi-task and just keep them off entirely.

I don't think Ruff is coaching for 2 years. He might have been given 2 years to give him some extra pay so he would come coach this team, but I think he's done after this year and they expect Appert to take over. Which does nothing for me since I don't believe in Appert either.

It just confirms what everyone should already take to heart. A politician has no morals and should never be expected to stick to their word. He said he would not do it, but now he has. I really wonder if he would have done it if Harris had won the election. In my opinion he's completely de-legitimized himself. Not that I had a high opinion of him to begin with, but have some backbone and stick to your word. Your kid F'ed up and should pay the price.

Not every player on the roster is supposed to drive offense. The fact is Benson is like the 4th youngest player in the league (Luchanko, Celebrini, Bedard are younger) and he's playing harder than certain 6'4 vets who are supposed to love the Buffalo area and the team. He doesn't back down from anyone. Yeah, I'd love for him to score but what I would love more is for those players who are older, more experienced, and are being paid to score goals for this team take on some of his personality and actually give a damn about the quality of hockey they play. He's not immune from criticism but as the 4th youngest player in the league in his second year in the league, I wouldn't expect him to carry the team, so he gets some leeway in the scoring department. Compare him to the top 6 forwards in the Sabres. He's 3-4 years younger than the youngest. The 16k number is paid attendance, not through the gate. Regardless of who shows up at the game itself there are on average 16k people who were willing to pay for a seat in the arena for that night's game. That said, the Sabres are near the bottom of the league when it comes to percentage of attendance. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5914065/2024/11/12/nhl-attendance-tracking-red-wings-penguins-2024/

The Sabres stopped playing physical hockey and began going for the cute pokes again. Look at all the little drop passes and other "cute" crap they attempted against the Islanders that did not work. Thompson in the lineup and they defer to him for the shot, etc. Naturally that's not across 4 lines, but the tone of the team changed. Even the last part of the Canucks game they played like they cared. They played hard and they were rewarded with goals. The reason I am so down on Ruff, besides no appreciable change in how the team is playing compared to last year is that he juggled the lines in the Canucks game. He put Quinn and Peterka with Thompson, but Tuch, Benson, and Cozens together and there was a spark. He stayed with those lines for the first period against the Islanders. The first period where the Sabres scored no goals but were not getting massively outplayed. He changed at the beginning of the second and the Sabres immediately were on the back foot. Right now? Just play whatever players are playing hard regardless of goals. Let someone ask Tuch why he's getting 8 minutes on the 4th line as an assistant captain. They aren't scoring any way, so who cares if your "super" stars are on the 4th line. Hell.. look at Adam Gaudette on Ottawa. He's 75th lowest in TOI/60 (5v5) averaging 9:06 per game. He's at 2.7 G/60, that's top in the league. He has 9 goals... that's only 1 less than Tage Thompson, the Sabres leader in 5v5. The next highest Sabres 5v5 goal scorer? McLeod, Byram, Cozens, Peterka all at 4 goals. Sure Gaudette is a bit of an anomaly but who cares at this point. Play players who are playing hard the most minutes and let those who aren't get the least minutes. You can't bench everyone and until there's a trade it's the roster Ruff has... so reward effort.

I think overly emotional people have existed forever and that they will take action regardless of message boards. I'm pretty certain when they talk about the enabling of violent action from message boards they are not targeting a message board dedicated to a recently repeatedly pathetic hockey club. Assassinations attempts and successes, bomb threats and successes, etc. all happen throughout history. Hearing about them more does not mean it's happening more often but that it makes for good news at the time. I'm not dismissing them as acceptable. Personalities that are prone to making violent or extremist statements, such as Trump or Musk, are also more prone to invoking Newton's Third Law of Politics. Some people I know made comments about Trump's first assassination attempt that I never guessed would have come out of their mouths. No message board drove them to that, it's the very nature of how strongly they object to Trump and his persona. I suppose the way I see it, in the end, is that "F off and Die" is more akin to saying "I wish such and such didn't exist" versus "I wish someone would kill such and such"

The return wasn't overly egregious. But the Sabres don't need another young defense player who wouldn't be on the roster. They need older, established, veteran forwards who can put the puck in the net and teach this team how to play hockey the right way.

Last night was the reality of this team. They have no heart, no desire, no desperation to play the game. This was the Minnesota game except this time more pucks went in the Sabres net. I'm not even going to get into the players on the team other than to echo what others have said. Benson gets it. Krebs might be the next hardest working player on the team. I'm done with the Lindy Ruff experiment. This team looks the same as it did last year. They sucked AGAIN on the PP. They show no adaptability to when others teams have their number. Ruff is clearly not demanding accountability or Jack Quinn would be sitting in the press box. Who cares who plays over him, it's not like Quinn scores. Granted, after last night I'd want to sit the whole team. I'm done with ANY coach on this staff, no keeping some of them. they all get to go. I'm done with Adams who has built this joke of an organization. I'm done with Alex Tuch as the poster boy of players who want to be here. The only way he could try any less harder would be to not take the ice. He's loving his paycheck I am sure. And of course, it's all Pegula's fault. Year after year. This board has more emotion about the Buffalo Sabres hockey club than all those who step on the ice or work in the front office.

Who are these "wrong people"? What is this future doom you are portending? We're not going to sanitize all speech so that no phrase could be misconstrued as calling for violence against political officials right? If we did then we should probably look down on Musk as he did openly comment after one of those assassination attempts in question that "no one is even trying to assassinate" Biden or Harris. I'm not real sure where Ukraine and Afghanistan fit into this conversation. As far as I know those aren't pertinent to the discussion of "what constitutes a phrase as advocating for violence against a politician?" Neither of those events have anything to do with someone indirectly saying about Musk "F off and die". At least I can't see the connection. Is there one or are you just adding other events in some strange attempt to legitimize your position on advocating violence against politicians?

Here we go again... At least this game is late enough that I can make an excuse to go to bed afterwards. I don't usually go to bed after 7pm games anyway, but yesterday was tough because it was over and then I was like.. what now? I want to see the desperation to win in this team, shift after shift. That's all.

I don't recall the military comment from months ago and I'm not going to go looking for it. F off and die? I'm pretty sure I was told that more than once in my life. I never felt threatened by it. It's mildly more threatening than Go F yourself. I feel like calling that out as a threat of violence is quite a stretch. Hell, my teenage daughter's routine response to my Dad jokes is "Die. Just Die." I don't really think she means it, nor do I think she's going to kill me. And Musk is a absolute lunatic, his outward persona reeks of an unstable mind.

Nope... no thanks. I've been sticked in the nethers twice while playing hockey. I did not suffer anything close to this and the pain was awful, protective gear be damned. Just shuddering reading this.

They gave up 1 goal, on a 4 on 1. That's very rare and the circumstances that led to that are just unfortunate. So I can't blame them there. Minnesota blocked a ton of shots, but a lot of shots were shots that weren't hard to block. Not all of them mind you. While the dumb friggin' Swede (tip to Grumpy Old Men) played out of his mind so did UPL. It's easy to see their goalie stole the show but if UPL doesn't make some of the saves me made this wouldn't have been a 1-0 game and that's what I look at when I break it down. The Sabres still failed to execute cleanly. They are not good at zone entry. They are dumping pucks and not winning battles because they don't have someone going to the corners with speed. So many times they battled in their own end and then had to dump and change. Buffalo had their moments, but nothing about that game said to me that they have their crap together. They don't hate to lose. There's no way that Quinn getting knocked over should not have resulted in a skirmish. So often the Sabres just let other teams out-physical them and it's not for lack of size, but it's lack of desire. They simply look like they want to be just a skill team and not a grit team. So many opportunities to finish a check and they turned away. They didn't get blown out, but they could have. Minnesota plays hard, they play fast, they move the puck well, and they make playing against them a battle. They are a very good team. The Sabres still have a long way to go. Oh and final though. Does Quinn ever take a shot where he does NOT pull the puck back first? I think every goalie is looking at him thinking, okay, I've got time because he's going to pull the puck back then shoot... I never see him just take a quick snap shot.

Be warned... inkman's gravy is not like the others.

This is interesting and pertinent I think. Do the Sabres have players who would fit the scheme Laviolette wants to run? I don't think we talk favorably about the 5v5 defensive capabilities of our forwards on here. Are Kulich or Quinn the kind of players that the Rangers look to add? Conceivably Greenway meets their needs but he's not a prospect. Given the lack of success Buffalo has had I would agree that it is more likely than not that if a player has a m-NTC that includes 50% of the league that Buffalo is likely on that list. I'm not interested in Trouba, I understand why people would be. I would be interested in Kreider. He's a player that ups the grit level of the team and he has speed. He has a scoring ability and if he amounts to nothing more than a PP specialist due to his net front presence I don't know that the Sabres don't benefit. Zucker is filling that role lately and doing fairly well but in my head Kreider has historically been better. I wouldn't worry about his contract, if it's one thing the Sabres haven't done is hit the cap. So let's worry about that when they actually do it.

This is a good test of the team, even with the Wild injuries. Let's hope we see some inspired play out there. It would be a hell of a time to for some players to begin scoring!

Certainly the predominance of conversation is about the Buffalo Sabres. However, let's not pretend there isn't a Buffalo Bills thread, an Other Sports thread, an Around the NHL thread, and so on. So what makes you pick this particular non-Buffalo Sabres conversation as the one to ask why people care? As for what websites exist on the Internet? Well, you know that's a hole I am not going down. I learned my lesson a long time ago when I joked that there was a site for everything. I bet there was an uglypeople.com site.. and there was and the conversation went downhill from there.

I'm going to refute this. When I was coaching youth leagues there were plenty of kids who had to NOT be physical because they would get penalties, all the time. I had a few of them. Where smaller kids can battle hard and learn the physical aspects a lot of larger kids don't. Certainly that can change as they get into high school and higher level leagues and as the size differences iron out. However, it's not unreasonable to think that a skilled, larger player, would not be coached to be more physical because they were having great success with their current game. So, look at Owen Power. What made him a #1 draft pick? Was it his size? Certainly. Was it his physicality? No, not even close. Perhaps there was a belief he would be more physical but it was not in his draft profiles. https://media.nhl.com/site/vasset/public/attachments/2021/05/14983/ProspectBios2021.pdf Power was prized for using his size for offense and moving the puck, not for hitting. As far as the Hedman comparison goes, he's about 20 pounds lighter. I don't know what Hedman was when he entered the draft (searched quickly but only got current metrics). Is it unreasonable to think Power could get to 240? Not at all. At that point he will have weight on people. Right now Hedman is the 4th heaviest player and 5th tallest in the league (6'7 245lbs). Power is tied for 10th in height with 19 other players and he's tied for 42nd in weight at 226lbs, tied with Marcus Foligno (6'3), Josh Anderson (6'3), Matthieu Oliver (6'1) and Vincent Desharnais (6'7). And yes, all of this I still acknowledge that Power COULD play more physical.

What We Do In the Shadows. I have not watched many episodes, but it was pretty entertaining.

Well, my son is currently studying sports management, so conversations like this are quite pertinent and I find it's useful for me to have knowledge so I can assist him in better understanding concepts and how the world works. That's one reason. I can think of many others. The obvious reciprocating question is, "Why do you care who cares about this?"

Yes, someone should have been calling 911. However, attempting to stop an assault that is happening is not going to result in an assault charge. Good on him for standing up an attempting to intervene. It's unfortunate what happened to him. More people should be willing to stand up to morons like that. Unfortunately only Bissonette did, but if a group of people were to get up and defend the staff that would dramatically change things for the smaller group of drunken idiots.

Yeah, it's a strange season so far I think. No one pulling away and no one falling too far behind. The Sabres sit in the middle, 7 points to the top and 7 points from the bottom.