LTS

Basic hockey.. this isn't interpreting the post-season call up rule. I said the same thing.. perfect timing to pull them up. Regardless of Pominville's goal this team is awful. Miller faces a ton of shots because no one stops the other team from shooting. Oh well.. back to the game.

When I read the changes I thought two things.. First, someone might be getting showcased? Brennan in for someone to look at? Is Kaleta getting looked at? Brennan and Kaleta for someone? Just saying. If they are showcasing then perhaps they keep Stafford in the lineup rather than scratch him just in case they need to shuffle the lines mid-game. Don't you love when people make hockey comments and don't bother to understand what they are saying first? Christ... I think I saw a comment similar to this one multiple times in the thread debating if he should be kept.. people kept suggesting the Amerks.. ugh... drives me nuts.

No worries. I just tossed my hat in the ring. Here's why I am hesitant. Because the prospects don't come with the potential $5m price tag yet. If his cap hit was $3.5 I might be singing a different tune but at $5m and a decent length you are diving in deep for a guy who might not fit. We're talking a change from a team with more skilled forward help to a team with less skilled forward help. A team from the West to a team in the East. There are a lot of variables that could negatively impact his overall performance once he lands in Buffalo. I think he's good. But locking up $5m now with a lower cap next season and uncertainty if the cap will grow like it did in the past leaves me hesitant to deal out too much for a guy who I wish had 1 more year to justify $5m. Of course if this was last year I would pull the trigger as well. But no way would I give up anyone on the top line. We finally have a line that is producing and we want to blow it up. ROR isn't replacing that. Start at Line 2 and move down the list. This is why D is easy to give up. I wouldn't go for Armia, they'll need his scoring in a few years. I'm hesitant because I feel like the Sabres are finally drafting and developing decent players. I'm willing to wait rather than blow things up. I'd alsmot prefer to do Stafford and Sekera. :)

He wants fans to be pissed. This keeps the Sabres relevant which is what he said he wants. He only worries if the fans go silent. He wants to have a winning team more, but as he's said he's not running hockey operations so I don't discuss him when it comes to the quality of the product on the ice. Fans say a bunch of stupid, stupid things. You only need to listen to WGR for a minute or two to understand that. I just fail to see why anyone would let something like this get in the way of civility to other people or to play a major role in your life. It seems unhealthy. Changes have been made, they've just not been the changes you might have wanted. I don't know why people are so hell bent to indicate that changes have not been made. If you are referring specifically to R&R then I understand where you are coming from, but I don't want to assume.

If O'Reilly's name was Staal and we know as much as we did about him as we do now I think I would still feel the same way. That's the biggest problem. I think if ROR has one more season under his belt he's either signed or traded already (assuming it was a decent season). The problem is the unknown and that makes assessing trade value difficult. The Avs are content to let him sit out of the league for now but at some point they will need to address it. At some point the stalemate will break.. I wouldn't be surprised if the Avs convince some other team to offer ROR a sheet that the Avs find more acceptable just to see if he signs it... he Avs would match and the game is over. At this point, I'm in favor of getting him. If it involves trading Sekera I'm fine with that but the prospect list is something I would be skeptical about..

Sure, but why attack each other at such a ridiculous level. I get that the more nothing changes the less people have to talk about so they begin reaching even further and further to find justifications for their predicament. The further the reach the more insane someone might sound I suppose. Different philosophies I suppose.. I prefer to take the wins and let them increase my happiness and forget the losses.. they are what they are. Indeed.

I like where it's going right now. The Sabres need his face-off ability among other things. We have offensive D men. I don't like the idea of trading McCabe. He wore the C for the WJHC USA team.. I'm not a fan of letting someone go who clearly has some leadership and respect with his teammates. I'd rather wait on him. Just a feeling of course.

I've thought about it.. just never decided to do it.. although I brew in 12-15 gallon batches so taking about 2.5 gallons for a smaller cask wouldn't be too bad.

Okay.. I stopped it after 2 seconds.. I know i feel about it.. that's awful.

What I love is how we've allowed ourselves to move away from the team into pointless attacks on each other. That and a conversation about 99 Stanley Cup...

I'm going to throw out a different idea. If we keep playing all these upbeat songs and the Sabres come out lifeless... then why not play a lifeless song and see if they get fired up. In fact, perhaps we should stream elevator muzak to the Sabres bench until they score a goal. Then we can up to the local soft rock station until they score another. If they do that they get smooth jazz, until the third goal is scored. They can continue working up to some really upbeat music by the time they get to goal 6... Who would be more motivated to score than a team forced to listen to Yanni and Kenny G?

A win is a win... who gives damn who is in goal. Success is gained by taking advantage of opportunities.

Drop the puck... see if there is any life in the Sabres at all.

So change for the sake of change? I mean, I'm not sold on the guy necessarily being the player everyone seems to think he is. I'm not saying he's not. I think he's looking for more money than he's worth. This is how I feel... players do this, it happens. We saw it with Stafford so far but it happens across the board. If you keep reading the stuff that Adrian Dater is writing in the Denver Post I begin to wonder about this guy. It appears he's good, but also possibly a head case. Great. If this rumor about him being upset he was not named captain of the team have merit then I'm really concerned. I dunno.. I'm not saying not to trade for him. It really all boils down to what you have to give up. But $5m per season is a lot to put into a player with so many question marks..

If Foligno's games from last year were his first games this year we would be talking about the slump he was in. Given that no one on the team has done much this season I can't say he's to blame. I've seen him play harder than most Sabres and I feel more confident that he's playing HIS game. There's no way I would get rid of Foligno. He may be a Ruff player, but the problem is not Ruff players it's that I think everyone is struggling to do whatever it is that Ruff wants them to do. So he's not going to make a change by himself. I don't think Ruff ruins players so much as he confuses the hell out of them. Unless someone can identify the remaining locker room problems I have to look at the coach as the reason this team shows no spark so often. So, shuffling players in and out of a lineup would be like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic no?

The problem is that you can't get the beer that would work in a hand pump situation. What you are talking about is cask conditioned ale and those are far and few between. You can't take a keg of beer and make it cask conditioned. The carbonation in the beer is through natural secondary stage fermentation. The released CO2 is absorbed into the beer because it cannot escape the container (unlike your typical primary stage fermentation which allows gas to escape. Regardless of the brewery the normal beers are all sitting in tanks that are 32-38 degrees and have CO2 being infused into the beer during the trip into the brite tank. This creates a fast carbonation sequence and is also why the beer has to remain at a certain temperature (until serving) and under pressure (CO2 delivery systems). You could theoretically create cask condition beers with homebrew but nothing from a commercial brewery that was not siphoned into the casks PRIOR to filtration and carbonation would work properly nor taste the same. Scarlet Sunrise was a great beer, but it's not going to be a popular style to most. Smoked beers in and of themselves turn a lot of people off and in many cases I think it's well deserved. It's tough to make a quality smoke beer and so people usually end up drinking a crappy one and being turned off to the style.

I love throwing the comparisons around where we see fit. What we know... this team sucks. Why does this team suck? Well that's where it breaks down. How much of the team sucking is the coach, how much are the players? I'm not saying O'Reilly isn't a good piece in a team but if Ruff is the problem how do we expect O'Reilly to solve that? If Ruff is not the problem then who says we aren't trading away some kind of talent that hasn't been horrible misused by the coach? This is my problem at the moment. I need a different coach before I can go any further on the players...

True.. although honestly this year.. many times when Vanek has the puck I am waiting to see what he does. It all just seems to be going to right for him. In the past I've definitely been on the anti-Vanek train, but right now he's playing the best I've ever seen him play.

In my defense.. the link for the pic didn't work when i first saw the post.. that is pretty good stuff.

Until the past couple of games Miller wasn't making many of those saves either. Miller's play the past few games have been despite the team in front of him doing nothing to help. Both goalies have suffered in that regard. The Sabres need to come out and dominate this game. I don't suspect they will because I think Ottawa plays a style that causes troubles for Buffalo.

Yea.. I don't doubt that actually. The teams seem lethargic. Given the way the Sabres fall down a lot and seem to have stick problems I sometimes wonder if the equipment team is doing their job as well. Who knows.. I'm not saying Rip is a failure... but it does seem abnormal.. but at this point the only thing about the Sabres that is not abnormal is losing.

Sure.. still I believe he has gained some size, just not where they think he should be. He doesn't look as slim to me as he once did. Moreover, if his workouts are based on gaining size then he might be neglecting working out to maintain agility in which case he would look slow on his skates too. I'm certainly not an expert however.

The full monty of what we consumed Saturday.. (there were multiples of some). ]

Either way... the line is good... one of the best lines the Sabres have had in awhile. If we had been lucky enough to have Ennis-Stafford-Foligno working together like they did last year the Sabres might be in a better spot..but I'm not going to sidetrack the thread... Hodgson has been what I hoped for and more.. I can't complain at all.

There's no doubt Myers is not playing where he should be. There's no doubt a lot of it is mental. I'm pretty positive quite a bit of it is physical. As I mentioned before, they've been trying to bulk him up and I think that's caused him to have to learn new balance on skates. I think it slows some of his ability to react as well. Now, toss that into a team that consistently looks out of position and isn't playing as a team and I think it gets magnified. I wouldn't look at Myers point production because that's largely driven by the success of the Sabres as a team to put the puck in the net. You can't necessarily judge +/- either because if he's covering his guy but the forward fails to cover the high slot then it's really not Myers fault for that. The Sabres, as a team, are struggling and so those players who are struggling as well will appear even worse. I just look at his decision making with the puck and that's where it becomes obvious that he has some mental issues with the game. He admits it. Every time he touches the puck I'm sure he's thinking "I hope I don't make a bad play." He has to stop that and get back to a simpler thought process.. something along the lines of " " followed up with "Well, that was a good play."