Mustache of God

I believe Arizona has the 13th "slot" but they got their peepee slapped by the league and penalized a draft pick. I believe they were negotiating with draft picks or something.

This is great news! I can't believe people wanted to protect Borgen over Risto, lol. As soon as Borgen gets waived he'll end up right back on the Sabres.

The only pick I'm predicting is Sunday, February 13th. Tre White has pick-6 in the final seconds of the superbowl to seal the deal for the Bills. The Sabres ride that Buffalo Sports high to make a push for the playoffs and sneak in into the playoffs and end up winning the cup after going 7 games in all four rounds.

I'm looking at their page on Cap Friendly, https://www.capfriendly.com/teams/bluejackets , and they only have 4 skates signed past this next year. That feels really low? Not that I know much about the team but there's nothing they have that would make an Eichel trade palpable for me.

On the Instigators this mornign Dreger mentioned there was a "sleeper" team in the East who might emerge in the Eichel sweepstakes. I also saw a tweet saying depending on how the Seth Jones situation plays out with the Blue Jackers, Columbus might have 4- 1st round picks (currently have 5,25,32). I wonder if they are that team that sends us 5, 25 + whatever they have to offer? Do they have any great prospects?

Less interested...

What is an 8-day pizza? I am interested.

I think we'll be getting a goalie back via one of the Eichel, Reino, or Risto trades. Or signing a FA. There's no way Tokarski or Hauser should ever be considered to be in net again.

What about Ted Nolan?

A bag of pucks with no hockey sense and a severe neck injury!

Eichel & Risto for McDavid? Seems reasonable.

That blows my mind that Mike Smith has earned $50 million over his career, I guess it adds up when you play into your 40s. What a life.

Yeah, a lot of these picks are not what I would have chosen but then again I don't know anything about other players in the league and there's a damn good reason I'm not an NHL GM.

"Best team in the league has a better roster than the worst team in the league." Searing take right there.

I hate when that happens and you log in here and have to wade through 15 pages of reactions to get caught up with the thread.

The only thing attractive the Sabres have to offer for FA goalies is that if they sign the #1 spot is theirs to lose. I won't pretend to know the goaltending situation of other teams in the league but I can't imagine there's many more teams with ZERO NHL currently signed (I am operating under the assumption Ullmark is going elsewhere).

At the very least Risto will have value at the deadline, I'd rather get something for him than nothing. Or maybe he gets packaged with Sam for a better deal?

No, he has too many years remaining and we'd be paying the price for that through 2033.

Vegas paid $500 for the expansion fee that that was part of the agreement, I think the current thinking was that they'd still be developing a team and it'd be unfair to disrupt that so early on. Instead they content for the cup every year.

Is the absence of a response treated as a "no"?

There's a deadline to send the request to the agent and then the agent has to track down the player and discuss their options and get back to the team. What happens if a request is sent and the player never replies? Is the NMC waived in that scenario?

If I'm reading this correctly, it looks like they drafted Lucas Rousek in the 6th round of the 2019 draft. He recently signed a two-year entry level deal for the 21-22 season. Will we see him in Rochester this year? Meanwhile the Leafs drafted Pontus Holmberg with the 6th round pick they got from us and also just signed him to a 2-year deal starting this upcoming year.

This conversation really harkens back to the Vegas expansion draft when every fanbase was convinced they could dupe Vegas into taking a bad cap hit for a little extra something-something. Vegas did not do any of that and instead went on to get to the Stanley Cup Finals in their inaugural season. That is a model Seattle will likely follow. They will not ne taking on an underproducing, overpaid player on the worst team in the league, even though he's a great "locker-room guy". Okposo had a stretch of 12-15 games where we was almost at a PPG production level. Hoping we can see more of that next season.

GMKA: Hey, do you want Okposo? GMRF: What? No. GMKA: Ok, bye.