In The Buff

I read a piece earlier today that said since he was an RFA, that the Pens weren't in a position to pay him what he'd get in his next deal. Which will probably be around 3-3.5mil/per. Not huge money by any means but if they have other considerations then it makes sense. Plus for as much as we look down on Sheary & Erod, from the Pens perspective i can see what they liked on the return. I think its a win win for both teams with an edge to us, simply because both Sheary & Erod were gone anyways.

we have a center boys!

Extending Simmonds for a couple years is a better possibility than extending some of our other pending ufas. I'd rather extend Simmonds than extend Sheary for example. This isnt a splashy signing but i like it. Much better than overpaying & giving away prospects &/or picks that we can't afford to part with.

The name thats been mentioned for the past 5-6 years. Maybe one day it'll happen, but at this point im guessing he'll retire before it ever happens.

It boggles the mind how such an important piece of Buffalo Sabres history & our cities history could've been lost to chance or shall i say carelessness. Like i couldn't imagine a story like this occurring with the Leafs or Red Wings or really any other hockey team or professional sports team out there. You'd just expect more mindfulness would've been spent for keeping such an important document preserved for posterity in the 1st place. We're extremely lucky that it was Martin who purchased the auction & not anyone else & that the memorabilia wasn't accidentally destroyed/discarded or sold to another bidder. Thanks for sharing the article!

^Mignon.... its one of the best cuts of meat. At the very least, we can spell it correctly to honor its tasty goodness properly 😛 Point is regardless if its mathematically theoretically possible, the probability of us doing a total 180 from the past few years of hockey & becoming one of the hottest teams in the league down the stretch to make the playoffs is pretty much slim to none. Especially given our last game vs Ottawa where we got roasted 7-4. Just like that Filet Mignon, with the Sabres you can stick a fork in them. i wish i wasn't saying that but the whole 'you gotta believe & theres always hope' left the building awhile ago, anything else is just fooling ourselves.

The math says i have a chance at winning the Mega Millions too... but that aint gonna happen

Thanks for the info. I guess to the 1st part, I dont see how that's Kozlov's fault. If anything we should hate the GM for allowing that to happen if that was the case & Hasek for screwing us with the return. As a matter of fact i remember a lot of fans hating on Hasek at the time for asking to be traded. I used to have to defend him to my friends for why he'd want to leave. I guess in time that Hasek hate has died off, which imo was never justified in the 1st place. We had the best goalie of all time & didnt do a good enough job of putting a Cup quality team in front of him. For the other part, all i can find online is that he played 38 games here before he was injured & then traded. But afterwards he went on to have 5 seasons of over 20 goals a season & 1 with 17 goals. He was no superstar but to me that was a respectable career & not much of a dud imho. Definitely not worthy of replacing a player of the caliber of Hasek tho... but i cant really blame him for that. The 1st round pick we received for Hasek was used on Danny Paille who was more of a dud if you ask me. Pretty much making the Hasek trade like the ROR trade, where we traded a superstar away for basically nothing. Definitely 1 of the worst trades in Sabres history. I guess for me I don't feel as much hate for Kozlov as others do. Its not his fault he was traded for Hasek, so I hate Regier for that trade & on the Riga's for what they did. To the city, to the team & to everyone at Adelphia Cable. We almost lost our team because of their greed & misdeeds. The comments Kozlov made while unprofessional I cant really be mad at. You defect from your home country to play with 4 other of your comrades in Detroit, form 1 of the most dynamic groupings in NHL history, win championships & then get traded to the dumpster fire of the Sabres whose owners just got jailed. Your old team just got Hasek & are poised to win more Cups & ur new city/team hates that Hasek was traded & will only see you as the face of it. Those days here were darker than the ones we're going thru now. 10,000 fans in the stadium, uncertainty about if our team would be sold & moved. 2013-2015 is the only time that rivals it, just because of the tank. As a player who only wants to win, you go to a team that doesnt care about winning, yeah i'd be pissed too haha. But as bad as that time was, a few years later after the lockout we had those memorable 2005-2007 seasons. Showing that no matter how bad things have been, you could always be a few years away from something amazing. Something i've held on to for the past 5 years now & keep holding on to. Any time now....

Why's everyone hate Kozlov so much? I know he was part of what we got in the Hasek trade (which was one of the worst trades we've ever made imo, so chances are we were never gonna like him). I also know that he only played half a season with us due to being injured & that he also said some bad things about our team & city. But once again that was during a time when the Rigas were sent to jail & we went to the bottom of the league where thousands of fans weren't showing up at the arena. If i were a player i wouldve hated to be playing here too at that time, especially coming from a team like Detroit. Was there anything more specific than that where all the hate comes from? I don't really remember his time here or what happened.

Yeah it was, im glad i took a chance & watched it. In the early part of the documentary, i was struck by a comment their GM Jim Devellano said a few years into their rebuild about how he was "nervous" that they hadn't improved as much as they had hoped. It made me think of Jbot & how here we are in the same situation. I bet or i would at least hope that Jbot is feeling nervous as well. It took Detroit 6-7 years after drafting Yzerman (our Eichel) before they were able to get Federov & start putting an outstanding team together. Gave me a little hope that the years we've wasted with Jack could still be salvaged. All we need now is to draft Federov haha.

I just finished watching this new documentary that came out called The Russian Five https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8006926 Its about the 1990's Detroit Red Wings & the whole impact of bringing over Federov, Konstantinov, Larinov, Koslov & Fetisov that they had on that franchise & on the NHL as a whole. It was really well done & even though i kinda hated Detroit when i was a kid, it gave me a new perspective on that team & their success & i thought i'd share it here in case any of you would be interested in checking it out. You can probably find it on Netflix or if you can't i can give you a weblink to stream it from my computer if you want. I also have a massive library of tv series & movies. Close to 3,000 titles hand picked in my collection. Heres a list in case anyone is interested. https://justpaste.it/6kyqf If theres something on that list you wanna watch, just let me know & i can give you a link to stream it from my pc as well.

The benefit of hindsight helps. The team gave him that extension that seemed high at the time, based on his previous season, betting that in the future it would look like a bargain & obviously the opposite happened. His play fell off & a couple years later we decide we're gonna do a rebuild & buy him out. We switched GM's between the extension & the buyout so you had a total philosophical change take place. Darcy was looking to the future & then Murray was gonna tank for it. But after the buyout I believe Nashville picked him up & maybe he played another year or 2 but his play continued getting worse. It wasn't until 2017 or so where he was diagnosed with that illness. For me the issue was the 6 year $25 million extension on a player who just scored 15 goals. A gambling man can look back at that extension & figure it was worth the risk, committing that much to him & that much term. But was it the wisest move? I think its fair to question that. Not really worth doing now since whats it matter at this point. We have plenty of other problems we question multiple times a day. But this all occurred during one of our franchises darkest times. With many other questionable decisions that have cost us dearly & still do. We can chalk that up to bad luck but that doesnt sound right imo. Theres always an amount of risk with a GM's decisions. I think the best gm's mitigate those risks. Forgetting about the illness for a minute, but maybe only committing to him for a 2 to 3 year bridge deal to see what kinda player he really was wouldve been the less risky decision. Also i think it matters at the end, were we aware that Hodgsons drop off in play was due to a medical condition, even one we couldnt properly diagnose? Was there an alternative to buying him out? He retired a year or so after we waived him so if we were aware of his medical issues being a big factor in his decline, could we have stashed him in the AHL or classified him as LTIR or something equivalent at the time? Like with Okposo, we're on the hook for another couple seasons but if he were to retire we're not. Long story short i guess i blame them for committing that much to the extension based off his 15 goal season in the 1st place & i blame the buyout at the end by Murray. Obviously Leino & you can throw Ehrhoff & Moulson in there too. We have a history of bad contracts. But with the buyouts, Murray didn't seem to care about the impact it would have on our team for years in the future. Or he felt it was worth the risk. Hindsight isn't as kind i guess. Sorry for the novel i'm pulling an all nighter haha.

Yep that'll be great news. Still gotta wait til 2022-2023 for Cody Hodgson & his $800,000 per/year to come off the books too. Really shows how bad we bungled those 2 deals, where here we are many years later & still paying for it... literally

Yep... still not a real fair comparison imo. They're 2 very different players in 2 very different situations at 2 very different stages in their career. Not to mention one is 31 & 5'8 & the other 24 & 6' 1. It also wasnt until Marchand was 27 that he started to get nominated for All Star games & getting votes for Selkes. Thats 3 years older than Sam is right now. Might not mean that much to some but for me its important to distinguish that. Sam has consistently improved statistically every season & has had an arguably better career up until Sams point in his career than Marchand had. And as others have said, thats been on a pretty crappy team no less. But from a basic comparison of stats & what to expect for Sams next contract, I suppose on a basic level it works. Although im sure there are other options out there that may work better.

I would agree. But Marchand is also what, 7-8 years older than Sam, with many more seasons under his belt? Its still possible Sam elevates other parts of his game & as he gets older takes on more of a leadership role wherever he plays.