In The Buff

Yeah anyone who thought UPL might be up here next year were out of their minds. It often takes 2, 3, 4 years in the minors for a goalie to properly develop & be ready for the pro game. This will have been a good learning experience for UPL. As he now has a better idea of the speed of professional players & what he needs to work on. Sure it wouldve been nice to see him put up stellar numbers & dominate. But a solid learning experience that'll aid in his growth isnt that bad either. He's years away from ever playing here. I'd expect him to play well in Cinci down the stretch here.

Rick Vaive's toughness Andrew Peters' willingness to buy you drinks on Chippewa late at night Derek Roys ability to get young hot girls Dominic Hasek's desire & will to be the best Eichel's talent mixed with some LaFontaine & Mogilny on top Kyle Okposo's contract but used on this Frankenstein player ?

An upgrade at goalie definitely needs to happen. Ulmark going down definitely hurt us, but there have been far too many soft goals let in this year. However, we also can't expect every goalie to be Hasek either. Over this season, heck focus just on this roadtrip, there were plays where our defenseman made bone headed plays or where we werent tying up attackers sticks or playing heavy on their body, leaving forwards wide open & alone with space & hanging the goalie out to dry. There were lazy or misguided passes by our forwards that led to oddman opportunities that RK needs to ask what those players were thinking & then correct it. Hasek was good enough to stop a lot of those chances when our play broke down, but you can't expect that from everyone else... its why he was the Dominator. We talk about effort. Colin Miller i see is trying. But he's made a ton of bone headed mistakes that have cost our team goals. I heard the other night on the broadcast a comment from RK about how he thinks the guys have finally understood how he wants to play D. Every coach has their own system & it takes time to understand it & get to the point where you dont have to think about what you're doing & you just go out & react & play. Think of how often we've changed coaches/systems. I saw the Bruins mentioned above. They have stability & consistency thruout their organization & it shows on the ice. Whereas we have the total opposite of that & it shows on the ice. A dysfunctional organization will have a dysfunctional team. They go hand in hand. Unless theres some cant miss great GM out there looking for a job, i think we need to stick with Jbots for this offseason, just to try to have some stabilization of the franchise. But i think we have a golden opportunity to change the culture with the amount of players we can swap out of here. Some of these guys have known nothing but losing. Kahun while young had a taste of a winning organization. Simmonds has as well. Bring a few other guys, goalie/2c, 2RW & another year with the same system & that culture should change by addition & subtraction. I know everyones frustrated, i am for sure. But unless theres a clear upgrade at GM, blowing this up will cause more harm than good. We're really not that far away. For as much as we suck, we're a non Hutton 1st half of the season, a Skinner who scores 10 more goals, a healthy VO & 2C away from making the playoffs this year. Tage Thompson mightve helped too. (Did i really just say TT?, never mind i take everything i just said back!) haha we're doomed! Na but really i just dont want TP firing Jbots without a clear plan & upgrade to replace him. IF they had a GM they wanted now then sure maybe, but dont fire him & then look for your guy. You shouldnt quit your job before you already have a new one lined up. You don't move out of your house unless you have a new one lined up. I'd be more comfortable with replacing Jbots if it was because they had a guy in mind, not just because the fan base was riled up. But if we're having this same conversation next year, then yeah get him the $%@! out of here!

both guys blew it on that play, but Millers gotta stay with his man

Darcy

nope he's not

That works! We'll take it!

It wasn't before but now that you mention it.... thanks! haha

Yeah i've seen those. Was just curious because i've spent the past few days researching new earbuds/iems. If you're not planning on dropping $100+ on them, you my as well just get cheaper ones. Better bang for your buck imo. Now all we need is to hear we scored a GOAL!

That KFC Donut/Chicken thing, Dunkin just released a Franks Red Hots donut a few weeks ago. Its a jelly donut topped with Franks hot sauce. Seems to be a growing trend lol https://www.delish.com/food-news/a30751769/dunkin-franks-redhot-donut/

What kinda headphones you wearing? I'm assuming IEM's since u said keep them in?

Well if you need any help with that, shoot me a PM ?

I loved Miller as well. We also share the same name. Back in the day when he lived downtown, he used to go into Pano's restaurant from time to time in the morning, where i worked. Short story about him but 1 day he was there with his Mom & i got caught up in a conversation with him. I showed him my license & made a joke about how we have the same name & that i used to play goalie too & that i was playing vicariously thru him. His mother had been drinking a few too many Mimosa's & samples of Plum Wine that morning. So she invited me to sit at their table (which of course i obliged) & a few minutes later she's laughing up our conversation & gets up & sits on my lap & puts her arm around me. I never felt so uncomfortable as i tried not to look at Ryan's face haha. But he was laughing about it so perhaps that was just something he was used to or maybe he just thought it was funny. But anyways i have lots of little stories like that about that team back then. Run in's at local bars, or seeing all 5'9" of Derek Roy at Tops picking up cases of beer with a few 18 year olds draped all over him. Some stories i don't think i can share either! But yeah I loved Vanek too. Its not his fault Darcy mismanaged that situation. I try not to think about that as the Oilers offered us the whole world & who knows how things wouldve turned out had he accepted it. But as a player for the Blue & Gold he gave it his all imo. 2005-2007, those were good days!

Yes, $792k thru the 2022-23 season

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

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