In The Buff

I hear ya, the Avs were sure fun as hell to watch back in the day... Now if you were a Nordiques fan thats a different story

Simon & Garfunkel - The Sound of Silence

Still seeing too much of that trying to make the perfect play. Just fire it at the net, crash the net & good things happen. Rebounds, deflections, dare i say even goals. Whatever those are

Speaking of Grosek, i remember back in the day saying: "Juneau, I've got some Zhitnik on my Peca, do you wanna Smehlik? It's pretty Grosek." those were the days

Starting Hutton is the only choice coach could make. But if he gets lit up then it won't be long before we see Johansson. Coach also has the added benefit of seeing how Johansson looks in practice too. So if he feels he gives the team the better chance to win, then he'll get the nod. But theres no way he would get the start over Hutton. It'd just be horrible optics & would adversely effect the locker room imo. It'd send the message that you have no faith in Hutton or the teams chances with him at all. Lets save that for if/when Hutton plays poorly. It'd be easier to go from Hutton to Johansson than the other way around.

If all things work out & if we get back a player or players as good as those sure. But thats a lot of if's. Of course Quebec only traded Lindros because he wouldnt play for them but yeah trades can work out for sure. But i just see the same argument here for Dahlin that we made for ROR, & all it did was make our team worse. I think fans here had unrealistic expectations on Dahlin from the get go & expected him to have like 30 goals & 60 assists a year before he hit 20 years old. But he's gonna be an outstanding player going forward & we haven't even seen the best of who he is yet. Im not worried about his next contract, nor his play. There are other pieces i'd move before moving Dahlin. Namely the players we don't want. I get the idea of moving him & if you were running a team on Xbox & could make a blockbuster trade in your favor then sure. But with real life & Jbots, i'm not a buyer to this idea at all at this point.

Seeing some of the comments about how this could be a good idea & how it'd jump start our improvement & all that jazz, has me think of O'Reilly & how people thought the same thing then. That didn't turn out well & now we want to try it again but with Dahlin? I think all these years of missing the playoffs has made a lot of us crazy.

This is nothing about the OP but I wonder whats the over / under on the amount of 'Jbotts needs to get fired' threads being made thru the end of the year? 30 or so games left so im guessing say 19 more threads on it? I still don't see him leaving until next season at the earliest. They have their plan & theyre not gonna bail from it now.

Jack Hammer, Jack Attack, Captain Jack, Jack Frost, Jackie Chan or something with Eichel, like Iceman or simply "Ike". Eich Daddy, The IkeMan Cometh But yeah since his birth name is John his nickname is already Jack.

Cool to see Anderson on this list. I was gonna mention him yesterday in another thread but didn't. He is a pending RFA, but if he gets traded this year the team that picks him up will have another year of his services before having to give him a new contract. If Columbus waits til next year he'll be an UFA & will be moved as a rental. So it makes sense for them to try to move him now & apparently he is someone who is in play. He has shown in the past that he can put up some numbers. If he were on a 20+ goal clip right now I'd be all about it. But his lack of production this year is concerning. Does he have an attitude problem, lack of motivation or is it just poor usage or a combination of those? Idk. But if he can be had for cheap or for Bogo (which is pretty cheap at this point) i'd say go for it. If its for Mitts in a package i'd say no.

No. I just see it not only as near impossible to implement at this point given how the sports leagues have formed to get to the point where they are now, but also there is not any real incentive for them to do something this drastic. However for things like Esports this practice was used all the time & worked well. But now that theres been years worth of investment & developing & refining the industry & tournament structures, various Esports leagues have moved away from a relegation system into a more structured & permanent system. I really only see relegation as beneficial to a major sports league thats starting out. Where youre not sure which teams will be viable or good enough to compete at the level you wish. Or for a sports league that has a ton of possible teams that wouldnt fit into a typical format. Something like college football for instance where theres 130 schools in Division 1. For something like the NFL/NHL with millions/billions of dollars involved with each franchise, its pretty much don't rock the boat.

Well the lineup for sure looks better with Skinner on it... just not as good as I would've hoped. Still its great news that he's healthy & back with the team. We desperately need him to come back rejuvenated & light it up.

Skinner being day to day is the best Sabres news i've heard in awhile. If he can come back for this crucial stretch of the season coming up, it'll help us immensely. In theory ?

Totally agree & i know most others do as well. He may have found a role for himself in a checking role, but when you're paying $6 Million per year on a player, you need him to be above average at something. IE: you need him to score 20 goals per year. He's the 14th highest cap hit for RW's in the entire NHL. On par with Patrik Laine, David Pastrnak, Radulov, Loui Eriksson, Dustin Brown, Brock Boeser, Ryan Callahan etc... I could go on because quite literally there are much better players getting paid the same or even less than him out there but you get the idea. Okposo is the 3rd highest cap number on our team & offers nothing in terms of production that any of those players do. If we could magically swap out him & his contract for one of those other players, the look & composition of our team improves dramatically. Think of what our forward group would look like if we could allot that $6 Million into a different & real quality Top 6 forward? It'd be night & day with what we have now. There for sure are other areas of our roster we could focus on to improve, but there is no doubt that KO is an albatross & a dead weight that hamstrings our team. Regardless of how well he does in a checking role.

less... but hey you never know

Cirelli would be a good target. I know he's a name we've mentioned for a couple years now. He's one of 6 RFA'S Tampa will have to deal with heading into next year, in addition to 4 UFA's & they only have $8 Million in cap space to do it... so someone has to go. He is arguably their best 2 way forward & I have no doubt that we would be interested. Its just that other teams will be interested as well. Toffoli would be another potential target & I know his name has been mentioned from time to time. Its been said the asking price for Toffoli is a 2nd round pick & a prospect, so that seems like a pretty fair ask. But I believe he's an UFA going into next season so we'd have to be confident in signing an extension with him. Jason Zucker is another name you hear quite often. He won't wow you or anything but all he does is play a consistent game & put up 20 goals a year. Has a modest cap number of $5.5 mil thru 2023. Seems his name is mentioned year after year. I gotta figure at some point those rumors pan true & he's moved... that whole where theres smoke theres fire kinda thing. There are options out there, but with so many teams coveting quality forwards there'll be bidding wars so to speak, with teams trying to maximize their returns on guys like these.

Yes of course... pretty sure that was already stated. But his question was about paying taxes for away games in different states (which is something thats not as commonly known) & thats what i answered.

Yes he's right. Its called a Jock Tax. And besides from having to pay a tax for each State in which they play, some cities also add an additional City Tax, generally another 4% or so on top of that. So at the end of the year, players will file 10-20 State Tax forms for the various States in which they've played, on top of the taxes they pay for their home residing State. Theres lots of articles out there about it. Just a few months ago our own Scott Wilson filed a complaint vs the city of Pittsburgh for their tax scheme towards non resident athletes. Article here if you're curious: https://www.si.com/nhl/2019/11/27/pittsburgh-jock-tax-scott-wilson-kyle-palmieri Every State & City has different requirements of course & i don't know what the current laws/rules state. But yes afaik players are still required to pay for away games in States where that's a thing.

Adam Henrique gets mentioned here a lot by some posters. Why i'm not quite sure, maybe its a perceived lack of options. I've said this before but I just don't see Anaheim even wanting to trade him in the 1st place. Not to mention he has a 10 team no trade clause. But he just signed a 5 year extension in 2018. Thats not something a team usually does when they're considering moving him. He's also their 2nd highest scorer in terms of goals, 1 behind the leader at 14. He's now on their top scoring line playing alongside Getzlaf & Sprong. But he also takes lots of important draws for them, as he has the best Faceoff percentage on the team. All this for making a hair under $6mil a year til 2023-2024. Anaheim is on the outside looking in on making a wildcard spot, so come the deadline i could see them willing to shed a contract or 2 of an under performing player to get younger or out of a bad contract to build for the future. But moving Henrique wouldn't really fit that idea. He's 1 of their top scorers who can play anywhere in the lineup on a decent deal. What would it take from us to get the deal done? I don't think we'd be willing to overpay & we don't have much cap space to take any cap back in a cap dump. I guess anythings possible but it takes 2 to tango & i don't see either side wanting to make a trade here & have yet to hear a plausible scenario for one either. Rumors out of Pittsburgh are that Galchenyuk is on the block again. I'd say a trade with them would be more likely than Henrique & even with Galchenyuk i don't see that happening either. But i'd be more likely to believe that as a possibility than Henrique. As sad as it sounds i think maybe Botts makes a move for futures at the deadline but he waits til the offseason to do anything substantial.

Saw this on espn's hockey portion of their site for bold 2nd half predictions for the season: What candidates for Pres above Botts that would either accept the position & be what we need is beyond me. RK i could see a few years down the road, but we need someone now. Correction, years ago. Patience is probably the Sabres version of "The Process".... since we don't seem to have any process at all besides from needing more patience... which we're all running short on after years of this mess. Just need a little more patience. Someone should make a Sabres version of this song. GM in the office late at night, trying to make a trade & get it right. Hard to deal with so many around, you know i don't like being seen in the crowd. And the seasons don't change but maybe the year. Whole things depressing as i drown in more beer. No seriously, think i need to get drunk now & forget about all this. I know, just need a little more patience haha, shoot me! But yeah we're gonna need a lot of it...

@North Buffalo I have a friend who uses the online handle of Ukko. Ukko in Finnish mythology is the equivalent of Thor. I think Ukko itself translates to thunder. But he always makes a point to correct people that its Ukko, not Uko. Seeing your title i just had to see if u could correct it. Thanks for sharing btw, pretty cool!

I still enjoy going to the arena to watch the Sabres play. I still get that anticipation & excitement walking into the arena. Its just that sometimes by the end of the 1st period that feeling has turned into dread haha. I don't really go to games as much as I used to, just because I don't really have the extra money to spend on a game experience that ends in a loss or disappointment. But when it comes to supporting the team, i still stand behind them. Because I don't ever want to take them being here for granted. For years our franchise had that dark cloud over it, where we weren't sure they'd even stay in Buffalo or not. So i'm thankful they're still here. As for a contest I suppose you could assign people a number & just have a simple or impartial lottery. Or maybe you could pick a set of games coming up & have people guess what the score would be, or which Sabre would score the 1st goal & decide the winner based on the correct answer. Or if you're looking for something more creative, maybe have a contest for best new Sabres slogan? For an example: "You'll give away the whole seat, but we'll only need the edge". Or "Don't fall on your sword. Stick with the Sabres as they cut up the competition." I don't know, i'm just talking gibberish now haha. I'm sure you'll come up with something! Most likely something way better than i suggested!

Figures lol

Ullmark having a phenomenal game tonight. If it wasn't for him, we could easily be down right now. TB has had a ton of great scoring chances.

I don't think we're gonna do anything dirty per se. Thats not what RK wants us to be. But i think its a good thing that we'll have someone who is not only not afraid to get in someones face, but someone who is capable of smashing one should a need for that come up. But with the media attention towards Cernak & Smith, i think its inevitable that something happens between those 2. I'd rather we'd be talking about a new 20-30 goal scorer being added to the team, but if Dalton Smith makes us a tougher team to play against, I'm all for it. Gretzky had a protector on the ice, Lemieux, Ovechkin. if we can find a guy who can help protect our young stars & not be a liability at the same time, i think that'll help our team for sure. It'll be interesting to see how he does.