In The Buff

Hey thats cool. Sounds pretty much like an honest answer. With such a pivotal moment in the game & in the series, you can't blame the guy for what happened. It's more on the ref's for not enforcing the league rule at the time. And yeah i imagine its like this with every player, where 1 on 1 they show you one side of themselves, & then when they get on TV sometimes its something else. There's been a few times I've been downtown here at the bars/clubs & i've run into players having drinks & they've been for the most part really cool about interacting with fans. Andrew Peters while not a big star was one of those players who would buy you drinks like it was nothing. I remember one time half the Boston Bruins were at a bar on Elmwood, i think it was called Oasis. Its since now closed but they were practically the only people in the bar. At 1st i kinda felt bad for them since it looked kinda sad. I talked to a few of them, was gonna suggest a better place for them to go to, but then i remembered they were the Bruins so i couldnt care less & left them there. I hate the Bruins lol.

Thats cool... always neat runnin into famous athletes like that. Many years ago my Aunt owned a greeting card store on Harlem Rd called The Card Factory. Cornelius Bennett & Bruce Smith used to go there often whenever they needed greeting cards. I was maybe 8 or 9 years old at the time, but I was awestruck at Bruce. The guy was so big he might've even had to duck down his head just to get thru the front door. There was no denying he was a football player thats for sure. But personally if it was after that No Goal travesty & I had run into Brett Hull, i mightve been so inclined to bump into him or something lol. Even now he's a bit of a prick when he discusses the Sabres, at least whenever i've watched him. It's like he enjoys twisting that knife a bit where that goal was concerned. To the winners go the spoils i suppose lol. But no denying he was one helluva hockey player & prior to that series i was a big fan of him growing up.

There's some nice houses / condos over there. I know its a popular location for a lot of Sabres players. I used to run into Derek Roy all the time at the Tops on Niagara St. I never got over how tiny that guy looked in person. But it makes sense that he'd like to live close to the arena. I just hope that's his reasoning & its not to just get closer to Chippewa lol

True enough but we didn't get rid of Jack, we got rid of ROR. I find it kind of frustrating hearing the same stuff over & over again about that ROR trade on how much we're gonna miss him. Thats why i said that. I think people miss the bigger picture. 1 player doesn't make a team. A team makes a team & we desperately needed to improve our depth overall, increase our even strength scoring & change the culture. Who on our team at that point could we have dealt to make that happen? ROR was the guy. Now some people will say well if we would've gotten Robert Thomas or kostin they wouldve evaulated it differently. Yeah & i wouldve liked if we couldve gotten Connor McDavid. Sometimes a GM has to take what he can get if you wanna get something done. But with a lack of great options ROR was the piece we moved. And who knows, maybe our GM knows more than we do & sees Thompson as a good fit for what they want to do. Yes ROR on a good team can be an excellent addition. But him on a bad team as we saw last year, he wasnt gonna make or break us whether he was here or not. I think we improved overall with the trade, even if we didn't receive 1 player that was equal to him. We were that bad of a team last year with players who didn't belong.

I dont think there is any reason for us to not expect Housley will try all sorts of line combinations. In training camp & preseason & thruout the regular season. They'll roll with whatever combinations provide the most energy & scoring. I do expect to see Mittlestadt starting the season on the 3rd line, perhaps sometime on the 2nd line. But theyve already said they want to put the new guys in a position to succeed. So youre gonna have to shelter the newbies until they get acclimated to the system & team. And i've said this before, but i don't think we're gonna miss ROR as much as many claim. We didnt exactly do that great when he was here lol. And our bottom 6 was horrible last year. With better depth we'll have better balance on the lines & can roll 4 lines consistently thru the 1st 40 minutes of each game. I just wish the season were here already

it really is too early to tell but its the offseason so we ask these questions. But we really need to see how these guys play. If Thompson is a failure or if he becomes a success, then that obviously impacts grading the trade. Same goes with the players we get with the draft picks. Whether JBots trades them or selects players, we need to see what becomes of them before we can truly grade the trade. Come December we'll have a better idea of where we are. But I voted #3, we have better depth & talent in the pipeline. I dont see how people can be overly critical of the moves JBotts made. He inherited crap. Its hard to turn crap into gold. Getting rid of the Pu should help turn our team into a Skinner

I know Caseys performance this year is a big question mark, but in his short stint last year he got like what, 5 points in 6 games? With another year under his belt & with how hard he's been working to get ready, I'm pretty confident he'll be okay. Im not as worried about it as some of you are. I'm more afraid of him getting hurt, since we don't really have that enforcer type of player on our roster to help protect him

Is Sheary gonna quit? Skinner? Sobotka, Berglund? Dahlin, Eichel, Reinhart? I could keep naming names but the point is that we've replaced 40% of the roster. I 100% believe & expect to see a much different team this season. We may be a bubble team, or we may be worse. But the team as a whole will play & look a lot differently than what we've seen last year. The added speed, the improved even strength scoring with a better power play, better defense & hopefully better goaltending. You can make strong arguments for all of that. And i have to think that the players who have been here thru the worst of it... they gotta be motivated as hell to not look like last years team.

I dont know, i think sometimes we as fans tend to think we're more talented or better than whats really there. Maybe its the emotional aspect to being a fan where you try to be optimistic. But truth is we were the last placed team for a reason. Yes we had potential talent, & some players who are truly skilled, but we also had quite a few players that didn't belong on an NHL team. Combine that with a new coach & system & with crappy goal tending & you're gonna have some problems. This year however it really looks like JBotts has set this team up to be competitive again. I would say its safe to expect us to be a bubble team this year. IF & a BIG IF, we get solid goal tending between the pipes. A good goalie can make everyone around him better, whereas a Lehner can break your heart haha. If Hutton can give us 50 games & play as his numbers were last year, we have a shot imo. But I for one think Housley should get some more time. He's a 1st time head coach with essentially a brand new team this year. And he's had success before & is a HOF'er. We can't keep switching coaches every couple years. Only way I'd support it is if we mirror last seasons record & theres a better option out there.

I couldn't resist going on their board to say thanks haha

To be honest i'd rather not think about where our team would be today had we not drafted Dahlin. We've lived thru years of disappointing hockey... wondering what if we had this or that, hoping to get back into the playoffs. It's like thinking of where our team would be if we still had Ville Leino on the team. I'd just rather not go there haha. Interesting question & you're more than welcome to explore it. But all eyes forward for me, looking towards the future because our recent past has been brutal. The faster we break free from the doldrums of Sabres past the better imo. What a pleasant surprise today hearing Skinner's coming to town & thats nothing to Pu at ?

This deal is a win win for the Sabres. If he performs well & we re-sign him, BOOM we have a speedy top 6 winger locked in with our core. If he performs well & we don't re-sign him, BOOM his higher scoring totals benefiting from being on Jacks line should give us a nice asset come the trade deadline. I like it!

We can only hope Cheek... we can only hope haha.. I think Casey & Dahlin are pretty much locks to be good. If we hit on a couple of our other prospects & get some solid goaltending we'll be alright. Goaltending is probably my biggest worry atm. We know all too well how big of an impact a great goalie can have on a teams success. Or how much a mediocre goalie can shine a light on a teams deficiencies. I do like that we have Ukko in the pipe tho. If only Hasek's grew on trees

I came across this article today from the Sporting News about the top farm systems in the league. I expected our Sabres to be in the top half of the rankings but I wasn't expecting this. Here's the article in case any of you would like to read it: http://www.sportingnews.com/us/nhl/news/nhl-top-prospects-best-worst-farm-system-draft-history-sabres-flyers-canucks-penguins/tn8fb6mqnial16bxvtds5dacu

I'd love to see Nylander on the top 2 lines. Potential-wise i think he could be a good playmaker, but its hard to vote for him because he hasnt exactly shown us he can handle being a winger on the top 2 lines, so I didn't. His AHL performance has been less than desired. The kid is still young tho & adjusting... for some players it just takes longer.

To be honest i don't think we can fully evaluate this trade until the draft picks we acquired have been selected & we know who they are as players. Obviously thats years away but if one of those players down the road turns into the next O'Reilly then that'll change the overall balance of this trade for sure. I also think our team was such crap last year that getting 2 bonafide NHL caliber players back, in addition to Tage was worth it, even if we didn't get a player back as valued as ROR. We were the last placed team for a reason, & that was with ROR. I hear what you're saying but bigger picture, i do believe we've improved as a team with this trade.

I know we all like to poke fun at the infusion of Swedes into our lineup, but I for one view this as a positive. If we can get a leg up on other teams & have an advantage into a foreign talent pool then by all means, i think that's good news. Just because we hired a Swedish scout, it doesn't mean we're going to ignore the rest of the world. The way i see it, the more scouts we have, the better.... for awhile there, it appeared as if we didn't have any scouts lol

Well looks like this years semi-annual event: 'What about adding Bruce Orpik' has finally been brought to a close, after the Capitals brought him back for 1 year at $1 Million. Stay tuned for next off-season when Matt Bove throws his name out there all over again. ?

I know someone mentioned how the News mentioned that we should go after Orpik. While I wouldn't be against it, i think its kinda funny that every few years he's a name that's mentioned around here. Stempniak is another name ive seen over & over the past decade, Ian Cole as well. It just wouldnt be a typical offseason without bringing those names up. At least we've gotten off the Matt Duchene train. As much as i know we have a need to improve, I just don't see JBots doing anything drastic at this point. Maybe, just maybe we'll package a draft pick & a player out for someone else, but it really looks like JBots has a plan to build from within with some veterans sprinkled in as depth signings or mentors. I'm in the camp of i don't really expect that much. I really don't want JBots to make a move just to make a move. Most of the times we've done that it hasn't worked out.

You guys are funny haha. I suppose at this point theres a lot of that misery loves company attitude with this team. Having endured years of poor play from both the Bills & Sabres, its like we all need one big group hug... or alcohol, maybe both! I'll tell ya what though. If we do suck this year, at least we'll suck differently than last year. We'll suck in different ways & that in itself is reason for optimism! Because man, last year was brutal. For the 1st time in my life I found myself unable to watch our games. NHL.com's twitter feed would have links of condensed games. They'd squeeze a whole game into 7 or 8 minutes, only showing a play of substance, so i would just watch them that way. I found keeping track of the team that way was less painful. Hopefully this year our compete level will be higher & our fundamentals will be more sound. With the additions we've made this offseason thats pretty much what i'm looking for, even if we still suck in the standings. I still see this season as the glass is half full. I like where this team is headed, even if its gonna take a few more years to truly get there.

I don't remember the deal specifically for the draft, but I remember hearing he put a package together for a trade with Columbus to get Nash, but that he had a no trade clause & Buffalo wasn't a team he wanted to come to. I don't know for 100% if this was true but it came from sources online, for what thats worth haha.

In the past 10 years, no team has traded out of the top 5 spots. But back in 2002, 2003 the Hurricanes traded their #1 selection both years, both for the #3 selection. The odds are obviously it wouldnt happen. But say the Sabres start out with the #5 pick. Take that & package it with our other picks and i dont know, maybe it becomes a possibility? Just fyi, heres the source paragraph of the Canes trading out of the #1 spot if any of you are curious to learn about it. I myself didnt remember until i googled it. The Florida Panthers traded the #1 overall selection two straight years, in 2002 and 2003, both times getting the #3 overall selection. In 2002, knowing that the #1 guy on their draft board (Jay Bouwmeester) would be available at #3, they swapped picks with Columbus, who chose Rick Nash #1 overall. In exchange, the Panthers got the #3 pick and the option to swap picks with Columbus in the 2003 draft. They won the draft lottery again in 2003, so they didn’t need to swap picks with Columbus, but they still moved down to #3 to select Nathan Horton, who was #1 on their board, and sent the pick along with a third rounder to Pittsburgh for the #3, Mikael Samuelsson, and a second round pick. Pittsburgh would select goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury. In both cases for Florida, the player that was at the top of their draft board was still going to be available with the pick they traded to, so the risk for them “trading down” was minimal.

I've heard next years draft is supposedly pretty deep, so using the picks & stocking up on talent should be the better long term strategy imo. However I'm curious as to the chances of us trading all 3 1st round picks to move up to the #1 spot to get Hughes. Do you A. think that move would be worth it? Getting another one of those 'generational talents' who can jump in right away & be productive? And B. if we're not drafting 1st overall to begin with, do you think the team up top would be willing to trade down with us for 3 of those picks? I highly doubt JBots would do this, however if I were a GM i'd rather have 1 Connor McDavid than 3 possible Nylanders. The NHL Draft is a crapshoot, i'd rather go for the sure thing if i could. Just curious what some of you think about this scenario

Yeah i guess that true. And that makes sense given the talented D we had.... some sarcasm there lol. For McNabb's sake, i'm sure he's happy he got his shot for a team that went to the Cup, logging 20 some odd minutes a game & playing some solid hockey for them. I guess ive focused on it because that kind of play is what we've needed here desperately. Hindsight is 20 20 i guess.

Guess i can't blame him if that was his reasoning. I just hope he doesn't end up being another player that couldve potentially helped our team that got away. Watching Vegas's run this year was something special, but seeing Brayden McNabb have the success he had, all the while our defense was horrendous, left a bad taste in my mouth because he very easily couldve been helping our defense out. Our new philosophy of player development thru our farm system is the right way to go. But when those players bolt for other teams, its hard not to be cynical & think we're the farm team for the rest of the league. All said i am fully on board with our rebuild & direction & see bright days ahead. But its going to take a vast improvement on our defense this year for me to forget us trading McNabb for Fasching & Deslaurier.