In The Buff

Do they really hate us? I figured they would just sleep right thru & not even realize we were there ? I went down to Raleigh in that great run of 2006 with 4 other friends of mine. Somewhere adjacent to the big parking lot is a big Stanley Cup we made, buried in the ground there. I haven't been back there since, but if we're ever in a series like that again with them, perhaps i'll make the trip down again to right my personal wrong haha. I'm with ya in hoping Skinner lights it up & often. I imagine he's gonna have a lot of emotions & I expect him to be flying all over the ice. With Jack being back & our secondary scoring seemingly improved, a win of 6-1 sounds good to me ? GO SABRES!

That'd be great, however its gonna take a helluva sweetener. My fear is that Seattle tries to go after Ulmark. We're gonna have to give them a good asset to protect the right players, yet alone getting rid of Okposos ghastly contract. Surely KO knows he hasnt lived up to his contract. If he was such a class guy, it'd be nice if he'd restructure his deal to give the team more flexibility to improve the roster. But of course that won't happen, KO is no Tom Brady

Some posts here are looking for just a 1 or 2 year rental so to speak that can push us over the edge. Others are looking for more of a longer term player. What we all share is that our GM should do something, while not veering off course for our long term plans. I think we could do it & I have faith in JBots that if a deal appears worthy he'll pull the trigger. I'm of the mindset that no season should be written off & if youre in striking distance of the playoffs you need to take advantage of it. Because theres no guarantees for future success ever. 1998-99 we made our Cup run. Most of us probably thought we had many more coming. Whenever you have a chance at being in the playoffs you gotta try to make the most of it imo. If we can get some scoring help that won't disrupt our long term plans I think you gotta go for it.

I hear ya. When the #2 goal scorer doesnt get to play in the All Star game, somethings wrong with the selection process. In my opinion its due to how the teams are split into 4 separate teams. Our division is stacked with great players where as it stands now, you cant really justify taking one of those players out for Skinner. But when you look at the other divisions team, you could easily find a spot for Skinner there. Some divisions just have a larger amount of better players than others. I think they should go back to the East vs West format personally. If that was the case I think Skinner gets in. I tweeted to the NHL last night the same idea, because as a fan what else can I do to bring that up to them? Dude belongs in the All Star game, period

Yeah its a shame how awfully quiet Sabres games are. Its like everyone's in a mausoleum & are afraid to make a sound. In years past with how dreadful our teams were, it kinda made sense. Perhaps if our team keeps winning people will have more to cheer about? I dont know. I do know from a dj's & music perspective, the tracks they play at the arena are a bit embarrassing at least to me. For instance cotton eyed joe shouldve stopped being played 20 years ago lol Perhaps the Sabres PR team could help promote crowd noise more. By making a public push to create more fan noise. Maybe even making some contest for a cheap Sabres related prize to the section that makes the most noise during the game? The big thing I guess is that the culture around here just needs to change & for that its gonna take a whole lot of winning & a bunch of time. A new arena wouldnt hurt either ?

Yep my take exactly. I've seen too many times where he'll have the puck along the boards in the offensive zone, only to skate back towards the blue line to cough the puck up, leading to a breakout the opposite way. He either tries to do too much or simply can't stickhandle like he'd like to. I think he'd be much more effective just bringing the puck down low & working the puck from there. Or imo, simply not play at all. With CJ Smith being recalled & the news of KO being demoted, I'm relieved that HCPH appears to finally be doing something to address this.

thanks Marty Biron for answering my question lol

They've mentioned a couple times of the travel time perhaps affecting their play tonight. If we've been off the past few days why wouldn't they get to St Louis yesterday instead? It's not like they had to play a game the night before. Oh well crappy game. Thanks for the support Sabrespace ?

The goals would be nice, but at $8.5 million & the ever present threat of him crashing into a Tim Hortons? Idk. I'd rather we get someone else to score 15 goals

I'd like to see Elie skate over to ROR & punch him in the face. It'd be the most useful thing he's done all game

man the passing & puck control has been atrocious tonight. Not very clean at all

Still gotta think JBots brings in another forward to help with the secondary scoring before the deadline if we're still in the hunt for a playoff berth. I know its been mentioned in other threads but its a glaring need for one. But with Berglunds departure idk how he can't make a move if we're close to making the post season. Would love to win this game however. Good teams find ways to beat worse teams. We need to put games like this in the bag

Thats 1

call a timeout at the very least... maybe after the next goal

Sabres looking a bit jumpy in their back end tonight. Perhaps its that time off where they're not as tight

I imagine that if he did indeed want to play on the Sabres, he would've made that point clear at some point in this story, while offering another explanation. Our ownership team probably would've given him whatever time he needed for personal issues, had they felt he was 100% committed to being on this team. Thats why his silence on this issue leads one to believe part of the reason for all of this is that he doesn't want to be here. At least imo. But everything here is conjecture since we don't know really anything. At some point we'll know what happened im sure.

Sorry but I couldn't leave it at that. Dom never liked to lose. He absolutely hated it as most should remember. I remember seeing him sprint away after other tough losses as well, & he's not alone in that either. I think its safer to say he did so from being mad at the loss & or himself, than saying he'd sprint off from deliberately letting the other team score lol. I mean it was game 7 in overtime. It seemed like he played the angle wrong from sitting deeper in the net due to the oncoming rush & Kasparaitis shot just beat him. If that happened to me I wouldnt want to stand around watching the Pens celebrate. I'd get away from there as fast as possible too. Fans who claim anything different always rubbed me the wrong way on this. Its like ur thinking way too much into it. But i digress. I hope Berglund is alright but as for our Sabres this is the best that could happen to a bad situation.

i watch them online & in HD. Any sporting event on earth with a camera pointing at it. Tv shows & movies as well.

The Coyotes, another team thats been blessed by the genius of Darcy Regier. As long as our Sabres don't take the night off, I see 5-1 Buffalo tonight! Go Sabres!

The way i see it is he's taking a lot of shots just to throw it on net, as Reinhart, Pommi & skinner crash to the net. I don't see a lot of his shots on goal as legitimate attempts to score. More him just moving the puck towards the net in the hopes of a rebound or ricochet to one of our players for an easy goal. Just something i've noticed a lot the past 10 games.

Nor would teams want to get a tie in a game & end up with no points out of it. The only thing i could see as a solution would be to eliminate ties all together & have it be a continuous overtime until a winner is decided or have it be like now but with a shootout forever until someone wins.

I don't think theres any real way for any of us to know what goes on in private in talks between GM's. Any guesses are pure conjecture. One would think you'd target the other teams best players & work down from there & perhaps thats what JBots did. But we really have no idea what was discussed between the two of them. It is possible JBots liked what he saw & he valued Tage more so than Armstrong did & insisted on im coming over, but who knows. I do think its unlikely Tage was the 1st name Jbots brought up tho.

Yep, we just dont know, and we won't ever know.

Doug Armstrong the GM of the Blues said that we insisted on Tage being part of the deal. Many sources out there that use that term 'insisted'. But heres the 1st one i got from google: https://www.pjstar.com/sports/20180702/newly-acquired-tage-thompson-eager-to-settle-in-with-sabres And another one:https://www.sportsandotherthings.com/nhl/2018/7/2/ryan-oreilly-to-st-louis-is-another-step-in-the-wrong-direction-for-buffalo Obviously we don't know for 100% what JBots would've accepted or not. But all signs that i've seen point that Tage was a player they really wanted. I'm still hopeful that Tage will develop into a productive player. He's got great size & has a great shot. Just needs more refinement & playing time imo. If he's not gonna get ice time up here, i'd like to see him sent down to Rochester so he can get more reps there. Its funny though. That 2nd link i posted where they said the ROR trade was a wrong step for Buffalo... Looks like they were wrong & everyone else who said the sky was falling with that trade. ROR has been playing great for St Louis but we've been doing pretty good ourselves. I for one continue to see the trade as a win win for both clubs. #In JBots i trust 

Just think, a few days ago we were seeing threads on how long do we give JBots & Housley b4 we fire them. Now we're getting threads on handing out long term contract extensions. What a difference a couple wins make huh? Instead of throwing out a term for Skinner i'll simply say that if JBots believes he'll be an important part of our team moving forward, he'll put a solid offer out there & get er done. I'm sure Skinner playing great was the hope going into bringing him here & that an extension was something already considered. Hopefully this is just the beginning & that line turns it up even more.