LaFontaineToMogilny

I think he would be lucky (very lucky) if he got half that. Maybe in Sweden someone would pay him close to half a million dollars a year, but I doubt it.

Pretty exciting to see the German breakthrough this year. For a couple of years Spain has ruled the world with their extreme possession soccer, but the Germans have found the counter. Aggressive pressure on the ball a little higher up the field, pull midfield back to defend swiftly if the press is broken and break on possession based teams with precision and speed. As much as I love watching Messi play it was great to see such great use of counter-tactics. I can't wait to see how this will play out in the World Cup.

That doesn't make any sense, if he's not good enough for the AHL, who is going to want him in the KHL which is a much higher level league? If he's going to Europe he should probably go to Germany or Switzerland. He would probably rather retire I suspect.

From the IIHF power rankings after the games on May 5th: 14. LATVIA Can't stop 20 Americans with one Rochester American 15. AUSTRIA Clone Vanek before it's too late Darcy, are you listening?

Denmark with the best jersey sponsors of the World Championships:

He didn't play today, so maybe I have it wrong and he won't be added to the roster. A mistake by Ted Nolan ...

PP goal by Ehrhoff today against Finnland (4-3 loss) Assist for Sekera in Slovakia's 6-2 win over France Vanek and Zemgus plays tomorrow.

That is Miroslav Satan

Just suspended two games for elbowing Dustin Brown shows he has learned his lesson with this 'hockey play' against the Blues;

I am hyped about Zemgus. Studding it up in the AHL playoffs, and now another great opportunity to grow in the WC. With a season of suffering ahead I hope they give him a crack at the NHL next season.

I see them both as Gerbe and Sulzer type players. Does what they are asked to do well, works hard, feel good stories, but not good enough for what I want the Sabres to be picking up and I am longing for the day when neither has a sniff at cracking a Sabres lineup. We need to inject high end talent, not cycle low line pieces.

I don't hate on the Bruins for the Lucic thing, it's done with as far as I am concerned. My hate for Boston runs deep and across many sports. Outside of hockey, I don't mind Toronto at all.

It's so weird to be rooting for the Maple Leafs... I hope they both eliminate each other in 8 games.

Jonathan Quick is one of the worst puck handling goalies in the league. He should never, ever leave his crease.

If the Sabres are set up to run huge deficits that are covered by Terry each year (as they are now) those deficits don't disappear over night. A new owner would still be on the hook for all those 8 year, 8 million contracts. The lease with the city for the arena is still in place, he has tons of staff hired, expenses out the yazoo, not enough revenue. If he wants to not lose 20 million dollars a year (assuming that's where Pegula decided to take the Sabres) revenue must come up, expenses must go down. To get the money for revenue sharing the new owner might have to increase ticket prices by 20% for example. Not a good spot for the team to find a buyer. If you want a real life example, look at the issues trying to find stable ownership for the Coyotes. Contrast that to buying the Sabres that are running at or near the break even point and you can easily see why it would be better for the Sabres to not lean on Pegulas wealth too heavily. For one thing, showing that the team can run at a profit in Buffalo would make it much more difficult to make a case for the next owners to move the team. It might not seem like it matters with a super rich owner right now, but for the Sabres to stay long term in a market the size of Buffalo they will probably have to scrap for every single dollar of revenue that they can. I am happy that current management realize this.

No need to pick #1 overall, or #2 for that matter. That will cost way to much and the real gem is projected to go 4th overall anyway. If I were Darcy I'd talk to Nashville and Tampa, and see what they would need to swap picks. Nashville needs scorers so perhaps they'd be reluctant to give up the Drouin pipe dream, but Tampa might be willing to do something I guess (at least Andrew Peters says so, so probably not) So, the comparisons I see go like this: Seth Jones - Chris Pronger Nathan McKinnon - Sidney Crosby Jonathan Drouin - Martin St. Louis Alexander Barkov - Peter Forsberg Yes dude! Yes! If the Sabres end up with Barkov, I shall be quite pleased.

The players are responsible for their own conditioning and work ethic in season and off season, I just think it's strange that the Sabres have not had much more rigorous demands of their players physical conditioning and work ethic basically. There should have been a culture in place a long time ago that if you show up for training camp out of shape or don't push yourself and the team, you are automatically assigned to Rochester or other more severe consequences. The more of the inside info that sort of trickles out, the more it seems like the Sabres have built a complacent culture where players get along great, coaches and ownership have a great relationship and players are allowed to get comfortable and get away with doing 'just enough'. I think something like that has a lot to do with how long Ruff was here, but it's something the entire team should have caught onto. Darcy should have seen it a long time ago and made the moves needed to have players in place that are hungry to compete. For example: Pominville said that it was nice to get to a group that was committed to winning. ????!!!!???? Who was the captain of that group you left that apparently wasn't committed to win? Not enough players (if any at all?) that would drive the group to commit to winning. It can only lead to failure.

Not that this is directly comparable, but here is a real life example of what could happen if a sports franchise ignores it's financial foundation and relies completely on the wealth of it's owner. My favorite soccer team did just that, ran up a yearly defect of about $4 million that was covered by the owner who had green lighted every cent of spending and ok'ed the yearly spending and lack of revenue. This was great for about 10 years until one of his companies started to struggle and money became tight, he pulled all his cash out of the team which was left with a massive amount of debt and a huge commitment in salaries and wages, and no where near enough revenue to cover it. Management had built a structure that was unsustainable without massive amounts of money that was controlled directly by the owner. If you think missing the playoffs twice in a row is painful, try having your team go from contending for the championship to being completely wiped out, not as in relocated or rebuilding, but as in no longer exists, in two years. That hurts. I take Ted Blacks comments to be a safeguard against this kind of scenario. If the Sabres are run like a pet project rather than a business it will put the entire franchise in jeopardy down the road. And dismissing a legitimate income stream for the team just because you could is doing just that: not following solid business practices. Having seen what happens to a team that is built on unsound economics I was actually very relieved to hear what Black had to say about that part of his job.

Good stuff (finally) on the show this am. Biggest take away for me was that the team realizes that several of the young players are too complacent and need to work harder in the off season to show that they belong. Foligno and Myers, are you listening? I find it incredible that this has not been addressed by the team systematically a long time ago, but better late than never I guess.

Sabres got their eyes on Barkov?!? Make it happen!

In my opinion, this whole season hinged on a gamble, and that gamble did not pay off. In fact, it backfired spectacularly. The gamble was that we had found a great second line with Foligno, Ennis and Stafford. In reality Stafford had a historically poor year, Foligno looks like a possible bust and Ennis being the only one who has had a semi respectable year, albeit a steep drop of from what he showed at the end of the season before. If that line had been able to do what they did before the lockout, we would not be having this conversation, we would be talking about the upcoming playoff game tomorrow. The team (Darcy? Ruff?) gambled and lost and now the team is in a dangerous spot. So, it's not fair to say we went into the year with one center. It is disrespectful to players like Hecht and McCormick. In Elevens defence, he was one of the only ones who asked where Roy's production would be replaced when Ott came in, but not many others brought up that point. Back then the yell from the masses was that we needed to add grit, so most seemed perfectly ok with the setup. So, this whole line of reasoning basically boils down to get rid of Darcy because he thought Ennis would be a good center. He made a mistake, sure enough, but not nearly a mistake grave enough to fire him for. I am sure many others thought the FES line would have a much better year, I know I did.

It's possible for anyone. You are in Medicine Hat, AB. Be afraid

If these players are the ones we need to target is another question. I don't really care, what happens happens, but to say that they are not top tier talent makes me wonder. What exactly is top tier talent then, if these two highly rated prospects are not? And for these two players, I think they would become our two best prospects if they somehow landed here. nm. I see you've quantified top tier talent as 1st, 2nd or 3rd overall picks. I guess by that definition 4th and 5th overall picks don't cut it. As I suspected: really lofty standards.

I wonder what you consider a top tier talents. You must have some pretty lofty standards.

I also heard Ott on the Sabres Hotline and he says all the right things. Props up his lil' bro too. A good guy and I hope the team has the sense to bring him back long term. Most interesting thing to me is what Weber said a few days before, that the room has lost the sense of people being held accountable over the last few years. To me this sounds like Jason Pominville, great as he was, was not a good captain for this team. The last few years coincides with the time when he was handed the captaincy and paired with other comments about how He was not a vocal dressing room guy and Leino's comment about not everyone having to like each other paints a picture of dressing room where no one really owned the room and the captain was not the kind of personality to make it his room.