Randall Flagg

Thought Cozens was pretty impressive. That wasn't what it looked like when Luke Adam or Mikhail Grigorenko or Casey Mittelstadt had to step in between wingers like that (and the matchups they draw) for a full game. More than once, with wingers vacating the zone despite a Philly forecheck, this guy came all the way down BELOW the goal line to help his defender out. Dylan Cozens, the pressure release valve. And the line produced 2 ES goals. Very nice performance for a kid who has played less than 20 NHL games. He really does do the little things, and his speed is such a sight for tired eyes. Seems to me like Philly was being coached about our board work tendencies. They always had a guy between the board battle going on and the point man ready to pick anything off. To the Sabres' credit, they took advantage of the space this opened up underneath, and got more unique looks from juicy areas than we've seen in probably 7 weeks. I have no interest in getting rid of Reinhart and a lot of interest in signing him. Jokiharju with his best game in a while I thought. Dahlin is severely broken. I worry about his value as an asset, both on the ice and in the offseason. Is he ever gonna learn how to defend? Bryson is entertaining as hell, and will make watching games this year so much easier. The added bonus to this is that it keeps bad defenders on the bench and allows him to continue to develop - you can see his game and his confidence growing by the day. I know it was just a 4th line, but we have nothing in our bottom six that is remotely capable of what the LOG line was doing last year. PART of that is Zemgus being out, but a huge part of that is also Larry's absence. I skimmed through some offseason threads, and people were predictably dismissive of that, predictably assuming that anyone can do what they did off the bargain bin, probably better. (inexplicably, considering our non-LOG 4th line track record in the last decade). But it sure is fun watching a tank-level 4th line struggle through minutes hampering every single defense pair and every other forward line that now needs to try and slow momentum and get the puck back before trying to score, isn't it? We didn't have to create this, I always warned that this team was incapable of putting a 4th line together until LOG, and they showed us exactly why we shouldn't have taken that play for granted. What an abomination Rieder - Eakin - Okposo is. It's not in the top 4 reasons why we suck this year, but it's probably top ~6 and has non-negligible effects on the reasons above it. 14 ES minutes of opponents exhaustedly trying to follow the cycle each night, outscoring other teams' top lines by 8 goals (Larry was +8 in this usage) turned into like 10 minutes of 2013-14 hockey each night. Disappointing. There was no reason to do this for a team that gave Eakin a bigger contract for longer than what Larry signed for. The third line is still a mess (like whatever frankenstein combo we could muster between Veseys and Simmonds and Shearys last year) but we also threw a wrench in something that works just because we could. Go Sayberz

Brysonnnnn

Twice now Sheahan has caused real problems by passing backwards back into the zone to nobody.

Staal's jump today actually makes me angry

I thought Cozens looked to fit in with Eichel and Hall. Excited to see him run that line.

You are going way too deep into this haha. "Everyone who has mentioned trading Eichel you are about to see what that looks like. " All I'm saying is, no, we aren't, because everyone who mentions trading Eichel doesn't think that the 2021-22 team looks exactly the same as this one but sans Eichel. It would be a trade, not launching him to the moon and then refusing to do anything else all summer

The point I'm making is that ppl talking about Eichel trades are not thinking about going into the 2021-22 season with a center spine of Cozens and 4th liners, nobody thinks this will happen if an Eichel trade happens, and nobody wants it to happen, so today's game is not an indicator of our lineup should we trade eichel

I do agree that it seems likely that neck thing in the Islanders game caused this. What's interesting is the reaggravated phrasing

But what are his 3 other mystery injuries that people have whispered about, and why did he have lingering injury issues no one would say anything about each of the last couple years? We know that his injury to start training camp was from "training"

I mean this endearingly, but when I see him standing by Kim in public/at press conferences I picture an 8 year old accompanying his mom to work

Pure speculation, but given that jack is a gym freak, and knowing what his body looks like (and what he could clean when he was just 16 years old), I wonder if his gym routine is actually deteriorating him. The first two ankle sprains were flukes, but little stuff here and there since then seems to be increasing at an alarming rate Dude's been lifting big for a long time

Not really, people assume that we are either getting a good center back in the deal or will supplement the roster accordingly before playing again

More than a bit, if we are being honest. I like Terry, but man he seems, er, dumb

Breddy gud

What forum are some of these posters reading. You took him to court!

I definitely don't think Ralph would spend his free time creating one small fake account to defend himself every once in a while. I really believe it's Ralph's son, who didn't even think about the idea that someone would notice that it was him, because it doesn't really matter and he never said anything particularly revealing/problematic/whatever

Wonder if they just discovered a serious injury they've been allowing him to play on

That's my guess

Larry has just one fewer goal than Eichs, Hallsie, and Skins combined.

Sabres fans on twitter noticed a lone recurring Krueger supporter. Over a span of weeks he would periodically comment on the tweets of random members of Buffalo Media (and popular Sabres fan twitter accounts), in staunch defense of Ralph. Some of them looked into the account, and noticed that its user's name, Justin Gibbons, could be put together by the name of Ralph's son (Justin) and the hyphenated last name of Ralph's wife (Glenda Krueger-Gibbons). The account is about a month old, and before this blew up his only follower is what appears to be a fan group of a soccer team based in southampton, which is where Krueger was at his previous post (i'm not sure the exact nature of this group, whether it's the team itself following him, a fan group, or something else, but it is located in southampton). So some entity in southampton is aware of this Krueger-defending fan's existence, and decided to follow him on twitter. Some of the things this Krueger supporter has said include: "Stop being so negative and actually try to support the coach. It’s as difficult for him as it is for you. No one will coach better while being treated like this from the fans." "This is disgraceful. If fans actually put faith into the players and coaches and didn’t consistently berate them they would have more success." "There’s no point in firing him when the fault lies mostly on the players. If they came in with the right attitude and changed the locker room culture we would be a much better team. Krueger is not the problem." "The team is making progress in a lot of areas but we cannot put together a complete game. The intensity from Cozens was a great showing of characters. The mentality is starting to change for the young players. We are headed in the right direction." "Turning on the coach is doing nothing for the team. The culture of the team will never be right if the media, fans, coaches, and players do not have a mutual respect for each other. Everyone has the same goal in mind at the end of the day." "Blame has to be put on the players first and foremost, coaching has almost nothing to do with it. It’s not on the coach if you get shutout twice in a row." "The average fan has a difficult time seeing why Skinner is left on the bench, but at the end of the day it’s up to the coach and we have to put our trust in him." "The manager or coach cannot put one individual player above the system or team. No matter the situation the manager has to put out the players that gives the team the best chance to win." "The coaching staff as a whole is working really hard to put the players into positions to succeed. Once the players see positive progression, and consistently play with the right mindset, the results will follow." "The whole team is coming off an unprecedented time with the covid outbreak. It cannot be easy to play elite hockey after that. One year is not enough time, especially when communication is made difficult in the offseason. Once the team has its confidence back we will be better." These last two quotes were posted 3-4 weeks ago

This definitely doesn't seem like an account associated with a member of the Pegula family that would know anything

So it's supposed to be the Pegula dog. Slightly increases the chance that it could be a family member, running the dog's account. But tweets like this: "Anyone at Duff's to see if Boudreau is there?" read like a fan who doesn't know anything, not like a family member with inside info

It's definitely real, the question is, who is it? Justin Gibbons is not a name that you would connect to the organization on any level, his son's name is Justin, his wife's hyphenated last name includes Gibbons. The account is at least a month or so old, so it would be a fairly long-running and patient joke, if it were a joke. The jokester would have had to control himself, tweeting sporadically enough so as not to arouse suspicion, to have a fairly normal posting pattern. He also would have to trust that eventually his tweets would be read or noticed by someone who cares, without promoting them himself. It feels organic. Maybe it's just a random Ralph defender, but the name thing and follower connection really does read like it's Ralph's son not thinking that anyone would care enough to dig like this, since it's not that big of a deal even now that we may know

I'm not sure this is actually a Pegula, I think it's just a fan account, going through the timeline/media/bio. An incredibly cringe fan based on everything I see there tbh, very representative example of how twitter makes banal airheads believe they are unique, interesting, compelling