Randall Flagg

It's definitely going to be Kyle Turris and his 6 million dollar cap hit through 2023-2024 (Full disclosure - he may have gotten better this year, he was just bad last year)

If Brady were to leave NE and win a SB, he would have more rings than any single individual NFL franchise. I bet he thinks about that a lot.

I am 100% for the Bills signing Brady and then benching him forever. It would make the Bills better by removing Brady from their slate of opponents this year (NE, TEN, LAC, LV - every team he's rumored to, we have to play). Brady doesn't remove our NE problem though. Sean and Brandon have not beaten the pats yet, and in the first 5 tries, Brady was pretty mediocre, throwing 3 TDs to 5 INTs. he was downright awful week 4 of this past season. We still lost. Then, Brady was good enough in week 16 that I'd still be happy to see him leave NE. I hope he does it just because i'm sick of the 20 year same-old same-old. Also, if Brady was on the roster and you ignored unquantifiable locker room fallout stuff, of course I'd start him over Josh Allen in a vacuum, I'm just joking around

Going to elaborate on my Olofsson frustration. It's not frustration with Olofsson himself - he is where he is, and is doing the best he can. I think all of our skaters did the best they could last night, which is why we outscored the Colorado Avalanche when play was even. We all know the limitations of this roster, and find new ways to rephrase them every single day here. We all know that, if we want good results over a month and a half of hockey, or longer, we need Eichel's line to be the best it can possibly be, and not only outscore its opponents by as much possible, but flip the ice enough to pass momentum off to other lines. Olofsson started the year struggling and pretty invisible playing with Jack 5v5. Ralph stuck with it, and he got hot for a stretch of a couple weeks. Since his return from injury, he's reverted back to previous form. If he keeps the play going, we're lucky. He's not contributing more than that though. If he doesn't, it's a turnover, or a missed chance. He's scored 7 goals all year while on the ice with Eichel at 5v5, in 48 games. That is the skill he's supposed to provide to the line. I'm okay with sacrificing a bit of the line's potential in order to develop Olofsson, but we've pretty obviously made organizational moves in the last week to establish the philosophy of playing a meaningful March. That means these games are important. The reality is, since Olofsson returned from injury, the only goals scored by the top line are an individual-effort breakaway from Sam, that had nothing to do with anyone else, and a seeing-eye point shot that goes in one time out of 200 from Montour. MacKinnon didn't score last night, but their line shows you why they're a good bet for at least a goal, often too, when healthy, any given night. They drive play in a way that creates and usually buries obscene chances. We have 48 games of our top line not doing this 5v5 to the extent that it is capable of when Olofsson isn't out there, even if he's replaced with a whipping boy like Vesey. I posted the stats elsewhere, but we're up to the line approaching 30% worse at scoring, 30% worse at allowing goals when Olofsson is on it versus when he isn't. It's manifesting itself in losses. The last two games, they've been shut out at ES. Olofsson lost pucks and missed a wide open net with a few minutes to go. I get it, and I'm not mad at him, and I think he's a helluva player. But that lost us the game, and subverts the organizational philosophy. Again, it doesn't need to be a game of maybe, woulda, coulda. It is in film and in the stats. He's been back for 6 games. The notable 5v5 plays he's been involved in are as follows: The open net miss last night, and a goal post against Toronto. The Sabres are stuck relying on crazy individual efforts like that from Sam, or fluke plays like the Montour goal, when their top line is on the ice 5v5 since Olofsson's return. Those things can go weeks without happening, and they aren't generating anything sustainable offensively otherwise, they're getting outshot and outchanced and outpossessed. This not only doesn't happen with underlying metrics, without Olofsson, but their actual goal scoring rapidly gets better. Unless Olofsson takes a massive step in development right this second, or gets moved off the top line, we are a typical scoring drought from lines 2-4 away from continuing to lose too often to get the meaningful March we'd like. Jack's goal scoring 5v5 has been wonderful this year, and has nothing to do with anyone else around him, and the goal creation from his passing has become more than 50% worse 5v5 compared to last season, when his RW was the same is this year, but his LW is different. He has 1 5v5 point since Olofsson has returned, and it was an end-to-end solo effort. I always say that you need to do everything you can to maximize your strengths if you want to win hockey games, winning hockey games is more important now than at any other time in the season, and 2+2=4 - when our sole strength is an offensively gifted 1C, we need to do the things that had him flourishing more than anything else this year, over the things in which he has qualitatively and quantitatively struggled by comparison. This isn't Olofsson hate, as I was perhaps his strongest bandwagoner this past summer, and he has even gone above my expectations. He should of course never be taken off of PP1, and I think he'll come to be an incredibly good 5v5 player. He can still make these developmental gains away from Jack - hell, give him Sam too if you want. It won't cripple him. It may even build his confidence and grow him even faster. But the checking assignment that Jack draws swallows him up and neuters our top line, and I can see it unfolding every shift, and it leaves its mark in every stat there is Also, if Compher actually succeeded in doing what he WANTED to do, getting a shot on goal on the spin-around, it would have not gone in and we perhaps would have survived the PP. Colorado got lucky that when it rolled off it stick, it was on a tee for Gabe.

Hoping the Johansson play behind the net only LOOKED like a penalty. Because I hate feeling like opportunities were stolen.

Olofsson

Never bought the idea that our individual players wouldn't be able to handle playoff hockey, thtough our roster issues. I know you didn't either. Cant wait to see a lot of these guys experiencing it for the first time.

Not a fan of Jeff on PP1

Skinner has to get to that loose puck

The MacK line with Makar is probably the GLO line's toughest matchup all season.

I don't think he likes playing center

We gave up assets for players, match lines with the same philosophy. We have a season of evidence of this. We need wins rigt now, and Olofsson being used in situations he can stay afloat and contribute will hardly stagnate his development. And itll be more likely to get us wins, which will give March the meaning you desire.

Zero percent of this anger is directed at Victor himself. He's not ready for this deployment and it's hurting the only weapon we have 5v5

Beyond exhausted of Eichel-Olofsson being a nonentity 5v5. Victor may as well be a ghost, the net effect on that line would be the same.

16-17. the amount of hockey skill they show is one of my prime sources of frustration

I'm not directly comparing drafting - I'm meaning to say that one little area that comprises a tiny percentage of McBean's body of work is more impressive than Jason's three year totality

Entertaining period.

I've said this before, but you could take rounds 3 through 7 of ONE of McBeane's drafts and find more evidence of competence and promise than in the entirety of the Sabres last three years, before you even get to the on field results and other things that have went well

Yes. But, we still have time to hope their new GM is an idiot, and I'm going to take advantage of that hope

Guess I'd better go to the gym this evening rather than tomorrow evening.

Eichel, Reinhart, and Olofsson are our offense. Kyle is the one that won the last game for us. GA, I don't see why you're saying that I'm celebrating TM. I'm obviously pointing out what a problem Jason's forwards have been for three years straight. Jason's middle six, that we ran with for a while before the trade deadline, is this: Skinner: 1 goal in 24 games Johansson: 1 goal in 19 games Sheary: 2 goals in 19 games Vesey: 3 goals in 14 games Lazar: 1 goal in 19 games Frolik: 1 goal in 17 games (it was an empty netter) Rodrigues played too, he had 5 in his last 13, but was a GMTM guy. Would rotate with Frolik and play when players are injured, which was a lot recently. These are our second and third lines, and have been when everyone is healthy for over a month now. It's what Jason put together. He liked this group. This is what I'm talking about, the fact that it's GMTM picks driving our offense isn't a celebration of him, it's pointing out what the problem with our team is

If we manage to snag a Tampa forward, whoever it is, I will be excited to watch Tampa games and learn more about them These guys don't have comparable trade values, and a first projected around 11th isn't enough to get either. I'd be willing to give up Cozens, the first, and one of the defensemen, and a prospect for Point and Mitts, the first, one of the defensemen for Cirelli This would be true for any first rounder outside of the top 2, and I'd still move it if it was top 2, but I'd ask for more from Tampa

It doesn't bother you remotely that three consecutive seasons of genuinely trying to improve forward depth still has Murray acquisitions driving all offense, while the team is the single worst team in the NHL quantitatively and qualitatively at generating consistent significant scoring chances? His eye for depth forwards is legitimately the worst I've ever seen from an NHL GM, and his only two very good trades came in the midst of getting pushed around by other GMs in other moves, like when he paid Pittsburgh to take their junk and also accepted a clause that their pick in return would be upgraded if we found a way to clear Matt Hunwick's cap the following offseason. He then put himself in an ROR-like situation with his first good trade, his back against the wall, resulting in a 72 million dollar contract for a winger that his abominable middle six setup has poised for something like a 15 goal, 25 point season. the Hunwick cap, the cap rollover we might get because of Frolik (another dandy of an acquisition, what an eye for low-event, sub-replacement level forward talent this guy has), causing trouble even though we completely lucked out on more cap junk when Berglund, his locker-room fix, quit on the team, and with Bogosian refusing to report. Trading the first pick in the sixth round for a guaranteed-worse sixth rounder the following draft, when not ten minutes later Detroit traded a 6th round pick for a FIFTH rounder next year. An objectively mediocre prospect pool to boot, three years later, hopefully returning to a standings finish that got his predecessor fired, for the FIRST time in his tenure, after three years. One NHL center under contract for next season, and only two NHL centers in the organization today. Sitting on the roster imbalance we've been commenting on since May, which materially hurt players at each level of the organization, with D playing forward in Rochester, and legit defensemen riding the bench night after night up here while all of Frolik, Lazar, Vesey, Sheary, Rodrigues etc. got middle six playing time. None of this touching what might have been the single worst UFA class in franchise history, in the summer of 2017, which set up the environment for the unbelievable (and left-to-fester-for-an-unfathomably-long-time) season that was 2017-18. The dude might fix it, but he has been a clownshow for three years in the meantime, creating three years of avoidable, unneccesary garbage

Friedman did not get a whiff of Buffalo making a pitch for Trocheck. But leaves open the possibility that they were an unknown team 11. The move that surprised most was Florida’s trade of Vincent Trocheck. I heard when teams queried the Panthers about it, they asked what was wrong that made him available? Arizona, Calgary and Minnesota were among those who made pitches.

with his 100% offensive zone usage hehe you could take everything we've said about Mitts to date and replace it with the name Tyson Jost and we'd probably feel a lot less excited about it in that context