Randall Flagg

Which feeds into your belief that he can break Gretzky's record, right? That stuff can further deteriorate but he'll still be able to beat goalies clean

Psh I beat that thread by 2 hours

Carry on with the suckage as I wish? I was one of the first ones to point out that Jason has a questionable eye for forward talent, and worrisome team-building abilities. I've nailed the offseason projections of what our team has been capable of in the standings both last year, and through 53 games this year, within a window as small as 4 points. And I've been plenty pissed off about it - only I get most pissed off when it's sunny out and people are more likely to object, because changes can still be made then, versus when things are predictably circling the train and everyone else is mad - it's way easier to be mad about "suckage" now. Montour himself has almost surely said worse things than what Kadri said, about a player's MOTHER, and me not buying that your loose collection of bullet points underlies something that I predicted/saw better than most since the ROR trade (that the team and GM are bad at hockey and making hockey teams), at times in the face of intense opposition, does not mean that I want the team to keep sucking

The story that your loose collection of bullet points purports to tell

I dunno, I generally have a large amount of ignorance on this subject. For instance - I force myself to believe that Usain Bolt has never done any drugs

Talk about reaching to fabricate a story.

After scoring 14 goals in his last 7 games, with 3 hat tricks in the last 6 comprising 9 of those goals, Ovechkin has hit 40 goals on the season, in 53 games.

Anyone catch Craig Button laying into the Sabres today? https://www.tsn.ca/sam-reinhart-calls-out-buffalo-sabres-gm-botterill-admits-owners-are-frustrated-1.1438078

Me n the boys chirp each others' memes harder than Kadri chirped Montour here

Colorado Avalanche 2016-2017 Record: 22 - 56 - 4, 48 points Goals: 165 Goals Against: 276 ( - 111) Landeskog (18G, 33 PTS) - MacKinnon (15G, 53 PTS) - Rantanen (20G, 38 PTS) Comeau (8G, 20 PTS) - Duchene (18G, 41 PTS) - Bourque (12G, 18 PTS) Iginla (8G, 18 PTS) - Grigorenko (10 G, 23 PTS) - Andrighetto (5G, 16 PTS) Nieto (7, 11) - Soderberg (6, 14) - Martinsen (3, 7) Others: John Mitchell (65 games, 3 goals, 7 points) JT Compher (21 games, 3 goals 5 points) Jost (6 games, 1 goal, 1 pioint) McLeod (28 games, 1 goal, 0 points) Beauchemin (36 years old, 13 points in 81 games) - Johnson (17 points in 46 games) Tyutin (13 points in 69 games) - Barrie (38 points in 74 games) Zadorov - Barberio Goloubef, Gelinas, Wiercioch as other defensemen to skate significant minutes Goalies: Top prospects: Mikko Rantanen, Tyson Jost, JT Compher, Calvin Pickard, Nicolas Meloche, Chris Bigras, Rocco Grimaldi, Andrei Mironov, AJ Greer Buffalo Sabres 2017-2018 Record: 25-45-12, 62 points Goals: 195 Goals against: 278 (-83) Evander Kane (20 G, 40 PTS) - Jack Eichel (25 G, 64 PTS) - Sam Reinhart (25 G, 50 PTS) Jason Pominville ( 13 G, 34 PTS) - ROR (24 G, 61 PTS) - Kyle Okposo (15 G, 44 PTS) Benoit Pouliot (13 G, 19 PTS) - Johan Larsson (4G, 17 PTS) - Evan Rodrigues (7G, 25 PTS) Zemgus (7, 15) -Wilson (6, 14) - Nolan (4, 8 ) Others: Baptiste (33 games, 4 goals, 6 pts) Bailey (12, 3, 4) Josefson (39, 2, 4) Griffith (21, 2, 3) Scandella (22 points in 82 games) - Ristolainen (41 in 73) McCabe (12 in 53) - Antipin (10 in 47) Beaulieu (9 in 59) - Nelson (8 in 37) Guhle, Falk, Gorges, Bogosian also played. Top prospects: Casey Mittelstadt, Victor Olofsson, Alex Nylander, Brendan Guhle, Rasmus Asplund, Cliff Pu, UPL, BBF After the season listed, Colorado made the playoffs and lost in the first round. Then the year after, they made the playoffs and won a round. We had last year, and then this year, for comparison. I don't think it's a stretch to say that these franchises were, within a season, in very similar circumstances, with the same GMs they have now. I think it's quite clear that Jason just did a bad job trying to fix a bad team

I just read on tweeter that the Avalanche have 20 million dollars of cap space, while we have roughly 22 thousand dollars of cap space.

I mean, that wasn't one trash talking dagger in a season full of compliments and "hey bud"s. We just happened to hear this one. Chances are, several players on every team and our team say stuff like this, and worse stuff, every single time they're on the ice.

1.) The Bills stretch went on longer than this one, but this one is worse in quality than the Bills' stretch so far. The Sabres are dead last in the league in wins if you add up the last ten years!! (I am not doing the work on the first few years of the drought, but they were 8th worst from 2007-2016) 2.) What will truly fix this mess is relatively easy to find, in principle. This roster was never going to be capable of more points than around what they're pacing for now - so build a roster that is capable of more points! It's not that hard, since at least 2/3rds of the league can do it better than us any given year, so find a GM that can do that, so we can finally kickstart the process of growing, learning, developing into serious cup contenders.

Given the effect that the team-wide collapse had on EVERYONE'S stats for a long period of time last season, I wouldn't be surprised if it gets worse before it gets better TBH. Like, ending the season with 15 goals and his contract being the butt end of jokes and snide comments all offseason. But in general, I think that when we have a properly built team that is playing relatively strong hockey throughout the entire season down the line, and making the playoffs, he will be a lot of fun more often than not, and will always have the potential to go on a Conn Smythe-type run because of his capability of absolutely piling up goals, even clutch ones (how many of those comeback and OT wins early last year did he play a role in? All of them?) Like, the only way I can see us hitting a point with Skinner like "Jesus Christ, this thing is an abomination and severely hampering our ability to do anything" is if this organization torpedoes even further in a way that also has nothing to do with Jeff I'm also tired of arguing so I will stop being picky and annoying when you criticize Jeff, who certainly deserves it at some level at this point.

I don't think Tampa would be interested in Reinhart given that his cap hit is about to go up pretty significantly. I'd try seeing if they were interested in an ELC guy like Mitts or Cozens or Dahlin ?

A few weeks ago I gave you examples of several elite goal scorers and chunks of games that are ~6 weeks in length where their numbers are severely depressed. Like Jeff, who spent 20 games this year at a 40 goal pace and 60 games last year at a 50 goal pace, they also have good stretches of goal scoring. He does this, and it's more severe in his time with the Sabres than it is for most players, in both directions. I don't know what else to say other than the fact that it's not surprising for a goal scorer to ride the waves like this, especially a player who's pretty obviously not in the tier of Ovechkin and Matthews, and not playing with the level and type of players that Pastrnak does, even accounting for his time with Eichel. Again, that doesn't mean I think this CURRENT stretch is acceptable, because it's materially worse than his cold goal scoring stretch of last season, when he was still effectively generating a lot of chances and therefore keeping the puck away from the other team, versus now, when he's really just hurting the team, but still. Before he ever got to Buffalo, he has had the following sample of separate cold stretches in Carolina: 6 goals in 39 games (which includes 3 in 23) 4 goals in 22 games 2 goals in 20 games 2 goals in 18 games 0 goals in 18 games 3 goals in 19 games 3 goals in 19 games I guess I'm just not as surprised by the two bad stretches of production he's gone through as a Sabre? 1 goal in 22 games (with that injury that had him hobbling around, before which he was pacing for 51), 0 goals in 15 games. It sucks that they're so close together temporally but other than that they fit in with the information I had already processed about the player that Skinner is

Skinner will be fine for most of the contract. It'll always be too big, but it won't cripple the team. That we're melting down because he didn't do anything else for this team doesn't mean that it would have been acceptable to let a 40 goal guy walk and leave us with an organization of Sheary - Eichel - Reinhart Olofsson - Johansson - Lazar Vesey - Rodrigues - Asplund Girgensons - Larsson - Okposo Mitts, Tage, Cozens, and that's it

Woof

Nobody thinks it's okay, they just don't expect his contract's suggested level of production if he's not with Eichel. He's obviously performing below where he should even without Eichel right now. He will do this many more times throughout his career, too, though hopefully not for this long, just because he's an NHL goal scorer and those guys regularly have down stretches of ~15 games, and he doesn't bring a lot to the table outside of his goal scoring. But anyone coulda told you that before we traded for him so it's not high on the list of things people are really mad about

People don't need coronavirus to not care about this impeachment haha, they'd do that on their own Everyone knew it was coming the second the Mueller thing fell through and didn't remove the man from office, it was obviously next up on the checklist of things to try The idea that coronavirus is a government distraction because they're scared of people paying attention to impeachment is pretty entertaining to be honest

To be fair, I couldn't think of a less compelling topic than this impeachment New diseases are interesting and sobering in their potential implications

Right? I hear all of our coaches and GMs talking about how we're building a lightning fast team with fast wingers who can score at ES. I was excited before I realized this meant "speedsters" that can't outskate anyone in today's NHL Already having nightmares that part of the 'needed turnover' this offseason will be letting Z & Larry go under the guise that we all need to move on from each other and that it'll be easy/trivial to replace their impact, and then signing Josefson-level 4th liners that get cratered and thus only get used 6 minutes per game, back where we were with our 2013-2017 fourth lines

I truly believe that people would have melted down, especially considering how the rest of the offseason played out in terms of our ability to acquire good offensive pieces. Losing Skinner without gaining assets wouldn't have helped that even a little bit. It probably would have forced a desperate Botterill into losing a trade for a top six forward badly. I for sure would have melted down.

I'm more focused on comparing their roster, cupboard, and record in 16-17, to ours in 17-18. Edit: Must have had a stroke while writing that

No team is ever entirely the same, for sure. The team that Jason inherited, in competent hands, would look a lot more like Colorado did tonight than we did. Crazy things can happen in three full off seasons.