Randall Flagg

There is some nice puck control from Casey.

Do not like disk golf.

Lazar has cooled off a bit this preseason

So Kyle Connor is all that's left.

Kids are totally fine. And when you're ready to have them, and have them, they're a blessing. But man, floss cam at a hockey game is one of my personal hells I'm on record as saying the Sabres will not turn this thing around until they ditch the floss cam

That wasn't a smart play

Lol gotcha. I was confused, but then looked at what I said and you can actually come to the conclusion that I was implying it's easier to find space in the regular season and that was no good

You might have understood me completely, and so this clarification might be unnecessary, but I realized that my post isn't saying what I meant it to say. I agree with your diagnosis and there's going to be even less space for him when the real games start, so I think he's a goner as far as being an NHL player

Yeah...when you account for the fact that there's a huge difference in the amount of space available and the effort level of the opponent from preseason to the regular season, I can't imagine that he is going to look BETTER. And did they say what happened to Crosby?

Mitts has had a couple of frustratingly soft giveaways with the puck. Still waiting for signs of the dynamic ability that he is said to have. Everyone else is pretty good. I like Gilmour.

Really wanted us to sign Tanev

Let's get through one last game without injuries eh?

This has saved my ability to watch the games countless times. It's very easy to avoid hockey scores in Oklahoma, so I've missed games by as much as a couple days and was able to watch them without having any idea what happened. Same goes if you are a college student.

True. I think Jason and Chris Taylor each did an excellent job with his last calendar year, though.

Well I don't think Reinhart/Eichel/Dahlin's growth from year one to now is quite as large as the growth of Olofsson from 2014 to what I expect him to be this year. Which will be incorrect if he falls short of where I think he'll be, but I anticipate him being a very, very good NHLer this year

Yeah. Like I'm talking player growth from moment drafted to final product while in the "possession" of the organization. I don't mean to claim he's as good as those players listed.

I think Victor is the best hockey player to be developed by the organization since (at least) Jason Pominville.

I'd assume so. I still think Vlad is some sort of placeholder just based on his usage from Ralph all preseason long, though I wouldn't be surprised to see him get used on line 4 especially if Larsson stays hurt or whatever. To the rest of what you say, I hope Ralph sees that Larsson can also do that stuff at a higher level in the NHL right now, barring miracles I don't think we've seen any signs of yet.

It also says something (not as bad, but) different about his character that Dubas first found out via twitter when we did, months later.

I second this

Yes, even if the AHL isn't the RIGHT league for a specific player, it's never a place where players are going to be actively harmed in the way we're talking about Casey here - not driving the middle of the ice with the puck? The AHL was NOT inferior competition for a guy who couldn't crack PPG in college the year before. It wasn't inferior competition for Kyle Connor either, and he hit the NHL ground running. I cannot fathom believing that Casey was too good for the AHL given what we saw in the NHL and the year before in college. If we're in disagreement there, this conversation simply will not continue effectively. Why would his bad habits have continued down there? I don't think his "bad habits" were all that successful in college, given the stat line and the games we saw. Why would this have been true of the AHL in his 20 year old season? Apologies for coming off like I'm going off on Sabrespacers. *****'s going on IRL and I'm letting it seep in here and I shouldn't

This is impossible to quantify, but I saw some silly dekes this year and solid fundamentals last year as well. I can see that he's stronger, and a bit faster, so I'm hoping that puck protection can translate, but what I'm getting at is I hope we don't keep him up here if he's still not ready to be.

Why on earth is the AHL suddenly a league where bad habits are perpetuated? In EVERY other context with our prospects it gets described as a positive developmental tool, and this fact is often cited as one of Botterill's major accomplishments to this point. Is Chris Taylor a moron who would have nothing to say about turning Casey into an NHLer, quietly ignoring any requests from Jason or developmental staff in dissecting Casey's game? Why on EARTH did we let Olofsson spend all year down there then, when he had showed at the end just how good he already was? Especially for guys with underwhelming college seasons the year before, who did very badly in the NHL. That is simply shoehorning the idea that maybe a mistake we made was actually closet genius because go Sabres That premise is just stacking a bunch of unknowable "plausible" together despite each of them individually not being convincing or having any tangible evidence. Also, Casey did the same exact thing this preseason, so if that were even true then his NHL experience didn't help it

It's also likely not a true thing

Sports doesn't care about their impatience, but the idea that our team is just logically being patient over the last [x] years is nonsense at this point. x can be 2.5, 5, 7, whatever you want it to be. Botterill is mediocre-to-awful at his job at this point, even if he somehow GETS better, and then has a better team in the future because of it. And fans talking about that mediocrity in detail with frustrated undertones doesn't mean we think that we can change things or that we know better than all the smart hockey people in the world