Randall Flagg

Perhaps. I hope he's seriously training

I'm glad he seems to agree that Jack and Jeff don't need Sam to produce while every other line does desperately. I wonder how different we'd all see Mitts had he gotten most of the season with Sam next to him Their limited sample size was promising

From what I have seen of him and read, he's pretty fried, or verrrrrrrrrry close to it anyway. If only those 2009-2011 Sabres teams could have had Simmonds...

Give it to us!

According to Preds fans, most likely, and he was back to normal for the playoffs.

Toronto has basically built their team on this concept. Wingers drive play, centers bury pucks.

The way I'd describe it: From what I've seen of older hockey, space on the ice was there for manipulation. A guy like Gretzky could manipulate it like nobody before or since. That was the game - which team could take advantage of the ice they had more than the other to score as much as possible in a 60 minute time period. While getting assaulted i a way that would be illegal 200 yards away from their location on the ice. When I watch today's hockey, I see a default of completely gummed-up rubbish, where if two teams are roughly equal, 90% of the game is unremarkable skirmishing for loose pucks without anything super coherent. What breaks the game open is the one time an attacking team, either via coaching technique or raw ability (be it speed, vision, or hands) is able to create new space to fill and attack from. The space needs to be created by teams and stars first right now, before anything can be done with it. This trend is decades in the making, and the development of a 12 year old hockey player has spent that time shifting along with it. I think old stars, average players, and plugs alike would need to be given this time to adapt the same way the kids today have, or their effectiveness would not be as high (which is not saying that a star from the 80s would suck - I just cannot believe he can approach what he did then against what his peers would be today). If you gave them this avenue for development, they'd take advantage of it like they took advantage of white ice and their teammates filling the gap, and would roughly be capable of what they were relative to their old peers with their new peers, which means a guy like Gretzky's vision, after working for his entire childhood to develop Sidney Crosby's edgework and Alex Semin's wrist shot, or however he would have doled out the time, would have coupled it to his completely unique brain and made him a 160 point player in today's league, or whatever the domination equivalent is to what he did then. But I think he'd need that time, that work, and that practice against the type of game that I refer to first.

So I'm about to head off to a valley I spend a lot of time in, and a place where I don't have internet access. Every major move the Sabres have made the past few years - Both ROR trades, the Lehner trade, drafting Jack, trading Miller, trading for Kane etc. has happened while I was there. So, keep your phones/laptops/whatever nearby the rest of the day!

Ah, now I'm convinced. Great job bringing substance to back your contention. If you don't give the best players the training and the time to do things like develop their stickhandling, their quick-twitch snap shots that can pick corners while being smothered by three guys who can do physically what maybe ten players in the eighties were capable of (the freakish farmers mainly), they won't be able to keep up, because the game is fundamentally different. Gliding at 13 miles per hour and having 10 seconds to wind up an unscreened slapshot that beats the goalie from 25 feet out, as they slip and fall on their ass, is just something that doesn't happen anymore. You need the decade of skill development to even have a chance to make it. I know twelve guys I grew up with who can stickhandle better than Gretzky and they've never even played organized hockey. All we're saying is, if you don't give the old player this same decade to develop skills in ways that simply didn't happen and weren't prioritized because they weren't needed to beat said goalies and defensemen, they will be at a severe disadvantage. And if you do give it to them, they'll stay the greatest.

Oh, I wanna make moves. Just not for JT Miller hehe

Your two examples, music and baseball, are not comparable to the transformation the NHL has undergone from the late 80s to now. Those things were far more developed far earlier than the NHL. I don't think that replacing Ovie's or McDavid's training and skill development with what Gretzky had, and putting them into the 80s, would have let them surpass Gretzky - it goes both ways. They would be good, but not the best in the league, because of Wayne and Lemieux standing above everyone else. But when I watch old footage of day-to-day NHL hockey, and see guys barely capable of skating backwards, and how slow the skating was, and what their bodies looked like with the habits they had back then, I just don't see how someone as finely tuned as McDavid, with the skating and hands (let's be real here - nobody focused half as much on their stickhandling as that kid did growing up, and McDavid himself has led to a mini stick-handling revolution* in the NHL with the kids who grew up following him from 2013-now) not being able to take the puck from anyone on the planet back then at any time they wanted, including the great one. And 2007-2010 Ovechkin being plunked down in the 80's? That would have been the most astounding thing any sport has ever witnessed. *Seriously, it's not being talked about yet, but in 20 years it will be a well-known phenomenon - the McDavid effect. It's changing the NHL for the better.

That's where I am. Gretzky being teleported to here would have his doors blown off by Ovechkin or McDavid every single shift. But Gretzky would still be the greatest hockey player to ever live if he was born in 1997 and the only thing that changed was training, nutrition, and equipment. He'd likely control the league today similarly to the way he did then.

I'm not sure when it was filmed, but I'm pretty sure it didn't hit the internet until after the season ended. Then again, you're probably right, because it appears that Casey bases himself in Minnesota when the season is over. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Interesting discussion above. I thought I had a good handle on the number of giveaways (particularly the egregious ones) Dahlin made, but when I re-watched about 15 Sabres games in April and May, it was a lot more than I remembered. It's legitimately worth talking about, and a thing he has to fix. I remember Karlsson's rookie year, and he wasn't as good offensively, but I don't remember him being quite like that with the puck (he was sometimes overwhelmed without it). That's the weird thing about Dahlin's gaffes - they come when he should be operating from one of his strengths. I expected numerous defensive coverage/decision making/physically-overwhelmed errors. I didn't expect anywhere near the amount of fairly low pressure hand grenades with the puck on his stick. I'm not worried about it, but it's not something to gloss over either. And bad Dahlin plays single-handedly lead to quite a few ENGs against, and more narrow misses (like against TB - Kucherov of all people missed a wide open net). He'll settle down, but people shouldn't be averse to discussing the flaws of this organization and its players, particularly the golden ones And yes, he was amazeballs on the breakout and had uncountable numbers of small, wonderful plays defensively and offensively that we should never take for granted

It depends, but we've been bad for a long time and have a ridiculously flawed depth chart, so I'm not inclined to be confident that we're giving up pick 24

Today the devils got PK Subban for a package I wouldn't give our (likely to be high) first round pick for

Jack did an interview fairly recently with a fuuuuuuuullllllll lipperrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr And I'm relieved if you're sure that it's tobacco because my first impression on seeing the video was it being weed

We can build a package around that first that can make the team better than just giving it up for JT Miller would have

Prospects should not change anything about your immediate roster plans unless they're Connor McDavid or Sidney Crosby, and that's about it. Cozens and Mitts could both easily bust - and if you acquire a 2C and they don't bust, then you're stuck with the problem of a lot of good hockey players.

Between PK and Marleau, i think we're seeing how valuable cap space is right now. We need to be on the phone with Vegas/TB

Devils fans partying right now. That could be us today. Go make a trade Jason!

Lol, so is Shero a good GM then? We could have done something like that and then still had Risto to build something around for a 2C, no? Subban had a down year but was a Norris finalist the season before. Did Nashville not retain anything? That could explain it. They really want Hall to stay. Jason, start trading with these cap-strapped teams.

Maybe the GMs know what the cap is now and the floodgates open and we have an epic day with all the moves I would have liked Subban, wonder what the return was. At the same time, we need to use assets on 2C pronto

Subban is a New Jersey Devil

It's sad that teams won't just say "rather than acquire and/or use a bad hockey player, let's watch Toronto struggle and see what happens" The first rounder is pretty nice, though.

In the highlight video posted on the second page, his edge-work on the second goal shown is incredible.