Randall Flagg

I swear people were talking like both McCabe and Scandella were going to play, like, back on the road trip we finished last week? And now we're watching Matt f****** Tennyson, worst defenseman to play on last year's ridiculously bad Sabres team? Can somebody ask Phil for details beyond what half of the body people are injured in?

In 36 minutes of 5v5 ice time together Berglund and Tage have been on the ice for 3 goals against, no goals for, and a sterling 30% of shot attempts, 17% of shots on goal, 9% of high danger chances In 125 minutes with Zemgus, 10&28 have been on the ice for 3GF and 5GA, 57% Corsi, 56% shots, 63% high danger chances

Where is zemgus?

Which one??

Those centers are just the 2Cs that we will need to be facing in the playoffs and regular season for the next few years. Casey is our only hope right now, we need him to be able to compete with those guys. I'm happy to have Casey, and I think he'll get there sometime fairly soon. And yeah some of those guys are semantics (I like Point better than Stamkos right now too) but Kuzy scores more so I called him the 1C. He mostly played with Ovechkin last year IIRC, it was Ovie-Kuzy-Wilson.

WTF is with the setback to McCabe's recovery? The guy was supposed to be ready by now

Jack's fine, he scored one if not both of his goals after that happened. He's definitely just resting because he's played a crap-ton of hockey the past few weeks. I'm just curious if anyone has asked/heard about what happened there.

Also, does anyone know what Jack may have done to his arm/elbow? It looked like he hit a funny bone or something, because barely anything happened and then he was suddenly holding it very gingerly

I'm pretty sure we were at least at 7/10 for my whole life, so the fact that we've lost 6 of 10 now keeps me up at night. That's three full years of non-ideal results. I would rather the Bills lose 20 games in a row to the Pats than the Sabres lose any given game to the Leafs

Agreed. Our center spine is downright weak, and essentially needs Casey to become a 2C that can compete with Brayden Point, John Tavares, Vincent Trocheck, Geno Malkin, NIck Backstrom etc.

When did this happen, last night? Seriously the Leafs can fall off a cliff

So it's not just us that sees Kim as the brains of the two owners eh

Anything below ~8/10 is not ideal. Below 5/10 makes me want to die

Awesome details, keep em coming!

Concerning trend: The Sabres have won only four of their last ten games played against the Leafs.

This is actually a pretty funny story so I'll share it. I responded to a Risto post from a Leafs fan in a Dahlin thread on the mainboards. A leafs fan with a name that has no obvious connections to Yuri, which I vaguely remembered reading in the Bills thread on the Sabres' board over there. I disagreed with him, and in his response, he said "hope you're well Flagg" which could have been just random stranger politeness, but it read like more than that. But looking at his post history, he's a Leafs fan. But then his posts were referencing how he used to be a Sabres fan. Then he signed -Yuri, so I had to ask if I knew him, cuz maybe he remembered me. He said yes in a way that would have confused a different Randall Flagg, but the one from Sabrespace would understand. He's a LEAFS fan now. A LEAFS fan. Because he likes Marner and hated how the Sabres fans rooted for the tank, from the looks of it. Get a load of this from his post history: "I jumped off the Sabres ship when the fans started cheering for the other teams goals, during the tank.I fought against the tidal wave of fans wanting to lose, and the media wanting to lose, arguing, Buffalo could try their best and still get Marner.It was a lost cause. The Sabres fans were a lost cause. Fighting with the media was a lost cause. So I followed Marner to the Leafs.And it felt so good when Mathews scored the winner to hear the Leafs fans go wild in that building. It sounded so good, in that building, when Marner dished that spinning backhand sauce to Tavares - OOOOOOH, AHHHHHH, YEEAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! What a game!I almost want the Sabres to be good enough for the Leafs to beat them extra times in the playoffs." Blow Leafs Blow, Yuri! I hope they bring you decades of suffering!! It was fun to come across him. He's a dirty traitor, but I'll always love the guy.

He says hi to everyone

In the voice of Wayne from Letterkenny, Ran into our old pal Yuri down by the produce stand theotherdeyyyyyyyyyyy

By "read somewhere" I meant that my friend who is generally reliable about bills facts sent it to me today. I've since went and looked, and it is actually a stat about both KB and Holmes, the other guy they cut. No INT stats, and it surely isn't as simple as some conclusions that could be drawn from a surface look at these stats, but it's at least interesting. KB really was a dreadful target

WRT the KB "attempt at a catch" I read somewhere that Josh Allen is a ~60% completion QB when passing to any receiver not named Kelvin Benjamin, which was interesting

I know it's not fair and sometimes deceiving to analyze snapshots in hockey, and I've loved Sam's play the last few weeks. But from the situation in this picture there should be a zero percent chance that Toronto gets the puck on their sticks before OT is over, much less winning it, and honestly a 33% chance that we should win the game on this developing play. Sam is not a good OT player at this point in his career.

Is it mostly coming from what it took to get Jack? And how Marner is above him on the list while going 4th, an 85 point season for Barzal from the same draft at 15, Rantanen leading the league from 10, Aho over a PPG from the second round etc? Because I share that resentment but it's leveled towards the tank

I actually think you care more about this stuff than plenty of Sabres fans, even though I obsess over things like point production. If Jack never grew another ounce I'd be satisfied and never have to look at the 1C position on this team again over the next decade, focusing all my attention elsewhere, and he's going to be a better player 1, 2, 3 years from now than he is now

Matthews-Ovechkin is a fun discussion so I'm going to say some things. Some might have been said, and the conversation sounds over, but I missed out on the fun so deal with it. In Matthews' rookie year he scored 40 goals, which was 3rd. He was 5th in goals per game. In Ovie's rookie year, he had 52, which was 3rd, and he was 5th in goals per game. In Matthews' sophomore year he was injured, scored 34, but was 2nd in goals per game. He missed enough games for that projection to feel a little dubious. Ovie was 4th in goals and goals per game in his 2nd year. Matthews has played 14 games and scored 15 goals so far in his third year. He is shooting 10% higher than every other player in the top 10, at 30%, which probably won't last 32 games, even Karlsson last year was only at 23%. But the story isn't finished yet. Ovie's 3rd season he freaking destroyed the NHL, scoring 25% more goals than the second best scorer did. He had 65 goals that year, with a shooting percentage 2% higher than his career normal. Matthews is double his previous career average right now. Furthermore, Ovechkin went on to dominate this statistical category like no other in this era. He has 7 Rockets in the last 11 years, with no other player owning more than 1 in that span on their own (Stamkos/Crosby share one, and each have one on their own. Perry was the other winner.) This includes times where Ovie was scoring 50 when nobody else could hit 40. Matthews has barely any separation from the guy taken right after him in his draft, and has not separated from the pack yet, but looks to be having a year that could wind up being what Ovie's third year was. For him to come close to Ovie, much less pass him, the next decade of his career needs to be utter domination of the goal scoring stat: Since the beginning of the 07-08 season, Ovechkin has 529 goals. The next best goal scorer in the entire world in that span has 358. This is nearly 50% better goal scoring than the NEXT BEST GOAL SCORER in this span. The consistency here is utterly ludicrous. Matthews will not come close to this in a league with Patrik Laine, especially since Auston appears to be the one that can't stay healthy. Since goal scoring is higher than it was in 07-08, I want to see 60+ goals from AM (well, 50+ since he already missed a month) to consider him an equal to Ovie through this point, and then I need to see domination over peers that only Gretzky/Mario can claim better than over the next decade, and only THEN will Matthews even begin to make it a debate. Good luck Auston.

I vividly remember, after 16 months of being good, really good, cup-good, the Sabres hosting the Leafs in March of 2007. It was an epic game that we won 5-4 after being down 4-1 with 10 minutes left. The Leafs weren't that good and missed the playoffs, and yet the entire lower bowl was Maple Leafs fans. Now that the Leafs have a borderline special hockey team, that's ridiculously fun to watch any given night, why would things ever be different?