Randall Flagg

@inkman @That Aud Smell McD is just ahead of the game ? The tweet is interesting though. I hate the lack of "field position battle" that the game has now, not that I want it to be like it was half a century ago. But when the 7th most productive QB of the week before the 4pm games even start has 375 yards and 2TDs, and average ones getting to midfield from being pinned at the goal line in like 5 plays routinely...it's not that fun to watch to be honest And say what you want about the luck involved in turnovers, but when I watch the bills, they always seem to know what they're doing when they're creating turnovers. There's some skill to it, and we have guys that have the skill. Hughes' strip sacks, Edmunds, Milano, Poyer and Hyde. Wasting the 3rd DVOA defense this season (INCLUDING the first two games). Not that I know what DVOA means

This clip doesn't finish it, but it's the one you're thinking about.

Great minds think alike! Thanks though. I'm willing to buy into some culture stuff at some point. I bought in when we couldn't get over the hump in the playoffs, even though you could probably make a similar talent argument. But I simply won't have the conversation when in an ideal world, kids get insulated like Matthews did in Toronto with solid vets and great structure, but in reality ours were expected to pull this thing out themselves surrounded by godawful talent at every position and a front office that wouldn't even sit down to ask them how life was going, apparently. We need to cross a threshold and get this team to a talent level where it can actually be expected to sustainably score more than its opponents, before I have any interest in talking about their inherent character flaws. Because you CAN build this team even if Jack&Sam don't have the goods. Do it and watch the problems melt away. And THEN, if they don't, let's talk about Jack&Sam. This is both how I would logically approach the issue AND the most prudent thing anyway, even if you have We've/dark/Smell's suspicions, just because deciding to blow up the locker room 6 games after you decided to blow up the locker room...well..what pieces would we have left? I don't think anybody believes the issue is so dire that average managerial competence can't field an average team that gets some playoff games with these two players to see how it goes. There are plenty of bad, weak, shallow teams that get there based on puck luck alone.

This looks great, any chance you know why the images won't show for me so I can get the icing on the cake? And just from memory, I completely agree with your first goal interpretation - on the PK Risto can't attempt that play.

Agreed, but I don't think there's any way they'd do that. Is the Oregon kid gonna be good? I haven't seena single snap from him, but I've seen him talked about quite a bit recently.

I'm right here for 95% of all effort concerns people have with the Sabres, and the 5% that is real happens to every hockey team on the planet. And Eichel might not have the ridiculous drive of Matthews or McDavid or Dahlin hopefully seems to have (like Geno doesn't quite have Sid's), it's not a big deal, because I don't think he's ever really loafing either. And his preparation, from everything we could know, is top-notch. I recall reading more than one poster, before Eich ever played a second for the Sabres, pointing out that Jack's effort will forever be a topic of discussion simply because of his "slow the play down" nature as a player combined with his upright posture. Whoever those posters were, I think, nailed it.

I'd first point out that I don't think our effort is generally more of a problem than most other NHL teams' efforts. They aren't Nolan's Sabres in the 90s, but I've seen 23 other teams get Vegas flu just as bad. I've seen Vegas completely sh!t themselves on an entire road stretch, like they did for the past two weeks, and then look good coming back home. Darling Vegas, with Darling Gallant. Stuff happens. Over 82 games, what happens in the standings and stats is an incredibly good proxy of the collective hockey abilities of your team. There are times when effort and coaches and other things (extremely bad goaltending) hurt more than for other teams, but I haven't seen takes that I consider well-posed that support this in our case yet. Though I do get on him for usage and don't think he's great at it. But I've also been mostly fine with his lines this year, so I haven't had as much to complain about. And if I could be convinced that this team has a genuine effort issue, it'd take a miracle to further convince me that it's something inherent to our bad-effort players, and not a result of years of bad habits and meaningless/hopeless demeanor formed entirely by bad hockey. Further, I have a fundamental misunderstanding of why the negativity of thinking your roster is bad when offseason moves are being made is worse than the negativity that comes when the roster doesn't perform, negativity in a way that has much more damning implications on the future of the team than needing to not-trade good players and add more. Here's a post that hints at what I was referring to in the post you quoted: Here's another: I'm looking for one more, and will attach when I find it. It basically is a warning that we have like two culture scapegoats left, and so the fact that our team is still constructed in a way that will struggle at ES throughout the season is, for some reason, going to be shifted to those players (Jack and Sam, maybe Risto), whether the tangible reasons for on-ice problems have anything to do with them and the fact that if they get shut down and focused on, the team is done, or not. And I urged the board not to engage with this, because first of all, "bad cultures" magically become good when enough good players make the team a good, smart, fast team, culture has nothing to do with our recurring on-ice issues (quick-twitch decision making and hands that go along with it are the main thing that do) and second of all, it iis a far more damning and negative problem that a young captain on year 1 of his 8 year contract has some mystical, ill-defined character property that will forever prevent this team from playing a winning brand of hockey, than to just realize that our forward lineup was always going to get the results that it will end up getting, whether they look sluggish/lazy some nights (like all teams do) or not. Everything about effort, coaching, etc. aside, we have 3 forwards that I would say have the potential to be consistently dangerous and drive play at even strength, tomorrow night, and another 2 that I think can be consistently good complementary ES players at this stage. When you hit the road in this situation, I just cannot get surprised when a focus on containing those first three guys (and maybe some irresponsible partying) leads to results like last night, just like I can't be surprised when some of the youth shines through and we have a nice game, because there IS upside to this roster as far as in-season development goes that we haven't seen in a while.

Called it I just can't believe it only took 6 games, of which the Sabres won 3

Hold the phone. The Blues are 6% through their first season of 4 remaining on ROR's contract (or 5). If he hasn't done squat "since" (3 games...) and isn't helping the Blues, and their standings place (a crippling 4 points in 5 games) is relevant, then Captain Jack has last place Buffalo hitting records relative to .500 they haven't seen in almost a decade, and things are fine here. Or, the hockey season is incredibly young and some of the conclusions being drawn by this forum have completely lost the plot already

As we all know, in principle I don't put OK on PP1. But he's not screwing it up right now, so I'm not going to complain about it. Only thing I'll say is that the 5 second shot windup he's incapable of shooting without only works if he's on the right wall going short side with a Reinhart screen. They've gotta stop getting him stuck in the one-timer spot.

I do believe that he actually did start doing that last year. And it's a good move any year, by any coach. I get that last night wasn't acceptable (presuming their pregaming had something to do with their effort) and I don't think Housley does anything especially worthy of praise, but I think a lot of the anti-Housley takes after losses are fairly unorganized and just venting After myself and DDB, I'm a pro at recognizing it ?

I don't think their first period has differed appreciably from any other period they've played. Posts here and elsewhere were absolutely thrilled with, for example, the start of the Bruins game, where we carried play until one breakdown on a Boston rush, then all of a sudden the team "wasn't ready to play." This happens to every fanbase of teams that aren't that good. Trying to ignore score effects, the map of these games in those dumb corsi charts tell a story that we can usually hold it together for the first period before eventually crumbling. Of course, the Vegas flu played a role last night, which I do think is a game this sentiment applies to, and by all means we should criticize them for doing that again.

Take every word dark, Taro, TAS, Hoss and others have said in the Bills thread about their worries concerning McBeane and the QB situation for this season, even accounting for the fact that it was always going to be a tough/growing season. Every single word and possible nuance you could add to the situation to fully see it from all points of view, with the same ultimate conclusions. That's how I feel about Jason Botterill and our organizational center spine. With the added stipulation that in both cases, I'm probably less inclined for immediate bloodshed/punishment

The thing I was keeping track of with the Oilers ended tonight, after they scored 4 goals that involved McDavid. Their 5th of the night was finally not scored or assisted by Connor, though he was right there during the play, and it was 3v3 OT. They had 9 goals on the season either scored or assisted by McD, before an Oiler could score a goal that had nothing to do with him on the scoresheet (even though he was there off the score sheet, like I said). It broke the NHL record by 2 goals.

Posting about myself is pretty dumb, and egotistical, but I just wanted to talk for a second about this - GDTs are where emotions run high, so I have zero problem with Doohickie saying that to me, even though it felt like I did then. Stuff happens, and this sport injects adrenaline into our veins, it's why we watch it. We're cool, always were, always will be. But Doohickie is far from the only person to really get on me about stuff I post over the last little while, and this time and others, contextual posts surrounding these events, and distribution of "likes" indicate more of this sentiment as well. He didn't just get bothered for no reason. I live in the middle of a state with probably one ice rink, and I like hockey more than I like the only reason I'm in this state. As a result, I'm addicted to the only place where I can read and talk about hockey at the level we do. I'm going to keep pouring stuff out any chance I get, without any intervention. I try to make it a defining characteristic of who I am to remove all emotion from whatever it is that I'm thinking/talking about and to figure out the clearest picture of what is going on that I can (I do not claim to be successful), so I just don't notice and never will notice the tone of what spills out of my mouth. I'm not asking anyone to tell me that my posts are good/valuable or anything, but I'm not sure either that this is a place that I should be over-represented in the way I am sometimes when I get on a roll. What I mean by that is, sometimes I don't shut up and take up like 30% of the entire day's forum content (and plenty of this is not particularly good/useful). With the above points taken into account, this seems inappropriate, and I dunno what I should do really. I created a blog page thing a while ago as an avenue to dump stuff off like this. I have thought about just releasing everything in my brain there. It's not something I would even want anyone to read, that's not super important, and I could still read this forum and others without tinging the board the way it appears that I might. Like I can't just change. I can't not think, and thus not post, that the 5 wide open nets and 45% increase in scoring chances allowed from our previous worst game, was a sketch performance, and possibly our worst actual hockey of the year (before Vegas heh), despite a 3-0 win. But it's clear that doesn't go well for more than just Doohickie. I have deep running fundamental problems with 95% of our defense, problems that I think are fatal, and so I'm going to talk about them a lot if not stopped. Things like that. But SS shouldn't be a place where everywhere you look is Flagg b!tching about the same thing he's said since April. So I'm thinking about backing off is all. Even though I'm cocky as hell that I'm right about the things I've said since April ?? IDK. Apologies for my role in the GDT discomfort in general anyway

❤️ Also I didn't "leave" haha I couldn't let myself log on the last two days because of too much stuff going on IRL. To be clear, of course I stepped back after the Saturday GDT just to take a breath, as we all do, but logging back in before tonight was going to mess with my ability to get stuff done Sunday-Tues. And I probably have to leave again shortly for the same reason I'm not sure I buy this sentiment. It's pretty vague.

Thoughts: Sue is the most obvious Yuri yet, OR, the most interesting new poster SS has ever had I forget who has the inside info that a lot of the team was still blasted during the game in Vegas last year, but I'd bet this month's paycheck it happened again. Vegas flu. In Sobotka's 3 games, that was the first legitimate scoring threat he's been involved in at ES (not really, as the goalie was pulled). By my count, Berglund is still stuck at 1. Luckily Phil has noticed their sluggish start offensively. Kyle deserved the point, and showed why he has the A. As you can probably tell, his presence bugs me less when we don't lean on him on our top ES line. Thanks for coming to skate today Kyle, next time bring your teammates Hutton was good too. Casey had one of those rookie nights. I'm not sure he completed a pass, and he attempted about 40. I'd swap him and Tage for maybe Smith and Alex when we get back to Buffalo. Not sure this environment is as good as it was a week ago, to me it seems like the lack of success is getting in their heads. When Dahlin has an off night, we have zero Flagg-defined good NHL defensemen, yikes. If they can get 3 points in the next 3 games, I'll be fine with the trip. They'll get there. I don't back off a single offseason assessment I've put forward yet, concerning team-oriented ES play, cerebral hockey players with the hands and quick-twitch decision making needed for meaningful ES hockey, and the state/amount of those players in the Sabres organization, especially as it sits in relation with culture, and how careful we should be about just shifting scapegoats after "fixing" the latter (quotation marks because the whole concept is dubious to me) and not addressing the former in a significant manner. Today one of my students asked where I was from, and I said "Buffalo, NY." She said "I knew it! It's the accent." I don't know what a Buffalo/WNY accent is, but I swelled with pride. Boy do I miss home. A worthwhile time to reiterate that, in 57 games last season, Berglund recorded one assist that involved directly passing the puck to a teammate and having one of the next two teammates who touched it score a goal. The rest of the low total were random bounces or deflections of his shot.

"Filthy" "This is the one team we could have played this game against and gotten a win. You're not going to have it every night. They need to regroup for the California teams. That's fine. Get the points while you can, so when you develop as a team, you've given yourself a real shot to do something. Getting points in games you shouldn't is a very good sign. Arizona's PDO before tonight was like 90%, and we see a lot of their puck luck woes tonight - they're the only reason the game wasn't a lopsided loss. They're going to be a fun, young, mistake-filled team this year. With plenty of promise. 3 shutouts in 4 games is rough though. I recall a Hinostroza debate this summer. He looked great. I thought this summed up Scandella's game and start to the season pretty well: The good news is, he started last year poorly as well and settled in quickly and effectively. It took us 9 games to get to 6 points last year. Nearly cut that in half. " "Anywho, it took until October 30th to get our third win last year." Look at this negative hoser This is just the last page and a half, and I know I was criticizing their (objectively) poor play earlier, but Jesus Christ...And all of this after nothing remotely similar when Swamp and I were the only one not declaring the season over and throwing massive temper tantrums in the Boston GDT to start the season? Telling other posters to Shut the F*ck Up is the vibe we want instead Whatever, peace out fam

It must feel righteous to tell the whole world that you're going to ignore a poster. This might be the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me on here tbh and that includes being accused of touching children because I picked on Donald Trump

Uh... read the rest of the post you cherrypicked. I talk about how that's FINE, and how it's a GOOD sign that the team is getting points so early when so many young and new bodies are around. Excuse it with "you're not going to have it every night." And I've been posting about how it will help when the team has meshed. What are you on?

Anywho, it took until October 30th to get our third win last year.

Agreed, and I don't fault his character for it, but it's some sort of look to be the only one of the 2-year-franchise-center-triumvirate to do it.

Even I will concede about 20% of pi's take to him if that happens. The rest will still be garbage of course

This is the one team we could have played this game against and gotten a win. You're not going to have it every night. They need to regroup for the California teams. That's fine. Get the points while you can, so when you develop as a team, you've given yourself a real shot to do something. Getting points in games you shouldn't is a very good sign. Arizona's PDO before tonight was like 90%, and we see a lot of their puck luck woes tonight - they're the only reason the game wasn't a lopsided loss. They're going to be a fun, young, mistake-filled team this year. With plenty of promise. 3 shutouts in 4 games is rough though. I recall a Hinostroza debate this summer. He looked great. I thought this summed up Scandella's game and start to the season pretty well: The good news is, he started last year poorly as well and settled in quickly and effectively. It took us 9 games to get to 6 points last year. Nearly cut that in half.