Randall Flagg

GTFO Tampa It's not immediately obvious to me which team I will want to lose more.

You're supposed to root against him so he asks out of Edmonton for maximum offseason chaos

Seems like ex Sabres are having particularly good playoffs

Not to say I would know this better than you, but I've seen Winnipeg do this plenty of times. Buffalo does it sometimes as well

Go Knights!

Imo you should be able to get good penalty killing out of any nhl roster, even bad ones, at least in terms of the play of the forwards/defense. So I would say our problem was goaltending and scheme

C means average/met expectations. People give C a bad rap. It should be the most frequently awarded grade out there. I consider B/D one standard deviation above/below average, A/F 2

The announcer in the Avs game has a terrible goal call SCARRRRR

Cope and seethe

One time in the Blues' 18-19 cup run, I saw Alex Pietrangelo make a good decision to shoot the puck

Having a truly elite goalie is such a blessing for your hockey team's fortunes I really hope Levi can be that

I haven't watched their games but I bet he's struggling a bit. He's still very slim. Marner took a few years before he could shake the "playoff choker" label for a similar reason

Some teams need to get destroyed in the playoffs before they figure it out, it's not an uncommon thing. They are/will be an excellent team for a long time

I think that there is a really good chance we look like the Devils next year, in both good and bad ways

Why do you hope that a team which has caused us loads of misery gets back their players who love to concuss our best players with dirty plays that refs ignore because they're too busy trying to pile up power plays for them, so that they beat a team that we have some of our best memories against and which has caused most of us very little misery in our lives

Sounds like a dream! Forgot to answer this. You guessed pretty well. That sounds like the proper diagnosis too. Maybe 4 times in my life I've been able to play with others, and maybe 1 of those times had others who were better at their instruments than I (this is not pumping my own tires lol) I can do rhythm guitar in my sleep, can play the leads of most popular songs, and could learn most reasonable-speed rock solos with practice (Megadeath type stuff and sweep picking definitely not), and can improv in like 2 of the pentatonic boxes, with terrible phrasing 85% of the time I'm doing that. The best I've ever done is learn to make Little Wing sound pretty good over a backing track. I have been begging my friends to learn instruments for so long that they could be savants by now if they had listened the first time, will just have to hit up randos on facebook I think You should post some of your playing here!

That is something. It would also probably put the Sabres in a 6 minute 5v3 penalty kill Worth it though

I am less likely to lean into the "Krueger destroyed everything" idea that most fans have, but Brandon Montour's before/after even within that season was remarkable. He scored a hattie before Ralph's plane left

This is an interesting point. The Devils looked like a bunch of middle schoolers playing in the playoffs for the first time against a team of guys who've done it many times before - even though 82 games would tell you that the Devils were a step above the Rangers between the creases, including the ability to take 7 of 8 points from them this year. It is the first time many of their players have seen the playoffs, and many of their important players. I bet that right now, they wish they would have gotten a 4 game sweep out of the way last season, but they didn't make the playoffs. Sometimes, especially for particularly young players, it takes that first time through to understand what you need to do to get to and win a playoff series, so that you have a year of true preparation for it. When Tampa reset their group after making the playoffs twice with Stamkos and Hedman, but then missing a few years, they started to build the core we know today in 2013-14. This was the creation of the TKO line, Tyler Johnson, Nikita Kucherov, Ondrej Palat. That year was the first time I remember people talking about Tampa becoming a force, having the potential to dominate year in and year out. They made the playoffs and got swept by Montreal. I would say the experience served them well and wasn't a waste, and I'm sure it was appreciated the next season when they were able to make the Stanley Cup finals. The same thing happened with Colorado after bottoming out in 2016-17. Their first season back into the playoffs was dismissed in 6 games, but they had a bunch of young guys who learned a lot and would go on to help them win 4 years later The Kings were dispatched quickly after their first trip to the playoffs in years before eventually winning 2 cups. There are teams that build and are able to jump into deep runs right away, but those teams tend to have a lot of players of a kind our GM warns that he won't pursue unless the opportunity is perfect. The Blackhawks had Campbell, Sharp, Havlat, the Canes had Justin Williams, Justin Faulk, Nino Niederreiter, Staal, Hamilton, Teravainen, all guys who are either old/experienced or with significant playoff minutes. The Sabres had Briere, Drury, Numminen, Lydman etc. Those teams were able to jump to the Eastern Conference Finals right away after playoff droughts, didn't need to get spanked first. Our Sabre team reminds me more of Tampa/Colorado/New Jersey. As such, I think getting in and getting spanked this year would have been a tremendous value. Our players learned what it took to have must win games each night at the end of March...against teams that were sometimes also in must-win games, sometimes at the bottom of the standings, sometimes looking forward to a different game in the future, none focused on the Sabres quite like the Bruins would be this week. There IS an opportunity that was lost. I won't argue that it will hold us back long-term, keep us from winning a cup, whatever. But Jersey might have to spend a 52 win, 112 point season getting that sweep out of the way, which is probably pretty ***** annoying. Home ice is hard to get. I hope that we won't have to get blitzed next year to "learn" like we could have done this year, if we manage to put together a season like they did

Never seent it

I know you're just playing but it reminds me, everyone on WGR under the age of 35 says "sense" instead of "since." I've heard Joe, Nate, and two different producers (Ryan Gates and his replacement) do this. "Sense when do we blah blah blah" "Ever sense Krueger left, Skinner blah blah "

The problem is that you are built for writing 24000 word substack articles fleshing out intellectual/philosophical minutae in attack/response format with others who are maintaining the same focus on detail as you

I just always come back and was not contributing positively to the board. But I managed to stay away for a year and have been behaving well since then

Are you me? I sent SDS a message begging him to permanently ban me like a year ago. Dude never even read it

I said that. I don't think wawrow mentioned it