Randall Flagg

I'm surprised that O'Leary got cut, based on where we started camp at the position, but Croom/Thomas played pretty damn well. I liked Nick even though he wasn't great, but I'm thrilled we won't have to hear the Jack Nicklaus thing every Sunday

McCarron was the worst of the 3 QBs and I'd bet money if Peterman gets hurt they grab a guy off the street to play over Allen, if the plan really is to slowly develop Allen. And I bet that QB is just as good as AJ. I think Peterman would be a decent QB if his arm strength was better. But I'm fully expecting 6 out-route-pick-sixes this season at least

FWIW, some QB off the street they grab if Peterman gets hurt will probably play just as well as McCarron has

We should also do a Sabres-specific prediction thread but I'll leave that for someone else to make.

Most of those cases are bouncing around other teams' practice squads though, I'd imagine.

It's certainly about time something like that happened for this franchise.

That's more reasonable, and I'd try to level it out even a little more. I'm worried we see Dahlin-Risto for 26 a night from day 1, or Dahlin-Scandella at 24 to bump risto back, where it'd be cooler to see Dahlin-Guhle (presuming Guhle is ready and earns a spot) at 18 offensive minutes per night even if that means giving Bogosian/McCabe a little more than they can chew for 10'games until Dahlin's feet are under him. Of course, if in game 3 it's clear Dahlin is our best / second best defenseman, start introducing him slowly to tougher situations and more minutes. And if he keep playing great then we can treat him like our premiere defenseman, though still not like we've been treating risto (who has been in Suter/Karlsson/Hedman minutes for three years now) Rasmus can get those when he's a Norris candidate

If we just start giving Risto's minutes to Dahlin I will pull my hair out Put the kid in nice sheltered situations and let him organically work his way up the depth chart. If he can handle it then he'll be there soon enough completely naturally. We shouldn't just assume it like we've done to butcher/hinder thousands of other players' development over the last decade

I don't see any real way of addressing the OL for this coming season. I think our biggest help will be the cap space we open up at the end, and the draft picks we have. I've read that there are some stud DE's that will be in the draft next year too, and that's something to look into as well If we have our QB, we need to protect him and to get to the other team's QB

This is the guy that runs through lists of players, gives enlightening, one-word responses like "trash" and "overrated" and expects us to care about his "analysis" right? A pot-stirrer that isn't even interesting when he stirs the pot He's pretty annoying and dumb IMO Helluva CB though

i'm actually going to tryand predict the whole standings: Atlantic 1.) Toronto 2.) Tampa 3. Boston Metropolitan 1.) Pittsburgh 2.) Washington 3.) Columbus Wild Card 1.) Florida 2.) New Jersey ---------------------- Carolina (close) Philadelphia (close) NYI Buffalo NYR Detroit Montreal Ottawa Central 1.) Winnipeg 2.) St. Louis 3.) Nashville Pacific 1.) Anaheim (I like their defense too much and think the division is weak) 2.) Vegas 3.) Calgary Wild Card 1.) San Jose 2.) Edmonton ---------------------------- Minnesota LAK Dallas Arizona Colorado Chicago Vancouver President's Trophy: TorontoStanley Cup Champion: Tampa Stanley Cup runner-up: WinnipegConn Smythe: Victor Hedman Hart: Connor McDavid Art Ross: Connor McDavid (113 Points) Norris: Victor Hedman again Vezina: Bobrovsky Selke: Barkov Calder: Pettersson Jack Adams: Bill PetersBiggest surprise (team): Calgary Biggest surprise (player): Aho (LW) hits 80 points Biggest disappointment (team): Colorado crashes Biggest disappointment (player): William Karlsson doesn't break 60 points or 30 goals Biggest name traded during season: Tyler Seguin ? First coach fired: Hakstoll because he sucks Bottom 3 teams: all from the atlantic: Detroit, then Montreal, then Ottawa in last. Nice finals choices, NS ?

It's that time of year again!! Prospect Tournament begins at the end of this coming week, the preseason begins two weeks from Monday. I'll write down a format and you can fill in your predictions! Atlantic Division Winner: Metropolitan Division Winner: Central Division Winner: Pacific Division Winner: President's Trophy: Stanley Cup Champion: Stanley Cup runner-up: Conn Smythe: Hart: Art Ross: Norris: Vezina: Selke: Calder: Jack Adams: (You can add the other awards, these are the ones I care about) Biggest surprise (team): Biggest surprise (player): Biggest disappointment (team): Biggest disappointment (player): Biggest name traded during season: First coach fired: Bottom 3 teams:

I think where/how Reinhart gets played is one of the most interesting questions for the early part of this season.

With the O-line and the D-line the mess that they are, and with the prevalence of good RBs all over draft boards, I don't think the last part would be a good idea, but I wouldn't be mad at committing to the rebuild many expected last season for this fall. Not sure if Shady could get us anything of value at OL though.

This is a pretty odd way of looking at it, though I'm not questioning the idea of being critical of McBeane. The whole story of last year was they cut so much of Whaley's team off clean that they were supposed to only win 4 games, as predicted by anyone here and anyone in the media, and they more than doubled that to end the playoff drought. Remember how much talent they traded away? Watkins, Darby, Dareus, letting Gilmore go. The narrative was that they were literally changing how trading in the NFL was happening, they were doing it so often to dump Whaley guys. They rebuilt that secondary from the ground up by adding the two best safeties I've seen in Bills uniforms. Now, I'm a little skeptical of what's going on this year, but also can't put Woods/Incognito on them. But the lines on both side are a big problem and doing things like giving Star a fat contract and continually playing Ducasse, STILL, are not going to cut it.

I dunno if it was mentioned here, but I saw from an Athletic article that Jack went out to visit the Minnesota-Sabres (Nelson, Mittelstadt, Housley, and one other player) and they all hung out and played golf and stuff. He's been traveling around a bit I guess, being a team guy.

It's his groins. if Jack sprains another ankle tho I'm quitting sports

What happened? On my iPod if I open a link it'll crash safari

A valid take, but the counterpoint is that some of us remember the best Bogosian we've ever seen as not a good hockey player relative to league average defensemen, haven't seen that in three years, and have no reason to expect to see him for long stretches of time, and that Guhle, underneath the speed, was one of the worst defensemen I watched on the team last season in terms of first passes and statistically in terms of zone entries allowed when I was still counting those. I mentioned it in several GDTs but at NHL speed that kids passes were regularly missing by 10 feet. Pilut is intriguing but unknown, and Hunwick apparently wasn't worth a tiny amount of cap space, in fact, was so bad at that cap hit that a team traded an 18 goal winger for a 4th rounder just to get him out of the franchise. Through this lens, with a lineup of players we've all seen before with varying degrees of meh-to-disgust plus a rookie, well, most of us were looking for more insulation for that rookie. i think there's a 90% chance that either Dahlin is playing with Bogosian or we have Bogosian on a shutdown pair with Scandella, and both of those options are gross. But Rome wasn't built in a day

After tonight, we have the longest remaining stretch of no-Buffalo-sports until at least early April, lasting 9 days, and containing a holiday weekend. Then it's on. Starting September 16 there is a stretch of 8 days with 6 games between the bills and Sabres - that Sunday the Chargers come to town, sabres play preseason games Monday Tuesday Friday Saturday, and then the bills finish the stretch.

I'm still bummed about the state of our defense, but the volume of moves to help our forward group makes it acceptable/understandable (along with the low number of defensemen changing hands overall this offseason). And hey, they were actually in the top half of the league in preventing shot attempts and scoring chances. But I'll be real sad if two of Hunwick, Beaulieu, and Nelson are playing opening night. We just need to hope that Dahlin is enough to improve the transition aspect of the defense. Maybe Guhle has developed this summer and is ready for full time duty.

But when he gets a handle on everything and has met people he jives with, he's gonna thrive, I'm as confident in that as can be without having met him. it took me until probably October of that first semester in undergrad to really settle in and be comfortable

I relate to your son quite a bit, nfreeman. (Besides the being smart/funny part) The time away from home sucks, but man does it make those holiday/general visiting moments with the family that much sweeter.

None -> Pilut Just because we never get through October 12th without 4 injured defensemen. I'd love for a guy like Asplund/Olofsson/Nylander to surprise but I can't be sure about any particular one to pick one

Dahlin > all