Randall Flagg

Unskilled shooters are almost always better-served shooting low and hoping for holes around/between the arms, above the pad, or under/between the pads.

Cozens had a good rush brewing there. No need for the cute stuff.

The Leafs game outcome was the only just outcome

The only people who aren't are the only people who matter

Woof Tage

Sabres lost three straight battles on the near boards all the way up the ice, rapid-fire

Oettinger is one of ~7 genuinely good NHL goaltenders

Interesting. One of the last times I was on a plane, it took off at puck drop of a DAL at BUF game. When I landed, Buffalo had won...4-0

Botterill is my least favorite member of a Buffalo franchise front office since I started watching sports in 2005 By two orders of magnitude

I was all in on Boston's reign being over when they bungled the 2015 first round. I won't believe that Boston will falter until it happens On paper Donny has a point, but on paper the Sabres should have been among the league's elite three times over at this point. Him and Kevyn need to work to make it reality, and it probably needs more than just "add water and place in sunlight, " which is the path I worry they are suggesting

If you trade Diggs this offseason you either take on a dead cap hit somewhere near 37 million dollars this year (traded before some date, maybe 6/1?), or you take on 11 mil dead cap this year and 26 mil dead cap next year (2024 season) The Bills literally cannot trade Diggs

The stars lose a lot of games for a first place team I have not liked Greenway so far, still very early

Its very easy to feel bad about the Bills right now but things are rarely as bad as they feel and the Bills still have the ingredients to scare anybody any given year, which is all you can control and therefore all you can ask for

For me to see this i have to employ my imagination to a degree that is immediately unbelievable. He picks his skate up off the ground and has knee extension that directs it towards the goal as soon as the puck gets to his shin, no sooner and no later. While staring right at it lol

Easy The 2021 Bills had loads of problems that everyone forgets. They were 7-6 in December and threw 3 picks in the second to last game before the playoffs. Allen got hot behind a stable o-line. Allen will get hot many more times in his career and in some of them he will have better surroundings than he did for those two brief playoff games If 2021 is a year we "should have" won a super bowl then I am unbelievably confident Allen will bring us at least 1

It didn't fail, Von will be fine and elite for most of next season. We were always going to lose guys eventually

The Sabres are 6-8-0 since dahlin wrote that letter, including a 2-5 record at home, being outscored 32-23 This reminds me of Dawkins telling the Players' Tribune that the Bengals can "f*ck around and find out if they see us in the playoffs"

Gassing him and Power to incompetence/injury is important, this opens ambiguous future opportunities which not doing so would sacrifice.

We are rentoids right now, it didn't work out (and we are grateful that all of our offers fell through in hindsight, what a miserable time it was to try) No, but I'm having those dad daydreams more and more frequently, sometimes they are PAINFULLY vivid She's younger than I am, we will be in a better place for that sort of thing in the next year or two. @ Sabrespace: I ran into this guy at a game a few months ago, recognized him from a photo he posted once upon a time. Dude went to the game and then took public transport back to the airport where he waited overnight for the 5am flight back home Sabremike is the realest fan i know

They were bad, tired, injured and (most importantly) green tonight

Liger didn't expand on this point because he is filled with passion and fire, which is great for hockey talk But there is something here worth talking about. The Islanders' defensive metrics are abysmal - bottom ~6 in the league. They have one of the 3 or 4 truly elite goalies in the league, so their goals-against per game is ~8th best in the league. That means ~20+ teams play better team defense, and 7 allow fewer goals. But Sabres fans don't uniformly complain about the style played by those 20 (or 7) teams better at shutting things down than the Islanders. There is something gross about Islanders hockey, and nothing wrong with being grossed out by it. Toronto is excellent defensively, and nobody complains about their suffocating style or that they don't "let the sabres score" I'm genuinely glad the Sabres don't play that way, I'd rather play like Tampa or Colorado or Boston, and they are 90% of the way to figuring out the hard parts of playing like those teams, and hopefully they will learn the 'easier' parts soon

Not even sure why I logged back in, Thorny's IQ/autism combo blows mine out of the water

The iteration of the Bills we will call "the early Allen Bills" has 2 years left to change its story. McDermott grabbing the playcalling reigns is a telling signal, but it doesn't have to be a negative/desperate one. He's good at it, and it's time for the rubber to hit the road. No retool or blow-up is possible with the cap situation we are in, a Diggs trade either of the next two seasons is untenable. He will be here 2 more seasons at least. in 2 years, if they haven't made/won a super bowl, things can finally change in a meaningful way. None of this has to spell doom for Allen - Mahomes just won a super bowl in a cap-reset, step-back year. Allen is good enough that he can do it any given year. Last year was not the worst, but not the best, Bills roster he will have around him. The OL can be fixed in one offseason - Spencer Brown is a top-percentile athlete at RT and will have his first real offseason to finally figure it out. If he does, your LT, C, and RT are above average, and Bates has shown competence when there is stability around him (ie, when he played LG in 2021). You really just need to find a quality guard and do with Spencer what you've done with Knox, Edmunds, Allen - teach a physical freak with raw tools how to play in the NFL. Check out year 3 for each of those players, and then check out the UFA guards (there are plenty of good ones). It's no guarantee, but the ceiling of the Bills OL next year can be high. There is no doubt that the vibes are out there, but vibes don't mean anything, the good ones last summer didn't get us anywhere I have heard that he does this every summer but I haven't been fond of his behavior lately The scenario he apparently pines for does not exist. Your top 3 QB and 150 targets are right here in Buffalo, 3 years in a row. Yeah, you were open, 4 seconds into your route when Josh is already on his 4th progression/running for his life

Reasons for concern: The Sabres' important players were healthy for the vast majority of the season, this is almost certain to not be replicated any given year Tuch and Skinner significantly out-produced their career highs - age, bounces, and film study will almost certainly cut into their scoring totals next year Tage and Dahlin are having historic seasons which are never a given (Matthews last year compared to this year), and are on their way to being wasted Donny's coaching needs to grow, and I have no bearing for how likely this is (in a tied game against the Oilers yesterday, coming out of a commercial break, the Sabres received their second and final power play of the game, during which Tage and Dahlin saw 9 seconds of ice time total) The front offense does not seem keen on adding another core piece, when the team could use one both up front and on the back end (they want this piece but they want it to emerge organically from Krebs/JJP/2022 firsts, which may or may not happen next year or any time after) They are comfortable with that sort of uncertainty not only in the skating ranks, but crucially, in goal, and Kevyn has continued the franchise streak of ensuring that his team will get wildly consistent goaltending as its absolute ceiling Seriously, the best thing you could possibly do for a young team is let them learn knowing that someone has their backs behind them if they screw up, and the quickest way to hamper them is to give them the opposite, and that's all we ever do Reasons for optimism: They have probably passed a critical mass of talent which will hide most of the issues above There is a lot of untapped offensive potential available with a coaching staff that has a stellar track record of tapping into this sort of thing (Tage's first ~150 NHL games came with a shooting percentage comparable to Johan Larsson) Cozens is the kind of guy who will remain pissed off about the kick-goal and other things, storm into Kevyn's office in April, and make sure the team is ready to tear it up in the fall - nights like tonight don't decide your season when you win 50 games

A rush of gratitude coursed through me as Bryson passed out of a scoring chance down a goal with 5 minutes left in the third - it is reassuring to know that our future is not being put at risk. That he and Clague see important minutes together in a game of this magnitude is a living testament to a worthy ideal - that our many defensive prospects and mystery box draft picks can pave the way forward at a later date, as opposed to someone competent helping in place of Sammy today. The skaters have seamlessly adopted the FO's mindset as well - true organizational synergy It's definitely not over, these guys have another streak in them I think