Randall Flagg

This is the same team that told us they were aiming for Jack to play in the home stretch of last season, Jack who had surgery TODAY that will keep him out an additional 3 months. They do this every year and it's really getting annoying. When are these players coming back.

I think Jack and Sam are terrific hockey players. Pretty sure neither one of them would have skated like that after making the pass to Hinostroza. Dylan did, and showed why you should.

Skinner - Tage - Asplund Caggiula - Cozens - Hinostroza Zemgus - Eakin - Okposo Bjork - Ruotsalainen - Hayden Butcher - Dahlin Hagg - Pysyk Bryson - Miller Olofsson: Out day-to-day, nothing serious, soft tissue Will not play the remainder of 2021-22 season based on standard Sabres injury estimate conversion calculator Mitts: Out a few weeks Will miss 15 months based on standard Sabres injury estimate conversion calculator Jokiharju Out a little longer than a few weeks Will never put on ice skates again based on standard Sabres injury estimate conversion calculator

Have they even mentioned how excellent these PKs have been? Haha

Getting more and more alarmed by Cozens' (lack of) hands

I think that's two pretty easy no goal calls

It was disconcerting how much trouble ESPN was having diagnosing that "goal"

Physically impossible for this to be a goal.

I don't think Tage's hands have gotten better, he pulled off insane dekes his rookie year, he's just learned a lot more about how to play the game since then. I'm worried that Cozens won't be able to stickhandle and make quick puck plays well if he never gets a chance to succeed at them in games. I don't think that was Tage's problem

Cozens does a lot of things right. He goes out of his way to be a leader, and backs it up with his effort on the ice. He comes all the way back to play defense, and stays back to be an outlet for his defensemen. He trains hard and has gotten stronger because of it, though he still needs more time to reach real NHL strength. He can and does skate like the wind. His puck skills aren't quite up to snuff at this level yet, and part of that might be his processing speed. I believe that these things exist in his (hockey? real?) DNA. He has played 53 NHL games over the span of a year and I haven't seen either of those last two things develop an inch. It's time to ask - where is the line that we need to draw, such that if his hands and puck skills haven't started to look more like a top six forward, he needs to go down and play in AHL games to have the time and space to work those skills in a game setting? Because that time and space isn't coming in this league, and you need to succeed at these things in games to be able to reliably develop them in games. After some amount of time, if you aren't careful in development, that skill isn't going to come anymore, and you create another Zemgus Girgensons (a nice player, but) out of a guy that should have been Jeff Carter. I firmly believe this line exists and that, while it's still in the distance, it's now visible with the naked eye

If John Hayden is on your 23 man roster, you're either very top-heavy or a very bad team. Have to think there are guys on waivers that play better hockey

I've watched a lot of both players and it's clear Sam is a step above. We all know how you feel about sam. It was nice that his play after the eichel injury finally quieted that talk for a little bit. I guess it's safe to bring it back though

Yeah, Perreault was sick. But could he really hit the same speeds as Connor with the same quick twitch stick handling? I've never seen highlight videos of anyone that show anything quite like it

5 straight games have been tough. Detroit is an interesting challenge, very beatable but they can be overwhelmingly fast and they have some real offensive skill. If the Sabres look good tonight, it might say a lot about how important match-ups will be this season

Also, Foligno is pretty damn good now

It doesn't mean that

I know the first is protected, but very happy that we got Krebs and Tuch and that. By August or so I was convinced we wouldn't see both Krebs and tuch in the same deal.

It wasn't so much the Yeichel as what he tried to string together after the Yeichel. He wasn't doing too well back then, and it's great that he's bounced back to the degree that he has

The last part was a lame attempt at a joke. I definitely don't think the Sabres will do that. I just liked Jack and view a lot of the reactionary & emotional "***** that guy" sabres fan takes as understandable but fairly debased from reality. He was just a fun player to watch for me

It's over

Just remembered how badly Rick butchered the call on Eichel's first career goal. It was never meant to be

We've gone from having several players in key roles being in over their heads to literally every rostered position on this team containing a player in over their heads in that role

The Sabres need to stop playing like they have the skill to consistently complete 50 foot stretch passes through 3 defenders

Seattle is an awful team, but they school us in hockey skill. Very depressing

Eichel is my favorite Sabre of all time. I moved my life around to watch him, right up until the end. I don't take offense to anything he's done or said, and I'm grateful for the joy he was able to bring me. I think his story could have been a lot different here, and while it's true he didn't pull this team out of that, I'm not sure who you could sub in for this team not named Gretzky or Lemieux to have them make the 20+ point jump they always needed to just get a sniff of a wildcard spot. I did the math this spring, but during Eichel's tenure, when he wasn't on the ice, this team was so much worse relative to when he was on it, compared to every single NHL star I checked against. As time goes by, the crimes by Sabres management from 2013 through 2021 become more stark and obvious. They were already doomed when the mindset had to become "let's try to go for one last shot with Jack before resetting," because of how bad the roster construction was - BEFORE we even consider that the second most important move of that decision was signing the abomination that was 2021 Eric Staal to take the critical matchup position that is an eastern conference 2C. Every other team worth anything has elite 2Cs that can handle any minutes and score a boatload, and we matched up against them with Vlad Sobotka, Marcus Johansson, and then Eric Staal. They put themselves in this position at 2C because they could afford to "tear it all down to the studs" once given the chance to draft Rasmus Dahlin, who, uh, well. The vitriol that followed that decision, through a false positive 2018 November, felt symbolic as a symptom of the Sabres' well being poisoned, the signs of sickness starting to show up. Nothing has felt good since then, everything has felt like slowly festering rot, and this is the natural result. Eichel could have been super man, he was paid to be. he could have been a better captain too. He couldn't get us out of it. But no franchise deserving of existence should have ever let itself get to the point where we needed that level of effort in the first place. A match made in hell. Both are better off moving on from this point, and hopefully the Sabres have broken free of the patterns that brought us to this moment. Hopefully Jack gets healthy and finds on-ice success. Anyway, look at this nice pile of assets! wow, it's almost too many picks to realistically consider making. We don't want to rush kids and throw them in over their heads, we need good solid veterans to show them the way and protect them in the lineup. We have 3 firsts...might as well put something together for a C to protect Krebs and then slide to 2C after. A dissatisfied, underutilized 2C who hasn't experienced playoff successs... Elias Lindholm maybe? Very nice. We could use more reliable goaltending too, these no-names are doing better than expected in a tank season, but we need an answer. Ahh, yes, let's trade a 1st rounder for Georgiev - a promising young goalie who hasn't really had a chance to fully establish himself. Eh, he may have whispers of off ice stuff, but that's alright. This team is really coming together now, especially considering our injured goal-scoring power forward will be ready to go and protect his young linemates! Now why does it feel like I've been here before