SabresBaltimore

I think this is going be called offsides..

Let's go! Big save by Levi off a bad giveaway and a nice response by our top line.

I haven't been this excited/nervous about a Sabres game in so long that I can't quantify it. I'd love to win tonight and go on to win enough to overtake the Pens and Panthers (overtaking the Isles at this point seems very unlikely). However if we don't win tonight, I just hope we play our ***** off. We likely squandered our best chances at the playoffs earlier in the season, but our glimmer of hope depends more on this game than any of the others. These kids need experience in playing in high pressure games like this one if they have any hopes of contending for a cup. The only thing that will really make me mad is if we play terrible.

I can't speak for other teams, but living in Maryland I paid more attention to the Capitals than any other team besides the Sabres. When Ovi first got drafted there was a vet named Chris Clark (I remember mostly since he went to my college) who was the Captain (might have been that same year, I forget exactly). He was playing on their 4th line his last season there before being traded. When that happened they made Ovi captain, and in my opinion he wasn't ready for it. It seemed like a reaction to the Pens making Crosby captain more than a deserved/good decision. It took him a very long time for him to grow into a good captain on the ice. I can't speak to how the locker room felt about him. He's always seemed to be more of a go out and play hard kind of leader to me. I don't really remember who the various assistants were though, or when they gave Backstrom the A. Those teams struggled for a long time with playing great in the regular season, but falling flat in the post season. I think one of the keys was more depth. For years it was the Ovi and Backstrom show. I feel like having a solid #2 center in Evgeny Kuznetsov was a big difference maker. But in terms of leadership, it was basically Ovi and Backstrom. It may have been too much pressure on them to not only lead, but having to carry the team on their backs. The year they finally won the cup Ovi had fully seemed to embrace being a captain, but I always feel like he was more of the lead cheerleader (he always seems to celebrate just as hard when a teammate scores then when he scores himself) than a leader of men. Long story short I feel like the Caps tried to develop their own leaders out of their top point producers. I kind of feel like if Ovi could have just focused on scoring goals and let someone else do the leading they might have won a cup sooner, but at this point no one else could lead that team. I think team already has more (offensive) depth than those early Caps teams, and there are good in-house candidates to take over leadership from Okposo and Girgenson. However I still want some vets who have been there. Right now the only real vet on the team with a lot of playoff experience is Tuch. He has 66 games in 4 seasons with Vegas. Okposo might be the next highest with the 24 in 3 seasons. I love Girgensons and I'd like to see him back on a cheap deal next season, but the poor guy has known nothing but losing his whole career here. I'd like to see someone else with his letter. I'd personally pick Dahlin or Tuch as Captain, the other gets an A. I think Tuch is the better choice because he's older, has the playoff experience, and has really embraced the team since being traded. However Dahlin may be a more natural leader to the younger guys. For the other A I'd either add Cousins (who I think could be our best option for captain later on) or in the short term another vet we hopefully bring in this offseason (like a middle pair defenseman with some playoff experience?) until Cousins grows into the role. I wouldn't want Thompson to feel slighted about not having a letter, but I want him to just focus on his game. I don't think making your top point player the captain is great idea. But really it comes down to locker room more than on the ice stuff.

In MD I do a combination of cable (TNT, NHLN or Caps games) and ESPN+ for the rest. I used to do the Center Ice package for years, but it costs more than ESPN+ (even with the price increase) and you get fewer games and don't always get the MSG feed. It also helps for me that ESPN+ has NLL (Bandits) and a lot of college hockey that includes games from my alma mater (Clarkson). I still haven't been able to bring myself to cancel cable outright. For the stuff I watch/record I don't really think it saves me money because I'd end up with YouTubeTV or HuluTV or something like that most likely. If that weren't the case I'd probably just forgo the TNT/NHLN/Caps games.

Indeed

For a while the sabres and this forum were my main sports thing, but I grew up a Bills fan and came to the Sabres later. My Dad didn't watch hockey, but my step dad did. And my college had division 1 hockey only. The other sports were division 3, and they wasn't a football team. A lot of that coincided with when the team was really good (late 90s through mid 00s). As the Bills have gotten good again, and the Sabres were still pretty bad, I drifted more back to them. I still skim/lurk on the forums, but stopped participating in most of the threads. I've been a bit more active now that they are on the rise. I've never stopped following/watching them, but I didn't feel like there was much I wanted to discuss while they were bad. My Bills podcast has a slack server, and they have a channel for the Sabres that I chat in a bit, but it's not as active as this forum.

I don't expect Anderson to request a trade. I think the only reason he's playing hockey this year is because he wants to help these kids develop. I remember reading a quote from him wishing he was "10 5 years younger". I feel like If he really wanted to win a cup this year, he probably could have signed as a backup somewhere else.

So I'm torn. On one hand I want the team to break the post season drought and let our kids get some playoff experience. On the other hand we're still rebuilding and I feel Comrie is an unknown quantity at this point. But given where we are in the standings, we have a very tight margin for even making the playoffs as it is. Can we afford to risk a few games on Comrie? Then again, even if we do make the playoffs, it's not very realistic that we'll win it all this year. I'd expect to lose in the first round, although anything is possible if the team/goalie is hot. So if you're KA/Granato do you still want to see what you have in Comrie ahead of next season when (I have to assume) Anderson will be gone/retired? Or do you worry about next season later and just go with your best chance to get your young team some playoff experience now? I think I'm for making the push now. It not only shows you have confidence in your young talent, but will help bond them for future seasons. But it could result in a setback next year if they go with UPL/Comrie next year and Comrie is a total bust. Also I doubt he's happy about being 3rd on the depth chart. This was supposed to be his chance to be an NHL starter and now he's not even a backup anymore...

Ah yeah, I was looking at last week and this week. Not this week and next week. It'd make sense they'd have him start against his old team.

I don't really post here that much, so forgive me if I'm re-treading some stuff from the first several pages of this thread. With Anderson getting the start last night, it has me wondering when will Comrie start again? He's had 1 start since coming back from injury, and that was due to UPL being sick. I was assuming they'd put him into one of these back-to-back games, though Anderson saved our ass in the 1st period and has the best stats of the 3 goalies, so he seems like the best option at backup. I do agree with the Sabres that if they are winning in front of UPL, to keep playing him. However Comrie has barely had any playtime this season. He had a hot start, then cooled way off and then got hurt and basically hasn't been back since. Both Comrie and UPL have 1 year left on their contracts, and in theory Levi (and maybe Portillo but it sounds like that will be unlikely) in the minors next year. I'd love to bring Anderson back as like a goalie coach or something if he's willing, but we can't expect him to play again next year, can we? Either way I feel like we need to figure out what we have in Comrie, but I also don't want to jeopardize our chances of finally breaking the playoff drought. So I'd probably stick to UPL/Anderson until there is an apparent need to shake things up. Comrie had to expect to be the starter here and it's not as if his play was that much worse than UPL. It's not this is some Brady/Bledsoe situation here. So will we see Comrie again anytime soon? Last week had another back to back and both weeks we have 3 games in 4 nights (and 4 games in 6 nights), so maybe Comrie will play on Thursday? I find it a bit strange Anderson played last night instead of tonight.

I turned on the Nashville feed hoping to at least catch something, but as soon as they started things, they cut away from the announcers. I still have center ice, and it also doesn't have the pregame, so I agree this is probably MSG's fault. But overall I thought NHL.tv was far better than ESPN+. ESPN+ doesn't seem to have a hide scores option or a start from beginning option. I may stick with center ice next year.

Really annoyed the pregame stuff isn't on ESPN+. Terrible

My perspective is the Pegulas are (mostly) well meaning, but incompetent owners. I honestly think they dumb lucked their way into a winning formula for the Bills with Beane and McDermott. I don't have a lot of faith that if/when they need to replace either one of them they will do a good job. We need the equivalent front office for the Sabres and thus far haven't gotten it. I think they really want the Sabres to be a perennial playoff team and win multiple cups. They just don't know how to do it and have spent the last 10 years flailing. Early on it appeared the had too many cronies interfering. I'm not sure if that's still the case, but it maybe salted the land a bit so to speak. Plus covid is making it a lot harder since I think they are much more reliant on ticket sales and concessions than other NHL franchises are. I'm not sure how to fix it, but selling the team likely wouldn't be the solution. It'd probably make it worse since I think the Pegulas do care about the community beyond just their bottom line. Or at least their bottom line has largely been good for the city (albeit not the Sabres record). A lot of owners aren't very good at sports teams. I live in Maryland and the Washington Football team has been awful under Dan Synder. I'm sure there are other examples. Jerry Jones always brings in "top end" talent and you can see how well that has worked out for the Cowboys super bowls since the 90s. My hope is something of the success with the Bills can finally rub off on the Sabres, but as I said I think it's mostly been dumb luck rather than anything else.

First game back after all this time and it's NBCSN. 😞 Oh well, excited for some hockey. Go Sabres!

I have Center Ice, but I still have to watch the NBC Sports Washington coverage whenever we play the Capitals. IIRC in years past games on ESPN+ didn't black out Center Ice, but this year could be different, or I could be wrong on that. The ESPN+ is pretty new. I don't recall ever missing a game because of it though.

Haha. Nice. Real/die hard caps fans do exist, they are just a lot less common in my experience. I've lived/worked in the area for 15+ years and in that time I'd say (while being a hockey snob I guess) that I've only met 3 "real" Caps fans. Then there are a bunch of casual fans and a ton of bandwagoners. When I first moved here and the Caps were bad/only had Ovechkin the Sabres/Caps games were mostly Sabres fans. In more recent years, there are a decent number of Sabres fans since we tend to be everywhere. But to my point about the fanbase, I've worked with 2 other Sabres fans (both Buffalo transplants like myself). So that's a pretty bad ratio I'd say. There should be far more die-hard Caps fans at work than Sabres fans. Of course this area has a ton of transplants so you get fans of all sorts of teams. It could just be my experience is atypical but I know a TON of Ravens and WFT fans by comparison. I don't really know any Wizards fans, but I also don't really follow/talk basketball at work, so that could be part of the reason. Wizards seem far more popular in the area though despite not having the same level of success as the Capitals.

Living in Capital Country (hockey isn't nearly as popular here as in Buffalo, even with the recent Stanley Cup win) it's going to be weird being in the same division as the Capitals this season. I tend to follow the caps a bit, though never as closely as the Sabres. One of my co-workers is a pretty big Caps fan though. Most of rest are just bandwagoners if they are even aware of the Capitals at all. Like "yay we won the Cup". It also means a lot more games being forced to watch the non-MSG-B coverage. Personally I'm a fan of Joe Beninati, but I can't stand Craig Laughlin, despite the fact that he played hockey at my alma mater. I'm pretty sure I've said that before, but it annoys me everytime I watch the Capitals coverage. Either way with the Bills being so good right now and the Sabres being so bad the last few years, I'm not as excited for this as I used to be. Normally by this point in the season I'd have been to at least 2 home games too. I'm sure once the NFL season is over, I'll be more excited for the Sabres again. Hopefully our new additions can finally get us to the post season again. But we got a really tough division this year. Somethings to watch for tonight: The capitals have question marks at Goalie. They lost Holtby in the offseason, brought in Lundqvist and then lost him due some heart issue. So now they are relying on Ilya Samsonov. That may have been the plan anyways, with Lundqvist serving as a veteran backup, but I don't think so. Samsonov has had some good games behind Holtby but now he's the starter with an even younger/unproven backup in Vitek Vanecek (who has yet to play a NHL game). There will be a familiar face on the Capitals backline tonight as Zdeno Chara signed a 1 year contract. Let's go Buffalo!

I'd like to see him trade out one (or more) of our UFA forwards for some picks back. I don't expect we'll get any long term help beyond that with what we have to offer.

I still care, but work has been busy which means time to discuss a team that started strong then seems to have fallen off a cliff is limited. I don't like to dwell on the bad. I thought we looked good on Sunday, but it was against Detroit. It was hard watching that one since it was in the middle of the NFL playoffs. I would watch a period then, switch back to football, then back to hockey, etc. But since I typically watch sports on a delay to skip commericals etc it worked out ok. Anyways Vegas will be a bigger challenge than Detroit. It'd be nice to get back to back wins. Let's go Buffalo.

Yeah, while I'm glad to see the extension, I'd love to see something longer term. Or permanent. Apparently Indy was about to lose its contract (and other cities were trying to get it) but they were extended to 2021 last year: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2019/05/22/nfl-scouting-combine-indianapolis-events-shifted-television/1198030001/

There is only so much he can do with all the bad contracts he inherited. I'm waiting to see how the team looks next year before calling for his head. He won't have the excuse of lack of cap space this summer.

Eichel is out skating at least. Same with Rodriguez.

I'm hoping to keep my game attendance streaking going. Sabres have won the last 5 I've gone to, and the last game I was at started Jack on his consecutive game point streak with a 4 goal game. Then Im rushing my ass back to my buddy's place to pick up my car and head over to my cousin's for the Bills game. Let's get that double win today!

Just reposting this here since they are showing it again tonight and I'm stuck with the Fliers coverage. I have center ice, not nhl.tv, but apparently you can activate nhl.tv with your cable provider by going to https://www.nhl.com/activate (thanks again nfreeman for the tip) And here is a link to the feed for the game: https://www.nhl.com/tv/2019020405/221-2003735/70130703#game=2019020405 You'll have to scroll around a bit, but there are 2 parts 1 just after the first and 1 just after the second period. There are markers to show when each period started so I just went back about 15 minutes or so from those until I found the start of each part.