SabresBaltimore

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.

And for anyone else like me who wants to watch it that has NHL.tv or Center ice, I think this is the feed: https://www.nhl.com/tv/2019020405/221-2003735/70130703#game=2019020405 There are 2 parts just after the first and second periods.

This looks to be where you have to go: https://www.nhl.com/activate

Really? I didn't know that. I"ll have to look into that. I've debated switching over to nhl.tv, but I like to be able to DVR the games. That would make what I have the best of both worlds.

Sadly I have Center Ice through Verizon so that's not an option for me. I think they said they were going to air it again, but really I just want them to post it on YouTube or Facebook like they have with some of the other stuff. Hopefully they will eventually.

I'm annoyed about the Ray v. Domi thing. They should just post it online. I'm stuck with the Flier coverage tonight and won't be able to see it. Again

Works been busy lately, so I haven't had time to check in here much. It's been a bit up and down lately, thankfullly more up than down due to Eichel. So in addition to rooting for a win tonight, I'm rooting for Eichel to tie the Game Point streak record. I realized earlier this week the streak started for the Ottawa game I was in town for last month where Eichel got 4 goals. And now if he scores gets a point tonight it sets up Saturday's game (which I'll also be attending) to break the record. It'd be pretty awesome to be there at the start and be there if/when he breaks it. Go Sabres!

With the Bills doing so well I want to be greedy and get double playoffs this year. The prospects of that looked good in late October. Sabres need to start stringing together a bunch more wins though in December.

Saturday's game really showed me the general state of the fans right now. There was very little cheering beyond when being prompted ie when they'd play the organ use the score board for a let's go Buffalo cheer. As soon as the organ stopped/play started the cheer immediately died. It was depressing. I'd keep cheering then it'd feel awkward when I was the only one. There was maybe 1 time someone else got an actual cheer going and it picked up a bit of steam then also promptly died. Eichel looked downright angry after each of his 4 goals. He celebrated briefly then looked like someone ran over his dog. I was hoping the win/big game by Jack on Saturday was going to be the start of a turnaround but we looked awful Sunday night. I was worried after our early success that we'd fall over once we faced some adversity and here we are with adversity. A lot of it. So far we don't seem to be responding. Is this on the players? The coaching staff? Probably a bit of both. The Krueger honeymoon is over and now I'm wondering what we can do to get the season back on track before it's too late. Hoping for another win here and maybe some kind of spark because we really need it. Sadly I've returned to Maryland yesterday so I won't be in attendance to make some magic happen again.

Hoping for a double win today with the Bills. That (plus the pizza and wings I'll be enjoying) would cap off my trip back to Buffalo nicely before my 400 mile drive tomorrow morning. Despite the win last night, the Sabres only looked good in the first period and in the minutes after Eichel's hat trick in the 3rd. That's a lot of time in the middle where we were on our heals. Now we have a road game on back to back nights. I'm hoping yesterday woke them up a little bit.

3-0 in my last 3 games attended. You're welcome! ?

I'm in town for this one. I was 2-0 in games attended last season, so let's hope I can right the ship tonight. lol. But really though, I have a lot of time and money invested into this game, so I'm hoping they win.

I don't think he understands that I'm driving up to Buffalo tomorrow for Saturday's game. Missing tonight is bad enough. Missing Saturday is unacceptable.

I really hope we bounce back tonight. I'm starting to worry it's going to be a repeat of last year. It's been strange with so little hockey the last two weeks. Right after this game ends I'll be going to bed to wake up early tomorrow and drive up to Buffalo for Saturday's game against the Sens. Hopefully that game will be the second win in a row as we right the ship tonight.