matter2003

I like it! I find it funny how the same people who HATED these when they wore these back in the day now somehow were dying for them to come back? I guess maybe because they hated the fact the original jerseys were taken away and now this is only an alternate.

Yeah I know, it's pretty crazy how quickly things can change early in the year... I see them as 87-90 points this year and nothing I've seen so far tells me there should be anything less...potential for more but it would be really disappointing if they got less.

Sabres just went from 2nd to 6th place in the division over the last few days with the 2 losses...

Jaquan Johnson is killing the Bills right now, especially as the outside contain player on runs. He had 2 plays yesterday where instead of being happy to make a play for a 2 yard gain, he tried to take an angle that would have allowed him to make a play behind the LOS for a loss and got outflanked and gave up 20+ yard runs both times. He doesn't have the speed to make up for his bad angle and hold it to a 5 or 6 yard gain, and if he continues to take bad angles the Bills are in trouble on outside runs. Milano and Poyer not being in there really hurt as well...they are very good run defenders. On offense, the worst thing that happened yesterday was the first play of the game where Allen threw deep to Diggs. Allen never got out of that attack downfield mentality even when, similar to the 2nd half of the Packers game, the OLine was having pressure issues. Allen did well to escape but both teams are good in coverage so his downfield options were not open when he did...Allen could have easily taken shorter options initially, but as he is prone to, chose to try and wait for deeper ones to come open. Same issue Mahomes was having last year during his multi game struggles. Sometimes you just have to take what the D is giving you and move on to the next play. Specifically the issue has been in the 2nd halves of games. Bills were rolling up yards in both first halves and then whatever adjustments were made by those teams the Bills did not counter well on offense, only getting 3 points both games. Basically the Bills should never really lose a game where the D held the other team to 20 points. They just shouldn't. Even with the embarrassing drive where the Jets started on their own 4 and just ran it 7 plays straight to get into FG range on their last real drive. We needed Josh Allen from the Rams and Titans game that was patient and took what the D was giving him at first until they crept up and then started hitting them over the top, but instead we got Josh Allen from the Steelers game who kept wanting to throw the deep passes and was unwillingly to take most of those easy underneath throws until they were already covered after coming off the deep ones too often. More concerning is a potential UCL injury to Allen that could derail this season if he misses 4 games like his rookie year where he had a similar injury. He claims its a little sore and he'd work through it this week, but that doesn't mean crap if the MRI comes back with bad news.

Dahlin is day to day, might be good by next game

There are going to growing pains for sure with so many young players and probably a lot more mistakes than we want to see...but I don't want them to be afraid to make them...they need to make them and then learn from them. If they can make them while winning games, even better, but Carolina is one of the elite teams in the NHL and there was nothing I saw last night that would discourage me about the Sabres. They played well at times, but it was a fair result.

They aren't great but other than this game was trending on the right direction. Let's stop pretending they hadn't scored a PP goal in like 6 of their last 8 including a couple games with 2. They were 11th in the NHL coming into tonight. That's above average.

The goal with 0.1 second left

Carolina is really good. I think that should be the start and end of the "what's wrong with the Sabres tonight" comments. The metrics say they are the best team in the NHL and they look like it. Not really much else to say.

It would also help if we could stop having multiple D out seemingly half the season every year

Just aren't at the Canes level yet. No shame in that, they will take a lot of good lessons from this one even in a loss. They have played pretty well, just no answers for the Canes speed, team structure and aggressiveness in the D zone.

Sabres are doing a lot of wheeling and dealing in the offensive zone but it's all to the outside. Whenever they try to get inside the Canes either converge on them or get sticks in the way of passes. They are really good...very impressed especially with the way they play team D. Sabres are getting destroyed on faceoffs again too which doesn't help.

We played well in the early part of the first but Carolina has slowly kind of taken over. They aren't killing the Sabres but we are having to work really really hard in both ends and are having trouble getting shots to the net between the blocks and the back checks getting sticks in lanes. Sabres are doing a lot of circling in the Canes zone without any real shots on goal.

Basically we are watching what the Sabres will look like in about 3 years or so in the Hurricanes. They are damn good.

Can they stop icing the puck?

Ah...is that one of those stats that is judged by the teams official scorer?

This is super entertaining...Sabres looking like the Harlem Globetrotters in the Canes end.

I just stream it off my favorite "Mom's Basement" site.

I wouldn't know...maybe you should take a break or go get some help? 😉

Probably worse.

Should be a good measuring stick...Carolina leads the NHL in CF% at 63.56%. Sabres are 11th at 51.46% Surprise Seattle is 7th at 53.05%...could they actually be good this year? Also surprisingly...Sabres are the best team in the NHL at not giving the puck away with only 56 giveaways and also are one of the best teams in the NHL at not giving the puck away in the defensive zone, coming in 5th at only 41.07% of the giveaways happening in our end...improvement over last year when we were 14th and 8th respectively. Not surprisingly we are far and away the lowest team in terms of hits given with 109...the second lowest team in that department is Montreal with 193...for comparisons, Rangers lead the NHL with 362 hits...but we balance that out by being the 4th lowest in terms of hits taken with only 190. Chicago leads that with only 183 taken, so we aren't far off. We are an NHL worst 36.45% hits given tho so that is something we probably are going to need to work on I would think.

No idea what you are talking about. Weird take.

And look where it got us...nowhere...the same way the Leafs get bounced from the first round no matter how good they are.

It's an example of why Toronto goes out in the first round of the playoffs every year. This stuff matters when push comes to shove and when the chips are down. That is the kind of stuff that causes locker room issues. We just got rid of those with Eichel, Reinhart and Risto...don't need to be adding any of them back again.

Matthews scores a goal, takes a hit after and then goes back at the dude and gives him a crosscheck...then they start slashing and yapping and Matthews let's his teammate fight his fight for him and everyone else gets involved as he stands there and laughs...what a disgrace. This is what you call a punk move. It's like the one guy everyone knows growing up that they won't hang out with anymore because you go out with him and a few other guys to a bar and he starts crap all night with someone and gets your group into a fight and then just stands there watching it happen or runs away. Matthews is a soft little punk and the dude who jumped in there should be doing the same thing to him in the locker room for it.