Hoss

That’s a concern. He’s not alone in publicly smashing this franchise. For sure. It’s relevant to how atrocious this franchise has been with Samson on board. He was never given a chance to excel. He’s off to a very good start in Florida and is even a +4. Long season but him being a + for the first time in his career the second he leaves Buffalo completely destroyed your attempt to make it relevant to Samson.

This fanbase needs to stop playing dumb on this. The way you treat players has a huge impact on the way others view your franchise around the league. The Sabres decided not to go to bat for their best player and decided he was not worth their money. That’s going to have an impact. It might not be the difference for a lot of guys but it’s certainly another obstacle to address. +/- is an irrelevant stat and shows absolutely nothing about a player unless it’s an outlier to the rest of the team.

See? Not the same player at all!

I mean … it definitely isn’t. Convincing players to come here and stay here is near the very top of the list of ways to fix this franchise. It’s a step above concession prices, at least.

Winning fixes a lot, sure. As does money. But not having things to fix is even better. This will impact decisions in the future. Convincing good players to come here is already hard enough.

I was being sarcastic. I said multiple times this was happening and would continue to happen.

Wow we never could have possibly foreseen the handling of Jack having an impact on players around the league. I certainly never mentioned it multiple times.

No, not really. As far as point production goes: Samson has five seasons of more than 20 goals, Tuch has zero. Samson has six seasons of 40 or more points. Tuch has one. Six seasons over .5 PPG. Tuch has two. They’re not close. Tuch is a 30-50 point player. Samson is a 50-70 point player.

What a weird, made up attempt to discredit an amazing play.

That’s good timing to remind us what we missed when the lottery balls fell the way they did.

Tuch is indeed wearing 89.

I imagine he’ll go under.

Can we just get over the surgery?

I do wonder a little bit how much the poor effort is on the coaches and how much the poor effort is on the clear indications from management and ownership that the team isn’t intended to compete in the immediate term. That’s what I suspect will happen again this year. Tuch is not Sam Reinhart. Krebs - TBD.

He’s more than that on the ice but also doesn’t appear to be a comparable player in the room so this is a weird comment.

Not to mention Jared McCann has been good in Vegas

He’s not just a “good player” and he’s never had anywhere near the talent he has around him now. I don’t know how you can even try to compare it. If the Eichel first turns out to be a bust that contributes nothing that certainly doesn’t help this deal.

I believe @Randall Flagg has expressed that Eichel has been the star of the team through the prime years of his fandom as he’s a bit younger (aka slightly younger than me). Idk but @pi2000’s source says lotion sales in Buffalo have gone up.

You were the first person I thought of when I saw the Hurricanes mentioned. We're here for you.

This felt like it was him referencing the summer and he seemed to really think that was happening. Man, I want to know what those deals looked like (just as a fan of the inner workings of front offices, not really in the context of being a Sabres fan).

I’m curious about Carolina. If they were “serious” I wonder what they offered. They’ve got a ton of good young players who are already on the NHL roster.