DarthEbriate

Columbus skating hard every, creating their puck luck. Every puck is finding their sticks. Sabres are just waving their sticks around. Someone needs to tell them this is how we play every game or something. Or throw a hit, wake people up.

Just being skated in circles until Power clears the puck off Timmins right back to Chinakov. Ugly.

Jackets getting to every loose puck and passing lane first.

3:45 (6:45 ET) is too early without being early enough. It's a wonky start time even if someone/sportsbar were to 7 TVs.

They made it to 11-9-1 after a Reimer-led win over San Jose last season (the 3-game California sweep). They got home, Luukkonen was great in a 1-0 loss to Minnesota... and they lost the next 12 as well.

I'd give Luukkonen a two-week conditioning assignment of 3 AHL starts to ensure he was back to health and recovered properly after each game and saw a variety of shots and net-front traffic, with... oh. Now that the monster exists, I guess Ruff just rides the Llyon (a Fflam never falters!) into the ground and then pick your poison on the two guys who've been sitting around barely used for weeks. If you try to go with a 3-man rotation, even with the condensed schedule, none of them are going to get into a groove. But what they should do: Dress 'em all! Treat them like pitchers. Lyon starts every game. Luukkonen gets the 2nd for the long change. Ellis gets all penalty shots. Luukkonen is on the bench during PP/PK where you need stickhandling/passing and then the reactions to handle shorthanded breakaways/rush chances. Switch them on the fly like a regular line change. Revolutionize the game.

To be fair, of the forwards drafted #9 (Savoie) or later in the first round, only Nazar (13) and Kulich (28) have made any difference as of yet. And after the 1st round, only Poitras and Hutson have done anything in that class. Savoie will get that shield down, we gotta give him more time.

Hoping a quick return to health for Kozak. Last season, the team looked better with him in the lineup and that has continued into this season. And he needs a Star Wars name.

They do need to draft better, although 3 of Adams' drafts are much too early to bother counting in any top 150 list unless it was Celebrini. Adams' flaws in his early drafting (underweight skill/finesse reaches with almost no grinders selected)... are well documented. However, specific to this top 150 list the more important thing is to look at who is on that list. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6755065/2025/10/28/nhl-player-tiers-roster-building-trades-drafting/ This is nearly all established players (except Celebrini) and high-end scorers. But if you were starting a team, would you consider Erik Karlsson as a top 150 player in the league to build your team around? I wouldn't. Eichel, Reinhart, Ullmark. Adams traded them away or didn't offer an extension going into the UFA season allowing them to walk. Who is on the Sabres roster from the Top-150 list? Thompson (pre-Adams), Dahlin (pre-Adams). That's it. The real issue is trading away two top-50 skaters and a top-10 goalie and getting (thus far) nothing close in return for any of them.

Almost there....

It’s an optimistic way to look at it. The issue now is how is Luukkonen going to regain his form (as an .880 goalie) by splitting time with two other goalies. That’s the crux of the issue. If you’re going to get him his rehab, it’s in Rochester. Meanwhile, Ellis doesn’t get to build his game. And Lyon… gets rested, which is good, but we the expense of points in the standings.

But he's months from potentially being bought out (and unlikely) and he's not being waived. If the agent complains about the conditioning assignment, again -- full NHL salary -- then you tell the agent that their client played 1 period of hockey since last season and you're in 3rd place in the division. If they want to request a trade, so be it. But the agent knows his client has no trade value.

Mrtka has a primary and secondary assist in his season debut. Seattle leads Prince George 2-0... ha. Whoops. 2-1. In the first.

C'mon. Just a little bit of rampage....?

How? He's under contract for 3 more years. And players get their full NHL salary when they're given the conditioning assignment designation. You're doing what's best for the player and the team if you give him an extra week to get up to game speed.

Yup. But no sane GM is trading for a just-below-average goalie on that salary and term. You can bury him each October in Rochester. Lowers the cap hit, doesn't lower the payout from the owner. And... I'm not going to forget it... they're also paying Georgiev because they were unwilling to play hardball and get a PTO from someone. But --- more importantly --- Luukkonen could be part of a tandem with Lyon (potentially, at least -- if you get good -- staying in his net and not leaning forward Luukkonen). He just shouldn't be in the lineup this early. He shouldn't have been called up until he had made at least two, and preferably 3, rehab starts.

Adams has to convince his boss to buy him out and keep paying him for a few more years any. And take the extra cap hit in addition to Skinner.

Right. So then it's Lyon and Ellis as the backup. Luukkonen is still conditioning. Easy. Yup. His fantastic run got him all the way up to ... .910%. Which is above league average, but... 15th-ish in the league. Nothing elite. And that means that his other 30 games were... his normal output. And I love his name!

Husso got Future Considerations last year. The thing about Luukkonen is that he's got 3 years left at 4.75M. If you're a GM, are you taking that risk? You'll lose your job if you bet on him. Maybe a team planning to tank next season that needs to get to the cap would do it. But... no one is doing that right now. The tanking teams already have those guys. Boston already has a Korpisalo. Pittsburgh already has a Jarry. The teams that just tanked (CHI, SJ) don't want him on their books for 3 seasons when they're going to be on the rise.

That's a 4-1 empty-net goal win with Ellis. But --- the former sentence is the more important to the future and health of the franchise.

Love the Canucks black skate jerseys.

This could have easily been a 4-point weekend and putting Toronto in a world of hurt. 3 points is good, but the decision to bring up an unready goalie left a point on the table.

Like I said... he should be in Cleveland right now. That's on Adams.

Power... tsk, tsk, tsk. And any uncontested shot on Luukkonen in OT was going in.

Precisely. You have him and Levi split the games for two weeks --- it's not like the Sabres were struggling in goal and needed a spark. They needed Luukkonen to get his games in.