DarthEbriate

If the stories are true, the answer to this question will be the indicator of how much influence TPeg has on the final roster. If the owners say UPL is a Sabre this season (as stories have indicated they thought he should be up a year or so ago), then I think we're in trouble. UPL's future is bright. But before he can visit the stars, he has to dominate the AHL and get about... what... another 60? 80? professional games before we can feel comfortable in his consistency. (COVID/short season last year stunted many a prospect's future -- including Jonas Johansson, who should've been an Amerk and not wasting away. But UPL also missed out on about 10 starts last season because of the shortened season and his injury, and his games were split across the Atlantic, to boot. He's behind his development path now.) Come next season 2022-23 we can start thinking of NHL backup duty, but ideally it's just call-up spots. Then, 2023-24, earn the backup or even 1A/1B outright. Patience! Soon, he will be with us.

Okposo is a solid pick up for Seattle in a lot of ways. When healthy, he can still play really effective minutes (he's the vowel in the LOG line!) and he can still generate points in a middle six role (as we saw with that 10-game stretch with Granato). He's worn an A for years and been on Team USA. He is a fantastic teammate and even sticks up for teammates at the detriment to himself -- which is terrifying! Selfless and terrifying. And on the social side: he's African-American, which is really important to the city and area (and NHL) to grow the game and inspire more young Black (and Asian, other ethnic minority) kids to get out skating. Seattle got Fitzhugh for radio PBP and JT Brown as a TV analyst, they'll get Black players, too, for both team and community. PK Subban (1 year at a much-too-high 9M, but then extend at a lower/reasonable salary) is a sleeper expansion pick for Seattle as well, especially if NJ throws in a sweetener because of the salary. Longer-term, Okposo could easily become a coach or get involved in the front office for the expansion franchise.

Fully agree on all points except 4. I like Okposo a bunch (and I can see Seattle loving him just like we do as a person and a player [if only he weren't concussion-prone and earned $2M/year]). But if you can give Seattle a 6th to take Miller or the rights to Pilut, or a 5th to take Eakin or Okposo -- go for it. Give them that scale and say "Any of those vets, you get a pick." That goes in part with #5 because one of Asplund/Thompson/Bjork gets exposed and Asplund is XGMTM's guy, Thompson is tied to ROR-trade (TPeg/franchise pride), and Bjork is GM Sheevyn's guy. My guess is they expose Asplund... which is the wrong move based on talent level.

The key thing everyone's conversation on this thread is reaffirming is that $34M in cap space doesn't mean bantha poodoo if you don't know how to use it wisely. We had plenty of cap space in the summer of 2019 as Moulson, Beaulieu, and Pominville came off the books. But then we (rightfully, because of injuries) stockpiled defensemen (Miller, Joker) to the extent we were trading Scandella for a 4th and demoting Bogosian, then extended Skinner to $3M beyond his worth, and signed MoJo to play center instead of wing... and Vesey, too!, and we were right back up against the cap to start the season. Then, we added Frolik for $4M once we had cap space from moving out Scandella. That's some excellent cap work there. But GMTM taught us how to get to the cap floor easily: Meszaros for $4M. 🍺😇

I totally agree with you. But it's a PR campaign to appease the fan base when we get less in return than we want. Plus, then Sabres fans can boo whenever Reino handles the puck in his new sweater.

Here's the Sith in me dealing in absolutes: Skinner will remain a Sabre until one of two things happens: 1) the GMs/owners determine to give themselves a compliance buyout in one of the upcoming offseasons after the expansion draft, or 2) he is bought out sometime after the 2022-2023 season, after his signing bonus is paid. Then, his buy out cap hits will be manageable except for one season at $6M+. If he did somehow miraculously waive his NMC... remember, Toronto gave up a 1st (late, yes) to get one year of Marleau at $6.25M off their cap. That's an easy buyout. Skinner has 6 more years at $9M, for a guy who's been demoted to the bottom six by each of his coaches in the past 5 seasons (Granato, too, at the end of the season)..., and his buyout is not pretty during this flat cap period because of his upcoming signing bonus. If I'm an opposing GM, the Sabres would have to start by giving me 3 unprotected firsts for me to touch that contract and its buyout. Maybe 4 firsts... to give it the same weight as an RFA offer sheet.

KA is adamant you have to want to be here, which means TPegs is adamant you have to want to be here. Jack is at a disconnect. The old suffering guard (still young) is being moved out. The agreements are already in place and now it's up to the opposing GMs to sweeten the deal just a touch to get their 1C. Everyone is waiting until after the expansion draft to see how that shakes anything up, but mainly they're holding in place because they've set up their rosters for the draft and everyone is properly protected. The trade is announced during the trade partner's first round pick and the Sabres are back on the clock. All the coordinates are set. It's now or never. Punch it!

Of course they'd like to keep Ristolainen. Every GM and front office should be talking up all their players for either trade value purposes (whether to be moved now or at the deadline) or to keep the player's morale up on returning to yet another lackluster season for the franchise. The good news is... he's under contract this season, so it's easy to keep him until it's time to move him. Dreger wasn't saying they were looking to extend him.

So... you're saying... all we have to do is make every penny's mass equal to a gram, and every thousand dollar-bill a kilogram... and it'll work. We'll use water for dollar currency! 🍺😇. Metric Dollars!

While they do have to get to $50M as a rule... it's also incredibly easy to do without taking any bad contracts. The only bad contracts Seattle is taking are because they are receiving incentives to take them. They'll gladly take a shoddy contract for a couple seasons... but after Marleau's cap hit was moved for a 1st, that's what they'll expect. Okposo is staying in Buffalo. We let him play this season -- when healthy, he's still fine. Not worth the contract, but a viable NHLer. Then, buy him out next summer. Seattle isn't taking Eakin, Girgensons, or Miller without a sweetener from us going their way. They'll take any of the Asplund/Tage/Bjork or Borgen from us and get their meatier contracts from another squad.

The altered effect in this equation would be that Carolina doesn't have an Eastern Conference or Stanley Cup championship that season.

Three weeks to go! Time for the prospects by name for 2021. The order is from some sort of prospect list and has no bearing on my preference. Except Power, which is the clear favorite for names. Bonus picks included as we could have multiple firsts. Owen Power – Uncle Owen had better have that crease cleared by midday or there'll be hell to pay. Unnnnlimmitted Power! This one speaks for itself and is clearly the best name available for 'Ebriate purposes. Mason McTavish – Moff Tavish is a regional governor in the Galactic Empire. Somewhere Mid Rim. He could become a Grand Moff if he plays his cards right. Kent Johnson – Nope. Too old! boring to be drafted Star Warsy. Luke Hughes – Luke! Luuuuke! Hughes! Huuuughes! Be sure your defenseman speaks Bocci. Not enough Us to threaten Luukkonen. Dylan Guenther – Rebel officer. He wears a vest with a little insignia/rank plate. Matthew Beniers – Jedi. …. I don’t know anyone named Matty, but Young Beniers lives in both zones of the ice sea. He’s kind of a strange two-way hermit. Brandt Clarke – Is the E silent? Yes? Imperial officer. Probably serving on an Imperial Star Destroyer. William Eklund – Bounty hunter. Eklund wears a cape. Lots of hidden weapons. Simon Edvinsson – Junior member of the Galactic Senate. Someday he’ll be a character whose talent and importance is never really appreciated. Jesper Wallstedt – What is a Wallstedt? A cup? A ship? A speeder? I sense a ship. The Wallstedt. A Rebel ship. Aatu Räty – Ithorian. Denizen of a cantina/cantina-adjacent locale. Has all the latest off-world rumors. Sebastian Cossa – Mercenary/pirate. Seems like he’d know Hondo. Carson Lambos – Lambos is not a system. He’s a man. Card player, gambler, scoundrel. You’d like him. Fabian Lysell – On the other hand, Lysell is a system, not a man. Chaz Lucius – An alias. “Chaz! Chaz Lu… ci…us” is the kind of name an 'Ebriate would fabricate by reading nearby signs in an attempt to deceive our plucky protagonists.

A communications disruption disconnect resolution can mean only one thing: Invasion! Trade! Either right before the expansion draft (to force Seattle to make a very hasty decision) or immediately following the announcement of the expansion draft. If Buffalo is getting two non-exempt players for Eichel, they may push to wait until everyone is picked, then proceed. Likewise, if the opposing team is getting Eichel + roster sweetener (lets say, a Tager) to unload a cache of prospects, they may want Buffalo to hold off for the moment. Everyone protect the elements of the trade, follow through on your side deals with Seattle if any exist, then consummate the trade.

This is really it. GMTM was a death by a bunch of paper cuts, not a single move. This trade was about clearing out softness for some grit. We all agreed then we needed it. It was successful in that regard. Bogo had something like 13 hits in his first game with the Sabres. Kane once fought 3 times (and won) in a single game, which was more than Myers or Stafford had done in the previous two years. (In later seasons, Stafford was always good for 1 fight a year so he could point out that he did, in fact, step up to protect his teammates.) If it isn't this trade, then we move Stafford for a 2nd at the deadline. Myers still has to go for some heaviness/grit because GMTM wanted to be the LA Kings east. Armia wasn't becoming the elite shot he'd been drafted as any time soon. Lemieux, whatever. The 1st could definitely have been useful. Roslovic, Beauvillier, Sebastian Aho (don't worry, GMTM would never have drafted Aho) were all soon to be taken. Agreed. The McNabb trade was bonkers for the "prize" of a 4th-round Fasching. And I liked Fasching's game a lot. An issue to keep in consideration was that we had acquired too many assets. You can only have 50 players under contract and so we were going to pool some larger quantities to get fewer items in return, but hopefully collectively of higher quality.

This is terrible. And it's still so early in the summer.

It can't always be about the almighty dollar. I figure we're good with metric for any of the various units: liters/litres, grams, dollars.

As a continued tangent of conversation, IF we trade into the top 10 (either Reino or Eichel) what is everyone's preferred draft scenario? Alternately, what is the worst that could come about? Because I'd be ecstatic with a draft haul of Beniers/Eklund, and only slightly behind would be Power/Eklund. And if we get 8-10, I'm kind of good with looking at Beniers/Power and Wallstedt as well. But Eklund/Wallstedt would disappoint me. What is your best two-pick top 10? Your worst?

Hmmm.... Yes. I think I'd have to also question our currency being metric because it appears to based on a decimal system with the primary dollar unit on a scale of 100 instead of 10s. Now, with a cent (centimeter) it makes perfect sense (ha! homonyms!) because century/100 and all that. But formally, we'd be calling those centidollars. And dimes should be decidollars. And instead of dropping Hamiltons we'd be dropping decadollars. Kilodollars for 1,000s. All of our veteran players would be signing seven-figure megadollar contracts instead of million dollar contracts.

Within 5 minutes after @Brawndo posts the practice lines of the morning skate before the first preseason game.

It's probably something boring like the weight of gold in grams as measure of then gold-backed currency. For myself, I propose a guess that Benjamin Franklin was flying a key from a kite, got struck by lightning, measured it in 1.21 gigawatts, and that's when he drew the diagram of the flux capacitor which is what makes time travel possible. That, or the use of parsecs as a system of... <mumbling something incoherent>

If cool names are all that you love, then that's what you'll receive. And Uncle Owen Unlimited Power is a cool name. I'm on record as Beniers-preferred. However, as stated up-thread and in many other conjectures, if the Sabres were to land Eklund with something other than 1st overall, I'd be pretty stoked (with the draft, not necessarily the other elements of the trade) with either of Beniers or Power first. Please do not diagram that sentence.

I've had visions of the future and have already made my decision. The good news is that I will only share my feelings on this matter in an "I told you so/familial connection plot twist" sort of way. Beyond that, I try to judge coaches on a quarter-season basis. 20-game chunks are sufficient to evaluate how they're handling lineups and goalies, practices, "effort/compete" levels, line-matching opponents, and in-game adjustments, while still taking into account injuries and a goalie getting hot or cold.

The "Mr. Trololo" song would be an awesome goal song. However, my wife has told me that singing the "Mr. Trololo" song gets really old, really fast.

If it weren't the GMs in charge of making these rules to make their jobs easy, I think stealing a version from the NFL might work. You can designate a couple players as PUP/LTIR before the season and you can free up the roster space/cap until the midway point of the season. But then you have to decide to either activate them (and meet the cap requirements thereof) or shut them down for the entire remainder of the season, including playoffs. It's LTIR, it should give you that mid-season option in case they're healing well, but if you use it later in the season, they're out until the start of the next season start (July 1st UFA period). In this scenario, once we lost McCabe, we could have put him on LTIR to trade for his replacement for the remainder of the year (you know, if we were contenders). But fast forward to next season -- at the beginning of year, McCabe isn't quite ready so we keep him on LTIR until midseason and then voila, he's back. It could also create an early unofficial trade deadline as LTIRers return midseason and a wave of veterans at modest prices get released to stay compliant.