DarthEbriate

I always forget that Leopold scored that one. I just always [edit: remember it as] thought it was simply Foligno willing the puck in via Komisarek completely losing his head.

For myself, the hope is that it's still a veteran roster and most importantly, they had the goaltending. Drafting poorly, Leino... gah. (I still love the Ehrhoff signing and cap hit,just not the front-loading that turned it into a horrible contract.) You get into the playoffs and let the chips fall where they may. We've seen wild runs before and underdogs advance a couple rounds all the time. (You could get a Hamburglar/Binnington playing lights-out, you could get a team missing a bunch of key players, you could win on some bounces in OT.) But if you don't give your team the opportunity to even make the playoffs, then you're casting all hope solely to the future that isn't even there yet. And of course, the tank was successful. The hope was rightfully there and re-established around a new youthful core. Hope can never be the strategy. It must always be there... whether you're the #1 team in the league or the #32. You can expect to compete for a championship, but the expectation of a championship is also not a strategy (and is unfounded because of how these seasons and the playoffs in the NHL play out). We had him right in our sights. (Or White or Samsonov or Beauvillier, etc.)

I count the tank starting point at the "suffering" press conference. We know we have no centers -- Grigs and Girgs are drafted but years away from playing (ideally), Leino is not a C, Roy is traded, Hecht is best-suited as a wing and not part of the future, and Hodgson and Ennis are going to top out at 2Cs at their best. We're going to suffer to get those top centers in the draft. McDavid is looming. I had to go back to check it -- 4/29/2013 is the press conference (or 4/28, if the articles came out the next day). We'd just finished the lockout season 21-21-6. That's where I start the tank. Others may not agree with me. But my tank begins with "suffering" and the nosedive 2013-2014 to get Reinhart and then the continued stall to get McD/Eichel. Prior to that, we're in a XGM Regier rebuild --- is it working? Meh. We're trending downward as the core ages. But the previous three seasons had resulted in 1st in division - playoff berth (09-10), 2nd in division - playoff berth (10-11), and 3rd in division (11-12) and a heroic charge to 9th. Good enough? No. Stuck in no-man's land and faltering? Yes. Were those three seasons suffering? Gosh no.

The decision to tank (for Eichel/McDavid) and dismantle the organizational depth down to the studs --- to the extent that both Buffalo and Rochester were bottom-dwellers in their respective leagues --- is the reason this team has sucked for a decade. So I guess, maybe we could blame Eichel/McDavid for that. But really that's on TPegs and whoever sold it to XGMDR. Was it Eichel on the ice? Absolutely not. Trading a 1C in ROR while Eichel was still becoming a solid 2C was horrible. Having consistently-below-average goaltending behind a youthful roster... horrible. Hiring a coach who wanted to play a defensive shell 100% of the time and sit solely on the PP as the means of offense... horrible. Tons of reasons beyond Eichel for this team being terrible on ice.

When GM Sheevyn's phantom menace coup finally reached its realization, all that was needed was to remove the one final viable competition from a position of power. That last thread is Jack-ikin Eichwalker. He's more machine now than man, and soon will be traded to some star cruiser in Outer Rim to waste away, from from the city-planet of KeyBank Center. Every GM gets at least 3 years to make over the roster in their own choosing. Except here... here it's sometimes shorter.

It's time to write, direct, and produce another trilogy.

I think it'd be worth the Canadiens' 5th or our 6th to get Seattle to bite on Miller instead of Borgen/Bjork. Simply because they're NHLers and the 6th Seattle could use to stock their farm. Remember, they have to put together an entire AHL roster, and in a season or so, they'll partner with an ECHL team as well. Or this. Particularly if you pick up a D in a near-same-day Eichel move.

They became Deslauriers and Fasching. *zing*

I also believe this trade is really close. Maybe ensure that that 2022 1st is lottery-unprotected (unconditional). Maybe another toss-in prospect who projects more to AHL/4th liner. But it has the constituent parts. And I'm hoping if that's the offer, that GM Sheevyn says "Nope. Where's the Zegras/Drysdale?"

You're not going to die in childbirth trade Eichel just for the 3, Gibson, the rights to Lundestrom, and Derek Grant, @Randall Flagg, I promise. No, I promise you!

Hasek was so very fun to watch. Even moreso because the Sabres teams in front of him were sometimes quite scoring-challenged so he had to be fun to watch. I really, really would have loved to see Peca on that 00-01 squad. That iteration had serious depth. Baby Dumont, baby Afino, old-timers in Andreychuk and Gilmour. Gratton would have been the 4C with Peca present. We'll never know. And always the caveats --- that '99 team was much better than given credit for. Three 2Cs and a 3/4C, fast wingers all around, really complementary defense, stymie-and-counterattack offense. But that Dallas Stars team was a star-studded roster. At that time in everyone's careers, up and down that lineup, I think you take the Stars player at nearly every position except Hasek (+ research: Stu Barnes over Carbonneau at 3C; and Satan over Jere Lehtinen at 1LW). And Belfour was no slouch either, especially with a Hitchcock shot-suppression system and the dead-puck era. (And Colorado and Detroit were even more loaded. We were massive underdogs for good reason no matter whom we played.) And always the dream -- let's magically heal everyone and go again. Give Grosek back a healthy back (he was a beast that season), give Satan back his foot, and give Modano back his wrist/hand. Rock and roll.

Don't sell us SabreSpacers short. 🍺 We can be idiots, too, when we put our minds to it. Myself more than most.

This. Goaltending is the #1 issue since the rebuild started. Lehner/Johnson was a solid tandem for a team not ready to compete. Then Lehner couldn't stop a shootout attempt for anything. Then JBott signed Carter the Hutt and the rest was history. Hutton had 2 good months (Nov 2018, Oct 2019) in his three seasons here, and otherwise he pretty much hung the team out to dry 4 times out of 5. Yes, I know that innumerable other factors contributed. But we saw it the last two seasons as Ullmark solidified his game. This year: Ullmark, average-to-good starting goalie, had this team hanging around .500 in arguably the strongest division top-to-bottom. We'd still have missed the playoffs: fine. But when Ullmark played, we were in the games.

Did you have the accent? I think it's the accent. I don't think it's the shaving-of-the-head to hide a receding hairline. This from someone with eyebrows... or digitally removed eyebrows, depending on when you look. He tampered in Hodgson's domain.

I just don't see Vancouver as a trade target for Reinhart with only one year left on his deal. He can just play this season and then go home as a UFA. They're clearing some bad cap hits this year so they should be able to sign Hughes and Pettersson (Baertschi, Edler, Sutter). And they can buy out Eriksson's final year. Then, they can simply sign Reinhart next season after Roussel, Holtby, and Beagle's poor cap hits come off the books. Then, they wouldn't need to lose any good, cheap pieces along the way.

What we're hoping for future conversations: ++ I can't understand how we won that trade. I thought we were ROR'd. -- The Concept of the Ehrhoff Karmanos can have a strong influence on the TPegs.

I like this. I like this, too. At 1 and 3, give me Eklund and either other guy.

He might consider the Hall-treatment. 1 year, $9M. With a NMC so he can effectively choose his playoff team if he's not enough to get this team to the playoffs. Then, when we do realize we need to move him, he coasts so he doesn't get injured. We end up having to retain half the salary and throw in an overperforming player that season (let's say... Asplund) to make it happen. 😇🍺

This is hypothetical magic of moving Jack, Sam, and Rasmus the Elder. GMTM (pre-) loaded up on heavy forwards, a veteran D-corps (sort of?), and drafted/acquired big Swedish guys to play goal. GM JBot was alllll about puck-moving D. He even traded a 6th round pick from 2018 to take a lower 6th round pick in 2019 otherwise he'd probably have drafted another PMD and he didn't want to look silly. (Fun way to think of it: JBot traded a 5th, 6th, and 7th to trade UP to draft Cederqvist.) -- edit: I really wish Cederqvist was a PMD. I would laugh more. You could look at this thread as --- what kind of team is GM Sheevyn trying to build if he trades Jack/Sam/Risto. What's already here that could be type-of-team-A or play-style-B, and how would that impact the types of players GM Sheevyn would attempt to acquire in said trades. Based on his single five-player draft, Hall experiment, and in-season pickups like Caggiula and Bjork, I don't know we have enough to go on as to what he wants to build. All he's claimed is to try to get players who want to be here (as if a draft pick or a waiver/trade pickup has much of a choice) and play the game the right way, which means... they don't coast or take shifts off? Every GM says that.

Pre-Jack veterans: UFAs at the end of the next season but you could add David Legwand and Jamie McGinn. Pre-Jack prospects: Remove "Mikhail" as he was moved for O'Reilly -- I think you were already doing that. Phil Varone was a C, not D. In addition to Larsson and Pysyk, we tendered C Tim Schaller and D Jerome (Gauthier-just-) Leduc that offseason, too. Other prospects already in the pipeline (not signed like Rodrigues as UFA post-Jack-draft) who would eventually play with Amerks/Sabres: Will Carrier, Dan Catenacci, Eric Cornel, Vaclav Karabacek, Victor Olofsson, Sean Malone. And a few that never signed: Gustav Possler, Max Willman, and Christopher Brown

I would argue they worked beautifully with Reinhart. He played at or below market value every year and we could have moved him for value at any point in time. And he improved each season. The problem isn’t Reino (he’s fine). The problem is that the franchise is in only slightly better a place and with only a touch more stability than it was when Reinhart was drafted. And when he was drafter we were intentionally jettisoning out NHL-caliber players and stripping the AHL to the bones too. And he’s seen no continuous improvement of the organization for his entire career that might lead him to re-sign here. (Edit: phone autocorrected to a misspelling)

Skill, schmill. His name is a horrible Star Wars name and doesn't lend itself to barely any references atoll.

Well... I mean, truly his floor is total bust. This ankle injury at the WCs blossoms into a recurring surgery-machine and he never sniffs the NHL. But... provided return to health, let's say he's a 3C who kills penalties. That would stink. However, he's the USNTDP top center... In last 10 years they're starting to have a very solid track record. One is a top-15 pick even in the deepest recent drafts. And probably top-10 even in the deepest, but it's really hard to be concrete on anything this year because the wide variety of games played, teams that didn't play at all, etc., from COVID. The other (Bjork) was very good and made it as far as the USNTDP junior team and managed to represent Team USA a few times. But he was a fifth round project who has a high motor. Beniers knocks Bjork out of the park skill-wise and has the motor, too. Upstaging by Frank Oz! Bjork, Bjork, Bjork! You may say that in jest... but Curtis Brown was a 2C. Peca was a 2C. Stu Barnes was a 2C. Holzinger was a 4C. Put a bunch of complimentary hard-charging wingers in there. Get some (yeah, OK, all-world) goaltending... and voila. However, goaltending across the board is so much better than the average back in the '90s... you get two Ullmarks together and a boatload of 2Cs and you're in business. Our trouble is we haven't even managed to get two 2Cs together in the last 8 years.

I think that's the right move for them. I also wonder if they'd be a great fit for Ullmark. Kind of a perfect fit, really. And then @MODO Hockey just trolls us forever. 🍺🍺

And which one takes on the nickname of "Buffalo West"?