jad1

So Jon's real name is Aegon. The name of Rhaegar's and Elia's son is also Aegon. Is Rhaegar Weteros' George Foreman, giving all his sons the same name?

The Levy era was almost 30 years ago. For the last 20 years the Bills have looked bad in preseason and played poorly when the season started. For the post-Levy Bills, preseason has proven to be an excellent indicator on how the season will go.

I think this is it. The article points out that Risto is poor at defending zone entries and making zone exits. It doesn't correlate this to the system the Sabres played last season, but it is in line with much of the analysis posted on the board last season about Bylsma's system.

Bettman is such a smarmy a-hole.

The Sabres are going to get a new jersey this year for the winter classic. Wonder what that will look like. Hopefully it will feature the original colors. And why doesn't the NHL just have teams switch home jerseys after the new year. So they start the year wearing light jerseys at home and then wear dark jerseys at home after Jan 1st. That way fans will be able to see both home team's jerseys live during the season, as well as the opponents jerseys.

There are too many indicators that there are fractures between the players and the coach. At this point and time, the front office has to do what's best for the players. Most would agree that Eichel is the future of the Sabres. Almost none would agree that Bylsma is the future of the team (aside from the BN staff). As for Murray, his most imprtant job right now is rapid talent acquisition, he's has success adding 5 top 6 forwards in 3 years. There's more work to be done, but he gets at least another year based upon his work so far.

We could just trade him, before he fails again.

The Leafs missed the playoffs 10 of the last 11 years. They've average 73 points the last three seasons. Their rebuild has been pretty painful.

He's been saying this all season. It's defensive zone coverage 101. It's something a good coach would have fixed five games into the season.

They're a team trying to play a system rather than play hockey. And it's a system they don't believe in. I'd much rather see these players with a new coach, rather than this coach with new players.

The team has given up on him. Blame his system. Blame his lackluster, life-less personality. Blame his stupid attempt to implement discipline 75 games into the season. Blame his lack of attention to detail that manifests itself in every lame defensive zone turnover. Blame his inability to coach defensive zone coverage. Blame the brain-dead way he continues to play Lehner in back-to-back games. Blame his total inability to develop Reinhart into a center. Or stop placing the blame and just fire this stooge and bring in a coach who understands how to coach a young, talented team without killing theirs and the fans' souls.

How do we convince them to take the coach?

Nice to see Dreary Dan had the boys ready for this game.

That game seemed winnable last night, even though Buffalo was down their top defenseman and two of their top six forwards. Maybe one of those guys could have made the difference in a loss that officially knocked the Sabres out of the playoffs. But Blysma needed to teach a guy a lesson for BEING LATE toba meeting. Sitting him a shift, or a powerplay, or period wasn't enough. I guess the only way to drive the message home for a malcontent like Rinehart (who's been played out of position for two years with no complaint), is to embarrass him publically while the team goes down in defeat. Blysma's an idiot. There's a reason none of the stars in Pittsburgh stepped up to back him when he was fired. There's a way to handle this. Alienating a young star and losing a game was not the way to do it.

Especially on the back end of a back-to-back, when Okposo is out with an illness. If O'Reilly or Eichel went down with an injury playing 20+ minutes while this moron was trying to send a "message," firing would have been too good for him.

Eichel has carried this team since the break. What's the message Bylsma is trying to send? 'Thanks for dragging the dead weight that my coaching has turned this team into th last 3 months, but you had a couple of bad shifts and some bad luck, so sit down and watch how the real pros win a game.' Isn't Bylsma the guy who said that he would be disappointed if Eichel wasn't making mistakes?

He played one less minute than Girgensens for the game.

To me, a rebuild is the act of replacing core players. So, in the Chicago case, since Keith and Seabrook are integral members of their Cup teams, their rebuild started in 2002, when Keith was drafted, even though they actively tanked after that. It's difficult to argue that Chicago wins their Cups without Duncan or Keith, so the clock on their rebuild started when they were drafted. Same goes for Brown and Kopitar in LA. Their rebuild started when Brown was drafted in 2003. Despite the top picks that the Penguins made 2003 - 2006, Orpik was a key member of the Cup wining team. As the OP notes, he was drafted in 2002. During the rebuilds, each of these teams fired coaches. Chicago fired their GM. More important than the coach and GM, though, is the on-ice talent. It's that players that make the rebuild successful. The length of the current Sabres rebuild really depends on if you consider McCabe and or Risto core members of a Cup challenging team. If you consider McCabe a core member, it started in 2012. If you don't consider McCabe core, but believe Risto is, it started in 2013. If you consider neither core, it started in 2014. Any of those start dates keep the Sabres within the timeframe of Chicago's, Pittsburgh's, and LA's rebuilds.

I don't know if that's true. If this team had a coach who tried to win games 5-4 instead of trying to win them 2-1, the fans would be much more enthusiastic.

As Dan says, the last thing we want to do is get into a track meet with ANY of those teams. Keep it tight boys!

Risto played over 60 minutes in the back-to-back games this weekend (33:13 Saturday and 29:50 Sunday). He played 25:45 tonight. And as you point out, he's not playing easy minutes.

Most #1 defensemen don't play 30 minutes a game until the playoffs. Risto has been playing that many since October. And he's 22.

Are you freakin' kidding me? Eichel has made mistakes, but has he shown any indication that he's not a responsible player? Taking away ice time from Eichel is just a clueless move by a clueless coach.

He was overplayed the first half of the season. He's shot.

No, but (hopefully) he might have some say on the fate of the coach.