Curt

I know you guys are having a great old time talking about Buffalo Sabres beat guys up, but Risto is really bad at fighting. Marchand would probably knock him out. Also, they need to worry about scoring a goal. Boston wants to suck you into their stupid BS, meanwhile they beat you on the scoreboard while you are preoccupied. Just play good hockey.

At least he doesn’t have far to go. Raymond Bjork?

Raty seems hardly Liiga ready, never mind NHL ready. Projected #1 overall last year is not really a good quality because those same people are projecting someone else to go #1 now. I don’t know who should go #1 in this draft, but you have not presented a convincing argument for why it should be Raty.

That was super duper fun.

But if they did that, they would then need to call up a replacement player, who also has a salary, so that doesn’t accomplish anything in terms of cap savings. To get any savings from that, Boston would need to not call up a replacement player and play the rest of the season a man short on their roster. Boston could accomplish the same thing by not trading anyone but just sending someone down and playing a man short on their roster.

But those two guys are making the minimum, so how could they be replaced by someone cheaper? I hear you regarding team toughness.

That’s just so he can follow the action.

Yeah, saw that. Hmmm. 🧐 Im pretty skeptical about that working out.

I would literally take 3 clones of him. We have the technology!

I would honestly be pretty surprised if any player did this. Negotiate a NMC, but then go to a team you don’t want to just to be nice to Buffalo? Essentially no player is going to do that. The way I look at it is, it was worth a shot and now Buffalo has a 2nd round pick that they didn’t have before. The Lazar-Bjork part is almost a wash. I like what Lazar brings, but Bjork seems like maybe he has some offensive upside. We’ll see.

6 would be a lot. 3 sounds good.

I have an irrational feeling that Taylor Hall makes a huge mistake in an important playoff game that costs the Bruins big time, resulting in him being persona non grata in Boston. He just seems like that kind of guy.

No. Not relentless as an aspect of a game plan or system. Relentless mentally. A culture of having the will to overcome adversity. To not relent.

Oh, I don’t see why this should be the case.

We know it’s a neck injury, and we know that it could be season ending.

Even the day he signed we knew that if Buffalo wasn’t a playoff team it was extremely likely that Hall would be traded. The playoffs were a reasonable hope, but far from a sure thing, so this was not an unforeseen conclusion to the Sabres/Hall relationship.

Yeah, I suppose this could happen, but if management is going to be dumb then the team is kind of screwed either way, innit?

Every GM and coach will say they want to play fast. Weird that no one wants a slow team. It doesn’t mean anything. The relentless part is the key for me. They need that here. They need to surround the kids with high compete guys who won’t quite. That needs to be the expectation for a Buffalo Sabre, not the exception. That’s an identity. That’s a way out of the morose.

In a vacuum, I kind of agree. However, I see a lot of value in keeping him for the season though. The kids are coming along and I don’t want to crush them by burying their good play under AHL level goaltending. Let them stay in most games and compete down the stretch. Who knows, improvement in team play and visible growth from the kids could encourage Ullmark to stay. If he was traded, it wouldn’t have been long before it became obvious to everyone that it is futile.

Yeah, I think even in the low 40’s it’s something to consider in certain situations. Are you asking at what point it becomes disqualifying from playing the position? I don’t know exactly, but below 40 is pretty rough. However, with regards to Reinhart specifically, he hasn’t been playing C in a while, and I’ll assume not practicing FOs intensely, so I would hope that he can show some improvement if he focuses on them for a few months. That is if the plan if for him to be playing C longer term.

I think you were sort of kidding, but there actually could be truth to this. Dahlin, Jokiharju, Cozens, Routsalainen, Asplund, Bryson, Borgen? I don’t know if/how much each could get in bonuses, but it could add up.

Depends. What did we get for him?

Yup, they matter situationally, and it’s really nice when at least one of your top C’s is very good at FOs, but just because a guy has a FO win% of 44% instead of 53%, I’m not going to say he isn’t good at C. There are a lot of more important things.

True. Speaking of Jack, watch out, he has one of those coming up quick!

You just don’t think about it nearly as much when it happens to other teams. Remember when Buffalo got Jeff Skinner from Carolina for almost nothing then he scored 40 goals? If you give players trade protection, things like this will happen.