GASabresIUFAN

Ditto

Not a Mitts situation. Mitts problems stem in large part from immaturity and from the inability of the Great Communicator to coach. UPL has Bales who is a solid coach. I expect a 3.00 gaa in the A with a 905 save %

That was the first thing I thought I when I saw the thread. 77 is to young.

He should be in the minors all season. Maybe an injury or late season call up if he makes progress. That is what should happen. What will happen is Dell and Anderson will stink and he’ll get called up to replace one sooner then later.

So much for the new and improved pass rush. Sadly, as of game one, not much has changed on this club. We still can’t run the ball, our OL has issues, the pass rush looks the same and Levi Wallace isn’t an NFL starting CB.

I am a UPL fan and believe his development is tracking similar to Ullmark, but no one goes from 37th in AHL save% to competent NHL goaltender in one off-season. It just doesn’t happen. Could he prove ready after 30 plus AHL games this coming season? Possibly and I’d love to see it happen. Please do yourself a favor and go compare Ullmark’s 1st two AHL seasons (save % of 902 and 909) to UPLs (874 and 888). Ullmark blossomed in year 3 in the A and has improved in each NHL season since. I hope UPL does the same. Furthermore, I want what’s best for UPL long-term. I think being the man each night in the A behind what looks like a decent team would be better for his development then being used for target practice on a bad NHL team. KA needs to ask himself that question as well.

Wheeler’s opinion is easy to understand. KA found a way to downgrade the goaltending. He traded away our best and most consistent player in Reinhart for futures. On defense he arguably downgraded McCabe, Ristolainen ( and Irwin) with Pysyk, Hagg and Butcher. All this on a team that was already at the bottom of the league. Add our most talented player is injured and is likely going to be traded at any moment. Not exactly an off-season to inspire confidence for next season. Not exactly a thought provoking opinion either. It’s also not how things work. Last season the media believed the team had a chance to be good with the additions of Hall and Staal. Montreal certainly wasn’t picked to play for the Cup. So are things really so dire? The goaltending certainly is. However, beyond that there are reasons for optimism. On defense, Dahlin and Jokiharju should continue to progress. Hagg, Butcher and Pysyk all have played better hockey then they did last season. A good article on Butcher pointed out that he was played with the wrong partner last season and that cratered his stats. All are young enough to rebound with a better opportunity here. Considering how often McCabe was injured and how poor Risto was on defense, this defense could actually be better this season. Eichel and Reinhart are impossible to replace right now, but that doesn’t mean we can’t at least be decent on offense. Mitts, Cozens, R2 and hopefully Thompson could (should?) all continue to improve under a full season with DG. Health and bad coaching derailed last year’s team. If this team stays healthy, they won’t compete for a playoff spot, but they won’t be bottom of the barrel either. I chose option 3. I’d be more optimistic with better goaltending.

When I reviewed the draft this was the one guy who popped out as someone who could be a huge positive surprise. He is already 6'4 and just turned 18 in July.

https://www.si.com/hockey/video/2021-22-nhl-season-preview-buffalo-sabres Likes the coaching of DG. Expects continued improvement from Dahlin. Dislikes: Goaltending - gotten worse - Anderson 4/5 years past prime. Defense - Still a work in progress

The Bills O Line was a worry and still is. It was a terribly called game from the OC. It also looked like Allen was to geeked up. To much hype and a quick dose of reality. Honestly I maybe the best thing to happen to them.

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/buffalo-sabres-2021-22-nhl-194522847.html

I will say, 9/11 like the pandemic, we must stop living in fear and we must work to get life as back to normal as quickly as possible.

By the way, Apple TV is showing a great film of the excellent Broadway play Come From Away. I kindly suggest everyone watch it if they have a few hours. I have friends who were flying home to Atlanta from a skiing trip to Italy and they were diverted to Newfoundland on 9/11. The show does a great job of illustrating their experiences as the “airplane people” on 9/11.

6 years before 9/11 I did my training for my job at the World Trade Center. As part of our routine, our analysts did a morning video call from our company offices in the World Trade and on 9/11 that call was suddenly interrupted. Our feed switched to the news and we watched the second plane slam into our offices. My brother worked next door at the World Financial Center. He took the train each day to the stop at World Trade from his home in Jersey. I called my sister in law to find out if she heard from my brother. She hadn’t. Then the buildings collapsed, and surrounding buildings began to burn. Still no word from my brother. Everyone in my office was in shock. We all had friends and co-workers we worked closely with in WTC, one of mine was a law school classmate. Another was the nephew of a long-time client. My boss walked into my office to check on me because he knew my brother worked next door. He took one look at me, picked me up out of my chair, place my suit coat on my shoulders and told me “go pick up your girls from school, go be with your family, not sure when we’ll be back at work,” and escorted me to the elevator. It would be two weeks before I returned. I picked the kids up from school and brought them home. Like everyone else we were glued to the news. Phone communication was down throughout NYC. Still nothing about my brother. It was a beautiful late summer day in Atlanta. To distract myself, I drove my girls to soccer practice and waited for more information. As the day wore on we watched the thousands of people walk across the Brooklyn bridge, we heard about the plane crashing in PA after being taken back by the passengers, and then the death toll started to mount. Still no word from my brother or the others I knew. We went to bed not knowing a thing really. The next morning news began to trickle in. My brother was safe. He walked across the Brooklyn bridge and straight into a bar. He doesn’t drink, but he did that day. He was standing outside when the Towers collapsed and was covered head to toe with soot, ash and debris. Eventually he found his way to his sister-in-law’s house with a group of co-workers and they spent the night there. I took me a week to find my law school classmate. He was fine as well. My client’s nephew wasn’t so lucky. He worked for Sandler O’Neal and had no chance. He had just been married. I have been to the memorial once. As I walked through the basement, all the terrible feelings from that day came back with a rush. The tears returned and the anger. I promised my client a rubbing for his nephew’s name on the memorial. My anger erupted when a tourist from Brazil was using the shelf with the victim’s names as a bench. She was sitting on the nephew’s name. I had them removed. I’m still not sure we have learned the lessons of that day.

Ben Bishop

The Calle Johansson trade wasn't exactly great. 15 years of a great D (984 games w Wash) plus a 2nd for Grant Ledyard (240 games with the Sabres) and Clint Malarchuk (112 games).

The first thing they taught us in law school was the answer to all questions is "it depends." Yes 70 points would be another out of the playoffs finish, but what are your expectations right now for this team? 50 pts, 60? What if they scuffle early in the year, but progressively improve over the course of the season and have a good second half giving renewed hope for next year? What then? Not a single fan on this board wants them to miss the playoffs again and no here also wants them to tank to get the next Eichel. What we all want, I think, is progress and improvement. If we see continued growth from the kids, I think most here will call that a successful season playoffs or not.

The really sad part is if they put two real goaltenders on this team and the kids continue to progress under DG, this team could be a solid competitive team. Not yet close to playoff caliber, but a hard working fun team that can get to hockey 500. Maybe that is why I'm so annoyed (angry?) at KA and his "plan". Unless he changes course on the goaltending, he has already ruined what could have been a fun season.

This gets to what I don't understand about his "plan." There just isn't any logic to it. Why try to sign Ullmark at all, if you want to tank? If you don't want to tank, then why didn't you have a good plan B when Ullmark walked instead of the ghosts of former NHL goalies? It's not like a decent goaltender couldn't have been acquired. Vanacek was traded back to Wash for a 2nd. Surely Sea would have rather had our 2nd next season vs Washington's. (yes, Wash and Sea may have had a side deal in place) KA said he didn't want to give assets away to get goaltending help. I get that, but last I looked a 25 year old goalie who will still be an RFA after next season is a substantial asset as well. Got to give to get. This isn't the only example of KA words not matching his actions. The bottomline is I don't think he has a real plan, but is instead flying by the seat of his pants and hoping things work out. So far the results speak for themselves.

I’d give your argument more credence if UPL had regressed last season, but he didn’t. His save% was slightly improved from the year before, but still didn’t get to 900 in the AHL. He isn’t close to NHL ready. Do yourself a favor and compare Ullmark’s development to UPL. While they continued to play hard their record was 5-13-2 with Houser, Tokarski and UPL in net. That’s about a 50 pt season.

As I've been saying for weeks, KA's goaltending plan is the dumbest plan I've seen in years and this is just added proof. Having a camp battle between UPL (37th in AHL save %), Tokarski, Dell and Anderson to see who are the 2 least awful of the 4 is just plain stupid and condemning this team to a cellar finish.

We could have a good season and still finish under 70 points. First of all with Tor, TB, Fla, Bos in the division we would need magic to make the playoffs. Then the next question is what would a good season be? Does it mean we are competitive, play hard each game with win and loses being meaningless? Does it mean our key kids improve and we prove to be better then Det and Ott? To me, it means we play hard each night, the key kids improve and we don't finish last in our division.

Why do we need 8 captains? I can see Diggs or Allen for the offense. I can see Edmunds for the defense and Jones for special teams, but the rest?

https://theathletic.com/2804584/2021/09/07/ranking-the-best-under-23-nhl-players-does-cale-makar-or-andrei-svechnikov-top-the-list/ Pronman lists his top 194 players 23 and under in and out of the NHL. In theory each team should average 6-7 players on this list (194/32), we have 11 on the list. Sabres 4. Dahlin (behind Makar, A Svechnikov and Pettersson) Lefreniere is 6th 9. Power - I'm surprised he is ranked this high 15. Cozens - Zegras is 12 and Dach 13 43. Mitts 114. JJP 117. Ryan Johnson 135. Jokiharju 137. Quinn (way to low IMHO) Perfetti 39, Jarvis is 41, Rossi 75 175. Rosen - Lucius 61, Svechkov 142 176. Poltapov - Raty 107 194. Levi He seems to have lumped most of the goalies at the bottom of the list. Also I'm surprised that Kisakov isn't on the list. He projects similar to Poltapov IMHO. Also Quinn being that far below Jarvis and Rossi surprised me a little. They should be ahead, but Quinn has a similar upside to JJP, although I also like JJP more.

I'm not sure we lost the Colorado vs. Sabres trade. They basically got two depth players (Compher and Zadorov), a 3rd pairing D and a 3rd line Forward while we got ROR, a bona fide top 25 NHL center and a two way force who performed very well for us. Obviously incompetent management failed to build a team around him and Jack and lead to us getting killed in the ROR to Stl trade. Like Colorado, we'll likely end up with a 3rd line forward (Thompson) and a 2/3 pairing D (Johnson). The rule of he who gets the best player in the deal usually wins the deal hold true for both ROR trades. Odds are once Jack is dealt we'll likely see similar results unless we get a Krebs, Zegras, or Lafreniere back in the deal.