PerreaultForever

Huh? How is it stressful? Stress is such an overused word these days. There's zero stress sitting on your butt watching a hockey game. ZERO. But in terms of relative angst I can't see it with the Sabres either. Stress (even in that lightweight definition) would imply some sort of cardiac kids thing where all your games are 1 goal games, OT, everything is close. Sabres are definitely not that.

I was just thinking if I was right that they've never beaten them so I guess that's it. Kraken play with pace as we like to claim and that's why we can't handle them. They have pace combined with tenacity and that's the key. BUT, they are hurting this year, lost some people. Soucy was obviously more important than they thought as he's made a difference in Vancouver. They did not replace Sprong's goals. Beniers has had a bit of a sophomore slump. Goaltending not quite a s good. Wright looks like a long term project at best. Most of all right now Dunn and Schwartz are out so they are not the team they were last year. Very beatable, but Sabres will have to be at their best. One has to hope the Kraken have given up after their last loss. Not that it will matter.

Penguins up 4-1 and dominating as I type this. Not sure it's good though. Penguins could pass us soon. I liked them better when they were in their post Guentzel funk and not trying.

How is it next to impossible? If he is one we've already got 3. All you have to do is suck bad for a decade.

This is a short term memory spin that makes KA sound like a success but it isn't really true. Do we have a bunch of unproven high end prospects? Absolutely. Ranked top prospect pool I think or close to the top by just about everyone. (Meanwhile Boston has the worst prospect pool every year and sits atop the league, but that's another discussion). But did KA magically make this happen with some sort of great management skill? Absolutely not. He traded away all of his top players. Eichel went on to win a cup remember. Reinhart's likely over 50 goals this year. So we have a bunch of prospects instead, hoo-ha! We traded a 2C finally coming into his prime for a top pairing offensive D man. Fair deal, but the improvement in one area is a decrease in another. We were deep at center, now we are thin again. Krebs as 3C come on man, he's barely 4C, We now have a new hole to fill and that's how it goes. Don't pretend trading Mitts was some great hockey move. He moved a player he knew he wasn't going to pay what he wanted and to avoid that he traded him while he was in demand. It's a strategic move but it's not really an improvement. What we "are allowed" to have is a discussion of just how crappy KA is as a GM. Right now, imo, he's worse than JBot and maybe not even as good as Murray. If he hadn't gotten LUCKY with UPL (a JBot pick) we'd all be calling for his firing. UPL saved him on that so now we wait to see how badly he botches UPL's contract and the rest of the off season. I am not optimistic.

Bryson in the line up has a better win percentage this year than Dahlin so I guess Dahlin has to go.

He's a depth forward for the playoffs in case of injury, no more no less.

It was a fine deal as Nylander was basically on a VO level at his best moments and definitely a draft mistake but I would be happy if we flipped him this summer and brought in a solid defensive defender. Big and tough. I can see Byram/Dahlin, and then Samuelsson/Clifton but Power/Joker is flawed imo unless Power gets more physical and becomes more of a Pieterangelo type. As is I'd rather have a big defender paired with him and Joker could be part of a trade for that (unless they want to ditch Samuelsson because he's made of glass).

To both points, perhaps, but it depends on Comrie's relationship with his teammates, and if your back up isn't good enough to play 1 out of every 4 games or so, then he shouldn't be your back up. That's on KA. Show me one other team that has a back up who never plays and calls up a rookie for 1 road game instead. It's absurd.

and that's how you burst a bubble and don't make the playoffs. A lot of old issues came back to the surface in this one and the flaws are more than evident. On the first Detroit goal, the forwards are too high, waiting for the quick outlet and counter attack. Nobody comes back. Dahlin chases, goes around the net and isn't strong enough to box out on his own. When he chases, the forward has to be back to force that guy outside. It's just basic defensive hockey and it's on Granato not Dahlin. On the second Detroit goal, Skinner is just floating in no man's land accomplishing nothing. The D chases again, and Skinner has to pick up Kane on that play. He's wide, he's outside, it's an easy play and Skinner is just too damn lazy to make it. Skinner has to go. We will never win with that guy. (The other forwards are again, too high and that's our style and one of our flaws. ) The third goal was an early season UPL special. Poor positioning, he does that. I'm not going to fault the goalie since h also makes big saves, but it is a recurrent weakness and he already looks like he's getting tired. We can't win a face off if our life depended on it, especially in that final 3-4 minutes but of course I know, "they don't matter." Except they do. Lastly, on the new guy BB. He lacks physicality. Fast, very fast, and very skilled, but he gets hit and knocked off the puck. I can see why he had concussion issues and I can see him getting targeted and crunched by a team like Florida if we ever met in the playoffs. We need some more bigger bodies on the team to keep that from happening as much as it will. Not a lot of positives from a deadly loss like this but I will say I am liking Greenway a whole lot lately. He's becoming a major irritant to other teams and he seems to relish the role. He won't be a fighter and he doesn't have to be but he fills a valuable role. I like him with Cozens. imo for next year we have two pairs we need to keep and build around. Tage/Tuch and Cozens/Greenway. I would keep those together as pairs and add the appropriate winger to them be it Quinn or Benson or Peterka or whoever fits best but the duos should hold and grow together. That's my view anyway. We can only hope that Seattle no longer cares as they are all but out for the next one, but Islanders get a loser point today as well so I think the dream is over just that easily.

I find BB very interesting. There's something to his level of compete and his attitude and maybe it's infectious. I'm with Friedman's comments on 32 Thoughts about that PP thing where he's trying to direct people. He's come in from a high compete organization and he brings that and MAYBE it's like party's over it's time to give'er as they say on the prairies. There's something more than just the stats and on ice play imo. It has my interest anyway.

I actually disagree with this. You can argue that Adams should have a better back up than Comrie, but it is Comrie and if you piss on him and treat him like garbage there are players on the roster who won't like it. It's not how you build a team bond and a winning culture. Comrie plays if UPL is tired and that should be that. Team has to shut down and elevate their play to go with that (as winning teams do when in a similar position).

That's kept me going through the lean years. I thought it would flip by now but not yet. It takes a huge level of incompetence to stay this bad this long.

Well this is new. A lot of Sabres stuff on 32 Thoughts.

He's young, but it is a ridiculous ask.

I see no argument here. It's Dahlin. Seider is a little younger though so he might still come into his own next year. The better question might be who is better, Dahlin or Byram?

I totally disagree with this. You can't look at two old guys who are well past their prime, has beens even, and conclude from that that you don't need veteran leadership. The other word that gets tossed around is "pros". You have a lot of kids on your roster you need leaders to guide them. You will get better results in that sort of environment and you will build a lasting culture. Kids are fragile, kids get knocked off the path easily. Kids get tempted. Pros are pros. Talent is talent but heart comes and goes and you need guidance. But I said long ago KO should not have been re-signed, Girgs should not be re-signed for next year and EJ was a has been. The veterans you want are in their late 20s not their mid 30s. Adams on the other hand might just think he can wait and then in 3-4 years he will have his own.

I don't have the patience to keep waiting and waiting and the next one and the next year. I want to make the leap NOW.

Pittsburgh, Tampa, NJ and even Washington all also winners tonight.

I hope not. I want them to add a veteran 2-way 3C in the off season and if Krebs stays as 4th that's fine but Krebs as 3C isn't good enough imo.

Agreed. They currently need 5 teams to play substantially worse than themselves down the stretch and that's a big ask.

Well if Detroit hadn't taken a total meltdown nosedive lately there'd be zero hope. Now if all the forces of the universe align and we get lucky it's not impossible. Unlikely, but not impossible.

Well, that was just an outstanding hockey game. No but's, no qualifiers, no other factors, they simply outplayed the opposition. You could see early, although they pressured, Isles kept most of it outside and they took plays away but the speed wore them down and the Isles had no answer for it. They got worn down big time. Sabres handled the physical side, even dished a little out and just played a solid game top to bottom. We can ponder where this has been all year I guess. I'm sticking with the belief in the goalie idea. When you believe your goalie will keep you in it you elevate your play much like many Sabres teams did in the Hasek era. Maybe that's it, maybe it's something else, but whatever it is they have elevated their play and this is the hockey we were all hoping we'd see at the beginning of the year after last year's late surge finish. I still think it's too late, but you never know. It's no longer impossible. The only negative, if you want one, a minor one, is Benson is still taking too many stick fouls and that might cost us against a good PP team. Yes, Barzal dove on the second one, but that's what some good players do. You feel that stick on your skates and ooops, you let yourself fall. Benson's NHL timing is still way off but that's rookie stuff and it's just a pity we aren't deep enough to address that. Next season we need to hire an assistant coach who is a PP expert. I see they are experimenting now that they have Byram on the roster but it's a mess and they really don't know what they are doing. With this level of speed and skill the PP should be a LOT better than it is. If we miss, it's on Adams imo. Should not have signed KO. Should not have signed Girgs. Should have signed a goalie instead of Comrie and games were wasted on pacifying Levi's demands as well. We still need additions if we want to be legit next season, but it's very doable. Finally, I had fun watching Sabres hockey. That hasn't happened much in a long time.

This is the contrasting styles game I've been waiting for. How we play in this one should tell us a lot about what we really are or aren't.

That's valid. It certainly was a "hockey trade" and I'm glad we didn't just get prospects/picks for him. That would have been a true step backwards. The winner of this trade is maybe determined by which team signs their guy long term and the success/failure relative to that contract down the road. Both players at this moment seem to "fit" into their destinations.