PerreaultForever

Get worried. I saw him ranked as high as 6th. There are a number of fairly big centers in the top 10. Desnoyers is one of them as @LGR4GM said above. If we draft Eklund I might just have to find another team.

Not yet, and if they unload Cozens for prospects/picks and go with Kulich and then idk Helenius or whoever they stay low and keep riding those ELCs but if they pay Byram like Power or even a little less you are eating up a heck of a lot of money on a defense that can't defend. Proportionally higher amount than most teams I think.

Bruins definitely looked like a team on the way out tonight and Columbus looked like what we wish the Sabres were.

How much money you going to spend on D? These big time puck movers with the scoring stats want more cash than the stay at home types. Flash gets cash but it doesn't keep the puck out of your net. This is why a well constructed roster has 2 of them. One for each PP unit. If you try to have more, your defense suffers and so does your cap.

Because you need to play defense. That's why it's called defense. You want all puck movers fine, have them, that's what Terry wants. Enjoy last place.

One of Byram, Power, Dahlin needs to be traded. Dahlin likely no and he's the best of the three so the return would be the best by far. Power is younger and bigger with more upside so it's likely Byram but 3 top level offensive defenseman on a team is one too many.

Just to be devil's advocate, so we get even younger, again? I agree that Kulich is this year's pleasant surprise (as he's ahead of his timeline) and Kozak might become a decent bottom 6 guy so a great pick but really the failing is in how useless Lafferty has been not how decent Kozak has played. It's all relative. The bottom line reconstruction has been a complete failure. Fourth line this year is a downgrade from Girgs-Krebs-Kyle not the promised improvement. Krebs might be playing his way into 3C. More suited to 4C imo but he has built his face off game and 2 way game and is a reasonable role player now. In many ways Krebs is the new Girgensens. Expectation of being a scoring center ending up as a solid bottom role player with a bit of grit. So Girgs out Krebs in we are younger but not better. Kulich is very promising but he needs to work on his defensive game still (like many of them) and he could use some more muscle and size. I expect him to eventually be a 2 or 3C but it is a mistake to rush him. We always rush them and it almost always bites us. Get more veterans and have these guys push those veterans out if they are able to. Develop them properly.

Not sure what you mean. How does his next contract affect his waiver status? He hasn't earned any sort of one way big money deal. True, but I see him as a rental. I doubt he is here next year unless we back up the Brinks truck.

Adams has to try to stop trying to make him the number one goalie. He needs 2-3 full years in Rochester much like Calgary developed Wolfe. They should have played Reimer and they should get a better veteran #2 to back up UPL next year. End the blocking nonsense and start developing people properly.

Kulich is the lone bright spot on the season. I feel smug because he was the Sabres draft pick I liked the best that year but regardless of that, I'm glad he looks good. You can see Ruff thinks the same as he is using him in moments you would think were normally reserved for veterans. He looks like the real deal. I think the Vancouver goal where they just circled and circled and the Sabres moved in tighter and tighter and it just seemed to go on forever until they scored was an example of the worst of what this team is. Just horrendous D, but they came back so what can you do. It was nice to come back and win a game for a change (even if it did look like another collapse in the final minutes until the clock ran out).

So then it was the league's way of saying we have to suspend you 3 games but it's not really 3 games. Your team will be fine for at least one of them. Guess we might see Skinner then 🙂

Contemplating a change? wtf would he be waiting for? I cannot see how not letting a guy do anything because you are thinking of making a change would make any sort of logical sense, even if he was just penny pinching. Surely you would fire him and make one of the other mutts "acting" or "interim" and then constrain that guy. My view. Terry was 100% sure they had drafted the right guys and he was 100% sure all they needed was the legendary(?) Buffalo coach and they'd rise to the top instantly. This failure has left him clueless and so he really doesn't know what to do and he's following the old "wisdom" of if you don't know what to do do nothing and see what happens. I really just think Terry is lost and clueless at this point but he's too prideful and arrogant to admit it.

Ddi they actually make these guys fly to and from the West coast for just this game?

Torts would. You are right though, trying to make fancy plays happens all too often along with too much perimeter play as discussed often. Two lousy teams going nowhere played an even game. They are slightly less lousy so they won. Bor-ing.

No the analogy works. You have a budget. You can't spend over it so if you can't find the thing you need in the store you cobble together something else. You build your own. Home depot can also run out of whatever you need because somebody else bought it first and new ones are on back order. The problem is the foundation is wrong, so no matter what you try to build it will fall down and your basement will flood.

If you care about the franchise you will realize it needs to be nuked.

Why? Because they have built it wrong. So if you build your house wrong you can try to patch everything and reinforce things but it'll end up looking like crap. Better to burn it down and lay a new and proper foundation. I do not believe the core of this team has the character needed to win.

Do you really think the Sabres are in any way invested in what the Bills do or don't do? Maybe if they grew up around there like Tuch but despite public appearances for the image of being part of the community I doubt any of these guys really care if the Bills win or lose and a lot of them probably don't even care about football at all. You Buffalo locals however should probably not watch the Sabres until the Bills season is over. That way you will have a good 4 months of the year and then if the Sabres are out of it you won't have to suffer the agony of false hope every year. You can just talk about the next rebuild and the draft. I don't really like the NFL game any more but when I was a big football fan I never took hockey seriously until January/February.

Why? At this point they are so far out of it the worst thing for them would be a late season run that gives the illusion everything will be okay. I'd rather it got so bad now that Pegula has no choice but to fire everybody just for the optics of next year hope. Of course I do realize the new hires would probably be bad decisions too but until that happens I can hope they finally decide to turn it over to experienced hockey people and get rid of this clown show of assistants that they made Ruff keep. EVERYBODY needs to be fired. EVERYBODY.

Glad you took down the hated Ratbirds. Now get ready for the roughing the passer calls.

I haven't seen enough of them to say definitively but today they resembled the Sabres. Fast and all offense and good in open ice but really soft when it got physical. I don't think they will do well in the playoffs.

True. That's likely the plan with players like that (or rather their agents). Guy like Power says pay me this or I'm not signing and I will be gone as soon as I'm eligible. The guys coming up for contracts this year will likely ask for overpays as well.

I watched Ottawa twice this weekend. Comeback win against Boston and a close win against NJ and they are currently where we wanted to be. Their roster was constructed differently but talent wise they do not have more than us. Different, but not more. Their D has certainly been constructed differently with more of a defensive focus. Ullmark is still injured and not playing. Boston game looked like a playoff game and was very entertaining. In both games the big difference I saw was a team that was giving it their all in every area. They wanted to win, they want the playoffs, that is obvious. I know they laid a dud and we beat them before but in these guys their effort level and intensity was way way beyond what the Sabres have been giving. That's the only real difference. If I had to bet now I'd say they make it over Detroit and Boston.

Ya I could see them running into a Cutter Gauthier type situation for sure.

and a bunch of championships in the 1970s.