PerreaultForever

This is my point. It's the same with the Sabres. Both teams should be a veteran/prospect mix. Veterans to teach and mentor the kids. It should start there. That's me Mr. Silly, and yet every year I am right about this and every year it continues cause the Sabres are the dumbest franchise in hockey. But whatever.

That's a lot for Knies but I'm not opposed to it. Some sort of bold moves need to be made.

There's a constant critique in Philly land over there being an "old boys club" and all this sort of thing. I'd suggest there is always a disagreement with fans over driving a team's culture forward and giving meaning to the crest vs. stuck in hiring their own in a nepotism sort of way. You know, Bruins give Chara a job. Neely is president. Flyers hire Jones and Briere and now Tocchet. Clarke and Holmgren are still in the structure. So is this good or bad? idk, but I do know that hiring Ruff here seemed right and maybe Sabres haven't had enough of this sort of thing and thus have little to no pride in the jersey. It's a forever argument I think, but in Buffalo's case I'd be happier if our senior advisor was Rick Dudley or if Pat LaFontaine was still here all along and I am sure if people like that were, this would have all gone different. maybe he is lying, but Briere has said he's already gotten calls from agents suggesting there are free agents interested in playing for Tocchet. Maybe that's a thing to consider to. We shall see how it goes, but I wanted Tocchet hired by the Sabres when Vancouver hired him.

Going to be the same if the Sabres ever get into the playoffs. It's the type of players Sabres have and want and draft. They don't know how to construct winning rosters at either level.

Brad Shaw is indeed not returning to the Flyers after being passed over for head coach. Sabres should snap him up and offer him whatever to work with our D. Unless they bring in McKee as another option. Either could be an associate coach who could take over from Ruff if he fails again or wants out or even gets elevated out. But the D is the priority. Sabres of course will do neither and the heir will be Appert and I will just hate this team more.

So if Edmonton does go all the way this year and wins it, Jeff Skinner will in fact continue the legacy of leaving the Sabres and winning the cup even though (barring injuries) he will have only played in one playoff game in his entire career and I believe only for a few minutes. Wouldn't that be something.

What would you offer him to be a Sabre? Everybody on every team is talking about Knies. I suspect if Leafs do let Marner walk then Knies will be paid to stay.

"assuming Norris is healthy". Well that's just it isn't it? He's never played a full season. If he did, he's potentially a 50-60 pt. player I'd guess but the odds of him playing a full season seems small to me. I'm pretty sure Ottawa moved on from him for that very reason.

Looks like Tocchet is in fact going to Philly as well. Obvious fit there and kind of expected. Right man at the right time. He will look like a softy compared to Torts so it could work well. Foote in Vancouver surprises me. Is he a cheap sacrificial lamb like Granato was? Rebuild tear down coming? Hughes to NJ? Petersson to ??? (Buffalo?) . Hard to say. Does Adam Foote do "party tricks" too or did his son learn that on his own? (too soon?) Seems like an odd hire regardless. One guy Sabres should look at if possible (but they won't) is Brad Shaw as a new assistant. If he's pissed that Philly passed him over for Tocchet he'd be a great guy to bring onto the staff. He's the guy credited by Philly fans with fixing Risto and improving Drysdale. He'd be a really good hire to work with Power and maybe even fix Samuelsson. Maybe he's fine to stay in Philly though. No idea. Just a thought. We need a good assistant to work closely with the D regardless. Sturm looking like a leading candidate in Boston. No idea what Seattle's doing. Woodcroft? Or is JBot talking to Kreuger about a comeback?

That's fair and that's a huge difference between Avs and Sabres. You can argue about their mistakes but they do not sit pat and hope for the future. They constantly make moves and try to get better. I think they balance the future view with the present so I disagree a little with @Jorcus but they definitely don't wait for prospects to develop. If something isn't working they make a move and they move fast and aggressive. They gave Mitts a shot but their patience wore thin quickly. Goaltending with the Sabres has been a joke for years and now we wait on Levi. Hope that an AHL star goalie will carry us next year. Maybe, maybe not. Obviously Adams is banking on Levi being as impactful as Wolf in Calgary. Without a solid plan B it's a fool's gamble.

Lou certainly fits the "senior" part of the equation. I'm actually all for that. Why not have a cranky old man in there to not take any crap and tell Kevyn when he's being an idiot (so like, every day). We need a contrarian and Lou could be that.

Everybody wants a pay day and everybody has a price.

Thing about the Avs (and maybe this keeps them from getting over the top again) is they are clearly a forward projecting team with the idea of staying competitive long term. Hence they move people out that they think will give them cap issues down the road. I'd guess they already knew Byram would exceed their payroll and since they already have Makar they chose a different direction. Mitts was a gamble (like Ottawa with Cozens) on the idea that players will be better when they escape Buffalo. He didn't fit and they swapped him out for what they saw as a better playoff 3rd line fit in Coyle. Coyle disappointed too so I guess that's failure. Adams? He just doesn't seem to have a clue one way or the other.

Biron in for Ray. He's already shown he can be really good at that when he filled in before. Then create a larger panel for the intermissions with a little dissent and argument even. It's past time to step up everything and call this team out when they suck, not just praise them. You can still be home biased, but also more real.

Looking that way. It just shows you how hard it actually is to move up. The same top teams are still the same teams. Bet they don't. Florida are masters of getting in your head and then doing the opposite. Really good at walking away after instigating and not retaliating. Refs coudl decide it though. Hope they don't.

Edmonton with a clinic on how to go to the net. Remember when Ruff was talking about that this year? He needs to make them watch this Edmonton game over and over all summer long. Except Benson, he already gets it.

Save up some hate for when he becomes a free agent and signs with the Bruins in another year. 🙂

He already won the cup so does it really matter? I'm torn on the west because although I don't want Eichel, and I would like to see Canada break the cup drought just so that people stop talking about it (but not the Leafs), I really don't want Jeff Skinner to get his name on a cup sitting in the stands as he is. So Winnipeg? Sure. But I don't think they will get past Dallas. As such, might as well be the rats.

The funniest thing for me is that Tkachuk is also laughing because he hasn't even had to be himself yet. Marchand the Leaf killer is so in their heads at the moment. They got rats on every line. This could still go either way, but you can see the Florida being Florida is slowly getting to the Leafs and they are going to have trouble staying focused and disciplined.

I haven't seen anything that shows me that he can produce in the NHL. At best he's like Alex Nylander imo. Similar to Fabien Lysell in Boston. Another first round Swedish guy with speed and skill but not able to do it in the NHL. Never say never in terms of development paths but their value isn't very high .

Yes, that's what I said earlier. Adams can't expect a 1 for 1 deal he needs to package up assets/picks and make some bold moves to improve the actual NHL roster. I just think in general people here over value the assets they don't want (like Rosen) and they want a big return for a guy like Samuelsson with all his exposed weaknesses. Remember people wanted Jokiharju gone and all we got was a 4th round pick . Samuelsson is hard to move unless you eat contract and they won't do that.

Yes indeed, Mitts was not good and Lohrei couldn't handle the ice time or pressure and completely fell apart. Minten looked promising. Got him from the Leafs in the Carlo deal. Remember that name. I think he will be quite good.

Which is also kind of the problem with Byram isn't it? He's not a complimentary piece to Dahlin or Power, he's a similar piece. As was Jokiharju (although a lesser version). We need the Braydon McNabb, Jake McCabe types that we didn't keep around. Even Borgen was more of a complimentary piece, although again lesser in his case. I suppose they thought that was Samuelsson, but he's not, and they messed up Risto and there was all that, but we definitely need some solid D and RHD would be best.

Wouldn't surprise me. They were pretty happy with the Zadorov-Jokiharju pairing which seemed to work for some reason (I suppose it's the old playmaker with thumper/defender idea for a proper pairing). Zadorov had his best games of the year after Jokiharju showed up and with McAvoy and Lindholm out that was the top pairing.

Kraken maybe but I can't see the Bruins being interested. They're more likely to sign Jokiharju than to go after Byram. Certainly not if they have to give up a first. Their D is most likely Lindholm-McAvoy, Zadorov-Jokiharju, Lohrei-Peeke along with some depth guys they already have. You might be able to get the Bruins to gamble on Quinn, they need scoring forwards with skill. Also don't think Philly would offer up their 1st. They got Drysdale in that Gauthier deal and they have young D coming I think. Might be wrong on that.