Pimlach

The playoff season ended before the leftover turkey was consumed.

I’m dropping the stream a lot. Wi-Fi in a basement is not great.

Good evening Teammates, Lets see if they can avoid dropping 3 in a row somehow.

Adam’s gets an F for much more than acquiring the 4th liners. They are not the problem at all. It’s the players they expected to be 1st and 2nd liners that are. Ruff gets an F for more broader problems than utilization of the bottom 6. He doesn’t have enough to work with because the players Adams counted on to step up (Power, Cozens, Samuelsson, Quinn, Peterka) are not delivering enough. Peterka has been very good at times and is now becoming invisible, hockey gets harder after December.

Jagger - a young prospect, but they say he likes to party a bit too much. Bennett - a seasoned veteran but he can still bring it.

Replete with errors. Jeff Skinner? UPLs record is wrong? Cozens pivotal play? Levi starting for Buffalo?

My take: Zooker - A. He will be gone at the deadline and in pursuit of another shot at the cup, and he will continue to play hard to show another team he deserves it. After that he is never coming back. McLoed - C+, could be a higher grade but Lindy cannot stop the shuffling. Beck - C, he is what they said he is and they chose to pay a lot for it. Fast and he hits but no fight and not an angry player. NAK and Lafferty - C- each. 4th liner guys, NAK was showing something for a while, then he got benched, could be hurt. Reimer - C- Again, he was a twice waived goalie at the end of the line. Good soldier and not at all well supported. Gilbert - C He is what most of us thought, and 8D that adds a physical side. Big and tough but not an everyday NHL player. Ruff, Appert, and the rest of the holdovers - F. The product on the ice is not even close to better this season, its worse. The losing streak was hideous. The home record and the power play are still terrible. All of this is on this coaching staff and the front office. Adams - F- What else can you say about the worst GM in team history? 1. The "exhaustive coach search" was a farce and was the start of the bad off season. Another example of TP and Adams looking for an easy band aid. Assigning Appert and a few of DG's misfits to Ruff's staff was a red flag. They are all there because they are on contract, it is about saving money. The lucky one is the video coach guy that they fired, he got to leave. 2. What GM is ever that proud about retooling his 4th line? Only Adams. 3. Buying out Skinner and not bringing in a proven NHL top 6 forward show us again that he is not capable of making a big deal. He simply cannot pull the trigger on a big trade. 4. Look at our center spline. Really look at it. How did they do in that last four minutes in Colorado? Now think about why Ruff moved both Cozens and Thompson to wing this season. Think about why Kulich, a winger in the AHL, is taking critical D Zone face-offs against Nathan MacKinnon? But hey, we have cap space to sign our young players. 5. Who is wearing the letters? 4 guys alternating the "A"s just screams of Adams. Does any of it make sense? 6. Press Conference: Why hold a press conference if you are going to show up looking like a guy off the street, smirking and eyerolling and wise cracking, and worst of all blaming the "destination" for your inability to improve your team despite possessing coveted resources like Eichel, Reinhart, and more. He is the joke of the NHL. In summary, I refuse to give hard workers like McLoed and Malenstyn the failing grades, no real GM thinks these two guys are gonna turn this sinking ship around. This GM is unqualified and way over his head.

Pegula has destroyed my team and the brand. That’s all I know and it is a fact.

Ouch.

Sone interesting options tossed out. Does Adams have the stones for a big deal? Maybe that is why he acquired a guy named Jagger?

Anyone notice Peterka getting less ice lately? Ruff did not use Peterka, Quinn, Benson, Krebs and Lafferty for much of the 3rd period versus Colorado. Kind of hard to win in Colorado’s thin air when half your forwards are benched.

Byram is playing better overall as of right now. Power is still a compelling prospect. It’s tiring watching him play so soft at times. His natural size will support considerable strength, but will he ever get the mindset to use it? That’s the gamble. He probably won’t hit peak years until 27-32. The peak could be worth it.

Palm trees.

McLoed played over 15 minutes, while Krebs played only 8. Why is McLoed playing with 4th liners is the question but that line saw more ice than Krebs , Peterka, and Benson. McLoed has long reach and great speed. On the 6v5 he might have been able to carry a puck out and race down the ice. It blows my mind that Kulich was sent out for those critical defensive zone faceoffs. There is more to the game than winning the draw.

Agree on the injury. Wedgewood was down quite awhile. If the Avs were more concerned about their goalie it was odd that they challenged for goalie interference. The refs had that called correctly on the ice. Benson played a regular shift after his goal. He got crosschecked by O’Conner and promptly punch him in the face 3 times and backed him down. Benson is not afraid I didn’t like the way Ruff played that last 4 minutes. His bench was too short and I feel he over used Tuch and Malenstyn when Zucker and McLoed would have been more poised and both were playing good and deserving of more ice. Thompson is a liability when asked to defend and he was out there but not Zucker. Finally, asking Kulich to take key defensive zone faceoffs, that’s a case of managing by stats with no feel for the game. He didn’t win a single draw and he couldn’t help us get possession. Big fail across the board.

The bolded paragraph is spot on. I am a Lindy fan, but I am very unhappy with the overall play of his team. They are no better than last year although they are healthier and they made some changes in the off season. Much of this is on Adams and Pegula, but the coaching staff is accountable as well. With a 5-3 lead they should have licking their chops looking for that 6th goal and instead they retreated and played scared. They never threatened even once to score into the EN. They turtled, they caved, they quit - all of it. They literally failed at every facet of defending their lead. The OT was a forgone conclusion that the Av's skill players would easily win, again. This meltdown, coming weeks after blowing a 4-1 lead at home to this same team, is not something that many long time loyal fans should be excusing away. To those looking for positives: Yes, they played good for large parts of the game, and they answered the Avs goals several times, and yes the Avs are very good, but this team proved again to be fragile and mentally soft. The fact that the game was there for the taking makes it worse. It is unfortunate that Terry cannot, and will not, interview and hire qualified hockey people to run his team - but he won't unless he somehow knows them, or knows someone who knows them, or other such nonsense. He seems like a nice guy but his commitment to this team is not there. This team is still operating under his Covid cost restrictions. I want to see him sell at least 51% of this team to a local interest. He is the root cause of all the losing.

And they most certainly got under the refs skin, leading to two consecutive "makeup calls" after the refs correctly ruled on the the ice that Benson was pushed into the crease.

Yes, correct. I remember that now. That was big and it is unfortunate they did not get that call which would have put the next face off outside of our D Zone. So they did win one faceoff, but overall they didn't do the things winning teams do. Maybe having a rookie take those big faceoffs in our D Zone was not the best decision? Maybe McLoed, who has Stanley Cup experience, might have ben a better choice? I don't recall him even playing in the last few minutes.

They could not change players with all the stupid icings that they took in the 6 on 5. Ruff needed the timeout because he played the same guys for most of the 6 on 5. Tuch and Malenstyn and Dahlin played way too much and they were gassed. The Sabres played very good hockey for 56 minutes and 8 seconds. After that they fell apart. They played the entire 6v5 by trying not to lose. They set up a very passive box in an attempt to take away shooting lanes but they gave up lots of room for Colorado to move the puck unchallenged. In the 6v5 they had no puck possession, no puck pressure, no faceoff wins, no won puck battles on loose pucks, no D zone breakouts, almost no neutral zone time, nothing. They became the Washington Generals playing against the Globetrotters. Muel had time and space with the puck and he blindly iced the puck. He could have easily carried it into the neutral zone and/or took a better shot at the EN. It was right there and he choked They all choked, even the coaches They almost never had the puck after their 5th goal. I’ve never seen a team fold that badly.

The Sabres answered the Avs and scored with 3:52 left to build another two goal lead. They were fighting. As soon as they got the lead they changed to passive play.

They suck as constructed. They are not as skilled as they are sold to be. Not nearly as skilled as Colorado. Where was the skill? Quinn and Peterka ***** were stapled to the bench. Cozens? Power? They have nothing at center. Nothing. The top two centers have been moved to wing because they cannot play two way hockey against the opponents top two. Did they win a faceoff in the final 3:52? Kulich taking face-offs in crunch time? He was a winger in Rochester. Why was Zucker not granted more ice at the end when our forwards were losing puck battles and could not break out. Malenstyn and Tuch played too many ineffective late minutes. I can agree on not trusting Adams to make any moves.

Ahhh. The exhaustive coaching search that Adams conducted. But I sure can’t blame Lindy for all of the problems. This organization is poorly run. Men vs Boys

The point is no consolidation when they lost another winnable game to the same team. They had a two goal lead with 3:52 left and they lost. This point means nothing and the psychological damage is there.

He had a shot, he didn’t take it, he had no were to go and lost the puck. Pretty pathetic.