Marvin

Zemgus and Larry would be better players without the tank - they were the top centres on that team on merit. Ristolainen would probably be much better too. They all would have benefitted from more time in Rochester. Then they could have made the NHL roster on a team where good performance was tolerated if not encouraged by the GM.

The GM doesn't deserve the playoffs as a reward for his work, regardless of what the fans and players deserve. Two consecutive years he has failed to find a 2C plus the Sabres don't have enough "good enough" players to compensate. Those are on him.

I saw these at a hockey camp in the 1970's

Yes, he does. Those were prime resources that he threw away, albeit for prime or seemingly prime returns. JBottom throws away less prime resources for lesser returns. Neither is preferable.

I was in grad school and never saw this game before. Thanks, Inkman.

Roger the Dodger's health issues were more important than most remember. Bromley's save percentage in 1974-5 was .873 while Crozier's was .904. Give Crozier a few more games and the Sabres are clearly at the top of the league. That changes three very important things: the Sabres have home ice advantage in the Finals, where they were almost unbeatable; the Flyers play the Canadiens in the Semi-Finals; the Sabres play the Islanders in the Semi-Finals. The Sabres were 0-3-1 against Philadelphia, 3-0-2 against the Islanders, and 4-0-1 against Montreal. According to numerous Flyers in interviews, the Forum was almost Philadelphia's version of the Spectrum for the Sabres. The Sabres are now a big favourite over a young Islanders team, even with rookie Billy Smith and a very good Chico Resch. The likely scenario is a Buffalo-Montreal final, with the Sabres again having home ice advantage. Sabres in 6.

Clearly, it was part of JNot's strategy to have about $30M free this off-season: It was when a lot of contracts JBottom inherited or acquired would expire and the only unacceptable contract which he did not create was Okposo. He has money for contracts for in-house RFAs and UFAs. He also has money to acquire a big ticket item from outside to boot. He has "his" coach broken in. IMHO, his primary goal the last 4 years was to clear the decks from the GMTM years and build the foundation HIS way. That doesn't excuse his performance and influence on the team's horrendous performance in the interim..

What do you get when you cross an elephant and a rhinoceros? Eliphino. That's what I saw.

There are a few places around town (Buffalo) which are doing curb-side haircuts where the barbers are in scrubs. I've passed them on Bailey a couple of times recently.

Think of the "Original 6" as the 3 big markets (Montreal, Toronto, Detroit) versus the 3 small markets (Boston, Chicago, New York). Teams had "territories" where they had exclusive rights to the players within them. Because there were more young players near Montreal, Toronto, and Detroit, they tended to have stronger players in their territorial systems; meanwhile Boston, Chicago, and New York had much slimmer pickings.

Thanks a lot. I will check that out later.

Burt Ward does it as Robin in the old Batmans. I guess it was because he didn't need to hide his secret true identity. Oh, wait, that's not what you meant... Wow, do I feel old. I always use two spaces after a period. I say, "with whom." Rob Ray sets my teeth on edge every time he omits the "-ly" when he uses an adjective instead of the proper corresponding adverb. I still write "e-mail", still try to properly use the subjunctive mood, and still use the Oxford comma. I keep a copy of Strunk and White handy when I send corporate e-mails, tweet something, post on Facebook, and respond on LinkedIn.

IMHO, they should play games 1, 2, 5, and 6. The Sabres were outscored 15-2 in games 3 and 4. There was a real question if the Sabres could recover. And people wondered if they could finish the series off in Montreal.

I think I was a bit more into Cold War thinking than everyone else here.

I did not know that it was a favour to Mike. I was at Michigan State at the time. I remember being upset that they moved him when I thought the Sabres were as good as anyone in the East before the TDL aside from maybe Pittsburgh.

Just like trading for Craig Simpson was useless, moving Ramsey for Bob Errey, and trading Andreychuk, Puppa, and a 1st for Fuhr was bad, Carney for Craig Muni was bad too. That team was better before the player movement than after.

We have multiple pedants; therefore this should be, "The Pedants' Thread."

He was a truly horrible skater. People mistook that for not trying. TBH, I needed someone more aware than I was to show me what he did wrong on the ice to really get it. He, like Barrasso and Housley, also had the misfortune of being around after Bowman was canned -- they bore the brunt of the residual anger people felt for him.

Guevremont was a good defenceman with an excellent shot, decent defencive positioning, very strong (as well all the Sabres' defencemen at the time), was a solid skater, but his limited hockey sense meant that you needed a very aware partner for him. Bill Hajt was an ideal partner for him.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/1/05-1007_article Quite a fascinating story.

It also buys time for treatments to be developed (probably months) and vaccines to be tested (probably years if ever). This decreases the aggregate death toll from the virus and the collateral deaths from lack of hospital space.

Sure. This is kind of a fun debate because we are talking about great players for our teams. Some biases: 1. My late parents' first friends after my Dad's post-doc were a defencive line coach and offencive line coach for a small college in Pennsylvania coal country. Thus, I am of the opinion that RBs and QBs from before the 2-hand-touch QBs of our spread offence era were much more a product of their lines than most would think. 2. The NBA was a big man's game in McAdoo's era. With no 3-point line, having a good centre was required to have a good team. So the game was biased towards what your centre could do. Even so, he often outplayed guys like Lanier, Cowens, Unseld, Abdul-Jabbar, and Hayes. The Braves' success was largely predicated on McAdoo and Dr. Jack Ramsay. 3. I don't put too much stock in SI. I can go on a long screed against their racism through the 1980's and their anti-hockey bias after the 1980's but I will spare you the details. They only would have cared about Hasek if he had been in a big US market. #1 should tell you that although OJ was undeniably great, he did have an excellent line from 1972-8 here. In fact, you can also argue that it was better than we remember it because every time something good happened with the team, RCW Jr seemed to want to blow it up for whatever reason. (I have reasons for thinking this was much worse on OJ than we were aware of at the time, but...) #2 is why I elevate McAdoo. The Braves were terrible their first few seasons. McAdoo was great from his rookie year. But he did something better than and more than all other Centres: he could hit open jumpers from anywhere reasonable, even beyond 10 feet. He also was very tight defencively, which allowed other players to expand their games -- Randy Smith the main reason the league started tracking steals. His career is overshadowed because he started in Buffalo, the Braves moved, Knicks fans resented that the Braves overtook them as Boston's biggest Eastern Conference rival, and he settled into supporting roles without complaining. But players all knew he was an all-time great. #3. is why I don't worry about Hasek vs. OJ in appearances in SI. Writers for _The Hockey News_ once called them, "Hilariously inept aside from Hasek." After watching some of the flashback games, I can't argue. Unlike the last 10 years, they iced 4 NHL-calibre lines, albeit three third lines and a fourth line; they also prove that the number of Cup winners a player is on should not be held against him. I can remember 2nd periods throughout this era where it seemed like the Sabres would never clear the zone. This is not to downplay that those teams were "the hardest working team in hockey". They also had great ensemble play. Hasek bailing them out of every mistake helped them a lot more than we remember: like the last decade, they often could not string 3 decent consecutive passes together; unlike the last decade, he held them in there so that they could cash in when, on the off-chance, it did happen. So yes, I think that McAdoo and Hasek are in there with OJ.

The problem is that when anyone has concrete numbers to use, s/he now has reinforcement of her/his beliefs. We also can add the psychology that anything that was derived from computation is somehow ennobled, so the numbers get even greater consideration. We can then add that the way we were taught math lends to the mindset of, "this is the right answer, period" adds to the mindset of dogmatism. How much the computation means is immaterial.

I can make arguments for OJ, McAdoo, and Hasek.

As a former math teacher, I guarantee that some of it is society's anti-STEM attitudes. Greater data analysis also takes some of the aura from the game -- I lost my child-like fun of the game when I started mining data in 1992, but I gained a different appreciation as a number-crunching adult. It is not a trade that everyone would make.