Marvin

To be fair to everyone else, I did it deliberately. That is how much I value good goaltending, how I read the market, and how angry I have been at the goaltending for the last few years. My obnoxious extortion price for a goaltender is how I would handle that situation relative to Buffalo because I expect GMKA to be getting heat for how the Sabres have been in goal for a while now, plus other teams feeling their window starting to close, with still more teams hoping to take the next step. P.S. thank you, @nfreeman, for the compliment. P.P.S. confirming: yes, I acknowledge my price for a goaltender for Buffalo is outrageous. If I were a GM, I normally would not trade a goalie with potential and/or term as good as everyone would want, myself included.

No. I am saying that deliberately putting himself into this situation is a firable offence. The time to start fixing this was 2020-1. Letting this fester for 3 years and the failing to solve it is absolutely firable. I have to see incontrovertible progress this season. Period. Sure. In 2020-1, start negotiations with Ullmark so that you can sign him before 2021-2. Make that trade for the goaltender which looked expensive at the time (we know he backed out of 1 on the table when the NHL announced the 3rd G policy; there should have been a back-up which did not include keeping Carter Hutton); it will be far more expensive now. This year, for a goaltender with minimal term like Helleybuck, it will probably take our later firsts and Levi to get him. Or pay through the nose on price and term for one of the good FAs. IMHO, the Sabres' goaltending problem is 100% his doing. His inability to solve it is his fault. Period.

I have one word for this: tough. It is absolutely a fireable offence. No: 2 of (Buffalo 2022 1st, Dahlin, Power) plus Quinn. So, outrageous extortion level.

If I were that GM, you laughing and hanging up would be fine with me. In real life, I would not trade my top goaltender or potential top guy behind my current #1 unless I get a ridiculous offer or he wants out; only in the latter case would I consider a "reasonable price" -- otherwise, I want a trade that is beyond verging on extortion. Instead, I would hope to be shrewd enough to raid some cap strapped teams, get some character depth, and hope to be next year's LA. Besides, I saw how the Jack Eichel trade worked for Buffalo and where Buffalo would be with even mediocre goaltending all season. Why would I trade the ultimate strength for a bunch of crapshoots and non-top-flight players? Who will ask for goaltending? Cup contenders with weak starters and cap problems, like LVGK, Edmonton, and Toronto. I would ask for top-flight players at a 50% discount (Stone, Draisaitl, Matthews), top flight established defenceman at a good price, and my pick of top prospects. From teams trying to take the next step with good youth and draft position, you saw. Supply and demand says that asking for the Moon instead of the Oort Cloud is foolish -- I expect to settle for the Kuiper Belt.

My wife prefers hot barbecue to normal hot wings. I personally would prefer he get his first game at home.

FYI: Quick wants to stay in LA. The Sabres are certainly on Varlamov's NTL. I would prefer Dell AND Houser as our goaltending tandem over having Georgiev as our #1. Samsonov is Tokarski behind a good team. I can't imagine Fleury coming to Buffalo. You would need double the salary and term that Ullmark has now in Boston to get the UFA's you listed. Given the situations in Toronto, Edmonton, Las Vegas, etc., if I were a GM with a good goaltender to trade, Buffalo has to start with 2 of Buffalo's 1st in 2022, Power, and Dahlin plus a very good sweetener (Quinn or better) before I even consider a counter-offer.

LVGK are 8-3 in their last 11. They are getting in. The only question is whom they pass.

I expect Caggiula would clear waivers. I personally would keep him for a call-up. If they send Peterka to Rochester, it is because he does not need to be exposed to waivers. After the first injury in Buffalo, he'd be up basically for good anyway. I expect Asplund and Hinostroza to be 4th liners and get regular ice time. All 4 of these guys will get 60+ games anyway.

Caggiula and Hinostroza are very good, particularly at their prices.

Welcome back. I would say plural: goalies. Assume Anderson is retiring, Tokarski is in the AHL, and neither Pekka-Lukkonen nor Subban is ready for the NHL until proven otherwise. Addendum: even if Anderson does not retire, assume he's going to be hurt for part of the season due to his age.

I would trade both Portillo and Levi for goaltenders who are further along. I don't care that they are both as close to sure things as goaltenders can be, we have to face facts: they both have crystal clear paths to the NHL in Buffao and neither took it. That means that they either don't want to be in the NHL or don't want to be in Buffalo. Assuming that they want to be in the NHL, that means they won't be coming to Buffalo and will go the Adam Fox route to force themselves onto their preferred teams (Detroit, Boston) or the Cal Petersen route. It will be very deflating for the guys who were here this year and could undo all of the good done this year. If we trade them for more developed goaltenders now, we can put the franchise on surer footing in goal because right now, the foundation is UPL and Malcolm Subban. That's not good enough.

Welcome back!

He's very good defencively. He's a decent passer. He has excellent instincts positionally. He does all the boring stuff very well. If Zemgus works on his face-offs, Asplund-Girgensons-Okposo could be a very effective checking line with some offencive touch.

How many copies of "much" did you omit?

My glasses need to be replaced. I see Tage Thompson where Gordie Howe should be.

Learn from my mistake: use natural peanut butter which is unsweetened. Look at my last comment: emphasis on doing it right.

My liver hates this suggestion.

When he only plays 1 game out of 3, he sometimes stands on his head and looks very good. Rooting for that tonight.

You are probably correct that Darcy was the Sabres' best GM after Punch. But his tenure, like Punch's, had some real problems. I personally start blame with how video scouting failed the franchise, but that does not excuse the sub-par talent evaluation and player development from 2005-12. And yes, a lot of that probably lands at Golisano's feet until 2011. However... In 2011-2, Pegula was the owner, not Golisano. I single out Darcy for that season with absolute precision. That team had a spell of 9-19-5. They were icing a team of a 1B/2A line, a 4th line, 2 lines of AHL-ers, a back-up goalie, and AHL goalies. Lindy Ruff and the players would plead with Darcy to do SOMETHING, ANYTHING on TV in the post-games and on the radio in interviews. Just trading late picks for bottom-rung NHLers would have actually helped. (Heck, maybe some sideways trades just to shake the players out of their torpor would have helped.) And Darcy did nothing. Outside of that horrendous drought, that flawed team's winning percentage was something like 5th in the conference. They made it back to 8th in game 78, only to have injuries on defence (Ehrhoff and one other) derail them. This proved the players right: even minor changes to just push a line of AHL-ers back to the AHL would have meant the playoffs. Players I met shopping got his message loud and clear: losing was acceptable. I agreed with them. They were PISSED OFF. So, if you like, blame me for their attitude towards management. Heck, some of my brother's friends blame me for getting Darcy fired -- I saved an e-mail from one of them whose subject is, "so what's your next trick, smart ass?" after Darcy got fired a few weeks after my interview with the New York Times (published 30 October 2013).

Metal errors make me want to bang my head.

Welcome back! It only seemed that way. I think.

You asked for it. Did anything I write imply that the Sabres were drafting well, badly, or anywhere in between? Did I write anything about the quality of player development? What sentence refers to scouting? What phrase refers to roster construction? Stop putting words and ideas into my text which are not there and cannot be properly inferred. Since you chose to impugn my intelligence, here is what I really think so that you are absolutely, positively, completely clear about my thoughts. Looking at the data from 2005-2012, the Sabres drafting has much fewer hits on drafting than was average over the league in that time. The players they did draft almost uniformly underperformed in Buffalo. A scant few of these performed up to par after leaving. Several were rushed to the NHL and did not improve as much as I would have expected. Very few players were impact players in Rochester, let alone Buffalo. This indicates sub-mediocre scouting, drafting, development, and talent evaluation. Even the Sabres playoff teams after Black Sunday had problems. Aside from the glaring hole in top 9 C, the team often got badly outplayed. I remember numerous games where Ryan Miller stole points when the team got outshot 35+ to 25-. An injury to one of Vanek, Miller, Pominville, Hecht, and Connolly could send them into mediocrity and below until they were healthy. Injuries to more than one sent the team into a tailspin. But when healthy, they were pretty good -- which is why Boston targetted Vanek in the 2010 playoffs, Philadelphia targetted Connolly in the 2011 playoffs, and Lucic targetted Miller in 2011-2. IMHO, the ONLY part of the above which is relevant to me is the causes and effects of a lack of talent in a submediocre development pipeline. That was my diagnosis of the problems with the Sabres at the time. Now, I will expound on why I opposed The Tank and preferred a normal rebuild like 1995-6 and 2021-2. A system so bereft of young talent and missing solid player development can't afford a tank where you ice a team consisting mostly of AHL Tweeners and the bottom end of the bottom end of NHL players because the team will lack depth and has no foundation on which to build. Rochester has not won a playoff round since 2004-5 and was mediocre for many years, so there was no cushion there. And then the players were mostly AHL cast-offs complemented by the rewards of lousy scouting and drafting. The negative effects of The Tank infected the locker room. (Make a good play and players joke that you are trying to get traded. So the subconscious message is if you aren't traded, you clearly stink. Masterful psychology.) Then the management got some bad players for a young team, mishandled several veterans who brought the proper attitudes, had no one left in Buffalo who had had success here, traded away assets like they were candy, drafted rather poorly, being unable to bring in solid defencemen, and brought in a coach who was notorious for being terrible at developing youth. That was followed with prematurely dismantling the rebuild with one God-Awful trade and then compounding the offence with terrible decisions with the bottom 6 forwards with a coach who thought he could be a dictator like Scotty Bowman followed by a coach who makes Ted Nolan look like a strategic, nitty-gritty genius. Therefore, I criticise The Tank because: philosophically, I don't believe in trying to lose (yes, that is vastly different this season -- the GM never undermined the coaches and players and put an emphasis on culture and talent development); I don't like the psychology for the players left; I did not like the instability it brought to the locker room, which made it far too easy for Kane and Bogosian to infect it; it was a flawed analysis of the situation at hand, whence it went after a solution to the wrong problem AND it was a try for a quick fix for what were endemic, systemic problems. I view the 11 years of garbage as the just desserts for The Tank. It was the wrong thing to do because was not the correct solution to the actual problems at hand at the time. And the lack of a deep talent pipeline after the current crop shows that there is STILL work to do to fix those problems.

The years we missed the playoffs before The Tank: 1970-1, 1971-2, 1973-4 1985-6, 1986-7, 1995-6, 2001-2, 2002-3, 2003-4, 2007-8, 2008-9. We have DOUBLED our playoff misses since Darcy allowed losing to become acceptable in 2011-2. Then we tried to lose for a few years and then losing became a bad habit like smoking.

Good teams on the road. The next few games have some real tests.

(To the tune of "parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme" from "Scarborough Fair") Pepper-o-ni pizza and wine.