Archie Lee

If you, arbitrarily to be sure, set the level for an NHL goalie's breakout season at starting at least half of his team's games and performing at a better than average NHL level, then you don't have to look far to find multiple examples of goalies who did not "breakout" as a starter until they were older than Comrie is. Just looking at the goalies in the Atlantic division last year and Jack Campbell, Linus Ullmark, Thomas Greiss, Anton Forsberg and Craig Anderson were all 28 or older and no longer with their original NHL team before they started 41 games in a season while also posting better than average NHL #'s. Of course, over the longer haul those goalies have had mixed success in their careers. It is though, based on Comrie's background, well within the realm of possible that he will give the Sabres better than average NHL starting goaltending. It would not be close to an outlier scenario for this to occur.

I’m not a Cornhusker’s football guy myself, but I was listening to a POD yesterday and they said that all of the Cornhusker references were from the 2010 season (so the mall caper took months to pull off, starting in winter 2010 and running into the fall). They said that based on the BB timeline, the Gene caper episode would have overlapped Walt’s return to the ABQ from New Hampshire and, of course, his death. I would not have pieced any of that together myself.

Gaudreau and Huberdeau are the same age. They play the same position and are, statistically, nearly the same player. If the Flames were to get Huberdeau and Weegar signed long-term, it would almost be like they just swapped out Tkachuk for Weegar and added a prospect and 1st RD pick. The Flames lack a true elite defender, but their back-end, starting in goal and through their top 6 D, is awfully good.

Of those 9 teams, as things stand today, only Edmonton and Florida look like they will have to move someone out. Unless they get bargain deals on Yamamoto and Puljujarvi, the Oilers can't sign both and would need to move out one or maybe Warren Foegele. The Panthers likely need to move out Hornqvist. Of course, if any make further trades or take a run at Kadri that would change things.

The optimist’s argument is that the Sabres added Tuch, Krebs, Samuelsson and Power over the course of last season and by the time Mittelstadt and Olofsson got healthy they had passed Ottawa and Detroit. Meaning Ottawa and Detroit were in positions of needing to catch-up. Now add Comrie, Lyubushkin, Quinn and Peterka and the Sabres still have the edge. This will never be the professional/media/expert opinion, because free agency is viewed as an avenue for improvement and the Sabres mostly abstained. What we know, though, is that many UFA signings will not have the anticipated positive impact (including, possibly, ours). Since it is July, I’m an optimist.

I think this is only logical if one takes the position that anything less than a Stanley Cup is failure. The Penguins have been, for a few seasons now, long-shot contenders. They have still been a really good NHL team though. They will fall off the cliff eventually, but I don't think it will be for a couple of years. Though aging, they still have high-end talent and decent depth and Sullivan is a very good coach. There are some who will take the position that if you aren't 1st you might as well be last. Me, I would gladly take a few years of cup runs followed by 5-6 more years of watching Dahlin, Power, Cozens, Thompson, Mitts, et al play on 100+ point teams with the hope that maybe there is one more "lightning in a bottle" season.

If I was betting an over/under on the Eastern playoff teams using their points from last season, I might go under on all of them.

Could be, but I don’t think that is the plan. Performance and health are obviously factors. Going back to his junior days, Comrie has had 5 seasons in his career where he has played 40+ games; Luukkonen has had two such seasons. I think they see Comrie as a guy who is ready to take the next step and that the only thing that has prevented him from doing so earlier is playing behind a Vezina level goalie. Who knows how it plays out, but my guess is the plan would be for Comrie to start 45+, Anderson the rest with Luukkonen coming up when needed. I know people don’t like Tokarski as a goalie, but I wish we had retained him over Subban. Tokarski is simply better. Maybe he was not interested in being an org#4.

I’m mildly disappointed in this. A couple of the vibes guys, Anderson and Hinostroza, were rewarded with one year deals that I don’t think they would have received from another team. With that as a backdrop, it seemed Pysyk was worthy of a similar deal to serve as our 7th D. OK, I’m over it. Still…

I don’t know what Comrie will be, but I do think he was the UFA goalie with the most upside. He is UPL plus 2 additional years of development. He very well might be ready to be a #1.

I do hope the Sabres do some things today. A goalie obviously, a vet D man, maybe take a cap dump and get an asset with it. I really don’t think you build a championship team by signing players to big UFA deals though. I’m content to watch our Eastern Conference competitors fall over themselves to give big money and term to players who will be of little help to most of them. Phi, Det, NJ and Ott can’t all make the playoffs this year. Some of these teams will look a bit foolish as early as Thanksgiving.

This won't be a popular option, but let me make a half-hearted argument for David Rittich. Prior to being dealt to Toronto late in 2020-21, Rittich had played in 129 games over 4 seasons with the Flames. He went 63-39-15 in those games with a .908 save %. In 2018-19 he started 45 games, went 27-9-5 with a .911 save %. In 2019-20 he started 48 games, went 24-17-6 with a .907 save %. Rittich's game fell off a bit in 2020-21 when the Flames brought in Markstom and he became the back-up. He was not a fit in Toronto and was a disaster last year in Nashville playing behind Saros. The arguments against Rittich are obvious. He was never more than an average starter and his game has seemingly fallen off a cliff over the last 16 months or so. The arguments for him are: he has shown he can start 40+ games and post around average NHL #'s; he is relatively young, turning 30 next month; he will be available (unless I missed him signing in Europe), cheap and won't be demanding term. Goaltending is just so unpredictable. Would it really be shocking if Rittich signed somewhere, became the starter due to injury and had decent #'s over 40-45 starts? Year to year it seems the goalies who move around are as likely to have disappointing seasons as they are to have good ones. Maybe Rittich is just a guy who plays better when he is the starter.

Well I could not have been more wrong. Did not see the Sabres taking 3 forwards. Love that all 3 have centre potential though. This is probably reading too much into the selection of 3 forwards but it made me think of two things: 1) The Sabres think they have their top 4 D for the foreseeable future in Dahlin, Power, Jokiharju and Samuelsson ; and/or 2) Adams got good vibes from the meeting with Ryan Johnson’s reps. Two years from now when our top 4 D are maybe making $25+ million combined, we will need some ELCs up front.

There are a lot of “you tube” scouts who love Lambert. Generally, those who love him seem to think that people who don’t are overthinking things. The more I watch on Lambert the more I think he is going to dominate the WJC this August and then the WHL with Seattle. By New Year’s there could be a bunch of teams wondering how they missed the signal for the noise.

Speculation has Campbell getting a longer term (3+) deal at north of $5 million and possibly in the $6 million range. It would be inconsistent with everything Adams has said for them to be in on something like that. Especially when you consider Campbell is far from being a sure thing and we could have cap issues as soon as year 3 of such a deal.

I think this is correct. Also, Anderson worked all of the Covid year with Samsonov and Vanecek. Maybe we have some intel on these two. Though, the Russia situation might negatively impact Washington’s ability to move Samsonov.

Do you mean can’t recommend “enough”…? Or can’t recommend?

Kuemper is the big UFA goalie prize this off-season. He was pretty average, at best, in the playoffs, but whoever gets him is getting a true top 10 NHL goalie in my view. After Kuemper, the next big 3 are Husso, Fleury and Campbell. Husso was awful two years ago. Fleury was objectively bad last year and Campbell had a good 1st half to last season and a poor 2nd half. It will not be shocking if Reimer is as good or better than any of Campbell, Husso and Fleury this coming season. The Sabres could and likely will do worse than James Reimer.

Nobody said it was or thinks it is the Sabres’ draft board.

If that is the Sabres list then we are getting Savoie or Kulich at 9 (don’t see Slav, Wright, Cooley or Nemec dropping to 9) and likely one of the guys in 6-10 range (Kulich to Trikozov) at 16. With the Sabres having the 3 first rounders and with them being so spread out, I’ve really focused on the prospects largely projected to go top 40. Unless we go off the board (possible) we will get 4 guys who have garnered a lot of attention. Maybe it is just because our draft position this year has caused me to dig deeper, but there are few combinations for our top 4 picks that I think I would be disappointed in.

It is not lost on Adams, I'm sure, that the two teams in the Cup Finals, widely considered to be the best run teams in the league, were built through the draft. The key trade acquisitions were either young when acquired (Sergachev, Cernak in Tampa; Girard, Compher in Colorado) or were not acquired until the team was clearly ready to compete (McDonagh in Tampa; Kadri, Toews, Kuemper in Colorado). Acquiring top UFAs means overpaying, even for good franchises in desirable locations. Our path will be through the draft, nurturing our own young players and then eventually needing to trade assets for pieces that are missing.

I understand why, for some, everyday that the Sabres are not a playoff team will be viewed in the context of 11 years of losing, failure and mismanagement. This is completely understandable. We all have different outlooks and viewpoints and it is not unreasonable for a fan who invests time, money and emotion into a pro-sports team to expect that the primary goal of each season is to win. For others, it is is easier (maybe even necessary from an emotional point of view) to separate what is currently happening from prior years of futility. Adams can't undo what happened in the previous decade; all he can do is take the resources available and use them to try and build the team that he envisions. Adams has really only been fully in charge of the team's direction since they fired Krueger; thus far, acknowledging that he isn't batting 1.000%, the team has steadily moved in the right direction. I agree with you that the reasonable conclusion from the Bishop trade is that the Sabres have no intention to acquire contracts that take us much higher than the cap floor. Where I differ from you is that I don't see this as a bad thing. Acquiring higher-priced veteran contracts can only be done at the expense of giving up young and valuable assets through trades or through singing UFAs who might block younger players and/or cause cap issues in the longer term. Adams is clearly not prepared at this point to do these things. Although the plan may take longer to show results than I would like, it does seem sound. My perception is that we are no longer the league laughing stock when it comes to team management, with Chicago and Philadelphia having taken over the role. I'm going to wait and judge the results.

I agree with your overall sentiment, but it is too early to say that the Rosen selection didn't work or, for that matter, that the Quinn one did.

I think this is a good reminder that some teams, and quite possibly the Sabres, will have internal rankings that are very different than any so called consensus or consolidated ranking. My tendency is to watch the draft and hope a highly ranked player falls to us (ie: Rossi). What is at least as likely is the Sabres will think highly of a lower ranked player and we will be initially perturbed by who we select.

I think there is a near 0% chance the Sabres trade for Kane this off-season. A trade for a player with Kane’s pedigree raises the fan expectation level for immediate success far beyond what the current regime has interest in. All indications are that the organization is in the stage of wanting expectations to grow organically as the team’s young players get better. A Kane acquisition this summer changes the dynamics in ways that the hierarchy has no desire for.