Porous Five Hole

The pitch clock has made a BIG difference. Also, batters cannot step out of the batter’s box and can only call time once. It has helped a lot with folks like me who have shorter attention spans.

I don’t love the term of 7-8, but the dollar values are all skewed from years of a flat cap. The 2024 cap was $88MM. 2026 cap will be around 107MM. 2027 cap even higher. So a contract for Tuch in 2024 dollars of 8MM is right about 10MM in 2026 dollars. It is essentially the same percentage of the cap. For me, it comes down to his trade deadline value. He will be the most coveted pending UFA given his style of play and current AAV (not to mention the first crack at signing him to an extension). You may be better off spending 10MM on what you could acquire with him than on him. Just know that he is one of the boys and leadership will need to be acquired to make this contract extension make sense.

“The solution is in this room” Fire KA

Wawrow’s tweets this morning need to be considered when discussing the Tuch extension. In the Bruins game day thread. This team is missing veteran leadership that hates losing. Tuch is a veteran. Can we say he’s a leader of men à la Josh Allen or he hates losing à la Drury? Not playing ability…leadership characteristics. Tuch is a good player. One of the boys and fits in just fine. Good in front of a camera. But he’s not what I hoped he would be at lifting a team up and demanding accountability. He’s just not. And if I’m a GM, I don’t want that type of guy to be my highest paid forward. I’m not saying he shouldn’t be extended. Just saying this needs to be considered. Nice dude. Not currently a part of the solution of needed leadership on this team as a 29 year old veteran.

Listen we have scored a goal

You’re not wrong. Walking out of the arena, I said, “it was nice one team I root for understood the assignment on opening night.” If the Sabres ever get healthy, the spark plugs of Dunne & Kozak can make the Amerks elite.

I agree on Radim. He’s just so athletic that I think he can hang as a young guy. It’s only one night, but you can already see how the Amerks are built differently for 25-26. They’re bigger, heavier, and more built to play big boy hockey than last year. Not relying on young high draft picks to out score teams and prepared to answer any bell. If Levi can hold down the fort, they’ll be excellent this year. Östlund may be the real deal. He had two PP assists and was a driver on each. He was even on the scoresheet and noticeable with the puck on his stick. Rosen scored two laser bomb PP goals. A good sign. The kids are alright.

Dahlin

This makes sense to me.

Also relevant to this is Power shed his non-contact jersey indicating he’s good to go.

I’m joking here, but wouldn’t promoting Appert get him off of special teams, which would enhance the team?

As is tradition, I’m here expecting the best. Better defensive pairs and more mature forwards = the loss of Peterka’s goal scoring. The Sabres haven’t had a hard time scoring goals. I’m here in the hopium den expecting Tage/Norris production to light it up and pushing Tuch to RW2 as a driver to a second productive line on a playoff team.

Yes. We already know Dahls & Bo are great as a pair. Assuming health, Kess & Power are a huge upgrade over Muel on the same pair. Timmons is an upgrade over Clifton and whomever. He did say that this may not be enough to cover for shoddy goaltending. But it’s a much better template than they were working with last year. Hope is a ***** strategy, but this is the path toward improvement. As Travis said, getting league average goaltending with this defense core = hopium.

Saturday’s game is also nearly a sellout. Monday afternoon’s game has tix avail, but will be well attended. Huge opportunity for the Sabres here.

It is kind of wild that you simultaneously just described Devon Levi.

Apartment hunting in Rochester

This is true and it all goes back to the UPL extension. UPL had a nice 23-24 season, but it did not warrant a five year extension because it was the outlier to his career trajectory. He got hot for 40 games and KA was hoodwinked. You would like to think the GM knows his guys and this was a good decision. It wasn’t. And he stopped trying to improve the position once he inked that deal.

Sure—but that is very unlikely because it is unlikely Ellis would clear waivers when we waive him. He can get re-claimed by the Blues and sent to the AHL (which is what they wanted to do all along). Georgiev wasn’t here until training camp and only signed because of an injury.

The organization needed another goalie for Rochester either way. The Amerks are legitimately good and giving 30 games to one of Topias Leinonen or Scott Ratzlaff would be a terrible idea. What’s scary is it took a UPL injury for KA to do anything.

He has eyes and saw Georgiev’s preseason, so I bet he expected it. In all seriousness, I think Darth nailed it that he will backup Lyon while UPL is out and hit waivers again. The perfect spot for Ellis is in the AHL owning a crease like Levi is doing. Ellis only 64 AHL starts in his career. Good for his wallet that he isn’t and I hope his fresh start turns him into Dom reincarnated.

Ellis’s numbers in the AHL last year comp to Devon Levi (Devon is a full year younger). CE: 42GP, 22W 14L 3OT 3SO, GAA 2.63, .922 Sv Pct DL: 42GP, 25W 13L 4OT 7SO, GAA 2.20, .917 Sv Pct