RochesterExpat

From the outside looking in, I will say I think Granato made a mistake with his handling/allocating the preseason games. The Sabres gave too many games to rookies and too few games getting the top lines together. The organization is too far along in the rebuild to give this much ice time to evaluating rookies. It is what it is. I think it's far worse of an issue in the NFL than it is in the NHL, but it's still something they should keep in mind for next offseason.

Welcome back. I missed your positivity.

I’m starting to feel I’m the only one left who doesn’t think the sky is falling. Sabres win this one by at least 4. Tampa can’t matchup effectively and the mismatches become apparent. Sabres confidence gets a boost and it creates a snowball effect of momentum.

I thought for a while it was some combination of coaching, improper development, and his injury issues that stunted his development, but he came into camp this year unprepared relative to others. Even just looking at his closest power, I t’s evident that Comrie worked hard this offseason. It isn’t with UPL. At this point it suggests to me it’s the player lacking the drive/focus to succeed in pro sports.

If his nickname is Bennie, I expect a hat trick in Winnipeg in November.

I expect Savoie in Rochester for his conditioning stint and whichever of UPL or Comrie gets the start tomorrow to be shopped to Tampa hard while Savoie is conditioning. Tomorrow is a marketing game. VO to the pressbox and Savoie is activated on a trial stint.

Something for us to complain about?

I’d rather see Biro than Savoie.

If Greenway plays like that the whole season, I think he’ll end up my new favorite player. If the team plays like that the whole season, I think I’m going to find a new favorite team.

If Tampa goes on a tear with Jonas Johansson in net while Vasi is out injured, I am never commenting on another thread about goaltending again. Clearly all goaltending consists of is voodoo and black magic and I am not a skilled enough rune reader to comment.

I'm not going to stress about $500K-$1M that I feel it's over by. It's done. That's good enough for me.

Gotcha. So that’s the missing piece.

I swear the agreement says NHL contracts supersede AHL and it doesn’t matter the organization because AHL teams change affiliates frequently enough the AHL-only contracts are truly separate from the parent.

Chicago might claim him. They have the cap and two goalies who are waiver exempt and UPL is arguably an upgrade for both. They’re also not in any kind of win-now situation.

More or less this is how I feel. Team defense is the issue--specifically the lack of a visible system. I realize this is bordering on insulting to the NHL coaches and staff out there to use this as a reference point, but I agree with DG that teaching offense is more difficult than teaching defense based on my experience coaching 8U hockey. Offense comes with confidence. It takes a lot more work to get kids to feel confident enough to skate with the puck, go toward the net, and shoot the puck than it does to get them to "come back and help out our goalie." It's remarkable the transformation that happens when you a kid gets the first goal. It's like a switch flipped in their brain. Even from personal experience playing hockey, when I made the jump to high school hockey as a freshman, I went 8 games without a point. Then I scored a fluke of a goal off what was supposed to be a dump in and proceeded to get 21 points in the next 18 games. To some extent we know it happens in the NHL as well. How often is player confidence discussed? It's part of what makes Benson stand out so much. If nothing else, the kid has confidence. It's also why I think Krebs will have a breakout season. I think it's a large reason Mitts had his breakout last season. I just don't know how quickly DG and his staff can get the player buy-in to play the other side of the ice and that's what worries me the most. If this season doesn't show development, it's probably time to look at the staff and evaluate their fit. I'm especially worried because I don't see a system in place. It's overly fluid and players are either ignoring their roles, don't understand their roles, or simply don't have roles. That to me is a coaching issue and one that--at least from my peanut gallery perspective--is less on DG than the assistant coaches. Unless there really is no structure at all in which case fire the lot of them. As for goaltending, I'm more optimistic than I am for defensive structure, but I'm probably less optimistic than you are. I am disappointed we didn't bring in a veteran goalie to mentor Levi but I recognize there weren't FA options available and reported trade prices were astronomical. I hate the idea of the three-headed dragon. I am confident in Levi's ability to play goalie, but I'm less confident in his ability to play 50+ games in a season. If we had a true starter, I'd be confident in keeping Comrie as a backup as well since I think he plays fine in limited use (not a 1B but a traditional backup goalie). I don't have confidence in UPL finding consistency. I don't think UPL is able to respond to other NHL teams figuring him out. Your #3 I am in full agreement with. I'm happy with the top 6. Not happy with the apparent 7th, but that's a minor gripe. I guess I'll add a #4 which is Benson. I have confidence that Benson can play on the top line with Skinner and Thompson or he can play on the 3rd line with Mitts and Greenway. I'm confident that he'll perform better than we would hope/expect an 18-year-old rookie to do; however, similar to Levi carrying a starting workload, I am worried about Benson's ability to play a full 82-game season at an NHL pace. Someone referred to the NHL as an "80 percent league" meaning players play at 80% instead of a full 100% because the season is so long. Benson clearly was giving 110% in the preseason to prove he can skate with the team. My concern with him is whether he can pace himself over the season. They can always send him back to juniors, but it does affect the future cap situation if he burns a year of his ELC by sticking around for more than 9 games, but doesn't make the full season. It's similar to why Quinn and Peterka--the latter especially--had a more productive first part of the season than the second. Peterka even recognized this publicly. It's pretty common among rookies. The difference with Peterka is he was older and had played in the AHL for a full season before hitting the Sabres roster. Benson doesn't have that luxury. I'm not as negative about this as you because I think we need to (mentally) let Ullmark go the same way KA did. Ullmark wanted more money to stay in Buffalo and Buffalo said his number was over their internal amount. It is what it is. If he really wanted the $6+m that was reported, that would have been an overpay by Buffalo for his production at the time he signed the contract (especially in light of his health issues). Obviously hindsight is 20/20. KA's mistake wasn't letting Ullmark walk in 2021. His mistake was signing him to a one-year prove-it deal in October 2020--and I think that deal is part of the fallout from the internal cap by the Pegulas. I refuse to believe they didn't set an internal cap considering the other spending cuts made. I think it also explains the roster decisions from 21-22. I agree that KA's real issue is not replacing losing NHL-caliber goaltending with NHL-caliber goaltending, but I don't think it's that cut and dry.

As others have said, it's preseason hockey so it's something to pay attention to, but not exactly an indication of the real season. We've been pretty lax on playing our starting core of defense which has certainly impacted the team's performance. Personally, I think it's because DG knows his top 6 already and there's no debating that, but it's who rounds out spots 7, 8 and 9 in the depth chart. Case in point: Ryan Johnson isn't going to make the opening night roster, but he's still playing for a depth position so they know if/when he'll be called up. Just look at how many starts those top 6 D have had versus the top 12 (presumed) forwards. It's quite a bit lower. There's actual roster spots open for forwards to compete for.

I was out this morning. Our weather station said we got 1.5" of rain and the top gust was 34mph with top sustained winds of 26mph. We had it comparatively easy to the rest of the metroplex. Only damage was a broken hanging basket.

My dad’s flight to Buffalo was cancelled so he was rebooked to Syracuse and made it all the way to the tarmac before getting delayed for 90 minutes and ultimately back to the gate.

He was sore from morning skate and scratched. Biro went in for him. I only watched the second period due to work and serving as an airport shuttle for family. Guess I watched the highlights…

“Old man worries he would be the only old man in the locker room and wanted a slightly younger old man to be with him.”

He’s going to need to really step it up and I’m sure he knows that. I guess it’s good pressure on him considering it’s still only a preseason game. Something else that I haven’t seen addressed is the player confidence in the goalie. I don’t think Sabres players are confident in UPL and it shows when they play. They’re confident in Levi (the video clip where Skinner/Mitts go “man he’s good” about Levi shows it). But the team confidence matters too and that’s a hard one for a coach to address.

I think most people just don’t want VO on any line, so any line he’s on is automatically unattractive.

Admittedly I liked him because he was here during the dark era and, at times, it felt like he was one of the only players giving an effort. It’s the same reason I was more upset about losing Lazar than I was about Hall leaving and the unimpressive return. Lazar played the same every night regardless of whether he was the only Sabre on the ice trying. I’ll always have a soft spot for him as a result.

Looking only at teams with cap space and then narrowing it down I came up with 3 teams who might claim him: - Chicago's current backup is waivers exempt and has 18 games NHL experience with basically UPL numbers. - CBJ just claimed Spencer Martin which suggests to me they're going to waive Tarasov (I don't see them waiving Merzlikins). UPL is probably an upgrade on Spencer Martin. - Tampa: UPL is an upgrade over Jonas Johansson who is the starter now that Vasi is out. In the very least, UPL is an upgrade over the backup who washed out of the AHL 3 years ago before making a comeback this year.

Kulich is impressive enough given his age, but he's still a tier below Quinn/Peterka/Benson. Kulich's contract also slides again this season (as opposed to Rosen's which doesn't). Let him sit another year in the AHL to work on his 200' game and buy a little time on the salary cap window while you're at it. It's much better than placing him on the 4th line in the NHL as far as his development is concerned. I'm not sold on Benson getting a roster slot, but having him with Skinner and Thompson enables DG to pair Tuch and Cozens together with (presumably) Peterka. That's going to be more difficult for other teams to matchup against since it almost becomes 1A & 1B instead of traditional first and second lines. It might take pressure off Thompson/Skinner. Still agree that it will be a serious test of Benson if that were to happen.