Jorcus

Also Winnipeg is one of the hardest places to fly back to Europe from but that is also true for a number of other cities.

Looking at the wording of the question and the time frame I think I can come up with most of the 16 players that said Buffalo is number 1 on their no trade list. To be number 1 on the no trade list for a player it almost has to be something personal. It's not about the area it's the team or the coach that makes you pick Buffalo over Winnipeg or Ottawa etc. For the most part it's going to be ex players that don't want to come back and we have a lot of them. Jack Eichel, Sam Reinhardt, Linus Ullmark, Nikita Zadorov, Jeff Skinner, Evander Kane, Will Carrier, JT Compher, Brandon Montour, Jake McCabe, Tyler Myers, Brayden McNabb. Somehow Girgensons has a no trade clause. Nick Foligno has one but may not hate on us. When you get past that group you are probably looking at Ruff haters mostly from the Devils or maybe Benn from Dallas. Possibly Pat Kane. Maybe a Toronto player. I am sure we are on most no trade lists but to be number 1 on a list would be more about how you were treated by the team or the coach in the past.

Reading some of the Avalanche board comments one kind of stuck out. Mitts is an East West player on a North South team. For better or worse we are a North South team right now. Unless we change the systems back to Granato days I don't see what he is going to do here. The other issue is the toughness factor. We are still a soft team and he does nothing to improve that. Players don't return so shortly after trades so I would not expect him to return. We need another tough right winger to replace Quinn. We need a solid Right handed D man to take Sammy's place. If you have to trade Cuz to get one of those things I am open to ideas. I don't see how Mitts moves this team forward.

I don't see why this team can not play in third period defensive style. They pretty much did it the second half of last year. I thought they did a pretty fair job of it last night. It's more about puck puck possession and limiting chances. For most of the night they were making smart plays getting the pucks deep in the opposition corners then using speed to get to the puck. For the most part they only sent 1 forward deep in the 3rd. The last thing you want to do is run and gun with the Blue Jackets. I did feel there were some errors though. With 8 min left in the game Dahlin goes deep in the corner to fight for a puck. I think Peterka now has to cover the blue line. It's not ideal defense for that time and score. After the Blue Jackets scored on the next shift the Sabres did become more aggressive and Dahlin and Joker both made trips below the opponents goal line. There are only a few forwards on this team I trust to hold the blue line and when you are protecting a lead it becomes more important to think about plays like that. All in all they played a good game. Speed is the tool they have to use.

I thought he played ok. The line looked out out of sync at times but they tried to be responsible on the D side of the ice. He made a few good passes in the O zone. At least once he poked a puck off a stick out of the zone defending. Had one or 2 good looks at a goal but that was about it. He got run over at lest once but no glaring errors.

The Benjamin Button's of hockey

Kind of interesting comparison to the Tage hit the other night when The Wilds Hartman takes a face off against Ottawa's best center in Stutzle and hits him with an upward slash then crashes his head to the Ice. I don't see where there was big response from Ottawa. They were way ahead during the game and Hartman was challenging other players like Harmonic to fight before this, but no one took him up on it. A preventative fight could have saved that ugly play from happening. Well Hartman gets 10 games off which he deserves.

We should have to sent our toughest player out to confront the Devils.

Yes, the fact he had no one to convert his passes led to the Skinner trade and the following overpayment for a contract. Whoever Skinners agent was should be in the sports agents hall of fame for putting a gun to our head for that one.

One thing that points to being a center is that he is not bad on the face offs. Even though he is 45% that is pretty good for a rookie. He has very quick hands on the dot.

I really like Kulich and think he a lot of upside to his game. It's hard to find any real flaws other than he could be a better playmaker. He has a great trigger which he has always been able to use even when he is under duress from the defense. To think he has gone from a non roster player to start the season, then a call up/4th line substitute, to 1st line center over the course of 51 games is astounding. That is a lot of jump even on this version of an NHL team. In a way he reminded me of when Thompson first got here before he was sent to Rochester. He was creating a lot of chances for himself but was just not putting them away. In the fist part of the year Kulich was creating a lot for himself but shots were getting saved time after time. Now things are going in and they are often important goals. What surprised me the most was how fast he is his year. I watched a few games in Rochester last year and he was not exactly burning up and down the rink. That was my biggest worry with him was weather he could keep up at the NHL level. So far no problem. He is good back checker and does a lot to bother opponents. He helps this team in a lot of ways.

Rosen is now in second place in the AHL in goals. Hope he is able to keep it rolling. On the other hand the current AHL scoring leader is Andrew Poturalski from Williamsville. If he holds on it will be the third time he has won the AHL scoring title but has only played 6 NHL games. Sometimes it is a world of difference between the 2 leagues. It's amazing how much skill and physical talent it takes to be even a marginal NHL player.

A couple of points. He was good here when Granato was here. I just don't think he would be better under Lindys system or demeanor. 10 of his points this year were playing on a power play with MacKinnon and Makar, and sometimes Rantanen. After awhile his production on that power play fell off to the point he was removed from it. If he could not thrive playing next to 2 or possibly 3 hall of fame NHL players how is he going to move the needle here. Then there is the remainder of the 5.75 M per year contract. At there very least there has to be a different option than the return of Casey.

I am still taking Cozens because of his age, He would have 2 more years to get to where Mitts is right now. Which is no better than what Cozens is right now.

If you read the last 2 pages of this thread on the Colorado boards I think you get some ideas of what is going wrong. The Colorado group can be overly harsh on players and if you want a good laugh see who they were comparing Casey to in the beginning of the season in terms of how great he is. To me he is just the same guy who left here. When he is playing well he good at puck possession and distribution. He can win faceoffs but beyond those traits he does not stand out. He has a lot of trouble scoring around the net. He had a chance for a tap in last night but got there a tad too late and muscled out of the paint. He never had much of a shot from beyond the dots. I don't think Colorado is going to trade him. They are in a weird situation with Rantanen who really wants to be the highest paid NHL player. That would mean paying him more than MacKinnon. He reportedly has rejected a big offer. Until that issue gets resolved I can't see a lot of movement. https://forums.hfboards.com/threads/mittelstadt-re-signed-3-years-5-75m-aav.2969559/

Casey was on the 4th line of Colorado last night vs Jeff skinner on the 4th line of the Oilers. Not that we can throw shade at anybody but I can't imagine either of those guys changing our circumstance this year.

Dahlin's minutes are affected by power play time. We only had 1 so that is what cut his time back a bit. 1 extra power and one less PK by us and I think you are right back to normal.

On the positive side they only gave up 8 shots in the third with a good team pressing them. With a 3 goal lead I think you would take that. There were stretches in the third where they played pretty good defense then at other times they had a hard time controlling the puck. After the second Carolina goal they played with determination to not sit back and go after the puck handlers. Way too many icings though.

This is the problem when you do not have straight line skating speed.

I am not sure of the context of that Hamilton quote but I remember hearing him a number of times last summer that Dahlin should be the captain. A lot of that was Hamilton's view of Dahlin in practice. Either way he is the captain and despite a number of issues of the what he does inside the context of a game he has not done anything nearly so bad to get demoted. Why create a new problem you don't need to.

Grants promotion was after the victory of Vicksburg so the West was left to Sherman at a later point. Much of Grants reputation as a butcher seemed to come from the battle of Shiloh. His political opponents in the west would use that against him.

I just finished reading the Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant. There was a method to the madness as well as political pressures to get something done or just give in and let the country be cut in 2 It was very close to that point. In some sense it was a war of attrition as well as a war of perception. According to the Grant the Southern press kept feeding the idea that they were winning everything until Sherman was turned lose and brought the war to Atlanta and the sea. It was at that point the the Southern population could not ignore reality.

Maybe part of it is UPL but the style of play in front of him I think is a bigger issue. When did UPL get good last year? Ironically it was a January 9th 5-2 loss to the Kracken with Levi in the net that ended up sending him to the Amerks. After that the Sabres became one of the better defensive teams in the NHL. UPL only gave up 4 goals 3 times in 23 games. All the rest were 3 or less in that stretch. The wheels came off against Edmonton where the Sabres gave up 8 to them on the road. UPL was pretty played out by then. The big difference was the style of defense. The Sabres started to play a zone keeping almost all shots to the outside. They would give up the one shot and then control the rebound and handle the puck behind the net if needed to maintain control out of the zone. UPL is good at playing with in that structure. Where he comes apart is if there are too many repeat chances in front of him. He is too big to be a scramble goalie. The third period against the Senators resembled the good defensive structure of last year. A lot of that style has to come from the forwards. If they are not all back in the zone working as a unit that goes away. It would have all worked if the power play could have supported the lack of 5 on 5 production during that stretch but it did not. Granato got fired and instead of building on that foundation it got reworked to the detriment of this team. I think the danger of playing a fast game is that when you get tired, (we only had 3 lines yesterday) the intended result goes away. The Sabres with few exceptions got very slow and could not play in a form to chew clock and counter attack. Add the lack of shot blocking and you get what you ended up with, another blown lead with a broken defense.

Yes

I don't think Dahlin played well at all. Early in the first period did he really have to flip the puck out of the zone? Maybe, he did but he does it way to often and it just kills any chance of clean breakouts. His zone entries on the power play are a mystery to me. Power and Byram are way better at getting the puck in the zone on the PP. We don't see Byram enough on the PP but he made great move to gain zone entry. Then there was the tripping call after the back to back scores in the third which lead to the fifth goal. When he get frustrated he some how finds a way to hurt this team.