EM88

The Sabres goaltending hurt them so much last year. Take a look at UPL the year before. For the season he had a .910 save percentage. From Jan 1 though the end of that season, over 3+ months he had a .919. However, last season it dropped to .887. I know some on this board will say the defense in front of him was terrible last season. My personal opinion is the defense was not that much better or worse last year than the year before. Shots allowed, high danger shots, and other advance stats were similar both years. Not the same, but in the same ballpark. My eyes tell me he let in a lot of soft goals last year that he was not allowing in the previous year. Conclusions from those numbers: Had he played last year like he did the entire year before, the Sabres would have allowed about 30-35 goals less, making them well into the positive goal differential as a team. The vast majority of positive goal differential teams, especially once you hit +10 or more in goal differential, make the playoffs. Had he played last year like he did only in the 2nd half of the previous year, things would be even better by 5 or 10 more goals. If nothing else changes from last year about this team except UPL stepped up to be an average level goaltender, this team at least competes for the playoffs. If nothng else changed except UPL started to play like he did the year before, a much better than average goaltender, then this team makes the playoffs.

Does the 35+ rule for buyouts still apply? If I remember correctly, the later years of a contract that a player signs when he is 35 or later can be bought out for a fraction of what most other deals would cost.

I do not see any current contracts on the Sabres that are likely to go bad due to players aging out. I think the deal Tage Thompson signed ends when he is 31 years old. That is the longest/latest/oldest anyone else is committed to right now on a deal that is any longer than 2 years. I am not advocating for an $80 million dollar, 8 year deal. But If you have to give ONE deal that might be an overpay at the end of it to Tuch right now, you do that so you get the 'good' next 2-4 years out of him.

As far as fan bases go: Boston fans are harmless more 'show' than 'go'. As long you you do not bring up the Patriots cheating scandal or even hint in the slightest that Tom Brady is not the greatest football player in the history of the world by 10 miles. Stay away from that topic and you are fine with them. Philly fan can be rough around the edges. However, you are usually safe with them because they spend more time fighting each other to bother with other fanbases. Toronto fan I have found to be pretty good when it comes to the Raptors or Blue Jays. They are annoying with the Leafs but it is a step below a lot of other fanbases in terms or outright anger. With Leaf fan, it is more arrogance, or maybe even 'wanna-be' arrogance. New York fan is different breed of person. One gets the impression the sole reason many of them attend games is they are looking for an argument or fight.

Toronto and New York are at the top of the list for me. It has little to do with the players of course, mostly due to the fanbases. My perception has those 2 fanbases being slightly different, yet still annoying. Toronto Fans: When they win, it simply because, of course, they are the better team. A bad call against the other team? No big deal, Toronto was going to win anyway. When they lose, it is always some external factor, mostly the fans or the league out to get them because everyone is jealous of Toronto and the Leafs. In many Leaf fans eyes, the Leafs have yet to lose a game in the last 5 years that wasn't the fault of the refs or the league. New York fans: When the Rangers lose, the fans hate their own team, they turn on the team faster than almost any fanbase. But when the Rangers win, a large portion of the fanbases seems to think that they, the fans, are the reason why. New York fans seem take personal credit for the success of their teams more than anyone else. Both of the above behaviors, while other fanbases have them to a certain extent, are notable for Toronto and New York fans, and they are annoying.

I think the rest of the board will go with Toronto. For myself personally of all the fanbases the NY city fanbase gets the most intolerable when they win. New York Rangers.

He most certainly is. If you want to question his health and availability that is one thing. But up to this point in his career Timmins seems much better to me.

Personally, I do not like hot weather. When its above 80, it is too much for me.

Take every player in the NHL. Every owner. Every GM, every scout. Maybe even throw in every single season ticket holder across the league that has had tickets for more than 10 years. Put ALL of those people in one big room and Terry Pegula might be the single most clueless about hockey of all of them.

The facilities in Buffalo are ok, good enough, but they are falling way behind in the 'wow' factor compared to what other teams have. And again, in a salary cap league where you have limited funding, those Buffalo facilities are 'nice enough' if you are here, but they are not going to win out over a lot of what other teams are doing.

They are notgetting direct compensation from another team, but they are not getting 'nothing', again, they are getting cap space. When you are a 'cap team', as the Leafs usually are, that can at times be even more valuable than a player return in a trade, if that new player is taking up cap space that limits your other options.

I somewhat like the morning show. As I mentioned previously, it is annoying when Jeremy White gets stuck on his opinion. I have always enjoyed talk shows where the hosts facilitated conversation. Where they would take calls on all different points of view and respond to them. Not when they have their opinion and they argue with callers who disagree with them. So why do I not think it is low quality radio? First, most talk shows about sports seem to be more and more like that. But the morning guys I can deal with, I find the show entertaining and somewhat informative. It is 'middle ground' for what sports talk should be. The 1 hour of hockey talk, I do not listen to it that much but I enjoy that also most of the time. The 10-12 show, not perfect, but I can get something out of it also. The afternoon show, Shopp and Bulldog, that is the only show that I can no longer tolerate. When you say low quality radio, to me that comment does not do justice to just how bad the afternoon show can be. But overall, WGR is decent-to-good for me for general listening.

I do not like the WGR guys all that much. I can tolerate the morning show, but JW seems to 'pick his point' and then never gets off it. The afternoon WGR show is awful. But as far and Brandon Beane, I didn't like how he came off during this interview. He can make his point without sounding like he did, and I think he came across today as somewhat of a jerk.

Not fast enough? where did that come from. He looks like he is one of the faster skaters on the team and above average in the league, and the metrics back that up.

Let us see if it continues with Krebs the rest of the year. Another handful of games will make the very small sample size slightly larger and somewhat more meaningful to evaluate. It appears Lindy finally got frustrated enough with Quinn so he took him off of McLeods line and put him with Krebs toward the end of the game. If Krebs is stuck with Quinn the rest of the season, his numbers may not look so good going forward.