pi2000

It's time for Linus to be sent down. Call up Makarov for a 2-week stint or so. Anyway, will be nice to cheer for a win this time around. ARI is surprisingly good this season.

I blame the unregulated consumption of energy drinks.

Give Eichel a few weeks down in Roch to get his groove back and work on his defensive play.... ....great idea? or greatest idea?

Are we sure this will be at the Ralph? Or the new downtown stadium adjacent to the Harbor Center.

Better offensive awarenes.... MIN: Suter, Spurgeon DAL: Klingberg, Oduya PIT: Letang, Maata BOS: Chara, Krug OTT: Karlsson, ??? FLA: Ekblad, Campbell OTT is the only team wear RR might see 2nd line PP minutes.

KP is running the Bills, she got duped by Rex. TP is running the Sabres, nice upward trajectory thus far. It's a family competition, who can win a championship first? Probably a $1 bet between them.

Disagree, i can rattle off atleast a dozen teams with better options for a second unit (assuming 1 D-man per unit)... ANA, MIN, NSH, NYR, NYI, PIT, BOS, DAL, CHI, FLA, TBL, MON, OTT, and so on.

Bylsma only uses 1 D on the PP, Risto would likely see 2nd unit time if they had a top tier QB. I'm not saying he sucks, he's above average, but he's not a top 20 defenseman in the league yet, and who knows if he ever will be. So all these comparisons to Lidstrom are premature at best.

As a defenseman you learn the stick lift at the squirt level. The second part of the equation is foot speed to stay within reach of the guy.... wait for him to square up the shot and pop up his stick. That play happens a hundred times a game. I don't see anything special about the play that Risto made. It's a play that any defenseman should be expected to make, if he doesn't then he shouldn't be in the NHL.

I live in southern California and watch just about all Kings and Ducks games in addition to all the Sabres games. First thing that jumps out at you is how slow Buffalo is on the back-end. They constantly lose puck races, fall behind the play as it moves up ice, etc... With guys like Doughty, Fowler, Vatanen, Lindholm, etc... those teams rarely give up breakaways and I've seen many many times where they catch a guy from behind or at least can skate neck and neck with him to make a stick check like Risto did. They guys who are too slow to make those plays, don't exist on the top teams in the league. Risto is a PP guy this year because he's their most offensively gifted defenseman. If a guy like Barrie, Campbell, Doughty, Fowler, Suter, Giordano, Keith, should I keep going? ... if Buffalo had a top tier offensive defenseman, Risto wouldn't sniff the PP. I expect TM to fill that void within the next 18 months.

Lots of good advice on here wrt financing, so as a homeownwer, my advice when looking at a house you like would be to carefully inspect the plumbing. Plumbing can be very expensive, have the main sewer line inspected with a camera to verify no roots are invading the line and the pipe is secure. Ask the previous owners if they've had any issues with pipes bursting in walls, etc... How old is the plumbing, etc.. It can be a real nightmare. Other things a good home inspector should be able to point out, make sure you trust the guy and take notes.

Most defenseman should be able to do that. We're so used to seeing slugs like Weber, Gorges and Franson, that anytime a D-man catches someone from behind, we're flabbergasted. Rasmus is playing well, still room to improve... some of his decisions in the offensive zone seem a bit rushed... doesn't hold the puck very long. I'd like to see him use more patience and hang on to it a bit longer. That will come with experience. I just don't see him as a PP guy either. Need a more offensively minded guy like TYSON BARRIE to QB the power play.

He's improved and is playing well. The big concern for me was his ability to stay on his skates and win battles along the wall. He's progressed nicely in those areas, still room to improve, but he's getting there. As long as he's getting top-6 minutes he should stay on the big club.

wait a sec. the NWHL has an all-star game? SO basically half of each team makes the all-star team?

He only played 7 games in Nov, not a huge sample size. and he had that one really really really really bad game tho where he gave up 7 goals on 26 shots at the end of Oct. He's been very good since that game tho. Ullmark still has a better sv% tho.

We can blame Tim Murray for this mess. He scouts all these guys. The fact that he felt the need to trade a 1st rnd pick for Lehner while Ullmark is waiting in the wings, tells me he has no eye for goaltenders. How he could he not see the potential in Ullmark? Sure he's coming off an injury and has never played an NHL game, but it would've been nice to still have the 1st round pick to fill another spot and go out and get a cheaper veteran guy to play net for a season or two at worst.

Consider there are infinite parallel universes. In at least one of those universes, tonight's game heads to a shootout tied 0-0, and nobody scores in the shootout..... ever. I believe it's highly likely that's the universe we live in. BTW, in one of those universes Gary Bettman is still conducting the draft lottery. Fortunately we don't live in that one.

It's due to the rise of the tall goalie. Tall goalies are effective because the size of their upper body equipment takes away the top the net allowing taller, slower moving goaltenders to make positional vs reactionary saves. The solution is simple... reduce the size of their equipment (namely chest/arms pads, make the gloves and blocker smaller by removing the "cheater" part of the pads). This will force goalies to make reactionary saves vs just butterflying on their knees at the correct angle to take away 97% of the net. As a result, taller, slower goaltenders will become less popular. One misconception is that the tall goalie is more athletic these days. The fact is that there have ALWAYS been tall goaltenders... they just haven't been very good because with appropriately sized equipment they were forced to make more reactionary saves, so smaller quicker athletes were preferred between the pipes.

I get that the guy was laying on top of him, but there were billions of zombies swarming over them. The dead guys body was laying diagonal across Glenn's, there's no way in hell Glenn could've survived that without getting bit at least once in the head or other extremities. Ruined the show IMO.

Considering where they were just last season, this is an improvement. I will say this. Coach Bylsma needs to leave some line combinations alone for a bit. O'Reilly with Ennis and Moulson were generating chances, as was Eichel with Kane and Reinhart. Keep those lines together for 10 games or so before pulling the plug.

Let's say Reinhart doesn't score that goal, the play continues and DAL scores a shorthanded goal. Can Buffalo challenge that they themselves were offsides earlier during the play and the DAL goal should not count? If not, I have a problem with it.

The wrist pad on the catching glove is 3-4 times the actual width of the goalies wrist. The arm pads are the same, 3-4 times the width of the arm, and the chest protectors stick up to ear level. That has nothing to do with protecting the goaltender. I understand you need the equipment to be larger than the person wearing it so they have some flexibility, but this is just too much.

I don't care what hand he is. The style this team plays is north and south, high speed, win puck races, D joins the offense on the attack. I'm sorry but Gorges, Weber, and Franson simply are not fast enough for this style of play. Watch how often the opposing team dumps a puck into any of those 3 players corner and then easily wins the foot race to the puck. It's a big sore spot. Barrie is lightning on skates and offensively aggressive, he's a perfect defenseman for this system.

I disagree. Large goalies are en vogue because larger upper body equipment means they can just take away angles in the butterfly position without having to move. Taking away the large upper body equipment will force them to make reactionary (instead of positional) saves in the butterfly position. That said, I don't expect all tall goalies to go away... there will be some who are athletic enough to make reactionary saves and continue to perform at a high level. HOwever, I do expect the average height of goaltenders to come back down by a few inches to where it was in the mid-90s. Does all these mean scoring will go up? Initially that would be the case, but as goaltenders evolve, it will even out. It's a cycle of offense vs defense that all sports go through at some point. RIght now goaltenders have the upper hand by a wide margin. Yep. Look at how high the pads are above the knee. When facing butterfly goalies as a youth in the 80's and 90's, we were taught to shoot high or five-hole on butterfly goalies. They took away the five-hole with the overlapping pads above the knee, and then took away the top of the net with massive chest protectors and oversized gloves. As such, the league has evolved into a game of getting the puck back to the point, screen the goalie and hope something finds the net.... as the primary way to score is by blocking the goalies vision instead of straight up beating him with an open shot. Effective, but not very sexy.