IKnowPhysics

Eichel: What are you trying to tell me, that I can play defensively? Botterill: No, Jack. I'm trying to tell you that when you're ready, you won't have to.

An old, but very good blog post detailing the early history of the franchise from the (defunct?) sabresfans.com: http://sabresfans.com/2011/06/20/the-birth-of-the-franchise/ Interesting storyline: When the NHL announced expansion plans in 1965, the Knoxes wanted a NHL franchise really badly in Buffalo, but James D Norris, Chairman of the NHL Board of Governors was bitter about a $2M business deal about grain operations that went bad and proclaimed "Buffalo is a bush town. You might as well forget it right now, boys. Buffalo will never get into the NHL as long as I’m involved." The Knoxes crushed it in the 1966 expansion presentation meetings, but weren't awarded a 1967 expansion franchise because Buffalo. When Bill Jennings, impressed with the Knoxes'' effort asked, "Your presentation was great, but why do you have to represent Buffalo? Why don’t you select another city?” The Knoxes responded, "Buffalo is our home and that’s where our hockey team will play." The impressed Jennings enabled the Knoxes to buy minority share and take control of the California Seals (who were expanded into the league in 1967 and were a mess of an organization, top to bottom), with the idea that the Knoxes could circumvent expansion by buying and moving the flailing Seals to Buffalo. The league allowed this sale without promising to allow the move, but this was a up, because Labatt's had recently invested in the Seals with the idea of moving them to Vancouver, which in itself was already a up, because the NHL's TV partner, CBS, wanted the NHL to remain in the Oakland TV market despite their failings. The Knoxes were in a tough position, but leveraged it to advantage Buffalo. The Knoxes hustled and cleaned up the Seals enough for them to earn their first NHL playoff berth, with the understanding that they would do the work and float the Seals and the league would grant them a team in the next expansion. Once the NHL expansion fee was settled, the Knoxes sold their share of the Seals and went to work on building the Sabres. The Seals, after the 1969-70 season and without the Knoxes, would never earn a playoff spot again. They would relocate to Cleveland in 1976, and later merge into the troubled North Stars in 1978. --- And there's a fun tidbit at the end that I didn't know: Joe Daly was technically the first Sabres player.

Maybe rightfully so. Some, including I, believe the return has to be bonkers to be worth moving ROR out. What can Botterill seriously get in return that makes this team better and not worse, and doesn't continue to leverage the now for the future. Any deal for a package makes this team worse. Any deal for a good prospect makes this team worse. Is Botterill going to piss away ROR just to fill Kane's spot? Just to break even, it'd have to be one of the 30 best defensemen in the league or a top pair D and a starting goalie, and even if he does that, there's no guarantee we can score enough to win next year, because between ROR and Kane we've just removed 44 goals from an NHL-low 198 goals for. It's an easy recipe for dissatisfaction.

Meanwhile, eight months ago:

One of the many reasons that trading ROR is nutty. Sabres have been literally screaming for a ROR-like center for decades. He comes in, plays hard, leads team statistical categories, is a finalist for Lady Byng, and a straight-talk post season soundbite gets overblown and spins up the league-wide media to run him out of town.

From the other thread: http://www.hockeydraftcentral.com/articles/article2.htm

I thought this was America.

Hence the facetiousness.

Dahlin had three points and was +3 in six playoff games for Frolunda. Almquist had one point and +2, Donovan zero points and -3. Defenseman Jesus.

Pi fails to mention Dahlin played fewer games than those other two defensemen. He also fails to mention that Dahlin led among Frolunda D in goals and points in the playoffs. Therefore, Rasmus Dahlin will be remembered for centuries as the best ever anything best ever:

For the same reason the 2018 1st round pick isn't on this list?

If Miracle is out, I'm guessing Wayne Gretzky on Pro Stars is also out.

Best ever, ever.

Analysis says you value both together: https://www.thescreen.co/single-post/2018/06/05/Turns-Out-Good-Players-Play-Better-With-Other-Good-Players-The-Sam-Reinhart-and-Ryan-OReilly-Story

FTFY

PP could depend on assistant coaches more than Housely. We watched a good PP get slapped when Scotty Arniel left.

Based on his 30 points in 34 games as a Gopher in B1G (NHLe = 0.33), Casey's NHL equivalency is 24 points. Now, he did this as a freshman, so he's young and has a lot of potential to tap.

Many of us have seen it, but no worries. If you hadn't seen that, then you may have also missed someone's breakdown of how close the Blackhawks were to winning the lottery: https://mobile.twitter.com/harrisonbacon/status/991512826656296961?s=21 ball 11.

Eyebrow-raisingly true. They could be in danger of being as spoiled as Patriots fans born after 1991, in which everything was rosy, even for the oldest fans after they were 5 years old. Even going back to the Whalers moving to Carolina: the Hurricanes started in Greensboro (an hour+ away from Raleigh) for two years after moving from Hartford, and once the team actually arrived in Raleigh in 1999-2000, it was only two seasons before their trip to the SCF in 2001-02 (and then a Cup in *shudder* 2005-06). Remember how smug those dickbags fans were? Gross. They've since calmed the down and eaten their humble pie after missing the playoffs now nine years in a row. I really hope Vegas embraces their team win or lose without taking them for granted or getting up on a pedestal.

Diamonds are nice, but our depth is in that area too. We've only taken one winger, Brett Murray, in rounds 2-5 since taking Eichel.

No one wants to stink after tanking. But going into the tank, you had to know that there are several different previously demonstrated models for tanking and rebuilding. Some aren't as pretty as others, but that doesn't mean that they failed. A lot of folks wanted this to be the Pittsburgh model: draft a Crosby, then win a cup. But you have to actually look at what happened to those teams to understand how long tanking -> drafting -> winning takes in reality. For example, Pittsburgh wasn't as easy as get Crosby, get Cup. Pittsburgh drafted: 2002 (5th overall Whitney) 2003 1st overall Fluery 2004 2nd overall Malkin 2005 1st overall Crosby 2006 2nd overall Jordan Staal And didn't get to the Cup finals until Spring of 2008. Blackhawks weren't eactly fast, after being so bad for so long: 2003 14th Overall Seabrook 2004 (3rd overall Cam Barker) 2005 (7th overall Jack Skille) 2006 3rd overall Toews 2007 1st overall Kane 2008 (11th overall Kyle Beach) They won the first new Cup in 2010. Our best bet, and actually the closest model I think that we're following is the Tamp Bay. They had a historic meltdown because of an awful ownership change after winning the Cup in 04, and suffered for a few years of bad management, bad trades, and bad drafting, before being in position to turn it around with two no-brainer picks: 2008 1st overall Steven Stamkos 2009 2nd overall Victor Hedman 2010 (6th overall Brett Connolly) 2011 27th overall Namestnikov 2012 (10th overall Steven Koekkoek) 2013 3rd overall Jonathan Drouin Tampa Bay went to the conference finals in 2011, dropped out, and then showed up in three of four conference finals from 2015-2018, including the SCF in 2015. Buffalo is currently here: 2012 (12th overall Mikhail Grigorenko, traded in a package for O'Reilly) 2012 14th overall Zemgus Girgensens 2013 8th overall Rasmus Ristolainen 2013 (16th overall Nikita Zadorov, traded in a package for O'Reilly) 2014 2nd overall Sam Reinhart 2015 2nd overall Jack Eichel 2016 8th overall Alex Nylander 2017 8th overall Casey Mittelstadt 2018 1st overall Rasmus Dahlin Tanking was successful: the Sabres acquired a stupid number of high draft picks, including three elite 1st or 2nd overall picks, and we are now so ridiculously loaded up with draft talent. We even converted to potential busts in Grigorenko and Zadorov into a statistical and team leader Lady Byng candidate. Any failure of the Buffalo Sabres to win again has nothing to do with the tank to acquire high draft picks. It has everything to do with how the rest of the team is put together around those top players and how the team is coached. That is a failure to build a team around its core players, not a failure to tank. Darcy and GMTM did a masterful job tanking to acquire picks. GMTM failed to get the team back on its feet, despite evidence from other models that doing so in the short post-tank time he had would have been a Herculean accomplishment. It's now JBot's turn to try to lift the team, and despite completely rinsing out the defense from last year, he hasn't had the opportunity or willpower to do it.

Up from 4-9.3% from $75M this season. Sabres currently have $19.2M in cap space, would have an extra $3-7M.