IKnowPhysics

1) Is the eye thing all better? 2) Show me some WOWY for Okposo with regards to Tavares.

I hope Cooper keeps misusing him out of spite.

I am disappointed he didn't land here. I am equally happy he didn't land anywhere else in the division. If you take the 8th year and spread it over seven seasons, that's $9.7M per season. I think he would've been paid considerably more than that by just about any interested free agent club. In other news, I'm not exactly thrilled by the arrival of Weber in the NE. But I'll live.

Rumor: "Leafs have a plan to give Stamkos a $3.5M marketing contract... vetted by the league and the lawyers... not in the player contract." reddit Bob McCown podcast. June 28th 4pm hour @ 7 minutes 29 seconds It's either or IT REALLY IS .

Well, the board logs IP addresses, and if SDS trusts you, he gave you access to the mod tools that allow you to search IP addresses for other accounts. While it's not always definitive, it's certainly telling if multiple accounts share multiple IP addresses.

Who the ###### are are you and what the ###### you talkin' about? Here are the only -even remotely- positive comments about Kane before your post: So which one of those clowns are you calling an employee? Again, who the ###### is the employee? ###### off with this nonsense. Weak unleaded troll horseshit. No ######.

For the money, we'd pay him... FTFY

APPLEBEES HAS RATS! I FOUND A WHOLE RAT IN MY COBB SALAD!

It's understandable that there's hesitation when handing out a salary cap league's richest contract to a player that just sat most of the season and experienced a dip in stats the year before. On the upside, people say he's healthy and quesionable usage explains the dip.

You know what we should do? Every week we should come back to this Applebees and sit at this table and have a family meal. And order the same stuff. And I would be delighted, TrueBlue, if you would accompany me to ballroom dancing on Tuesday nights. It's a lot fun. I think you'd have a good time.

Can't do pull ups at a beach. 3/10 offseason behavior.

We should be singing this in the arena. All you need to start it is the drunkest one of us to yell "BUFFALO'S GOT A SPIRIT..."

DAT STRUT

I hope those guys would develop so well to challenge Stamkos' GVT in two to three years; that'd be great development. But it won't be an issue sooner. Because we're not talking Stamkos vs Vesey in his potential prime, we're talking Stamkos vs Gionta or Stamkos vs Matt Moulson in the top six this year. The bonus from a developed offense and defense and the resulting improved possession will be enough to make the playoffs in that two-three year range. But you will need elite veteran forwards to will your way into deeper rounds. Stamkos can give you that. And buying him now just might let you force your way into the playoffs a year or two sooner than expected (this year?), giving the kids the battle-tested hardness they'll need for the show BEFORE they're in their prime. We have an opportunity to ignite an unprecedentedly explosive rebuild, even compared to Crosby/PIT, by gaining Stamkos for nothing but money. Stamkos is the fully developed type of player we would have tanked for and now we can buy him.

Moving assets to Tampa to get Buffalo Stamkos exclusivity and keep him off the market is one thing. But Stamkos has all leverage here, Tampa has none, and Buffalo will have to compete for Stamkos. The sign and trade only makes sense if Stamkos goes to the team he wants to go to. If he chooses Buffalo, it might be in Stamkos' best interest to eat that 8th year in favor of not forcing Buffalo to move assets back to Tampa- he would just wait until July 1 and sign with Buffalo. In order to do a sign and trade, Stamkos would have to get guarantees that he's moved only to where he wants to go, gets the salary he could command in open bidding, and has some sappiness about getting some asset return to Tampa. But he's a UFA. He can do all but that sappy part on his own.

When we talk about guaranteeing the offensive ability to not only go deep into the playoffs, but win the whole damn thing, what will it take to do that? Are our needs already met? Buffalo scored 199 goals for last season. League's top three in goals this year were 265 (DAL), 248 (WSH), 241 (PIT). We need to develop or add at least 50 goals per season. I know some of this will come with defensive improvement, but for this discussion, I figure that contribution to be icing on the cake when we go over the top. We need 50 more goals on offense. We had only four 20 goals scorers on the team last year, and zero with 25 goals. Who on the team is, who on the team will be, or what elite draft picks will we attain that are capable of performing like Stamkos? Who's even close? Maybe Eichel. Maybe Kane can return to 30 goals. Maybe ROR has 30 goals in him with the right wingers. Maybe Reinhart has 30 goals in him. Stamkos has been top ten in NHL scoring every year he's been healthy after his rookie year (2nd, 2nd, 1st, 2nd, INJ (on pace for 1st), 2nd, 8th). And this season's 8th place came with his usage messed with. If you buy Stamkos, with proper usage, you buy 40-55 goals per season. And you get to keep all of the players I just listed.

That could definitely happen. The NBC contract was $2B over ten years starting in 2011, meaning that the new contract will be signed in 2021 (five years into this 7 year player contract), likely with considerably higher revenue (especially with Vegas and potential Seattle TV markets). Rogers' contract was $5B for 12 years, but the Canadian dollar has dropped from parity to $1.32CAD/$1USD since then, meaning that if/when the CAD bounces back, TV revenue for the NHL will be increased by hundreds of millions of dollars per year. It's possible. I think definitely so in 10-12 years and possibly so in 7-8 years.

BREAK YOSELF FOOL! OH IT'S EVANDER KANE SON!

Dolla dolla bill y'all. -- You wanna get ballsy? You start banking on the cap going up so that your huge-money-player is only a pretty-big-money player by the end of the term. Therefore: Corrected NHL salaries based on NHL Salary Cap at time/previous of signing Corrected salary = Cap hit * ($73M projected cap for '16-'17 / cap hit at time of signing) Ovechkin $13.8M (based on 2008 sign date to now) Ovechkin $13.1M (based on 2008 sign date to seven years signing) Kane/Toews $11.9M (signed 2 years ago) Malkin $9.9M (signed 3 years ago) Subban $10.2M (signed 2 years ago) Crosby $9.9M (signed 4 years ago) Lundqvist $9.6M (signed 2 years ago) Giroux $8.6M (signed 3 years ago) ... Stamkos' $7.5M 2011 contract adjusted to 2017: $9.2M Remember that none of those players have ever been exposed to free agency. The cap has increased 28% from 2010 to 2017, so if that continues, a 14% overpayment now works out to be a wash (a not really overpayment over the term) by the end of term. So Kane/Toews' adjusted $11.9M as the highest paid players plus 14% is $13.57M. So that'd be extremely ballsy. If you take a slightly more conservative angle on this aggressive approach, and assume the cap only increases 18% over the next seven years from $73M to $86M, then Kane/Toews money plus 9% is $13M. The more meta impact of a signing like this will likely drive some other GMs league wide absolutely nuts. Some GMs would likely be pissed off for a perceived overpayment and inflation of player salaries, especially teams with high paid players and teams up against the cap.

I think I'm prepared to go to $13M now.

Landing Stamkos would make Vesey cream his breezers. Best case, he plays with Eichel. Bester case, he plays with Stammer.

In any case, I think we've all been long in agreement that accumulating all of the elite talent the Sabres would need to go over the top and guarantee Cup wins would require us to go beyond drafting and growing our own talent. We would need to trade or go free agency on offense to acquire elite parts to complement our high draft picks. Stamkos is as an elite talent as you'll ever see available. And he's in free agency, which means no major assets have to be moved out to get him. This is the best possible scenario for acquiring a zany amount of elite talent to win Cups. And as I mentioned before, boning the rest of the division out the opportunity to land him is worth major ($) consideration.

List of teams besides BUF and TBL interested in Stamkos: Historically: TOR, VAN, MTL, CAL, NYI, DET, STL Today: TOR, VAN, MTL, NYI, DET, BOS, NYR I see five of the seven other teams in our division lining up for Stamkos and two more teams in the East. I really want GMTM and the Pegulas to up someone else's day. And by someone else, I mean the entire division. And by day, I mean their next seven years.

By the way, Stamkos would already be 4th on the list of all time Sabres goal scorers behind Perrault, Martin, and Andreychuk and 5th in all time points behind that same list plus Ramsay. His 60 goal campaign would have put him firmly behind only AMo's 76 goal campaign for most goals in a season. He's won the Richard twice. Top NHL salaries. Toews and Kane both make $10.5M. Kopitar $10M. Ovechkin and Malkin $9.5M. And those were all deals signed to stay with their home clubs, not on the open market. I think you pay Stamkos top dollar ($10.5M) for maximum term and then have to pay a 20% premium for free agency ($2M ish). You're buying a Hall of Famer for $12.5M/year. Then you work out the roster. And then you hope that the salary cap goes up.

When you have three scoring lines, your 4th line is your 3rd line.