Doohickie

Tuch was hooked. No call.

Still.

Paging Alex Tuch to the Blue and Goald Courtesy Phone.

Östlund's puck sense is next level.

Some chemistry there between JJ and Quinner. Love to see it.

Krebs takes the man. Beautiful.

Ah yes, the Matt Ellis of deep thinkers.

Nice defense by Cliffy there

It wasn't the speed of the shot, it was the quickness of the release.

Apparently, yeah. Anyway, GO SABRES. Can we agree on that?

It's not "necessary" to have the NHL at all. In any city. But to criticize a city that has top 20% attendance with a non-playoff team just makes no sense.

All the criticism @Pimlach throws at Columbus are great reasons why Buffalo shouldn't have an NHL team. For that matter, Plano, Texas is bigger than Buffalo, even if you break it off from Dallas. And the county it's in (Collin County, TX) has more population than Erie and Niagara combined. And they probably have a bigger corporate base than Buffalo too. Toyota Motor North America Pizza Hut Frito-Lay JCPenney Ericsson North America

and yet they're 6th in the NHL in attendance per game with a non-playoff team. They clearly deserve a team. Nope. Regular.

Who said anything about square miles? I was referring to population. It just seems odd for someone from Buffalo wondering why Columbus deserves a hockey team. It's a good sized city on its own, and only a couple of hours from several other cities (Cincinnati, Dayton, Cleveland) which would naturally support a hockey team in their state. They're 6th in average attendance in the NHL.

Who knows how Rob Ray thinks?

14th largest US city? Biggest city in Ohio? Three times the population of Buffalo? Fans from all over Ohio, a state that supports two NFL teams and THE Ohio State University? They probably have a much bigger fan base that the Sabres. Odd question to ask from a Sabres fan. So a city three times the size of Buffalo isn't.... big? They have nearly a million people. If you count the metro areas, Columbus is still nearly 2X Buffalo-Niagara. Except for some fringe areas near Detroit and Pittsburgh, the whole state is going to support the franchise, and pretty much the entire state is within about a 2 hour drive from the arena.

Ass.

Miller was at the game with TPegs the other night. Just sayin'.

I a big fan of Their third jerseys The cannon they shoot off Watching them get soundly beaten

I think about the current situation with Kozak versus Östlund. Kozak has put in his time and I think he is NHL or at least tweener material, and more time in the A isn't going to improve him too much more. But he tops out as a 4C, at very best a 3C (doubtful). Östlund has developed all season and was promoted because he earned it when Kozak went down. In the depth chart down the road, Östlund almost certainly tops out over Kozak. But at the beginning of the season, Kozak slotted higher than Östlund (which is why he was called up first). In terms of internal competition, I would say Östlund is ahead of Kozak with a very small sample size, but I also think Östlund may benefit from a little more time in the AHL. It's an interesting case study.

Going forward how far? Three years? Sure. Six years? I would hope so, but..... he's probably heading into steady decline, but maybe not. Who knows which players will age well and which won't?