Doohickie

I don't know. He's a concept wrapped in an injury.

The same can be said about Tage. I think Thompson tries to hard to make a good opportunity even better and in so doing, loses the puck. Keep it simple, guys.

To me the most obvious is goaltending. And I wonder how much of that had to do with experience. We went into the playoffs with 4 total games of playoff experience in the tandem. UPL popped his playoff cherry this season and has that behind him now. I'm not saying that playoff goaltending is automatically good, but it's bound to be better than last season, if only from the experience perspective.

We're not stuck with Hellebuyck or any of the other trades we made, but the potential to make the trades is still there. If the Sabres start strong, no reason to make moves. If they Sabres falter, they still can correct with a trade to improve the struggling area.

That's DFW in general. Ridgmar Mall in Ft Worth is going to be turned into a logistics center.

Sure, but 99% of the fans that go to the Sabres games from across the border are rooting for the visiting Leafs, Habs or Sens.

Oh, skip all that. The Stars have announced a new arena in Plano.

We here in Fort Worth proven we can't even begin to support an NLL team. No way we could prop up an NHL team. You want a cross-town rival for the Stars? Try Plano. Plano/McKinney has a bigger metro population than Buffalo/Niagara.

...in lifts. 😉

I wonder how much last year's "injury" problems were really just managing the three goalie situation. I suspect injured players were kept on the injured list longer than need be out of an abundance of caution, but really because they had too many roster players.

Did you find the source of the smell? If I smelled gas that strong I'm calling the gas company and not going anywhere near the house.

We've got about another week to go as far as the Dog Days go.

Yes. The dog days are here.

While I think you may be right about him starting on the third line, it's entirely possible that a third line of Zucker - Helenius - Quinn might feast on other teams' third lines... thinking back to when it was... Vanek - Roy - Afingenov/Pominville?

I'm a little more philosophical. This past season was his first playoff experience. I expect him to learn and grow from it.

I think Kulich gets the net front. Half his 2024-25 goals were tip-ins or rebounds in front, and the rest were almost all from the faceoff circles give for take. It's where he thrives and I think he will be the reason the power play improves. Maybe he and Benson share the bumper spot- one on either side of the goal.

It's 50-50 in my mind whether the Sabres play Zellweger with Power in a stylistic reincarnation of last year's Byram-Power pairing, versus Crevier being paired with Power to duplicate the clear offensive/puck mover paired with a defensive specialist formula of Dahlin - Muel. Then the third pairing would effectively be a third copy of that with Zellweger - Timmins. Three defensively sound, offensively dangerous pairings could be tough for other teams to handle.

But he's not a fan of the team which is why I like to hear what he has to say. He doesn't have the biases that people who live in a Sabres bubble have. Yes, he'd like to see the Sabres to well, maybe win a Cup, but the Sabres as a rooting interest are no higher than fourth for him, since he's made no secret that Vancouver, Boston and Dallas the teams he likes.

Spoiler: The Hockey Guy has Buffalo at Number 6 in his mid-summer power rankings

That's a fantastic band.

Oh it's exactly what he was driving at. I applaud @LTS for not going there.