Doohickie

The Ravens own the tiebreakers over the Steelers, but fell behind the Steelers when the Ravens lost on Thanksgiving. Now that the Steelers lost too, the Ravens are back in first by virtue of their tiebreaker advantage.

Yeah, Östlund is gonna be a good one. He is definitely in the Sabres' future plans.

I won't be surprised to see Tage back at wing, but his defensive play won't really be the reason.

That's amazing. Benson totally would.

Maybe I should start following my local team more closely.

In program management, cost and schedule variance at the 15% mark of a project's timeline are difficult to overcome. So if a project is overrunning at 15%, barring some radical change, the project will end in the red. I think the Thanksgiving benchmark is a similar thing: By November, a team is what it is, and barring a radical change, that's hard to alter. If there's any hope for the Sabres, it lies in the fact that the Sabres to this point have lost more games to injury than most teams. If they can get healthy and stay healthy (looking at you, Josh Norris), maybe they can overcome the slow start.

No, it's the other way around: UPL has the lower GAA with a similar Sv% so UPL is facing fewer shots.

I had an error in the post you quoted and corrected it, FYI.

hooray we won And one who seems okay with mucking it up along the boards.

According to the numbers, we don't know that UPL and Lyon aren't "it". I think Ellis still represents the Shiny New Toy so everyone is flocking to him. I feel the same way emotionally; I like him. He was a good pickup. But a year from now will he be the new whipping boy? Who knows? On the completely other hand, it does show that the both Lyon and UPL could be the help a team with weak goltending needs. They're not as awful as Sabrespace likes to think. But really, that's the problem: based on those numbers, we've got three pretty good, not great, goalies. Out of 78 goalies in the NHL stats, our goalies are ranked 36, 39, and 47 in terms of Sv%. As a team, we're ranked 21 in Sv%. Maybe it's time to move one of these guys and get something that will improve the team in front of them, now.

I will say this: Östlund isn't exactly soft. He battles pretty good, especially along the walls.

Can we get an autocorrect on this spelling of Östlund please?

Is he clearly better than the other two? Player SV% GAA Colten Ellis .896 3.41 Alex Lyon .899 3.23 Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen .891 2.73 (including tonight's game, Ellis is up to .898)

It feels like Tage has, in fact, improved his play without the puck, including defense.

His time is at hand. We know he'll be back. I kind of like our pipeline; the players on the edge like Östlund and Rosén are mature prospects, ready to graduate to NHL play. There are others behind them that will be ready soon. The Sabres also have AHL vets that are creditable tweeners who can fill depth roles should injuries demand (Johnson, Metsa, Dunne), who don't hurt you too bad when pressed into service. Jacob Bryson will never be a top 6 D, but at this point he's fine as a 7D. He's played most of the Sabres games this year and has a +/- of -1 which isn't awful. It feels like he's taken a positive step over the last year or so. He feels more NHL vet and not so much a tweener trying to hang on. It feels less like rushing the young talent up too quickly and ruining them, and more like timely development.

There were a few saves tonight where he looked like Charlie Brown on the pitcher's mound when a hit comes zooming through: All limbs, everywhere at once. And yet in a split second he's in place for the next shot. His utter commitment to the save is second among Sabres goalies only to Dominik Hasek.

The streak is alive! LONG LIVE THE STREAK!

I noticed several times in this game that Östlund was playin' with that dog in him.

Almost scoring?

Almost, Quinner. Too bad it wasn't Malenstyn. He has such sweet moves.

Tuch needed to do something, anything, but a wraparound!