Doohickie

So what does MTL have that we want? Kaiden Guhle? Their young 1st pair RHD? Dahlin - Muel Power - Guhle Boosh - Joki Do it, Kevyn.

I dunno, Ullmark seemed pretty content here until he wasn't.

For the Sabres he only had 5 goals. He was playing on line 3/4 and killing penalties. He was a good glue guy for the Sabres but never scored double digit goals after leaving the Preds.

Overall he was one of the "adults in the room" on a young team, along with Brian Gionta and Josh Gorges.

He's like David Legwand in his final year in the league (with the Sabres). He played the exact role you describe for Girgs.

He probably did... in the UK. I'm sure he made good money off it.

I remember being thrilled when the Sabres got Skinner. He seemed like the guy who always scored the "dagger in the heart" goal against us. I'm he does that to other teams now. I don't begrudge him at all for the drop off in production. I think it's an interesting insight to his character that he wasn't one of the players targeted to be moved when Kevyn took over. Did we overpay? Yeah, probably. Is it hurting the team? No, not really.

I think he probably called him out on it.

I've heard worse. Not much worse, mind you...

I'm just glad Santa has Rudolph.

The Panthers' problems are bigger than Reino.

This, perhaps, is the weak underbelly of Kevyn's plan to build through draft and development. If that's how he plans to build the team you're going to have a conveyor belt of rookies pushing the second year guys into increasingly responsible assignments. But for the next several years, plan on having to assimilate three rookies. It's just the way the team is being built. This is where the intangibles comes in: If each of these guys has a leader/proactive mindset, it could work. I look at JJ and Quinn and I see that (despite the last game or two). If you have guys champing on the bit to be here (JJ, Quin) instead of just worrying about whether they're going to ***** up or not (Mitts, Krebs), it can work. Then again, maybe that's what the conveyor belt is: This year you have JJ, Quinn and Power, and to an extent UPL as rookies finding their way. Samuelsson, Cozens, Krebs, Mitts, Comrie as young players consolidating their experience to establish themselves on the team. The rest of the team. Next year it will be Savoie, Kulich, and whoever else as rookies finding their way. JJ, Quinn and Power and UPL as young players consolidating their experience to establish themselves on the team. The rest of the team. You have to acknowledge and play around the fact that you've got guys that are still learning playing regular shifts and need to account for their mistakes. Shortening you bench in the late stages of a tight game isn't a rejection of the rookies/younger players, it's just managing risk to maximize your outcomes. The advantage of having 2-3-4 rookies on the team is they are assimilating the "tribal knowledge" of the big club and its system so that down the road they are the guys playing the late minutes while next year's rookies are benched late in games. Team building is always going to be a conveyor belt. It's never complete. As you bring in younger players, older players will essentially age out, and other players will be weeded out. Learning how to continually develop and build is how dynasties are born.

Silly goose. JJP and Quinn won't be rookies next year.

Yes. We know.

30 NHL games (3 of which were for Buffalo): 1 goal, 5 assists, none of which were for Buffalo, and only one NHL assist in the last 5 seasons. AHL fodder.

That's the thing with goalie development: There is no set schedule. Even at the beginning of the season he wasn't ready. Now.... maybe he is? Or maybe he's just had a couple of good games? Comrie started out strong too then looked mediocre. Until a goalie "arrives" or shows that he'll never arrive, you just don't know. I hope that this is the beginning of getting stable goaltending for the team. We'll see.

We would get so frustrated when another team's rookie/backup goalie looked like Hasek. I'm just enjoying the shoe being on the other foot.

Oh but wait: THAT STICK TWIRL. Kind of sad that that's the only thing I remember about him at this point. Not even the goal that led to it, just the twirl.

The Hockey Guy was watching the Buffalo coverage; cites a comment by Rob Ray. He then did a full 20 minute video about why VGK sucks at home.

We're not supposed to get precipitation but they're saying we're gonna go down to about 10 degrees with 20-30 mph winds here in north Texas. Hoping it's not a repeat of the deep freeze we had a coupla years ago.

I think that's part of the point: The Sabres tend to take more high quality shots while the Knights take a below average number of quality shots. Fewer shots for the Sabres but more are likely to go in.

When you're leading the league at a 12.3% shooting percentage you can play like that. The Sabres got a couple of great looks and buried them, plus a seeing eye puck from the point. The Knights are in the bottom half of the league in shooting percentage at 9.9%. Vegas had too many great looks last night, granted, but UPL was up to the challenge.

There are some issues that even technology cannot solve.

So basically he's what we hoped Eichel would be?