Doohickie

He is no longer the Sabres problem. Are you happy? 😉

because it was.

Own goal by Dallas; 1-0 VGK

I had pierogies and kielbasa smoked by my cousin in Lackawanna for dinner yesterday, here in Texas.

It was like tipping the puck in with a high stick.

If you're watching the Dallas feed, Josh Bogorad play-by-play and Daryl Reaugh color. One of the best teams in the NHL imo.

ESPN+

The Vegas Garden Knomes

Honestly he was a very pleasant and friendly guy to talk to. He was in first class on the flight I was on; he got off first and disappeared but I caught up to him waiting at the baggage carousel. When the subject of The Goal game up he was actually kind of sheepish about it.

I think the excessive joy over the Eichel trade is magnified by the abject horror most felt after the O'Reilly trade. The two really are seminal points in the story of the Sabres. One trade was just horrible, not only for the team but for its reputation. The other is the polar opposite: The team disposed of what was increasingly a liability, and in exchange got assets both for right now and in the future. Add that to the improvement of the Sabres' fortunes of late, but not so good to make the playoffs (the hole was too deep)... well, just let us enjoy this for a change.

You know, I met and spoke with Brett Hull in the summer of 2000, just after the Stars were eliminated from the playoffs that year. To say he cheated isn't exactly right. The puck was there, he put it in. It was a split second thing and by his own words he would have preferred it had gone differently, that the goal wasn't in dispute. That said, it wasn't up to him to disallow the goal, it was up to the league officials, starting with the on-ice crew, to disallow the goal. They didn't. It's not like Hull purposely did something heinous.... it the context of the play the puck was there, the net was there, he knocked it in. Oh yeah and his foot was in the crease. After talking to him for a while I asked if he could sign his boarding pass for my nephew who played hockey, and he did: "To Matt, good luck in hockey. -Brett Hull" I thanked him and told him I'd take it to my nephew when we went to go visit my family in Buffalo the following month and the look on his face was priceless, like, "OH. YOU'RE ONE OF THOSE FANS..."

What was the average height of an NHLer back in those ancient of days?

A wee tot! Today? Happy birthday!

I think Kevyn will through $10 million per year for two years at Fleury, draft a goalie this year, and a lot of the chatter will settle down. If UPL isn't all that, this could still be a great landing spot for Portillo, and Levi can shore him up after that. (And if UPL *is* all that, who cares about the other two?) I'm looking at the rest of the team and really the only position of desperate need is goalie. Kevyn will take care of that. He might provide some improvement in the D or fwd ranks but if he doesn't I think the Sabres will be alright next year as long as he brings in a real goalie.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

It's actually pretty much the same as I've said here on SS.

I will likely never have direct contact with Jack so frankly I don't care if he's a good kid or he has faults or whatever. But to me in my lizard brain, he was the fruit of the Tank Curse and became the embodiment of the Tank Curse. By moving him, the curse was shifted from Buffalo to Vegas. There's some kind of a moral there about flying too close to the sun or something. Both teams reached for Jack and grabbed him as if he was some kind of brass ring that would magically transform their teams into winners, when the only way to do that is to improve the whole team holistically. There are no easy cures, you have to put in the work.

I would say a bigger factor is that Jack was already injured when Granato took over as coach. We never saw what Jack would have been like on a Granato-coached team. Granato could have had the same morale-boosting effect on Jack that he did on Tage and Skinner and Dahlin.

Amplified for emphasis. I personally feel he's too much of a gym rat and it has affected his flexibility, making him more prone to injury.

This is my guess. Which means one of two things: With an offseason of training and rehab he'll be good to go in October The surgery was nominally a success but he'll never be the same player he was. Either way I'm glad Kevyn converted him into solid assets. I was able to read it without logging in. I'm going to resist the temptation to log in and troll the thread.

I mentioned this one upthread. He turned out to be a perfect fit.