Doohickie

I personally hope they keep Hinostroza and that he gets regular playing time; in my mind he's bottom 6 perhaps, but not 13F. Perhaps he becomes a frequent contributor due to injury and/or rotating rookies through the pressbox for extra perspective. Hot take: If they have to get rid of a current forward, it's Girgensons and they keep Hinostroza. Trade him for a future or part of a deal to acquire a goalie if they can't get one from free agency. I think Fitz is a 7D but Bryson is a third pairing guy. Wouldn't be surprised if vet D is Pysyk and he alternates with Fitz or any D who needs a maintenance day. If you add that up though, how close are the Sabres to the floor? Even with a splash at goaltender, are they going to struggle to get to the floor?

It depends: Have the moves VGK made improved the team? After flailing around and failing to get better, it's clear they management doesn't know what they're doing. Jack is gonna hate it there 😄

The only reason it was to be envied is that the team was good. The worse the team gets the more foolish all that glitz will look.

The "loveable" part is a red herring: Fans "love" a winner. They "love" a team that plays hard, night in, night out. Less loveable is actually code for players who may be very good but don't play well as a team. There's a balance there: You want talented players that will play for each other. Jack wasn't that for us and doesn't seem to be that for VGK. Reino is a different case- he seemed pretty good as far as playing together with others, even as he was getting turned off the the continual failure of the Sabres to build a winning team. Take him out and plug him into a better locker room and BOOM- 30 goal scorer as a middle-six player (also speaks to depth of talent on the Panthers). The fan base wants a winner. Frankly I don't care if it's all kumbaya or the bickering Bills, as long as they all pull in the same direction when the game is played. We did see, though, that recent versions of the Sabres couldn't produce as a team. I think that goes back to GMs and coaches and what players they brought in and how those players were handled. Previous GMs seemed to bring in a certain type of player in terms of physical characteristics like size and speed, points scored, etc., but didn't balance that against the personality of the player. Do they see themselves at their best when they succeed, or when the team succeeds? I look at one of the first guys brought in by KA/DG: Vinny Hinostroza. He's good speed, so-so talent, average scoring, not a big guy, but he's a wonder piece of a line; he works well with others. Give him a role and he executes it, even if everyone knows he's not the best at that role. Hall, as a KA/RK acquisition, was none of those things. He wanted to skate on Eichel's wing and score goals to set up his next contract and when Eich was injured Hall was a slug. Bringing in players based on attitude as much as talent seems too be making the team better; the byproducts of better and good attitude is likeable. I think the low point they're bouncing back from is Krueger, not Eichel.

Thanks for posting that. For those of us watching on ESPN+, they didn't come back from commercial break on time and we missed all of the fallout. When the game came back on the ensuing penalty was already down to 1:11.

You could send Bjork to Rochester. If someone claims him, meh.

I can't speak for the rest, but I know that does it for me.

Oh, and

When the Yotes move to Houston....

Allowed the tying goal at 19:59.1 And then this filthy shootout winner.

Filthy

That's a whole lot of nothing from your forward with the most TOI.

There is a whole generation of stars about to wink out. Ovi, Bäckström, Crosby, Bergeron, Marchand, are all getting long in the tooth. I think in the next year or two, the Caps, Pens and Bruins are going to fall off the table- they will either not even make the playoffs or struggle to make a wildcard spot. Islanders and Bluejackets are bubble teams. I think you're going to see the Sabres pass most of these teams next year, and Detroit, NJ and Ottawa will be chasing us. It's time for a changing of the guard and the Sabres will be at the forefront.

Ovechkin out with a UBI (looks like a shoulder)

He didn't care about the consequences of his moves. He thought he could bring in misfit bad boys who could put up good stats and the poor attitude somehow wouldn't rub off on the young prospects.

I love the guy but I have no desire to bring back exes from Minnesota.

I remember being happy with acquiring Skinner precisely because of that.

Actually I try to think that we are at an inflection point of tech/learning, that may be the biggest since the advent of writing. In early classical Greece, memory was the accepted way of learning. If something was worth knowing, it was worth memorizing. This applied not only to analytical things like math and science, but to the arts and literature as well. Plays were learned and came down through generations by memorization, for instance. Effective speeches and rhetoric were memorized. Writing was first used for transactional record keeping- I've getting 10 sheep from you for 20 bottles of wine- I'm giving you 15 bottles now and owe you 5 more... that sort of thing. When people started writing down speeches and plays, the elder generations mocked the younger upstarts, calling them intellectually lazy. That's basically what's happening today. Us old farts look at the way younger people use electronic devices and the internet and sneer at them. But that's becoming the knowledge of the future. It used to be that one had to memorize knowledge. Then one had to learn the knowledge with aid of written reference. Now one needs to know how to find knowledge. We've already seen examples of inventions and ideas coming from rank amateurs that are changing the world (think of the drone geeks in Ukraine using their drones in new ways to defend against Russian troops). The future way of think is here; those of us in the older generation are being left behind. It happens tot he best of us, Lindy.

To be honest, I would be in favor of this moving. Possibly look at other woods than the hardwoods they've been using. Find something a little whippier.

Who do you want to win? Who do you think will win? I'm pulling for Minnesota this year. Marcus Foligno is my favorite ex-Sabre. I think Florida will win. They seem to be peaking at the right time.

Kings on the board, 1-0

Marchand has over twice the penalty minutes that Skinner does.

I'm going to answer the question as yes. Marchand is a hack and he's dirty, but he's also pretty skilled and has a way of getting opponents off their games. In that sense, Skinner is our Marchand. Both have similar offensive output. Both get the other teams off their game. But what makes Skinner better than Marchand is that Skinner isn't a dirty hack.

General comment from not only today's game, but the Sabres of late: I was watching the Stars-Kraken game. The Stars tried several stretch passes and cross-ice passes. The missed most, if not all, of them. Not that they were defended, but that the Stars passers kept missing their targets. The Sabres were like that earlier in the season. Now the Sabres hit those long passes routinely. It's a huge, huge improvement in the play of the team and gives them a big advantage when they can flip the ice with stretch passes. And it's not just the skill lines that do it: All lines and defense pairings are hitting long passes for the Sabres right now. They are playing like a unit and I think if the Sabres played the Stars now, the Sabres would win handily.