Doohickie

Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.

Almost as bad grammer is you.

Pshaw. These Sabres are different!

Ack! No way Kevyn brings in a goalie that old!

Are they not "riding the buses" in college?

You have some nerve, @JohnC, countering my snark with reason. 😉

There are two logins for my ESPN+ a login for ESPN+ itself, and a login for my local cable provider (Spectrum). I can't see regular ESPN with an ESPN+ account if I don't log in with my cable provider. The ESPN+ app would know, I think, whether I have TNT access based on my Spectrum login.

Sure, but any player plus Girgs and Okie give you that line. Except Butcher.

Anyone hear anything about a Swede-Finn feud in the locker room? I saw a random tweet about it and when I asked for more info I got no response. I tend to think it was nothing but thought I would throw it out there to see if anyone else had heard anything. The only Finn on the roster right now is Joki who is paired with Swede Dahlin. If there was actually a feud along country lines it's hard to believe they would be a pairing. The tweet was from a week or two ago, but the tweeter cited that as support for trading Olie away (which also doesn't make sense since there are a bunch of Swedes and only one Finn (two if you count UPL) on the roster.

Yes, it's the way of the college player. If your No. 1 OA pick wants to come out now you don't say no.

Ryan Miller has a new daughter:

He didn't say he's leaving right now, he said after the season is done.

He's not a third pairing guy for sure. But if we have 3 LHD that are that strong, what do you do with them? Joker and Fitzgerald are RHD. If Pysyk is back he's also RHD, and Bryson shoots left but is playing the right side. I've heard talk that Power sometimes plays the right side, but I would think the preference would be to play the left side when he first gets here. So assuming you're putting Dahlin, Muel and Power all on the left.... each one will be on a different pairing. I could be wrong; maybe Power plays the right side with Dahlin or Muel. Right now, though, if Power is NHL ready and going to play his natural side, we have three strong Dmen who are all play the left side. But you may be right, maybe one of the top three LHD will play on his off side and Muel will be in a top 4 pairing. He's not coming in here to watch. Just sayin'.

FAFO. The link in the tweet said he was suspended for 8 games and he has to go to diversity training as a result of homophobic comments.

Yeah, didn't someone list the number of point per game players? Maybe that was on twitter. But there are something like 44 this year, over twice what it's been in recent years.

Anderson isn't Swiss cheese. .903 SV%, 3.02 GAA. I think those numbers have improved as the team has improved.

This is it. He spends full time on it during the season, from what I can tell, putting out several videos every day: Game previews, game recaps, and special interest videos covering topics like prominent suspensions, contract issues, recaps of famous players' careers, power ranks, jersey rankings, etc. At one point he said what he used to do prior to this becoming full time but I can't remember what it was. It was a mundane job like speech pathologist or accountant or some such. Some background on him. Personally I think it's kind of cool that he buys all this hockey memorabilia and because he uses them in the videos he no doubt writes all those expenditures off on his taxes.

The Hockey Guy has them at 21

To be honest, it might be better to sign them in separate years. If you're Levi and Portillo's ahead of you on the depth chart, it's motivation to improve and pass him, but it's also room to have some patience and develop his game. if they came out at the same time, Levi's competitive nature might put too much pressure on him to beat out Portillo right out of the gate. Assuming Portillo signs this year and Levi next, I see UPL and Anderson (or his veteran replacement) as the top pairing this coming year with Portillo and Toker (or his AHL vet replacement) in Rochester. The following or possibly by the second half of next year, Portillo is challenging for an NHL spot and then Levi comes in and gets a season (or at least part of one) in the A. Then you eventually get to the top two of UPL, Portillo and Levi manning the pipes for the Sabres with healthy competition to sort it out. If they're all good, the Sabres will have the luxury of using one of them for trade bait to fill whatever hole remains among the skaters such as a RHD or a scoring winger, or even center depth.

The pairings will be anchored by Dahlin, Power and... not insignificantly, Muel, who's no slouch himself.

I don't disagree with you at all. I purposely said 3/4 "style" because I think he does belong in the top six but he is not as skilled as a typical top six player. His statistics say he's fundamentally good, but to my eye I just don't see it; he appears to me far less skilled than his linemates. He contributes more through effort than skill. It may be recency bias on my part though; he was running at a PPG pace early on and has slowed down lately. Mostly against teams in the playoff race too. That's probably the biggest cause of optimism to me. It shows the Sabres can hang with the Big Dogs even if they're not quite one of the Big Dogs themselves, at least not yet.