Doohickie

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.

Eichel never played for Granato. Not a single game.

Living in the Dallas market in 1998, I remember when they signed Brett Hull and thinking, ooh, they're really going for it. But that's probably a year or two down the road in the Sabres' case. In general I like the path the Sabres are taking. Like you said, develop stars. I think there are enough horses (and one Muel) in the stable to expect this with the current roster and the top prospects.

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.