Doohickie

Golden opportunity goes by the wayside.

This one is as MUST WIN as it gets. Win this one and set course for the Hurricanes.

Dahlin knows what to do.

In 2006 Ruff had a secretary named Kennedy. In 2026 Ruff has a secretary named Lincoln.

I think I read somewhere that the Sabres are one of the few teams that scares Tampa Bay. True, but the Sabres have more rest than the Lightning, since they had the early start yesterday.

The Hockey Guy's new power rankings are in:

That’s got to really suck. Perspective: It's not like he's going off to war. It's probably three months (which is a long time with a young family), but once school is out I'm sure the family will move to Buffalo. He's from greater Toronto, so this is much closer to his hometown. Carrick just didn't know how this ceremony works yet. Now he does.

Ooh, good point.

...but not with the kids. And maybe I'm not. We all see the public side and create our own narratives.

Kind of weird actually. Prior to that, Carrick was 33% on the faceoff dot. He wins two at the end to pull to 50% and he's a hero.

It will be interesting to see how he handles inevitable roster changes- backfilling Tuch if it comes to that, finding the next big star (Östlund? Helenius? Someone else?), how he allocates cap space. Can he maintain the roster once the inevitable cracks show? What happens if Tage loses his edge and his points production drops? Can he identify which players need to go, which players to go after? It'll be interesting. He's an appreciated member of the team now.

I found this interesting. The Sabres should watch this, particularly Krebsy.

I didn't think anything of it during the game; didn't strike me as offside. I just went back and looked and you can see Tuch wire the puck in, but I couldn't actually pick up the puck coming off his stick. But an instant after that, Krebs' toe is still on the line, and another instant after that the puck is behind the net. So I'm pretty sure it was on sides.

I would say then that the coaching needs to put them in a better position to succeed.

He's sure do.

That would be me. In the rare times that I've been called to lead, it's gone terribly. It's not my talent. I can see some of my faults as a leader in Kevyn. Sometimes you have to just recognize that not everyone is gonna be happy and make a call without trying to build a consensus. What I've learned from my leadership experience to to not accept leadership positions.

I think the communications issue was only a reflection of the deeper issue: He didn't truly have a vision for the team. He just won trades. Jarmo has a vision and even without making a trade he formed the team into that vision.

It's a spectrum. At one end is an autocratic leader who does what he wants and ignores his advisors. At the other end is the timid leader who dares not make a move until everyone below him has signed off on it. Kevyn was the latter as GM. Too early to say whether Jarmo is in a good spot on that spectrum, but so far, so good.

And even when he "led", he did so with the full consensus of the room, which really isn't leadership, is it, when you have to get everyone's buy-in?

The owner that wants to land the unofficial GM of the Year, the Architect of the Stanley Cup Champion Buffalo Sabres (or however far they get). I don't know if any owner would actually take that bait, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it happen.

But it's also important to properly utilize those subordinates. My sense (very limited so far) is that Jarmo has a strategic picture of what he wants the team to be and uses his subordinates to tactically help him build that pictured team. Kevyn was a pleaser and wanted everyone to be happy, so instead of using the knowledge, experience, and analysis of his subordinates to reach the end state of a winning hockey team, which I don't think he really knew what it looked like, he made each move based on the consensus of the whole room. He "won" a lot of trades, but it took Lindy's and Jarmo's influence toward the end of Kevyn's tenure to put the final touches on this team to produce the finished product we're watching right now.

This seems like common sense and a lot of teams do this to an extent, but based on interviews with teams the Sabres play, the Sabres Dmen are much, much better deep in the offensive zone than other teams' Dmen (led by Dahlin, of course, but Byram, Power and this year, Muel are all creative and dangerous offensive weapons). I think things seemed to change when Lindy came on board.

There were several cases in tonight's Preds game where the first shot was saved. In years past, the rebound would have been plunked in. But this season, even if they don't get a clean clear, there's much more effort to contest the rebounds and obstruct opponents near the crease. Put him in a palm tree location and he can rebuild a team in 4 years instead of 5+. Put him in a palm tree location and he'll milk it for 10 years.

He brought in quality ingredients but somehow he couldn't bring them all together. Jarmo did it with one speech.