Robviously

I'm sure someone said this 20 years ago when we were losing our fourth straight Super Bowl.

Aside from the hockey implications, letting the Sabres take the 2014 pick is the Islanders telling their fans that, yes, they're going to suck in 2014-2015 as well. And not just "suck", suck so much that they think they have a legit shot at drafting first overall. (see also: Suffering) On the other hand, maybe they don't care until they move to Brooklyn in 2015. Drafting McDavid/Eichel and then starting fresh in Brooklyn might appeal to them.

They HAVE to defer to 2015. How insane would they have to be to just give away a top 5 pick? Of course, if they suck again next year, this means they're losing their shot at McDavid and Eichel (and even Dylan Strome). If the McDavid/Eichel hype is at a fever pitch by this summer, I won't how tempted they'll be to let us have a pick in the 5-10 range. Especially if they think they're firing everyone and not turning things around very soon.

"And with the first overall pick, the Pittsburgh Penguins select....Connor McDavid."

Kevin also tweeted that it was indeed a concussion. So, awesome news.

I'd take a stud WR (then trade SJ) in the 1st, or a stud DE/OLB that would thrive in this defense. After that I'm looking for a TE, DBs, and a Guard.

This is absolutely spectacular.

There's this kid at UB....

Supposedly the sucker punch was to the nose so I'm hoping it's a broken nose at worst. BTW, Bill Hoppe got Larsson's age wrong in the link you just posted. He's still only 21 and doesn't turn 22 until July.

Still no word on what "upper body injury" kept Risto out on Saturday. Hopefully the sucker punch on Friday didn't give him a concussion.

Risto took a sucker punch late in the game last night and now he's out with an "upper body." Swell. That's just swell. Paul Hamilton ‏@pham17179m I've been told by @kevinoDandC Ristolainen is out with upper body injury. He got both suckered and slashed last night.

My German is a little rusty, but I think "Draisaitl" loosely translates to "Player who will already be gone when the Sabres pick thanks to a late-season winning streak."

They deserve credit but it's not exactly a strategy you can adopt.

And if the argument was that they were SO SMART that they knew (1) that Datsyuk/Zetterberg was going to be a star and (2) that no one else would take him prior to the 6th/7th rounds, then wouldn't they also have been smart enough to use their picks before those two on other NHL players? In 1998, they had SEVEN picks before they finally took Datsyuk in the 6th round. Of those 7 picks, only Jiri Fischer (1st round) had a real NHL career (300 games). Only one other player of the other 6 played in the NHL and that lasted 2 games. Same with Zetterberg in 1999. They had 3 picks before him and none of them had real NHL careers. They hit back to back grand slams but even they didn't know what they were doing at the time.

Johan Larsson is a straight-up barbarian. Kevin Oklobzija ‏@kevinoDandC1m Jamie Tardif hits the EN. #Amerks up 5-3 will win. Johan Larsson wants to fight Andrew Agozzino but linesmen get between them.

I think everyone knows that these are important characteristics, but I don't think they realize HOW important they are. If you're pulling out your phone for just a few minutes at a time to check email/internet/whatever, it's a lot better if everything works and if the interface is super easy to use.

I'm late to the party but I think you made the right call. I switched from iPhone 4 to a Galaxy S4 in June and I'm really regretting not going with an iPhone 5. Android basically took all the ideas from iOs, then added some extra stuff, and then made everything buggy and not super intuitive. Some of the extra features are cool, but they drain the battery and most aren't especially helpful for my everyday stuff. The really smooth user-interface on iPhone is great when you only have one hand free to mess around with your phone. I just bought an iPad Air based on all this. Basically an extra $200 over a Galaxy Tab/Note but when you figure I'll use it at least 3 years, that comes out to like 20 cents extra a day. Plus my iPod is now 6 years old and still going strong (after a lot of abuse) so I've had good luck with Apple products. (Knock on wood.)

Haven't the Turkeys suffered enough for this shallow, commercialized holiday? The Sabres have scored just one goal in each of the past four games. Think about it, America.

The Sabres have lost 21 of 26 games. Do you really think this is a "happy" Thanksgiving? If you need me, I'll be in my room cutting myself.

We are not allowed to enjoy ANYTHING until the Sabres are contenders again. Only misery should be allowed on this message board!!!

Sure, why not?

Cool article about Risto: http://www.democrata...lainen/3774205/

That's actually pretty rough for us. It's a lot harder to plan when you don't even know if you have a pick right then. If we knew we had the pick, we could work on deals to move up or down (or for players).

Hopefully Tropp is there to help out in their next game.

No, I mean how high does it have to be for them to *decide* they want to defer. There's no way they'd let us keep a top 5 pick right? Maybe they'd let us keep a 6-10 pick, if only to make sure we don't have both their 1st round and 2nd round picks next year (along with their chance of getting MacDavid if they suck again).