Robviously

I was at that one with my dad. They handed out white pom poms when you walked in and I still have them tucked away in my parents' house with the final score written on them. I remember they NFL draft was that day too and they put the Nate Clements pick on the jumbotron when it happened too. One of my better Sabres game memories. Afternoon games still mostly suck though. Saturday nights are for hockey!

Another lousy effort overall. Team needs to learn how to compete and how to win.

Update: Oskari just scored his 2nd goal of the season. Check out his hat in the gif: https://twitter.com/ilveshockey/status/1057702295859838976

Oskari is ours - the mystery man from 2 drafts ago. Mikko Kokkonen is 2019 draft eligible; we drafted Miska Kukkonen last year. (Crazy Finnish names...) Laaksonen's development has been nice to see though, especially when he was initially reported as like 5'7" and 100 pounds when we drafted him.

Awful effort. Wasted a great game by Hutton. I’d like to believe they’ll learn from this but they really reverted back to a lazy, underachieving team tonight.

Bogosian is such an idiot.

This. On principle, I really don't want to celebrate a loser point on the road, but fighting back after giving up 3 straight goals to go down 4-2 is something that we haven't been able to count on a Sabres team to do in years. And this was their third straight game battling back when they were down. It's only 11 games but so far this is a different team. They haven't fallen apart at the first sign of adversity and have dominated games at times. We've been waiting years for this, and the schedule is giving them a chance to keep it going the next couple weeks. I'm hoping this is the real thing. I want to believe.

He's surpassing my expectations by playing at all...which I guess isn't a great sign about his time in Buffalo overall. He and Scandella are the two defensemen that make me nervous when they're out there. But I guess that I like that he's big and stands up for his teammates? So I guess the verdict through 11 games is that he's fine but I still wish he had one less year left on his contract.

Game over - Amerks win 4-3 after trailing 3-1. Impressive come from behind win with goals coming from players we're counting on for Buffalo's future.

Absolutely. ?

Just got home. Haven’t read the thread but here’s what I saw: Hutton was great. Super calm and collected. If he plays like this, we’re a different team this season. I didn’t love Eichel’s game. He was hesitant to shoot, seemed surprised when the puck came to him, and didn’t stand out in general. We will definitely need more from him, but his play on the ENG was really encouraging. Jeff Skinner is a delight. No points yet but he makes things happen when he’s out there. I’m a fan. Can we keep Remi Elie in the lineup for 80 more games? Dhalin was good. Tage Thompson was pretty lousy. He caused a 3 on none. Mittelstadt made a great play to get the puck to Risto for our first goal. You won’t ever see winning a battle on the boards in a highlight reel but that play was huge for us. I still don’t trust this team to respond the right way if we don’t score the first goal.

I know you’re joking but the in-arena experience in Dallas is actually terrific. I wish PSE would hire their people away for real.

Yes.

I think the working theory is that the WC's from last season will eventually be unveiled as the new white jersey for the team, and that that template will be used to do the new blue jersey. It'd be the really simple way to go and they already know the fans love that WC jersey, so why not? And, if you're smart, you unveil a gold alternate (for their 50th "golden" anniversary) that also uses the same template. Unfortunately, the Sabres have never done the easy or smart thing since they started messing with their look in 1996 so it's entirely possible they go completely wonky next season and do all sorts of weird stuff that isn't what people want. Maybe a 50/50 shot of that.

Can't wait for everyone to be apoplectic again in 12 months when the uniforms change again. There's literally a guy whining to Jeremy White that his Winter Classic jersey "from 6 months ago" is outdated now. It's a one-time shot jersey from an outdoor game. It's not supposed to be current.

The "Somebody make some noise in this joint" era didn't work out. I'd love it if they went back to what they had before, or to Song 2, or to Jeremy White's "Swords of a 1000 Men" idea, or something else. Happy to push for a fresh start for the team in every way possible.

!!!

It's actually amazing how much we pushed his drunk-driving into a Tim Hortons incident out of our collective consciousness. A normal person doing that might still be in jail right now. If he'd have hurt or killed someone, his career would have ended immediately. We really wanted to believe in him.

Serious question, does ROR think this makes him sound good? "I stand by it and, oh, now I love hockey again." -- This is basically confirmation that he wanted out, so there's that. "I wanted to personally, honestly, be super duper clear that I really need to be better and do better. Really, really, really." -- This is ROR's "Magnum" from Zoolander when it comes to saying how serious he is about being better. He's gotten those first two practice teams out of the way and now, finally, he's ready to lead.

That doesn't mean he's slow. I'm guessing it's a comment on his technique and not a crazy one given his height. I've read a couple reports that also call him "quick." He's 6'5" and played at 205 lbs last year, which is probably 30 pounds lighter than he'll be when he fills in. It's tough to extrapolate too much from what he's done in the league thus far when he's got so much physical development to still complete. He's big, he sees the ice well, he goes to the net, and he's not afraid to shoot. There's a lot to like about Concept of Thompson. One of my biggest gripes about last year's Sabres is that nobody seemed to know what to do or where to go in the offensive zone when they didn't have the puck. Like, literally no one would know how to get in position to receive a pass and put the puck on the net. If TT wants to drive to the net or wait in the slot for a one-timer, then he's a nice addition.

Funniest thing I saw on Twitter this morning is that our Bottom 6 has 15 guys.

Exactly. And Berglund's contract being 4 more years after this one is too long but he's not going to kill us at under $4M AAV.

The Andy Strickland interview on WGR just now will make you feel better about the guys we're bringing in from STL (Hutton, Berglund, Sobotka, Thompson). Not sure if there's still an "audio vault" or whatever, but hopefully they post it somehow.

I think this is exactly right.

I think he did. He didn't explicitly state it at the locker clean out but that certainly felt like the subtext of what he said to reporters that day. And it sounded like there were issues long before that. I don't love what we got in return. I would have preferred some organization's top prospects but those guys almost never move. (Would you have traded Mittelstadt at any point in the last year?) But I'm not apoplectic about it either, and that's mainly because I think the Sabres needed to make a move to change their room. The Sabres' biggest problem last year was coming out completely flat most games. At some point, you need to shake the Etch-a-Sketch and try to build a team that gives a crap. And all the guys we're planning on contending with someday (Eichel, Dahlin, Mittelstadt, Reinhart, Risto) are still here.