GDT: Flames @ Sabres, 7:30pm Nov. 19, 2025, 🎙 📺 ESPN+/MSG

[CTJoe]

4 hours ago, JustOneParade said:

Wow. I'm shocked. Would have expected Lyon. Thankful it isn't UPL.

Sabres need to win this one, look good doing it, and show us its not 'same sh!t, different year'.

Why? I thought this was a given since he took practice off yesterday

[Taro T]

6 minutes ago, Night Train said:

Just win.

I don't want to hear about playoff standings in freakin' November . 

But, except for 1 year, in the post tank era if we don't talk about them in November we don't get to talk about them at all, at least in terms of making them THIS season.  😉 

[That Aud Smell]

12 minutes ago, PASabreFan said:

Yep. There is no playoff spot in November. This happens every year about this time. But it probably makes sense. Two to four points out after 20 games extrapolates to 8 to 16 out at season's end. This is not "we're right there."

People saying "we're right there" are of course presuming the team's need to stack several 3 and 4 game win streaks and otherwise tread water.

Also, the NHL standings around American Thanksgiving are highly predictive of how those standings will look in early April.

7 minutes ago, Taro T said:

But, except for 1 year, in the post tank era if we don't talk about them in November we don't get to talk about them at all, at least in terms of making them THIS season.  😉 

lol - man this is true too

[DarthEbriate]

The issue with the standings isn't that they're only 4 points back, it's that every single team in the East currently has a better points percentage than the Sabres.

Any team could get hot at any point in time and the Sabres need to be one of the teams to do it soon so they aren't looking up at 7 teams still between them and the final wild card berth with so many head-to-head matchups going to OT. Tampa and Boston are already starting to stack wins where they could get clear of the .500ish mass.

[elijah]

The level that the point is being intentionally misconstrued to solely because of a mention of playoff standings is comically impressive. 

Take out the mention of where they are in the standings and the point stays the same — they weathered the rash of injuries to the point that they’re still within an arms reach of being in the middle of it. Survive tonight and don’t have a typical Sabres setback, then see what can happen once they have a semblance of a healthy roster coming back in the next few games.

Edited 1 hour ago by elijah

[matter2003]

2 hours ago, PerreaultForever said:

He certainly does doesn't he? I don't really like it. I think it risks an injury or burn out on any goalie. Very few teams nowadays run one goalie multiple games in a row like that. I also think it doesn't do right by the goalies in question. There's too many goalies. Time to s@@t or get off the pot. Stop procrastinating cause you don't know what to do Kevyn. They don't fix this Levi will want out for sure. UPL obviously will be unhappy and Lyon might start to get unhappy too. 

Yes, that tracks. UPL also has a habit of letting in soft ones at inopportune times. game killers. He's unreliable. 

It should be Ellis-Lyon 60-40 split in games with Levi pushing for a real shot next year and then Georgiev as an injury insurance policy for the season at best. That's it. It's not that complicated. Adams is the only GM in the league that can turn a waiver gift like Ellis into a complicated mess and controversy where nobody will be happy. 

I would have started Lyon tonight and then back to Ellis on Friday. 

Calgary is a dumpster fire but watch out for the Johnny Beecher hat trick 🙂

 

Levi needs to show he can stay consistent.  One game he looks good, the next he gives up 6 goals on 20 shots and looks terrible.

[mjd1001]

I don't care about the standings.

Year after year after year, to get to the playoffs you need about 95 points. Worry about playing to that level (or better), the rest of the teams above you will sort themselves out.

85 points by April 1st. Again, it doesn't really matter to me at all where they are in the standings now, who is ahead of them, how far ahead they are...if you can get to 85 points by April 1st.   After that you have 7 regular season games left.  Sure, I'd love MORE than 85 points, but you will still be 'in it' and close enough that those last games in April will decide your season.

[Pimlach]

4 hours ago, Big Guava said:

 

Nowadays it doesn't matter cause they can just turn in homework whenever and get full credit usually.

Really?   But you still fall behind by the teacher moving on and you not reinforcing the past material by doing the homework.  ?? 

When my older son started high school I went to the early Parent Teacher night to meet his teachers.  His English teacher (the class included language and literature) said they probably would not be reading any books, they would watch the movies based on the book instead.   I asked about book reports, none of that either - they watched the movie and then do a group discussion.    Seemed like lazy teaching to me.  I have never seen a movie that covered the story and the details like reading the book.  

I went to lots of school board meetings, lots of parents teacher conferences.  I had a few concerns abouts the curriculum in this AAA rated school.  It seemed that the learning how to learn part was not stressed.  

[Sabres73]

1 hour ago, That Aud Smell said:

People saying "we're right there" are of course presuming the team's need to stack several 3 and 4 game win streaks and otherwise tread water.

Also, the NHL standings around American Thanksgiving are highly predictive of how those standings will look in early April.

lol - man this is true too

Elliotte Friedman says that because of parity and the closeness in the standings, particularly in the east, that he doesn't think the Thanksgiving date applies this year.

[thewookie1]

1 hour ago, DarthEbriate said:

The issue with the standings isn't that they're only 4 points back, it's that every single team in the East currently has a better points percentage than the Sabres.

Any team could get hot at any point in time and the Sabres need to be one of the teams to do it soon so they aren't looking up at 7 teams still between them and the final wild card berth with so many head-to-head matchups going to OT. Tampa and Boston are already starting to stack wins where they could get clear of the .500ish mass.

Even so, win tonight and you finish the 1st quarter of the season with 20pts in 20 games. With all the issues, injuries and roster upheaval; thats at very least an ok start. Every 20 games you want 24 pts for a  playoff pace.

At 20 pts we’d need to average about 25.3 pts a 20 game set. (The 2 remainders are gravy games) At the slightly higher number we still have a solid chance of achieving our goal. Effectively you need to flip 3 losses into 1 win and 2 OTLs. 

[Dr. Who]

35 minutes ago, Pimlach said:

Really?   But you still fall behind by the teacher moving on and you not reinforcing the past material by doing the homework.  ?? 

When my older son started high school I went to the early Parent Teacher night to meet his teachers.  His English teacher (the class included language and literature) said they probably would not be reading any books, they would watch the movies based on the book instead.   I asked about book reports, none of that either - they watched the movie and then do a group discussion.    Seemed like lazy teaching to me.  I have never seen a movie that covered the story and the details like reading the book.  

I went to lots of school board meetings, lots of parents teacher conferences.  I had a few concerns abouts the curriculum in this AAA rated school.  It seemed that the learning how to learn part was not stressed.  

That sort of institutional malpractice is unfortunately more the norm than a contemptible outlier. Imagine actually loving literature and discerning the many different elements of poetics that create the complex structures and artistry necessary to convey the unique meaning of a work that has genuine merit, and then finding that educators reject all that as guilty of all sorts of unjust privilege. Besides, kids raised on screens have micro-attention spans and can't read at what woulld have been grammar school level in 1960.

Film can be worthy of discussion and analysis, obviously, but it is also inherently a form that is taken in passively. You don't have to use your imagination to construct a world from the author's words. Likewise, one does not have access to the interior revelations, (or distortions if the narrator is unreliable,) that writing permits. The skill of interpretation which is part of the value of literary learning is replaced with a director's vision and a musical score.

But we've long ago abandoned the liberal arts for transferrable skills and conformity to whatever ideological norms are deemed necessary for social acceptance and success.

I know you weren't asking for this level of response. I'm a novelist and have a PhD in Literature, so it provoked my wrath.