Taro T

Sad that she likely won't be the same as prior to her injury. Glad that we now know what happened. Didn't ask publicly for the information, but again am glad we have it. The family did & does have the right to privacy. But sports teams aren't like normal businesses. The term fan is short for fanatic & those of us that waste so many of our few precious hours on this Earth opining & obsessing about something so seemingly insignificant in the grand scheme like the travails of a sports team are pretty much by definition fanatics. We live & breathe this team & many of us also live & breathe the Bills & Bandits too. (And we like the Amerks, some here even live & breathe them too. We won't get into the Kin-ig-hit Hawks.) As we do live & breathe these teams (and let's face it, millions more live and breathe their direct competitors) and we really do love the teams & by extention those associated with the teams, there is an anxiety that many feel from not knowing what is happening. Supporting a small market's franchises we've all dealt with multiple rumors of our favorite teams relocating & some local teams have pulled up stakes never to return. Not knowing whether someone that many fans end up loving as if they were our own family members will be / is OK & the subsequent uncertainty that carries with it for so many ancillary items is stressful in its own way. They don't owe us updates, but because of that weird relationship fanatics have with the object of their fandom, it is good that those entrusted with the stewardship of the object(s) of our obsession have finally gotten to a point where they were comfortable sharing this with us. The news isn't particularly good, but knowing is somehow settling. A sincere thank you to Jessica Pegula for that. That's great that Kelly had learned CPR so recently. Seems that decision literally saved her mother's life & helped make whatever recovery she has more complete than it would've been had she miraculously lasted until the paramedics got to her without the intervening CPR. Hopefully many of us that haven't learned it or learned it years ago & might have forgotten much will now get around to actually getting certified. Hopefully Kim Pegula will continue to improve as her recovery progresses. Fortunately for her, they can afford the best specialists and treatments that there are. If you're inclined to pray, hopefully you'll do so for her continued recovery. Can imagine what they're going through, but can't imagine how surreal it is when one goes through something like this publicly. One thing they have going for them because of their status as public figures is there are literally millions of people pulling for her and wishing her a full recovery. That can't hurt any and could even be beneficial.

Doesn't matter. Get to 98-99 & all will be fine. Need to find 4 points over an 0.600 pace to do so. Doable but very challenging. The best things in life often are.

When the Mittelstadt line was being listed as the 2nd line they were getting a lot of the 3rd pairing du jour (as a big part of that was during the injured D stretch) & not much of Dahlin. When they got bumped down, Cozens line inherited that pairing usage. With Granato doing a lot of simple line rotation, it isn't like he matches lines a lot but he does to a degree. (Particularly on the 1st rotation of the game & then usually of the other periods.) But he does have significantly difference deployments in 5 man units as you noted.

Nice analysis. Hoping you're right and that whole crew is on the verge of breaking out. Personally view it in simpler terms. (Which by definition misses a fair amount of nuance.) They've gotten tougher matchups since Mittelstat's line got bumped & eventually converted to Jost's line. They'll break through soon, as they get a smidge better. But getting Jost's line treated as the 2 could be the difference between the Kids breaking out and truly tearing it up.

Don't see why. Can't come up w/ a single major disaster ottomh in the last 60 years that the world didn't unite to offer assistance. The afflicted country might turn down the offer, but it always gets made.

That thin blue line around the neck in the photo of Dahlin is actually he top of the collar. So, the collar isn't completely white.

Holy Mother of God, this day just keeps getting better & better. 😉

Day-um. On the bright side, you now know it isn't some degenerative disease and with your background & connections any work you need done will be by somebody you will know is top notch. And, there're gonna have to shave your head to fix that, right? Whoo, hoo, there's hope yet. 😉

Yes he did! THIS is how we DO it. This is how we do it.

Sorry. Only 1 guy has a 40 inch waist. There is only ONE true husky amongst them all. 😉

Has to be off draft status. Which is understandable. Because even the guys that do this for a living aren't going to follow closely, what, 900+ prospects (~30 per team with 32 teams). Some of the lesser guys will necessarily be off pedigree.

It was. Like you said, with it being down the middle & low, he hit it about perfect. As soon as he hit it, thought he had a chance & he did. No shame in 2nd. And though Thompson should've been able to beat that velocity, no guarantee he would. If it'd rifle up top he'd've been down where Ovechkin was. Also, people probably noticed, but the 2 guys feeding pucks to the semifinalists & finalists in the shooting accuracy competition were Erik Karlsson and our own Rasmus Dahlin. The other event Ras participated in was the goalie tandem thingy. He couldn't get a clean shot off after getting a bad pass. So far it's been fun. Expecting the 3v3 game to be a little duller. Was interesting hearing some Rag fans talking about some talking heads (TNT, ESPN, ???) making the comparisons of Thompson to Lemieux. Thought our fanbase was the only one hearing that talk. Guess not.

A quality 1 timer (which is what they're looking for w/ the one timer) requires the player to be ready for it, meaning he can't be mid stride. If you notice in your video of the "skating Olofsson 1 timer" he hasn't taken a stride for well over 20 feet by the time Lyubushkin passes him the puck. He has been set to shoot for nearly 2 seconds by the time he gets the puck. Look at the areas that the 1 timers on PP's are taken from. When a guy is getting ready for it, he's in a very limited area typically. There's a reason teams don't typically line up looking primarily for 1 timers from either side - that being that it's easy to defend a motionless PP. And that's effectively what you get w/ 2 guys looking for 1 timers as it's only the guys in the middle spine of the PP moving and often they don't move much either w/ that configuration. You can have Thompson & VO moving around on the ice, but you are limiting their windows to try the 1 timer. Because they're not going to get a quality 1 timer off if they aren't set. The gimmick formations work when used sparingly because the other team isn't ready for them and some confusion sets in. (See Chara or Ristolainen in front of the net.) But when teams know what to expect, they become fairly easy to stop. MHO. YMMV.

Oh, they showed those events in the arena. Mainly during the 3 times the Zambonis were brought out to resurface the ice. THAT was a little surprising. The thing seemed to drag a little, bit thought that was just from being really tired. Woke up at 6 & never really got back to sleep. But then read the comments here & it seemed that people watching on TV were really unimpressed. The "breakaway challenge" was extremely poorly thought out.

They FINALLY went inside. Yea!

Trade his rights right ####### now! 😉

1st vacation in not even sure how many years. An absolute gorgeous night. Hanging out on our hotel room's balcony. Should be perfect. But there are 2 friggin' morons shouting at the top of their lungs down in the court yard arguing about something that happened between LeBron James & Kevin Durant in either 2004 or 2007. They're only been doing this for 45 minutes so far. At least now the argument has slid to Kevin Love. (Somebody shoot me now. Please.)

Point it out to someone that matters. No idea who that would be in this case. Voter fraud in all forms stinks.

EVERYBODY got Reverse Retros this year. (Pretty sure everybody else got them too 2 years ago.) And last year they had the Heritage Classic sweater. They've been talking about adding the goathead since before the 50th anniversary season. Expect they didn't want to continue waiting for a season they didn't have something else coming out to add a 3rd because they seem to do something special EVERY year. Winter Classic; 50th, RR, HC, RR. And 3rds stick around for 3 years IIRC; the specialty ones only stick for 1 year. So the B&R GH should be back next year. The B&G GH will be gone.

Did they show the mascot hockey game at the end? That was hilarious. The East won 7-3 & Tooth had one of the goals. Not sure why they waited so long between events, they were getting set up between things fairly quickly. It still was fun being there. The only thing that was BAD about the event was it took nearly an hour to sign up to get a customized sweater (& that was after being in line 20 minutes after the doors opened). They had 2 kiosks to order them but it was SLOOOOOOW to get through the ordering process. Each choice led to a separate screen. (Adidas or Fanatics; Eastern or Western, Size, Player, Your Name, Your Phone #, etc. ) Dahlin was not an option at the kiosk. Apparently Fanatics didn't have enough time to supply the kits to customize one for him. Might have to look for alternatives to try to get that.

The Sabres WILL be in the playoffs next year. With or without Meier brought in. Do you HONESTLY expect to see the in a playoff position Sabres trade away a major asset like Meier at the deadline (should they even have him)? When was the last time e a playoff bound team was a seller at the deadline? And if, somehow, you don't believe THIS team w/ Meier added is playoff bound, then why would you expect the Sabres to trade for him?

They only did that on the shift after the PP or until they gave up that 4th goal. After that, Cozens took Thompson's spot & Krebs took Jost's spot. Jost took a regular shift alternating between Okposo's line & the Kid Line. By the start of the 2nd, Bryson & Samuelsson had flipped partners. That, and Carolina trying to conserve some energy really helped the Sabres stop the bleeding & make a game of it. And, yes, that's how much Muel's injury was bothering him. Bryson was more effective top pairing vs arguably the 2nd best team in the league's top 2 lines than he was. Considering it was the team they match up worst against, trying to take small comfort from them playing them essentially even or even getting the better of play for ~45 minutes. Hard to do when Carolina adjusted after the 1st to try to just hang on. But will do so anyway. Break comes at a good time as they're banged up worse than at anytime since Samuelsson returned.

Something of that nature will very likely happen. When they were originally floating renovation / upgrade possibilities back pre-Covid, they were floating having tables in the 100's at center ice converting at least the lower half of the seats in 105 & 118 (?) into a very high end full service seating.

IMHO, seeing them live in the building they look pretty good. Agree they look weird on TV being all white w/ blue helmets. The helmets pop on TV & make them seem like Eastern Block Reverse Retros. (Is there nothing Putin won't try to control?) But seeing them live the helmets aren't so dominant. Clearly peoples opinions vary.

Pretty sure it's to be blamed on the Tiny Tot of the Kilowatt, FArt Wander.