Taro T

58 is a moron. He just cost his team a shot at OT.

2 things. 1. As the playoff races heat up, quite often those teams on the bubble pick up their pace a bit so, though pacing for ~94 appears that it'll be good enough, it very well might not be when all is said & done. 2. In the modern era, exactly 1 team has gotten to an NHL 0.600 and missed the playoffs. Shooting for 98 (well 98.4 technically which isn't precisely attainable) should be the goal. Get to 96 through 80 & then get the 2 or 3 more points they might need in those final 2 games. Let the Sabres take care of their own business & then they don't have to worry about what their rivals are doing.

If they beat Carolina, not an easy task but doable, they will be exactly 2 points behind an NHL 0.600 pace. Pretty sure, the way they've been playing, that they can find 2 extra points over the final 32 games. It's not a given, but it is very possible.

Dog it.

Caveat: am perfectly fine w/ ties & hate deciding games in a shootout, so am not an advocate for 3v3. But, since 3v3 for the RS is here to stay, there is one tweak they could make to improve it. Take a modified page out of the NLL. if the puck is brought over the opposing team's blue line, if it goes back onto your side of the redline, the other team takes possession. Don't want to discourage shooting, so if the puck goes off the goalie, the net, or the end boards directly prior to going back over the redline, there is no turnover. Yes, some tired players may try to wrap the puck all the way back to their goalie off the end boards; if they're concerned about that happening, just put in a rule that the goalie can't be the 1st player from the shooting team to touch a puck that comes out of the offensive zone in that manner. This rule change would do away w/ the current skating the puck all the way back into your own defensive zone to get a player change & maintain puck possession. The point of 3v3 is it was supposed to result in end to end action. This tweak would restore it. And again, a better tweak would be doing away w/ 3v3 OT altogether. But that ain't happenin'.

Game's in Buffalo. We only eat Carolina babies. The winter windburn makes the homegrown ones have a weird texture.

He scored the only SO goal in their only other SO this season & scored a goal tonight. IMHO it was a given he'd get a chance.

That'll come w/ age. Doesn't do ,uch for this year, but in a couple of years they'll be good.

With almost no practices this month they aren't going to give a guy that's only played twice in a month any PK time. So the parade to the box limited his opportunities. He's definitely low man on the totem pole & Granato is going to try to keep him sheltered. It isn't the doghouse it's not setting him up to fail.

They made that switch after killing off Thompson's hook in the 1st. Just starting to watch the 2nd now. Looks like Granato is keeping that going early in the 2nd. In the 1st figured it was because Jist had played the kill & Peterka was fresh. Maybe that wasn't the reason.

Needs to be a regulation win or the Pens have the tiebreaker at present.

Bandits won 16-10. Byrne left the game in the last minute of the 2nd w/ what seemed to be an ankle injury and didn't return. 7-7 at the 1/2. Bandits pulled away in the 3rd. 4 goals & at least 7 assists for the Great Dhane. McKay had 4 goals as well. Brandon Robinson w/ the Hattie. Nanticoke had a pair. Vinc was a wall in the 2nd half. The Riptide are now 0-5 at home.

And that is IMHO a big part of what in the end is going to leave Eichel as just another good player. (His not being a Getzlaf nor MacKinnon style leader will be the rest of it.) And also IMHO it is that tendency to be both injury prone & his ability to battle through injuries that a lot of guys might not play through that has & will continue to make his PPG lower than it probably should be. That year he got 82 in 77, he had a long stretch (~8 games) w/ almost no point playing through a leg injury. Last year he was playing w/ a broken thumb down the stretch and went very cold when his team needed him to produce something. Unless he can somehow get healthy, he's always going to produce less than his team needs & his fan expects. And like you say, you can't ignore his past 3 seasons, until he breaks out of @Thorny's term trajectory of those past 3 years, it's what should be expected. He could break out of that, but until he does, won't expect it. & don't believe he was ignoring them. Just distinguishing between the stages of his career.

Excellent documentary. Finally had a chance to watch it. Got goosebumps when they were sharing fan letters about how some of their music kept the, going when all was lost. Was never that low, but recall putting on Magic Power back in the day on many an occasion to get out of a funk. The Never Surrender album is so good to work out to. Have a reordered version of it for that. Would listen to the Just a Game album on the way to youth hockey playoff games. Good combo of energy & settling down songs. @SDS that fan event looked incredible.

Reminder, tonight's game at the NY Riptide will be on the regular MSG at 7:30PM.

And technically that is the 1st tie breaker. But will ignore that one until we're told the season is done & there are teams tied in the standings that don't have the same # of points. And like you said, that 1st tie breaker supplanted points as being the statistic used to rank teams in '20.

Yep. And though there may be fine points people want to argue with, really can't lose the forest for the trees. The man just gets it. And his players certainly seem to trust him implicitly.

Good thing. Otherwise he might've been bitten by the moose. And mind you, moose bites can be painful.

Maybe they think he's Brian's brother?

It is. But if the Sabres win in regulation they're on to the next tiebreaker ROW.

They tend to go as Vinc goes. When he's off, they seem to get there themselves. If not for the late goal in the 2nd Q waking them up, this could've been a much different game. The 3rd was amazing, as they held the ball for about 11 of the 1st 13 minutes. They chased the starter Higgins (who came back in the 4th) which was a huge turnaround as they couldn't score to save their lives after the Buchanan goal in the 1st. A PP was their only other tally & they were getting great scoring chances but Higgins was a wall. Earlier this year, they played very well vs Halifax and then destroyed a bad Georgia team in Georgia. They barely got past that same squad the next week at home. Vinc has generally been good, but wasn't against Albany nor tonight in the 1st 1/2. Expect he'd like some back from last week too. The team really misses Fields & Frasier too.

Saw posted elsewhere they gave it to Barkov. God forbid they actually put a D-man on the roster.

Bandits started the night ok getting the games 1st goal from Buchanan but then had a devil of a time scoring though they dominated play in the 1st. Outshot the Wings 18-9 but were trailing 3-2 at the break. 2nd quarter was a disaster for the most part as they were in the box pretty much the whole quarter. They were down 6-2 and down a man with 24 seconds left in the half when Filly took a dumb penalty and allowed the Bandits to score a contested goal w/ 0.4 seconds left. That goal sparked them to a 7-0 run and didn't give up another goal until there was less than 2 minutes to go in the 3rd. That quarter ended 9-7. In the 4th, Filly scored a quick one and thought they'd tied it up but the shooter had stepped in the crease before getting the ball & the goal was disallowed. Bandits scored the next 3 then Weiss got an empty netter. Filly got one in garbage time. Final 13-9 good guys. They play at the Riptide tomorrow at 7:30. The game will be shown on one of the MSG's, probably the one that shows Aisles games, but not positive which one.

Really? You don't say? Now where might we have seen that before? Oh, right in this thread about 10 posts higher.

At least you're honest.