Taro T

Whatever it takes to slide Jiricek past 6. Handedness is off, but does Columbus really want to spend 6 and 12 on D?

Then again, if he's THAT OK w/ being the backup do we really want to see him sharing duties w/ Anderson? Let the 'Guins keep him & point out to MAF that it's only a 3 hour limo ride to Pittsburgh from here when he wants to visit. 😉

Really believe anything short of 90 points should be viewed as an abject failure. If that means overpaying on a goalie that won't cost them 10 points in the standings, well, then so be it.

Sorry to read that your wife had a setback. Hoping it is minor & her recovery is back on track very soon. On a related note, at least you have a sign displayed at your non-hospital ER that it is considered a full hospital ER. Here in Ra-cha-cha one of the major health care groups has a bunch of "Urgent Care" facilities that are CLEARLY labeled as "Urgent Care" that bill as a hospital emergency room anyhow. Which is beyond frustrating when you receive a bill that is much larger than you expected from an "Urgent Care" facility and you find out your copay is much greater as well because the insurance company goes along with it and a visit to a hospital falls under a different deductibility regime than a visit to an urgent care facility would be.

They could miss qualifying for the US Open by a couple of strokes, so that's possible. But they'll all still be busy in March so missing the Players Championship by a couple of strokes is pretty much impossible for any of them.

Totally get the questions about whether the Russian prospects will be allowed to leave the Motherland and whether they might get conscripted. But does ANYBODY honestly expect their best athletes to get sent to the front lines in Donbas? That's not how they do things.

To the bolded, absolutely. And cap space that goes away unused is a wasted asset come next July 1. Totally get not signing expensive LT deals on guys that will be fading when this current roster is peaking, but if at the end of June the Sabres sit with $15MM in cap space that's about $10MM worth of an asset they'll never get back. Botterill threw away the cap space Berglund gifted him; don't want to watch Adams do something similar.

You sure about that? Unless something changed with the MOU, pretty sure guys need to be 27 by June 30 to become a UFA with the next league year. Even those that RFAs that weren't playing.

It does. That final payment of ~$870k happens in the '22-'23 league year. So it counts against the '22-'23 cap at roughly 1/187th per day during the regular season. Just like a signing bonus paid to a player that gets paid on day 1 of the league year gets charged against the cap at roughly 1/187th per day during the regular season. (Andvthe 1/187th is roughly how many days the regular season typically lasts. However long it is in a particular year, a fraction of those sort of items get charged against the cap each day of the season. If they didn't account for those in this way, almost EVERY team that has those on the books would be out of compliance with the cap on the 1sg day of the league year as the daily max cap hit is just a little under $500k/ day. 'What, you have a $1MM buyout on the books? Better hope you don't play the 1st 2 days of the season because you already spent your entire player budget for those 2 days on that.' 😉

Honestly not sure if the payout happened on July 1 or will on the 13th. (Haven't seen how the buyout language is written - does it stipulate the payment on July 1 or on the 1st day of the league year?) But yes, the payout happens now-ish, and there is no cap hit in '23-'24.

Yep. Though w/ everything delayed by a few weeks this past season, technically the '22-'23 league year begins on IIRC July 13 rather than July 1. But, yes, Hodgson's buyout comes off the books at the end of this upcoming league year and the Sabres are done making payments that contract.

And hopefully Adams struck gold & landed a smaller but as effective Carey Price. But to claim that Adams is/will aggressively target a top notch goalie because he MAY have lucked into a really solid goalie that might be a Sabre 2-3 years from now doesn't pass the smell test. Which is where Levi entered this conversation. And past performance indicates he isn't going to put a premium on obtaining a top notch netminder. He seems more inclined to try to get a solid platoon and will ask his coach to run with the hotter hand, ala Ward-Gerber, or from his youth Edwards-Sauve.

Plus 23 man roster vs ~60 including Practice Squad.

18 years old vs 22ish years old. How many of the HS All Americans end up being NFL impact starters?

It was cool that they still brought the Cup out when they realized they had the wrong house. Too bad the guy didn't get any photos with it.

Well, you are the one assuming here. Ward won the Conn Smythe in the year that the Sabres lost a D-man after every victory in the 3rd round so though it turns out over his career he was little better than a scrub, he got hot at the right time & on nights he wasn't Gerber (another meh goalie) was good enough. Also, Ullmark+ goaltending isn't scrub, though it leaves a lot to be desired. (Your better football analogy would be Mark Rypien who was adequate or worse most of his career but sold his soul to be an actual QB in '91. Rypien led that team's offense. Dilfer wasn't bad enough to offset arguably the best D of all time ('85 Bears would like to have a word, but that Ravens D was definitely in the mix) and nobody would ever suggest somebody is intentionally providing only a Dilferesque level of goaltending competency. How many of the "best goalies in college hockey" have turned into exceptional goalies at the NHL level? There have been a few through the years going back to Dryden playing for Cornell. But being the best in the NCAA is about as indicative of NHL success as winning the Hobey Baker is - sometimes it translates, but more often than not it doesn't. Hellybuck was the last one that kept it up at the next level and his heyday was a year before Eichel was drafted. And personally, really like Levi's potential. But until he's here & effective, all it is is potential. Something UPL had in spades prior to the double hip surgery and Noronnen had in the AHL (speaking of potential unrealized). Will be very surprised if a significant part of the cap is spent on GTing as this team is filled out while Adams is here. With the unique cap situation they have presently, it might happen that he spends serious money on a ST guy THIS off-season, but don't really expect it. Would really like to see Adams FIX the GTing. Unless Levi pans out, he might never truly do it. Adams would seem to be quite content w/ Kuemper level goaltending, but he has yet to show he can identify that & land it. It also remains to be seen if he can build that '06 Canes squad that Kuemper level goaltending w/ reasonable backups (can't forget the backups carried them well enough while Darcy was out) would be close enough for.

Since Russ Brandon went bye-bye (& Berchtold on the Bills side too) all the Pegula owned teams have been pretty leak-free. Which, though frustrating in a 'we need to know NOW what they're going to do in 3 weeks' is a good thing as the other franchises have less info on them as well.

Been saying for a while his winning the SC with Ward & Gerber gives him a view of GTing that many of us don't share. (And IMHO has a strong likelihood of biting the team in the arse when it does finally enter its window.) But, even though he may not believe you need THAT guy who like Price is pretty much always on, you have to have good enough keepers that on any given day at least 1 should be on. Which means you really need 2 guys Ullmark quality or ideally better. So far, heading into year 3, he's had 1 Ullmark quality guy (who wasn't a given to be Ullmark quality heading into that year) that got injured and another guy that was Ullmark+ quality for ~6 games before he broke. It hasn't been good enough because he hasn't found even the "good enough w/ a well rounded team" pairing that he knows is the floor of what's minimally acceptable.

Think the Hawks would be interested in his rights as part of a package for Kane?

And would be ok w/ them bringing in Kane if they can get him for ballpark what they gave up for Skinner. But if they have to start giving up real assets for him, would rather they chance him not being available in 1 year. Hoping they don't land Campbell. Just something about goalies that spent significant time in TO; they never seem to hold up to scrutiny. Swapping for their prospects has worked for the B's, but they weren't grabbing guys that had become established.

Thus his inclusion of the word "AND" between "team" and "again." Again was referring to his being repetitive with his comments about Russian Players, NOT that the Sabres were a bubble team last year.

Adams and Pegula met w/ all 4 of their "big" NCAA prospects at the Frozen Four. (Presuming they spoke w/ Huglen too then, but not positive.) Adams spoke of Portillo before that and somehow almost always seems to forget to mention him since. Adams definitely, at minimum, has suspicions.

Was going to say something to this effect. You stated it better. 🍺

Yep. And, prior to him & Pegula flying out to the Frozen Four, Adams did talk about Portillo and also that he was OK with any of the college kids deciding to stay in college. After they spoke with Portillo, Johnson, & Levi and came back with Power he pretty much hasn't spoken of Portillo at all. Right when they came back, didn't consider not mentioning Portillo in one or 2 media sessions as a big deal. But now that it's literally months later and he still isn't brought up, yeah, there is something to be read into that. It seems that not only is Portillo staying in school to work towards his MBA & run the business he started but he also seems to want to test FA. Whether that's because of them trading for Levi's rights or some other reason, would be perfectly fine with his rights being included in a trade package at the draft.