Taro T

Except for goaltending, Adams has done a good job assembling a team that could be good as soon as this season & very good a year or 2 out (right about the time he should finally have a GT that the Sabres currently hold the rights to should be ready to step in). And, the way the team played down the stretch, and even the way they typically played when it looked like the wheels were about to fall off around the time Subban was breaking, demonstrates that Adams has achieved one of his goals - assembling a roster of players with high character. But even the very best reach a breaking point and if we get to watch the equivalent of Anderson & Dell this year there's a chance we find out where that point is and that would be devastating. Personally, expect they could battle through getting that little support again, but really don't want to have to find out if that is a valid assumption. Get them the support they need & start rebuilding everything. Adams likes to talk about how everybody involved from management, to the players, to the back office, to the event staff, to the fans need to be on the same page; well, this is his 3rd shot at getting that aspect right. For the love of all that's good & Holy, get on the mother ####### page Kevyn and give the kids some NHL quality backstopping.

Again, hoping he doesn't tack that way and instead brings in, say, Fleury on a 2 year deal & Husso on a 3 year deal. But if we end up watching him bring in the equivalent of Anderson & Dell to "fix" the issue ...

Maybe. But the timing of this just seems 1 year early as Bergeron might walk and at least 3, if not 4, other key pieces are expected to miss at least 1 month of the season including the Rat Faced Git who might miss close to 6 months. Did Bergeron tell Sweeney he might stay if Cassidy goes? Doubt it, but at least that would make more sense for the timing. Unless they really believe he's too tough on the young players that will need to fill in early in the year, but it never was an issue his 1st 5 years on the job.

So, is Bissonette happy that his Loafs will be joined in their not winning Lord Stanley's Chalice by all the other teams based in Canuckistan or is he sad that once again it will go to a "non-deserving" squad based in the lower 48?

Love the press release. Everybody (GM, Team President, & Owner) loves the guy& says he's a great coach, but they want to move in a different direction. Alrighty then.

Wow. Really thought he'd be the sacrificial lamb for NEXT year's failure.

Darn shame there isn't a "bravo/ hands clapping" reaction here.

But did they find a tandem bike? Enquiring minds yada, yada.

And that's where he might have the character of the skaters so well nailed down that providing last year's goaltending again this year lucking into a top 2 selection might actually work out better in the long run than fixing the goaltending and letting the kids start competing this year rather than in 2 years. (Personally don't believe it would be better, but last year the team showed it had way more character than anybody that didn't work for the Sabres besides @Doohickie expected either. So, wtf knows.) Hoping we don't have to watch that & instead do get real goaltending, because the possibility of him managing to break these kids after what they went through last year is too depressing for words, regardless as to however unlikely it might be.

IF Adams starts the year w/ Anderson & UPL as the 2 Sabres goalies, we will know that he likes his odds of landing one of the 3 studs in the '23 draft.

TIL that that song isn't originally some English version of a Broadway show tune or a random pub singalong that was adopted by the team and also that it's Gerry & the Pacemakers and NOT Gary & the Pacemakers.

Then everybody could have Sabre-quality netminding. 😉

Vinc saved Smith's bacon after he didn't get the ball over the line in 8 seconds. Hopefully they close it out in Denver.

Which, again, is not reassuring. That after watching UPL play the previous season he didn't expect UPL to be pretty much what he was last year in camp really makes it easy to question his GT evaluation skills.

No. Those trophies went to the team that had the best regular season record in the conference.

And those trophies were handed out in many years that there weren't conference finals. The fact that the NHL came up w/ a trophy to hand out doesn't mean a whole lot. They've singlehandedly kept silversmiths & engravers employed for well over a century with their "we can come up w/ a trophy for that" attitude. 😉

Except, the NFL has never considered them semifinals as they started out as league championships prior to the merger and then were conference championships after with all the old AFL teams in the AFC & only enough old NFL squads to balance the conferences swapping over. Wouldn't ever call the ALCS & NLCS a semifinal either. In the NHL, they've often been referred to as semifinals as there were many years where they weren't conference finals. The entirety of the original 6 era; the entirety of the 70's; a couple of years in the 80's; and last season.

Can't see Miroshnichenko falling to 28. If the Sabres want him, expect they'll have to take him at 16. Which is OK if they land a guy they have a lot of faith in at 9 & it kind of sends them off in search of D at 28.

Thompson to center is something not even Tage saw coming, so it is 100% Granato's idea. But, he had had him play center before with the NDT, so it isn't from quite as far out in left field as it might appear at 1st blush.

That isn't reassuring. UPL wasn't anywhere close to securing an NHL job out of camp.

Umm, did you watch the playoffs last year? They didn't have "conferences." They had independent divisions that got sorted in the Semifinals into top point gathering division champion played the one with the fewest & then the other 2 played each other.

Pysyk played well last season & Hagg was more often than not an actual NHL caliber D-man in the 1st 1/2 of the season, too. Not sure that either was at the best production of his career, but both played better than expected.

This round is always the Semifinals. It's only usually the Conference Finals. (And btw, refuse to NHLese it into the Final. We aren't afraid of plurals. 😉 )

He's still a defensive liability, but not a huge one. Seems you're still giving a lot of weight to the Skinner from the 1st 1/2 of the year that did things like the play that cost them OT in that 1st Loafs game. The Skinner that was playing down the stretch w/ Tuch and Thompson was a guy this kid didn't expect to ever see. Really looking forward to seeing what Skinner does this season to see if he can continue to be a defensively meh player and a guy that can actually consistently make good passes to teammates. He was never that player before. Hoping he can keep being that guy. And mildly confident he will.

Don't go selling Plante short. He led the team in scoring once (with a pathetically low total during the dead puck era, but not with the lowest total for a team leader) & scored their only game 7 winner (in OT to boot). He also gave up a chance to go to the Olympics because the Sabres were having a crazy amount of C injuries back in '92. The Sabres could always use more guys w/ the heart of Plante. Really expect that people will be pleasantly surprised w/ Mittelstadt's level of compete & his overall game this season.