Taro T

That's the one. Really thought it was the mono that dropped him from top 3 and that the Sabres had a steal.

No idea who owns the Sens at present, but with Melnyk's death 4 months ago can see that situation still being fluid and ridding themselves of deadweight salary to be a short term priority.

The NHL & the KHL have agreements in place to not poach each other's players. Considering neither the US nor Canada are at war w/ Russia, don't see any reason to believe those agreements have been voided. So, yes, at present if they want to play professional hockey they do need to go back.

What he said. Plus, now if Murray does rebound they aren't relying solely on Anderson as the backup. (Still want them to target a legit, albeit ST, starter.) See no real downside to the Sabres in that deal.

Not sure why they need to tell the world that the Sabres live. Maybe they were afraid FAs thought the team passed away about the time they were on the 18 game winless streak?

Except for a very limited # of players in very specific circumstances related to experience, age, or prior health, no, contracts cannot include performance bonuses. And those few bonuses that are allowed can't be structured as you suggest.

Cap space over the life of a deal is real money as the 2 equalize over the life of the contract (minus proration due to the players' total slice of the pie set at 50% of HRR (minus any recapture the owners get for paying players over 50% of total HRR during the lockdowns)), but if a contract was front loaded or has a significant signing bonus as a component of the contract, then a lot of cap hit can be obtained in a trade for only a small fraction of that nominal value in actual money.

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.