Taro T

Technically, they are "day to day." But in the same vein as when Stephen Wright says "everything's walking distance if you have the time." 😉 Would be awesome if Mittelstadt's injury is a "bone bruise" with no actual break AND no additional soft tissue damage. The biggest part of his game are his Mitts. Having a fracture or soft tissue damage that affects how all those little bones interact w/ each other would be just about THE worst case injury for him to suffer.

NHL 0.600 is the key. If you are at that or better, in this era of loser points, then you are in. Under that, you might be in but likely aren't.

No selling off of JAGs to create space required. After the trade deadline roster size is only limited by the salary cap. The JAGS don't have to go anywhere to see what the baby Amerks / NCAAers can do. But before we worry about deadline moves, this team needs to be better than 0.250 on the road. Hopefully they can be, but until they are, they aren't. And of they can get close to the hunt, or even in it, wouldn't give up anything more than a single 2nd on one rental. Would show management believes in the kids, but even more so that they believe the future is bright & don't want to short circuit it.

... somebody else will be injured. R2 Rou2 should be saved by that & likely 1 of Caggiula or Bjork. Hayden to the farm & the other odd man out JAG to the pressbox.

Had UPL played like he has the past 3 games the entire year or for at least 1 month, would absolutely give him a chance to show he's ready for bigger things. But he's not been a tire fire for only ONE single week. The odds of setting him back getting shelled in Pittsburgh is just too great. IF he excels this week again on the farm, would consider bringing him up for the BJ's game or letting him travel to Detroit the following weekend.

True. But not 3 years.

Be interesting to see if this is just a flash, he finally feels comfortable with the hips, Samuelsson is the goalie security blanket, Dell brought bad ju ju for him, or if it's due to something else. Hoping it's that the hips finally aren't bothering him.

Couldn't they have flown to Joisey & then have the players lick everything just because? 😉

They recorded the attendance on a tickets sold basis, but could've sworn they used to announce attendance over the PA by actual attendance back in the day before Rigas & Moss had gotten involved w/ the team. Could very well be misremembering that or simply mistook the tickets distributed counts for the actual attendance. (Was only at a handful of games back when the original sellout streak was active really only got to go to about 5-10/ year after that before Adelphia got their hooks into the Knoxes.) That is precisely how it was done. Not 100% accurate, as somebody might spin the thing through again after passing through it but they'd have to have nobody right behind them and do it intentionally, but they were pretty close.

Even if it's a LHD, if he's clearly the BPA then take him. Just because Botterill could never convert any of his abundance of D-men into anything better than a 4th round pick doesn't mean the new regime will necessarily suffer that same strange affliction. But yeah, if it's close, they have enough LHD for the foreseeable future.

With all due respect, there was not even close to 7,000 at that game. 8,000 was the ANNOUNCED attendance. To have 7-8,000 in a building that holds close to 19,000 would mean the building has bodies in 2 out of every 5 seats. Not sure that even the 2 center ice 100 sections were above 60% capacity. But when the ends in the 300's had ~25-40 people in each section (8 sections total) & no other sections came close to 50% with many of the "prime sections being at ~25% full; there is no way they were over 5,000 paying customers in the building. They haven't even had bodies in every seat in the front row of the "good" 300's sections in at least 3 of the 4 yours truly went to. To, the 2nd comment: 🍺 PS - and dating back to at least the criminals, announced attendance is distributed tickets, not turnstile.

They are. Nobody is disputing that. They actually are trying to improve the things they can. Which was the point of proving examples of things that are finally being done well & some others that are still works in progress about the game day experience. Having not decided to go for another retool would've helped in the ST. Hopefully that decision works out, but there are still a lot of decisions to be made moving forward & a lot of players still need to be developed properly in order for it to work out. As much as people dislike ownership & in spite of the influence their hiring decisions have had on reaching this point, were they not as deep pocketed as they are we could be at risk of losing the team. Really doubt that's even a contingency thought. The decisions that got us here are in the past. They need to be better moving forward. And really, getting people back in the barn is dependent on 1 thing primarily & 1 other 2ndarily: Adams has to be good at this - he might be, jury's still out & Canadians need to be able to get in on a regular basis w/out jumping through tons of hoops. Remember, there are already a few thousand people that have paid at least 50% of next year's ST packages. Without any changes, attendance reaches non-embarrassing levels. Keep playing entertaining hockey at home & it'l get goosed more.. My 2 cents.

The 4,000 is off reports of people such as yours truly that have been eyeballing the attendance. It's ball park. But there is no way in Hades that they've significantly topped 5,000 in any of the Habs, Yotes, Bolts, or Eulers games. Can't speak to the other 3 but would be surprised if any were significantly different based on the crowd visible in the various shots.

And again, Detroit isn't as precise an analog to Buffalo as you keep insisting it is. The greater Detroit metropolitan area population is a smidge over 3.5MM people. The greater Buffalo metropolitan population is ~1.2MM. Might Buffalo be expected to double their attendance if they had 3x the population?

True in today's NHL. In the mid-80's & 90's when he came up, not nearly as often. Lemieux was relatively huge when he entered the league relative to the competition.

Your post brought up the Q of how many starters/#1's they've faced? Habs - Montembeault (backup) Arizona - Vejmelka (became starter, but at the time was the backup & it was his 1st ever NHL game) Vancouver - Demko (starter) Boston - Ullmark (backup) NJ - Daws (1st NHL game / backup) TB - Elliott (backup) Ducks - Stolarz (backup) LA - Quick (platoon) SJ - Reimer (platoon) Seattle - Grubauer (starter) Detroit - Nedeljkovic (starter) Caps - Vanecek (starter) Eulers - Skinner (backup, 1st ever NHL start) Loafs - Woll (backup, 1st ever NHL start) So, they're getting just under 1/3 of the other team's starters which isn't that excessive for a non-respected team. But they've also faced as many guys in their 1st ever game as they have starters.

Recency bias. He isn't even the worst Sabres head coach of the last decade. (Which might have something to do w/ wandering the desert for pretty much the last 10 years.)

Yes, the post you quoted clearly stated there are no issues w/ attendance as evidenced by the statement "(t)otally get your point that having 4,000 people in a barn that holds 18,000 is a huge problem." 😕 As for comparing Detroit & Buffalo, yes, they are both border cities. That is true. But might some of the extra attendance in Detroit be due to having a greater metro population of nearly 3x that of Buffalo? (1.2MM vs 3.5MM) And, really don't need you nor ESPN to tell me attendance is poor. Have been to 4 games so far. Have actually seen the attendance issue 1st hand. And none of this addresses the point of the post you were referring to, that your prescription to cure the poor attendance is untenable as had already been pointed out.

Well, if you're limiting it to guys that are 6'7", your pool of candidates is SEVERELY limited. Have there even been 50 guys in the league's history that are that tall? (And how many of those were goalies?)

Slightly shorter, but solider: Mario Lemieux.

Small sample size, facing a legion of backups, Granato coaching a more uptempo pressing game than his predecessors which actually WANTS guys in front of the opponent's net, finding out that healthy forwards are more effective than injured stars (who knew?), & John Cooper deciding that he didn't need a goalie for the last 6 minutes of the Tampa game. 😉 Certainly there's more to it, but that's a start.

Interesting thought. A 6th or 7th round pick could land a guy if Dallas ends up deciding to waive one. Anderson has been good. That he'd be good wasn't really in doubt. What was in doubt was could he maintain a high level of play over a full year (yet to be determined, but unlikely) and whether he could stay healthy (obviously that answer is 'no'). Tokarski has been far better than OK both last year and this. As improbable as it was. But they really do need another guy capable of giving them quality NHL minutes. Dell is not that guy.

Would've gone w/ 1 of the C's too. But Quinn had the highest ceiling of anyone left on the board. (And a really low floor, especially for a top 10 pick.) But if you saw something to make you believe his play in his 1 big season was legit & sustainable, a case can be made he was BPA. And his play since doesn't diminish the possibility he was the BPA when they were on the board.

Yep. If you have a great player to pair him with Hall can be excellent. But he hasn't shown an ability to drive on his own in a long time (if ever, at this level).

He doesn't look like the same guy that got some preseason action & the 1st few Amerks games. There's a "poise" (for lack of a better word) to his game this past week or so that was NOT there earlier.. Would be fantastic if he can keep it up.