Taro T

And you are looking at this completely backwards. The point @LGR4GM is making is that the STHers have paid the going rate for tickets and at an ADVERTISED "significant savings off box office prices" (the quote is directly from the website). They can't just cut ticket prices arbitrarily. They also expect to collect revenue sharing from their league partners. There are conditions on their collecting that money, one of which is they don't arbitrarily cut prices. Totally get your point that having 4,000 people in a barn that holds 18,000 is a huge problem. But due to contracts with others, they can't simply give away seats for $10 and hope to make it up on jacked up beer prices. As Adams said, they need to rebuild trust w/ the fans. They're doing a lot of things right w/ the in game experience. They have live bands playing in the intermissions. The music they play during breaks is oftentimes selected by the fans & actually doesn't stink. They've let the individual players choose their own goal song. They have people exit the building after a W to Buffalo's own Rick James. So, they are trying. They still have to work on their POS systems because they are interminably slow and are completely cashless so you can't even try to speed it up by having cash ready to drop on the counter. There's nothing they can do about having the border issue be a huge hassle for 1/2 the fanbase (though they likely could add a rapid test station somewhere in or near the building to make it easier to get back into Canada after the game) but if they keep playing well at home attendance will pick up after the Bills season is done - that's how it always worked prior to the long sellout streak.

Skinner IS playing better, but he's still Skinner. For all the criticism Miller & the other D took for the late turnover, that puck was right on Skinner's stick. Any other winger would've won that board battle & gotten the puck out of the zone. It'll be interesting to see where Skinner ends up when Olofsson comes back. People seem to be forgetting that Olofsson was the team's leading scorer when "that 70's line" was intact. Expecting that Olofsson will go back there & if Mittelstadt's wrist ever heals that Skinner will be back w/ him.

Oddly enough corresponding to the 1st game neither Anderson nor Tokarski were between the pipes. Don't know how Tokarski became Tim Thomas, but they'll need him to keep that up. No btb's this week, but 2 the following week & 1 each the last 4 weeks of December. So, Anderson has a week to heal up before he is absolutely needed back. Don't want to see them risk messing w/ UPL's newly found confidence & skill just yet. So Craig has to be back 8 days from now.

Help us Obi-wan Michael Bales. You're our only hope. 😉

To the bolded, that is generally the case but not universally. Larsson is a very effective checking line C but is not good on the wing. Thompson seems to be trending towards being able to play C but lost at wing as well.

Not happy that they'll be playing Dell tonight, but if the rest of the crew plays as hard as they did last night maybe he can pull it off. At least TO had to go to OT last night, so they won't be fresh either. Let's see them light up a rookie getting his 1st ever NHL start.

But once people start realizing they actually ARE good at home, attendance will pick up. Too bad it was an ESPN+ game as that likely limited the viewership as well.

Rocked the blue "3rd" Spacek tonight. Worked like a charm. 😉 Agree about wearing what he wants. But don't know that anyone in AZ will take pity on a Sabres fan.

Technically, they've yet to play Dahlin on the right side. But when he was with Butcher they both would wander & he spent about 1/2 his time on the right side. And, until the WC road trip it worked very well.

It aged better than the "he needs to be in the AHL right ####ing now" posts we've seen. And by the way, he stayed with the linemates I wanted him to stay with. How did the "he needs to have Girgensons & Okposo as linemates" posts age?

To the bolded, absolutely. But as said earlier, wasn't sure of the best way to handle Cozens tonight and said flat out that I'd trust Granato's judgement more than ours. He forking nailed it. And guessing this game will result in a decrease in "Cozens belongs in the AHL" posts. At least for a day or 2.

Every ####ing shift. Including all those in the 3rd when Draisatl was put on his wing. And at the end of the day, Dylan was a +2 in a victory. Granato gets it. (The rest of us, not so much.)

True. But why waste 2+ minutes reviewing the 2nd one. If they can't figure it out in 1 minute, it should stand.

~5,000. Tomorrow will likely hit 8-10,000.

And it didn't turn out he needed the sheltering of Kyle & Z either. Nor did he need to be sent down to figure it all out. As said earlier, wasn't sure of the best way to handle him, but trusted Granato's judgement more than either of ours. Guess he nailed it.

It seems a high likelihood that the Pegulas reasoning as to how to handle the surgery situation was influenced by the doctors & insurers that were speaking with (or their proxy, Adams was speaking with). They were told it was novel for a hockey player at this level & that there was another procedure that was less cutting edge that their experts recommended. Considering both Eichel & Adams (& the owners) all agreed that the relationship was coming to an end, can see non-malicious reasons to not allow the surgery & then have him try to re-up his trade value in recovery as a Sabre. It's still a procedure THEIR experts don't recommend. They also have no reason to want him playing for the team when they all agree it'd be a ST thing as he can disrupt chemistry, take a job away from somebody they actually are trying to develop, & create more questions than the side show is worth. Namely, what happens if Eichel being back causes them to win a bunch of games & what happens if the disruption to chemistry results in them losing at an even more prodigious clip & lastly & maybe least likely but most importantly what happens if he has a catastrophic injury during this league wide audition? Lots of reasons to throw shade at ownership for the course of the franchise since they bought it. But this is not one of those reasons IMHO.

Actually, they had to rebuild in 2014 because they'd consciously decided to send away at least Kotalik, Leopold, Pominville, Regehr, and Sekara ~2013 and let Hecht walk out too. And then traded Vanek & his replacement Moulson (who then came back as a FA) as well. The spoils of "video scouting" just left the cupboards even barer. But it wasn't the driver of the tank. Impatience was the driver.

And when he was playing against the Pens, he had a ton of confidence from his stint at the WJC's. And pretty sure it was the Pens that LITERALLY beat his brains in. Right now, he's gripping the stick way too tightly. Don't want to see him have to face McDavid nor Dreisaitl anymore than necessary given the confidence level. And the Same goes for TO's big guns. To try it in Pittsburgh, there is a stronger argument for it IMHO. Again, really not a fan of setting guys up to fail. Which putting him h-t-h w/ McDavid is setting him up to do.

The Pens decided 1/2 way through that year to race to the bottom because they only had 1 legit competitor for that title. But race to the bottom they and Joisey definitely did.

And as a follow on, the only reason the '04-'05 Pens didn't finish DFL and "earn" the rights to Crosby is because they didn't get the opportunity to do so. They'd been DFL the prior year & 2nd to last by a single point WITH Crosby & Gonchar added to the lineup coming out of the lockout. Had they played that year, that selection was most likely theirs. The reason they had that 3rd lottery ball like Buffalo & IIRC the Rags (or was it the BJ's?) for Crosby is they'd been DFL the previously played season.

They most certainly did tank. They sold the bulk of the players off (other than Jagr who was jettisoned earlier than that) 4 years after declaring bankruptcy and dropped their team salary the year after drafting Fleury ~$12MM than what they'd planned when coming out of bankruptcy. They did it to force the city & state to build them a new barn & to cut them in on soon to be arriving gambling revenues. They knew attendance (& therefore revenues) would crash with the sell-off, but they knew they'd either be able to move to KC or Windsor or actually get the new barn in the Steel City. You can say they lost on purpose for other reasons, but it doesn't change the fact they lost on purpose.

Hoping Eakin is capable of playing the way he did prior to crashing into the net in practice. Because Girgensons & Okposo will need help trying to minimize the damage the magician will cause.

Not sure what your point is. You said they didn't tank. They did. There was no editorializing about whether tanking has a high probability of being successful. Would argue that it has a very low probability of being successful and also that the low probability of success makes it unlikely that it will be worth it in the end.

The rationale was different, but the result was identical.

No, but they did to land Fleury & Malkin. (And yes, the Pens moved from 3 to 1 for Fleury, but they'd already cleaned house to get down to 3.)