shrader

Ahhh, ok. That wording made me think there was an injury or something.

Is there something specific about your designation there of "less than 5 games"?

Here's to hoping that this draft would be as successful as the last one where Buffalo picked first and Vancouver second.

Not many are.

I'd say it's even more crazy that they willingly traded for that contract, but once he retires this offseason, the majority of the cap recapture hits Vancouver instead. It gets a bit more ugly for them if he does decide to come back next year. And he's now at the point where he'll be paid right around $1 million each season (1.6 this year, 1.0 the next two), so he doesn't have all that much incentive* left to stick around. *I hate the fact that I'm saying a million bucks isn't incentive to do anything. I'll take over his contract and accept assignment to the ECHL in his place for three years. I've never worn goalie pads, but I'm willing to try.

I'm just hoping inkman can have a field day with the name Mark Alnutt.

The draft is cancelled. This is why you should always trade away those picks for 2nd or 3rd line centers.

Tyler Randell. I can't tell if he has two first names or two last names.

More per year than everyone on the team except Ekblad and Yandle.

That has to be a Tsujimoto draft pick

My wife teaches second grade down here in NC. Yesterday she told me a story about how she was having the kids talk about something that makes them laugh. One boy said RJ (by his full name, not just he initials). My wife knows nothing about the Sabres, but even she got a good laugh out of it, knowing exactly who he is. She wanted to break out a "Lalalalalafontaine", but she figured the kid would have no idea. The whole thing just made me thing about how this kid likes RJ so much, but all he's ever seen is this super old version. The kid's really missing out.

Give him time. He can't hope to live up to your status this quickly. And no, I'm completely ok with my other point. It really is great that new Nova Scotia guy (NS2?) and his son had a great time. I do enjoy reading about it. But if our big payoff for this entire season (and several more before it) is an out of town fan and his son getting to see a victory in their first game, well, we better find more families like this one that we can ship in for every single game. Hell, I'll start up the collection myself if it was guaranteed to work.

I picture a long drive where they do nothing but yell out the names of Moosehead players.

Yeah, I'm not trying to claim a thing about Weight here. My only thought is that I don't want to be OJ Simpson in any analogy.

He was a hair short of a point per game player for his two years in college (64 points in 70 games) and prior to this week, he had a grand total of 16 AHL games under his belt. Those college numbers were very respectable and it's tough to take much of anything away from 16 AHL games played immediately after a full NCAA season.

I thought you had mentioned at some point that you were from somewhere around here. I won't go that far. I'm glad they had a good time, but if this is the payoff for everything we've put up with, the hockey gods have a horrible sense of humor.

They offered playing time to a convince a free agent to sign. It's a fairly common practice this time of year. There's no need to dig your heels in to support what was a bit of a foolish suggestion.

Yeah, it's fairly obscure at this point, but I'd rather not have my name even remotely associated with all of that.

Does Doug Weight have some skeletons in his closet that I'm unaware of?

Even after you take into account the fact that Ristolainen has played 47 more games than Horvat, he's still blowing him out of the water in that competition.

So how exactly did you guys wind up as Sabre fans anyway?

Sign Derek Roy so we can include in the deal as well?

I don't know where the first one is, but I can't imagine they'll be heading out to Hamburg or East Aurora during this trip. I suppose it would be doable if they were considering driving near whatever they call the football stadium these days.

Sadly the NHL does require you to dress a minimum number of players per game.

You're really dragging down the success rate compared to those three.