MattPie

Sounds like you're moving in the right direction, bravo! I'm looking forward to some good food tonight, Plated delivery showed up yesterday so I'll be cooking at 5. We do a couple Plated (think Blue Apron but a slightly different meal selection model) meals every other week. Not cheap but you make some stuff that expands horizons. Up this weekend: Quinoa Burrata Bowl and Bok Choy Fried Rice. https://www.plated.com/menus/2017-01-15/recipes/roasted-carrots-and-burrata-with-quinoa-and-blood-orange https://www.plated.com/menus/2017-01-15/recipes/bok-choy-fried-rice-with-kabocha-squash

No, it's because it's pointless to complain now. Do you brood over that time you spent $20 on something at the store and then find you could have ordered the same thing off Amazon for $12? No, you accept, learn from it, and move on. I have some faith that GMTM is moving the team in the right direction, but a couple more questionable trades will disabuse me of that.

For now. :(

Toronto seems to have a tire-fire D and GT situation, but they play up-tempo and there are lots of goals. How different is Buffalo's D from Toronto's?

Agreed. It's a sunk cost so whining about it solves absolutely nothing. The trade is done, the pick is used, it's over. The only productive thing now is to look at who is in the system, and who should be our starter long-term whether that person is in the system or now.

I think in a perfect world ROR is at LW (as he was a fair bit in COL). Kane likes to skate and shoot so much, I'd rather him not be on a line with other playmakers. Ideally, Kane is 3LW with players like Foligno, Girgensons, or Larsssson where they are defensively responsible but have the speed and some skill to force the other team to take the line seriously as a scoring threat. Nylander and maybe Asplund or Carrier join Eichel, Reinhart, ROR, Okposo in the top six. Fourth line is similar to the third, but with the drop-off in scoring that's realistic. Ennis may fit in there somewhere if no one claims the 2LW or 2RW spots.

Randall's epic post does a great job laying out. In short (I think I have it right): Byslma likes long passes and dumping the puck in, which are old school "safe" plays. The long stretch pass from the D in the Sabres zone to the forwards at center ice doesn't connect enough, but when it misses the puck is going away from your net. Same with the dump in where you shoot the puck from center around behind the opposing net. If you make short passes or skate it out, you stand a better chance of having the puck when you get to the opposing zone, but mistakes may result in your opponent attacking faster. 15-25 years ago, many teams were successful in this "keep it away from our net" approach. Get the puck down towards your opponents net and wait for mistakes to attack. It's terrible hockey to watch. Now, either the players have gotten better or the strategy has changed and this doesn't work. The data suggests that successful teams are the ones that keep the puck. In really short: "They can't score if the puck is in their end" is losing out to "we can't score unless the puck is on our stick". Byslma's system emphasizes the former where many good teams with talent (which the Sabres have) are winning with the latter.

Yes and no. The datacentre wants to use outside air for cooling up to around 40 C to save power. It's interesting to see the pro-gress on ideas to cut electricity usage, eh? Low temperatures are rarely an issue in this field, the pieces generate plenty of heat on their own. Maybe there's a synergy there; put datacentres on frozen lakes for self-heating fishing huts.

I'd think January 2000 would be worse having just lost the last playoff game the Bills were in in heartbreaking fashion and the SCF 6 months before in similarly heartbreaking fashion. I told someone yesterday "The Bills will rise again; I only have about 50 years left so I'm not sure I'll see it."

On a side note: can you imagine what it'd be like to be a Colts fan at this point? They got a few good seasons out of Luck, but the last two have been 8-8 and they have to be wondering if they'd have won it all with Manning. This is the yin to the Farve discussion's yang above. Maybe the big difference there is they didn't keep Manning to tutor Luck for a few years.

I'm on an engineering call with a supplier that's located lovely downtown Saskatoon, SK. "These products don't meet the humidity requirements, eh?" "The flux capacitor only works from 5 C to 35 C, not 40 C, eh?"

EA would be smart to generate one of each team, and then update the scoreboard that has the day's visiting team for each game.

If the GT hasn't been practicing with the new gear since it's been available, it's on them.

Which numbers are you talking about? We can talk about his career record or whatnot, but I'll go this way: he may well be a bottom-10 coach in today's NHL (possession, etc.). He may have a cup, he may have racked up a pretty good record with a couple of the top players in the game for a few years, but right now I don't see him adapting to what the NHL is today. I feel like the Sabres have an OK NHL lineup, but other than the last few weeks, they haven't been playing OK NHL games.

2: rutabega is part turnip, part cabbage, all vegetable, ladies. 3: No, you're supposed to not notice that cronies and family are replacing knowledgeable people. Don't worry, Canada is part of America so you're along for the ride. Like Austria. 4: I didn't follow the game, but I doubt it. I'm sure the wonks over at bigbluestar.com/rootin-fan-club are screaming about it though. 5: Fox?

This is exactly right. The college game is different enough from the NFL that you never know who is going to hit a wall. The NFL is more complex, every single player on D is probably as fast as the best guy you faced in college, and the opposing coach spends 60 hours that week looking for every way that you're weak, and the players are drilled until they know it too. Some guys can handle that, some have been skating along on raw talent. Some guys that didn't look that talented in college excel at the new game. You can lament the Bills not picking Rodgers, Prescott, Brady, or whomever, but 20 teams passed on Rodgers and every single team passed on Brady and Prescott multiple times. It's 80% luck; maybe even more than that.

I'd think something like "Puckface" or "Don't Give a Puck" would be common too.

My choice was an entire growler of Yakima Glory (d4rk IPA, http://www.victorybeer.com/beers/yakima-glory/).Rumor has it Victory stopped making it to keep me out of trouble.

I don't know how those numbers fare compared to other OHL guys that went on to the NHL, but it seems like he may have a shot at the NHL some day. If it works out, that's a nice find. He's a right-shot Center, which seems to me he may have an easier time moving to RW where the Sabres are thin.

Also 4/10 thru 10/5.

Hopefully, he's not coaching their outlet passes. "Just bang it off the wall, as long as the puck isn't in your end they can't score no matter who posses it!"

Not directly sandwich related, but oven-roasting vegetables is awesome and easy, especially carrots and Brussels sprouts (just "sprouts" to Huckleberry). Carrots: wash and cut into 1 inch pieces diagonally, olive oil, salt, and pepper, oven until they're soft. Sprouts: cut in half, oven until getting brown. Tip for both, use some bread to wipe up the oil, salt, and pepper from the pan; it's awesome. Oh, I may have mentioned this before but salmon filet in the oven with any of the following things on top is awesome too: basil pesto, salt, pepper, and caraway seeds, BBQ rub, garam masala (Indian spice in a jar from Wegs), or Old Bay. Bake at 425 for around 15 minutes.

I think you're reading too much into it. There's no reason to think Whaley wasn't in Boca, or that anyone would rather be in Boca than Buffalo in January. The picture is candid, and could have been posed better, but I tend to think the only people who'd think about that are obsessives on the internet. No offense. :) (I'm kidding with you here)

I was 7 and it's one of very few hockey-related memories I retain from that age.

Somewhere on the internet, someone muses that Cal Peterson may be looking at the Sabres goaltending depth and decide to play out college and sign as a UFA somewhere with an easier path to the NHL. The internet then decides that Cal Peterson is not going to sign with the Sabres and will be UFA. Then the internet gets its wires crossed and he's UFA this year. Ugh. Cal Peterson will probably sign with the Sabres at the end of this year. Almost every college player does; they're not going to pass up the chance to make even regular-person money to play a game they love. We're going to be hearing about the Vesey scenario for years, just like the "trade at the deadline and sign them back in the off-season" scenario that gets bandied around but has happened only a handful of times over the hundreds of trades.