MattPie

At center or wing?

Gogol Bordello? MARKING MY CALENDAR! Slackers at a brewery near Philly June 7th; I better arrange a ride.

I agree there, 25 mile commute in NYC is nothing to sneeze at at least Brooklyn -> Uniondale is against the traffic. I believe a lot of the Flyers players live over in Camden near their practice facility.

FWIW, Uniondale isn't that far from Brooklyn roughly 25 miles. If you did sign there, you'd probably buy a place based on where you want in Brooklyn and commute out for the year. Or buy in Nassau Co. and commute in (via train if it were me) to Brooklyn.

Intoxicated with hope. It's better than resigned to mediocrity.

Huh? 13 guys signed paying out $32M. Roster is 23 players, let's say the cap floor is $48M next year (up $4M from this year's $44M). Are you really saying there's no way they sign 10 guys for an average of $1.6M/year?

Kind of. If we're, say over the cap by $5M until the trade deadline, we can be under the cap by a bit for the last month or two and still spend to the cap floor (I think). Can someone verify that the cap floor is how much you spend on salary per year, but it doesn't apply per game? A more concrete example (using easy math). Lets say the limit/floor is $64M/$44M (like it is now). If you pay a collection of players $63M per year for the first 60 games (near the limit), that's 63M * (60/82) = $46M spent up to game 60. After game 60, you trade off $20M per year in contracts for picks and are now under the "floor" . You play out the remaining games at 43M * (22/82) = $11.5M, for a total $57.5M spent over the course of the year, well above the cap floor of $44M. I haven't looked, but I bet the Sabres are under the floor if they had been playing this set of players all year.

You know, that's a benefit of this season being *so* bad I hadn't really thought of. At least for these last few weeks we can unabashedly root for the team, and maybe even genuinely feel bad when they lose.

So this seems pretty reasonable (without looking at whether the Foligno and Conacher contracts fall into a bad spot age-wise). So what's the problem? It doesn't even factor in scoring a mid-name UFA (Ott, Callahan, etc.)

People have talked about it here, but I'm not sure anyone has put a number on it. There's a few players that folks are talking about next year "that would be #1 in this draft", but that's just speculation.

What, you don't think all the prime UFAs (of which there are few) aren't going to be clamoring to come here? Have they seen the new green-space under the Skyway?

Of course not. Battista will be the first-line center.

That's a tough stat, since the next two are critical games but you don't really want to set the most consecutive losses record either.

Miller's a bum, where was that 1.7 GAA and .933 SV when he was here! :ph34r:

Awesome. We should chip in for Josie to draw us something like this:

Overpriced rentals won't be signed for the next 3 years, easy as that. I'm hoping that by the end of the 15-16 season (where Leino would still have one year left), the Sabres will be playing well enough to attract some FAs. Plus, if for nothing else, anyone they sign won't be as bad as Leino is playing right now. I'd think that between two new guys, they might be able to pot a goal or two.

OK, OK, can we add some olt-timeyart to the bottom with "Here be tanks"

FWIW, Montreal was shut out by and emergency callup thrid-string G (Lieuwen) for 1+ periods.

Indeed. And if they were in charge, they'd recruit various posters here and friends as advisors much in the same way TP has.

You do see this regularly at the end of (American) football games. Usually in the "kneel down" part of the games, the line-men who have been beating on each other for the last few hours will shake hands and whatnot.

Ugh. I'd be happy if Leino had 65 shots.

Ennis, Stafford, and a 3rd round pick. (No, I'm not serious)

Please. Every player on the Sabres was either drafted by the team or brought in from another team (maybe not Rudy, but he's only playing when other players are hurt). They're not signing players off the beer team over at Leisure Rinks. Sure, the Sabres picked up a few on waivers, but I seem to remember the Islanders doing the same thing last year and making the playoffs. The only players they traded away (other than McNabb) were UFA at the end of the season (unless I'm forgetting someone). And watching the games (as I am), the team is not good, but they're clearly trying to win games. The only option they could use would be to bring up some of the prospects, which based on the beginning of the season, would be even worse than what we're seeing now (coaching change is clearly a factor there, though).

I thought we were on a Mission from Patton?

I think I need to get produced before watching tonight's game, it'll make it easier to watch. ;)