Stoner

I've been saving this one up for awhile. Whenever the Sabres raised ticket prices after a season, it was conventional wisdom from the Pegula-ites that they had to do it — they didn't want to do it, but they had to... to continue to receive revenue-sharing, a critical thing for a small market team. The Sabres never came out and said it so starkly, but Ted Black among others was always willing to encourage the idea with sneaky, lawyerly language. Of course, it was never true. You don't lose revenue-sharing when your ticket revenues drop to a certain point. It's a theory we're about to test. The Sabres surely will see ticket revenues drop to below 75% of league average, for the first time under this CBA (that's a fair assumption given attendance totals and yearly ticket increases pre-pandemic). Those who blithely toed the company line might be confused when revenue sharing doesn't go away after this season. Some background: If the Sabres were to fall under the benchmark, which is 75% of the average league gate, they'd have to submit a corrective three-year business plan to the league and Revenue Sharing Oversight Committee, which is made up of three NHLPA members and four league reps. The RSOC may review, approve and evaluate the plan going forward. "A club's continuing eligibility to receive Distributions may be conditioned on successfully executing on such plan," according to the CBA. My source here is the CBA, Section 49.3(d)(i).

I know it's not a Rick night, but he's worth the tune-in. I might be crazy, but from what I've heard this season (work schedule has been uncannily against me, and I have a tough time watching a recorded game "live"), he's enjoying a renaissance. Goal calls of late have been much closer to Rick Prime (or at least Rick Still Really Good). He's getting more names, he's not losing the play as much. He sounds really, really comfortable, like he could do this forever. I really hope he and the team come to some compromise after the season. He can't go away. He just can't. Let him call a home game a month or something. If the team has a chance to win a playoff series, let him call the game for future release or something, while Dan or whoever still gets to do it live.

Absotutely.

I'll take my own advice and act like a winning fan. Despite this horrendous streak after a good start, the Sabres are only 10 points out of a playoff spot just before Christmas. It looks bleak, but it's been done before. The 10 can't get too much worse though (have you seen Bo Derek lately? Yikes). It starts with tonight. Maybe the 10 can become an 8. I'll keep updating the total. Baby steps.

h/t to @Norcal for bringing us this news.

So you're admitting Dahlin is merely a promising young defenseman who needs to be on a stacked team to be good? I guess it's OK if we all forget LGR's YT videos out of Sweden, the professional evaluations of Dahlin and the like. It's probably good for our mental health. But, yeah, if the subject comes up, keeping everything in context, to this point in his career, he has been a clear bust.

It had nothing to do with control. (But Coli didn't say that, so I have no beef with him.)

The answer is right in the rule SDS copied and pasted. "Skate contact with blue line."

This is the gist of it (gist is the word of the day). Rasmus Dahlin, a #1 pick four years into his career, is here to make the roster robust, to be the player who is so good he makes lesser players better, the player who directly contributes to winning. This argument is backwards, and we heard of it with Eichel, too. When you pay someone 10 million dollars a year, he better make the roster robust. If Dahlin isn't that player, he's not robust — he's a bust.

It's poorly written, but the gist of it is there. With Dahlin still not tagged up, there's no offside until Oloffson touches the puck or attempts to touch the puck. He did neither. What I want to know is what happened to letting the call on the ice stand unless there's obvious visual evidence it was wrong? The judgment call of the linesmen apparently was that Olofsson didn't touch the puck or try to touch it. What did Toronto see? Is it as simple as the replay officials thought they saw Olofsson touch the puck, even with their massive high-def monitors? I wonder what the linesmen told told Toronto during the review? Maybe they said they didn't see what happened?

I feel a little Elevenish. Might be the sausage and gravy for breakfast. Are you declaring that they're handling it behind the scenes, and you endorse this approach?

I've had it. I realize the Sabres are not a winning franchise and are barely an NHL franchise at this point. I THOUGHT this year was about creating a template for changing all that, which was to begin with adopting at least the posture of a winner. ACT like a winner. ACT like a team off to a good start, in a heated Presidents' Trophy race, that just got totally jobbed, robbed and disrespected in consecutive games. (In the tradition of Lindy, make a stink and maybe you buy a call somewhere down the line.) Where are the alternate captains? Where is the coach? Where is the GM? Where is the owner (sorry, the owners)? And please don't tell me they're handling it quietly behind the scenes. The fans need to know there was a response. They need to know there's still a pulse in Sabres hockey. Nothing changes until this changes.

If he had been attempting to touch or control the puck, he would have easily done so. I think he let it go to allow Dahlin time to tag up.

Glass half full: it was brilliant awareness by Olofsson there. Not sure of glass status: Granato's laissez-faire, stoic, them's the breaks attitude in his presser is both admirable (and closely aligned to how I've always felt about officiating) and absolutely infuriating given the state of the franchise, the depression of the fan base and the stated goal of developing a winning culture.

Possession and control get conflated too easily, and you can blame the language of the rulebook. Olofsson possessed the puck once it went over the line, but only because he was the last player to touch it. He no longer controlled it. Now I want to join a scantily clad inkman in the woods. The league allows a goal that shouldn't have counted the other night, and tonight disallows a goal that should have counted either because the offside review is asinine or the call was blown. You can't make this stuff up.

There didn't seem to be any attempt to gain control of the puck while Dahlin was offside.

Well?

Methinks something to do with ESPN+.

When are names being changed back? Just sayin.

It's a Rick Night. To use a rare Jeanneretism, they're going to be scarcer than hen's teeth from now on.

They did finish the season in 15th place. They went 16-4-4 after that fateful day, on which Elly May was not introduced as co-owner, sat quietly in the front row, made sandwiches after the presser and dutifully accepted her assignment to redecorate the lockerroom.

What's with having to fight traffic merging onto the 33 from I-90 while trying to exit the 33 to go west on I-90? (If it's "the 90," I apologize.) It's Clover Madness.

They were 27-25-6 and five points out of eighth on that fateful day — the day Buddy Ebsen couldn't pick Perreault out of police lineup, said Lindy wasn't going anywhere, challenged the press to tell him what Darcy had done wrong, said of Regier that he could "work with him," urged the Buffalo News to be more positive in its coverage to help the players perform better, and said he liked "hard-working, gritty players."

The run seemed to coincide with rumours of Pegula buying the team. They definitely weren't in last place (defined how?) on 2/22/11.

Did you even read the story?