Stoner

It's not 1 in 32. Unless you think the Sabres have the same chance of winning a Cup as the Lightning do. It's more like 1 in 16, and it's not that hard to be one of the 16. If you're a really good hockey team, you can win a playoff round and then you're at 1 in 8. Instead of making it sound like a Powerball win, say you just have to build a really good hockey team, stay healthy and have some luck. Odds aren't holding the franchise from its dream, Terry Pegula is. I tortured myself for several minutes of this clown show to get to the word I knew was coming. "Apparently." As in, cast doubt on the integrity of the league by suggesting there might not have been a memo Darcy acknowledged receiving. Weak.

"Embedded journalism, the practice of placing journalists within and under the control of one side's military during an armed conflict. Embedded reporters and photographers are attached to a specific military unit and permitted to accompany troops into combat zones." It's interesting how politicians and corporations freely co-opt perfectly good, meaningful words for their own scummy purposes. Hey, fans, you're getting a real look inside the Sabres organization! It's real, and everything. Someone's embedded, or something.

AKA nadir. (Which it wasn't.)

Siri, insert video of Robert in the fog/Sabres exploding for goals against the Russkies. I've found that in my posts, emails and texts, I'm starting to drop words. Hurry up, Sabres!

I'll clarify to say that my own expectation of a Cup has lasted 46 years, because I discovered just before they made the finals in 75. So it's burned into me. But it was also burned into the very first Sabres fans, because the Knoxes hired Punch because of his Cup-winning resume and there was a notion right from the beginning the Sabres would be the first expansion team to win a Cup. So the expectations have haunted some fans for over 50 years. From that disappointment in 75 and the next several years came Scotty Bowman, winner of Cups; John Muckler, winner of Cups; Cup runs in the late 90s; Cups runs in the mid 00s; and Terry's cup vow. It's been a constant drumbeat. Success came too early maybe. Any frustration should be left in the past. The idea shouldn't be revisited until the team returns to some measure of respectability, which will feel like a Cup win it itself. Just for our collective sanity. Still, when the real moment comes, it will all the more glorious given a half century of feeling like glory was about to be achieved.

Are we talking a specific moment? It's a little narrow to pick a series-clinching goal fairly early in the playoffs, in large part because it knocked out a heated (at the time) rival. It didn't come at a time that the Sabres franchise was on a clear rise. If you want to fold in an individual moment like you've chosen and overlay it onto a franchise on the rise, let's go with Grosek's series-clinching goal against Philly in '98. It was the first time the Sabres had defeated Philly in the playoffs. A larger lens is needed for this one. (And I wouldn't even say it was the pinnacle of Rick.)

Uh, no. It was the iconic moment of an unexpectedly thrilling season. But the pinnacle came early on, when Punch took an expansion team to the final in five years — or maybe soon after when his team demolished the Soviets. The franchise has been trying to surpass those couple of seasons ever since. We were spoiled; the early success also planted the seeds of a lifetime of frustration. I'll have my own thread about how it took over 50 years to finally hit re-start on Cup dreams/expectations.

I disagree, my sister from another mister. When you're winning, game presentation takes care of itself. When you're not, you're looking for every way to break out of a losing culture — then the game presentation can play a role, albeit small, in helping the players get their minds in the right place. More than that, it can help the fans have fun at an NHL game, which should be the floor expectation of going to a game. Imagine you've been a Sabre for several years, and this opening night, there's the same anthem singer, the same PA guy, the same horn, the same music, the same mascot, the same goal song. You can't tell me it doesn't play into an atmosphere of, "Here we go again (now)." (Should it matter? No. If the players are robots.) At its core, it's psychological torture. (Not to mention that none of those elements mentioned are excellent in quality, and this franchise right now should be about excellence wherever it can find it.)

Steve Ott restores his headlight cover. Wait for it!

Some dude with long blond hair ends up in the ER after driving drunk and killing some people. When confronted with his crime, he shouts, "FREEDOM!" and claims that there's no evidence that alcohol impairs driving ability. He's a POS unwashed Catt. Co. scumbag. Same dude plays a ball game for a living. He's awesome. Funny how that works.

The difference being that Fred's production tailed off in the playoffs, while Butch maintained a torrid pace.

Just read (h/t to Hoppe) that Stanfield was a point a game player after @Pimlach acquired him in late Jan. '75. Had the Sabres won it all, maybe the trade would have been remembered in the same vein as the Isles' deal for Butch Goring in '80.

She live on Park Avenue!

Memory is fading on some of these guys. I do remember that I always thought his name was cool. Not sure why, looking back.

I'm between 1 and 2. Closer to 2. I wish there was another optimistic option above merely breaking 70 points.

Was Dahlin not broken for most of last season? Why shouldn't that be the starting point until proven otherwise?

Psychological warfare was waged on us. Asymmetrical warfare takes a relatively small act and gets a huge bang for its buck. Terrorists need societies to cooperate. I won't mark their anniversary for them and keep the cycle going.

Then the terrorists win.

Talk about minimizing. You are trying to talk about how things changed after 9/11 and the most you can come up with are some beefed up security procedures at airports? You are truly lucky, I guess. Something like 20 veterans kill themselves every day because they can't live with what happened to them in the War on Terror. They and their families are forever changed. The rest of the country just keeps rolling along, as far as I can fell.

It's OK. I got the one thumbs up that really means something to me.

No, it's a generic thread that asked for people's thoughts. Some don't seem to know the purpose of message boards. Whether and how the country "changed forever" is worth discussing.

Something else changed this country in the last 20 years 100x more than 9/11 did. We're using it right now. And we're in the midst of a pandemic that is killing orders higher of Americans. Life goes on. Like I said, today I'll think of those directly affected and not those whose lives were altered fundamentally by having to take their shoes off at the airport or something.

So you want to start a thread on 9/11 and then get mad when someone doesn't fall in line? Go whine to the moderator and get this thread moved to LTS Land.

Changed forever? Seems like a cliche. I think I'd reserve that one for the those who lost someone that day... and the men and women of the military.