Ghost of Dwight Drane

Tips in a dribbler.....

It's fun watching the talking heads make fun of Marrone. The guy got cut a $4,000,000 check in the span of 72 hours, gets to move to Florida, make another 800K without the stress, and was going to probably be fired anyway at some point over the next year. Doug Marrone made more in salary in 72 hours than the Buffalo sports media person makes in 50-100 years. Marrone is an idiot.......

Hajt, Schoenfeld, Virta

You don't let a rookie coast like that. Especially one who is supposed be counted on as a top player going forward. Side note.....did you see the movie Whiplash? It's pretty much if Lindy Ruff was a music teacher.......

OK...you're on. You hit 2 in a row on me. If you hit this.....I will get something for you at the Sabres Alumni Wine Festival. It all goes to cancer research, so everyone wins.

I implore you to watch the tape of that game. I swear he was texting someone on his phone during one of the goals against. Does this look like a hungry player to you? 3 goals against, he's guarding the empty side board on the PP as Simmonds teabags the goalie on the screen.....literally teabags him... He makes Cody Hodgson look like a superior backchecker on the 2nd one. The 3rd was the best......floating as the guy jumps up and goes right to the net with a clear shot. He looks like a crappy version of Ehrhoff from last year......

Thanks Sabres.... Now we're all getting F'n Enlightened............ Do we get 100 Rewards points for that?

My eyes water. What a recharge. I need to sober up with some boobie jokes.

Sabrespace bachelor auction....... I wish I could work the land. I'm too John Candy. Had a bunch of mares and babies at a farm, and they had a lil' cattle yearling there. I would pet him and talk to him, and named him Sparky. Later in the year i got a package in the mail. It was 3 lbs of jerkey with a note written in The Shining style...."Heeeere's Sparky!" I am a sinner.

I'm trying to rectify the time it will take from being a historically horrific team, to the time that you can say this will be a legit, Top 8 team with 12-1 or better odds to win the Cup. Under this structure as-is, there is a honeypot of a chance 3-4 years out. Unless you have an amazing strike rate of prospects that develop at lightning speed.......where are you going to obtain top level NHL talent in a trade for any of your top 9 players under contract? If you wait for Girgs, Risto, Zadorov, Grig, Samuel to be actual top 9 players on a top team, you are realistically talking 3-4 years away from that progress.....at which time, they will be knocking on UFA contract status. I'm having a very hard time finding this equation being successful given the culture of suck, the open market worthlessness of your top 9 contract skaters, and the gap needing to be filled. I feel like watching this franchise, I am watching Bruce Willis with a 2 hour window to blow up an asteroid before it hits earth. I'm not saying Tim Murray is bad.......I like his honesty and eye........but he needs to be Top 5 in the league type of good to turn this into a viable group.

Yeah.... Bob just spent thousands of characters and probably an hour of actual writing on this......and who was the only player mentioned the whole time besides the "feature" of the article who was presented as a potential complicated situation? My guess....Buffalo and Colorado having discussions. Colorado interested in ROR, but wants a throw in. Bob spends 1/2 the article trying to show how complicated ROR's situation is, then the other half only talking about Myers and his potential. Article serves multiple purposes for Buffalo: 1) Gives impression that ROR is not worth his contract and should be knocked on his trade value given pending UFA in 1.5 years 2) Pumps Myers as a "young shutdown defenseman with #1 pairing offensive upside", and touts his contract as a deal 3) Lets the league know discussion is going on and if Detroit thinks they are getting away with Tatar and a 2nd for Myers....they should re-evaluate because he is hot goods and could get a #1-2 center in return 4) The more national talk of Myers being traded, the easier the soothing for the fanbase if Murray accepts prospect types from another team for him because, yeah, ROR was available but may have walked out on you in a year. Now you have another 19 year old and draft picks to hang hope on. It is a triple hedge for Buffalo from a PR standpoint. I'm willing to bet Myers is gone by the deadline. I heard Murray talk his first few months.......he might as well have been doing his Pacino impression and ask Myers to go fishing with him....

Grier, Dumont, McKee, Pyatt.........that was the plug on the scummy ringed bathtub of #blueprint being pulled.......

Myers is gone. Thanks Bob. My guess is that this was a backscratch special because Murray is trying to squeeze Detroit for that last ounce of OJ, and make it known to the rest that the Ebay bidding closes in the next few weeks.

With everyone being grumpy about Tank vs. No Tank, and the pretty much hopeless performance of the team, I got to thinking and looking...... The Sabres are paying $40 million to their "Top 9" skaters. 6 forwards and 3 Dmen are making $4-5 million. That is 60% of the cap right there, and a cap, thanks to the deflationary spiral and strong dollar, that may not increase much, if at all in the near future. Tim Murray is responsible for 6 of those 9 players. What are these guys actually worth? The team has used buyouts and are limited in that regard. Stafford and Stewart are pending UFAs, but what are they really worth? Stewart a low #1 at best or a prospect with some hope.....Stafford, a #2? Besides Stafford, Hodgson and Myers are to Darcy's record. Hodgson.....can you get any value for him at this point? Maybe a struggling role player who was thought to have potential at one point much like himself? Myers has actual value, but how much is being debated. It seems as if his high end worth is a recent player taken in the mid 1st round, and another future draft pick. Then we have Mess....who can walk, so no problem.....Gorges, who is on a long term deal and hopefully dealing with an injury to explain his pedestrian performance recently.....Mess is worthless.....Gorges, maybe you get a McNabb or Pysyk type prospect in return for him at the deadline from a contender with a 2nd or 3rd thrown in. At forward, Murray is responsible for Ennis. He tries hard and has some value in a trade, but in all honesty, he's a 3rd line player or 2nd line trinket on a good team. Pretty much Mason Raymond who gives a crap. Then you have Gionta. Nice attempt, but now you are locked in to a guy who seems to have jumped the shark. Does he have any trade value with that contract? Moulson......still may have a bunch left, but doesn't show well when your top center is a Latvian grinder. You could probably still get something ok back in a deal, but the worst team in the league paid him the most $$ which probably means he is on an overvalued contract by definition. Where does it leave this team going forward? You still have close to $30 million a year going to Hodgson, Gionta, Ennis, Moulson, Gorges, and Myers going forward. Even if Stafford, Stewart and Mess come off the books, what is the net return? Two 2nd round picks? I like Murray and think he has a real shot to show good things, but given the current performance, I am having a hard time seeing how critical mass can be reached in the next 3-4 years to have a true contending team. Even if guys like Girgs, Grigs, Risto, Zadorov all progress at great clips, and they get one of the Big 2 this June, you are still tied to a lot of dead weight and mediocre top line talent that as their contracts expire, the young guys will be replacing their salaries with big contracts. In reality, I have a hard time seeing a true contender until 5 years out. The only way it happens sooner is if Tim Murray is a top 5% GM and the picks and prospects he brings in his first 2 years hit at an amazing rate.

Are you sure it isn't just a 737 painted in team colors? I think Southwest has a fleet in each of the NFL colors.

He's here another 30 games.....the other one is supposedly here for a decade. You don't let that slide. Good for Nolan. I pointed Risto's crap play last night out to you in the Hodgson thread.

He was disgusting last night. Just sat and watched one of the goals as his guy skated past him.

So you're saying you took the blue pill today? There's a Giada marathon on the Cooking Network......

Let's get this puppy to 3 pages before the actual game to make up for the 7 posts that will happen during it!!!

Did you see Reinhart play? Did you see Risto drop the water ski rope on his guy last night?....talk about Ovechkin...... I guess there is no other thing to do but let it play out. So given the 20% chance you get McDavid....(Oh that's right, Eichel is just as good....just like Gretzky/Lemeiux/Crosby came the same year)....we shall find out.

Let's put it this way. Take Kiko Alonso as an example. Some fancystats place said that by him being out for the year, it equated to 1/3 less of a win for the Bills for an entire season. If Kiko is 1/11 guys on the field for 30 minutes a game.....for 16 games......he is 4.5% of the output in talent which influences record. Over the course of 82 games, Kiko would project to 1 2/3 more wins for the Bills. On a hockey basis, 3 points. Say McDavid plays 20-22 minutes a game. He is 1/5. That equates to 7% of output of talent which influences record. If McDavid at 18 plays at the level against men which Kiko did in the NFL at 22....it projects to just under 3 wins.....or 6 points. Kiko was pretty much in the talk for rookie of the year the whole year and even higher expectations given his first 8 games or so. If we expect the same type of influence from McDavid given an accepted line of fancystats in the NFL.....Why should I expect the Sabres to be much better than this year, next year, given everything else as constant?

I think it's a riot that we don't even know how the playoff system works anymore because this franchis has been such a sh!t show for so long, we know it doesn't matter......

But if Hodgson or Roy is a 6.5/10 on a good team.....and a 3/10 on a bad one......even if McDavid is a 10/10.....and that will probably take 5 years to see.....why won't he be a 6.5/10 and maybe add 5 points in the standings to this team? I'm not arguing individual talent. I'm just really thinking that the fly paper is way too sticky for this franchise right now. A 3 standard deviation in acceleration of improvement probably puts the team in 10th place.

You may have actually found a new scouting tool. With Pegula's money, why not bring in top prospects for a sleep and psych study? Monitor their breathing, ability to get REM, show them pictures of the Stanley Cup one night, then money, cars, and girls the next night...and see where more brain activity takes place....... It could be that Connor McDavid has a giant uvula and adenoids, and doesn't twitch for the Cup, but soaks the sheets with morning wood for the Benjamins.......

He made a mistake and got caught....thus, felt "terrible". He also is supposedly a rat on the Sean Payton / Greggo Bountygate. Fool me once..... I am very underwhelmed by the offensive staff. QB/OL/WR coaches all have major points against them, one way or another. I like Ryan a lot, so I cling to hope. I'm sure it will be downtown. For a group that didn't want to be real estate developers, the word was out 2+ years ago and everything strategic has been gobbled up.