Weave

Agreed. A Steve Ott or Chris Drury type personality in the room is sorely needed.

This take needs more love. Sam really does need to catch a bunch of ***** for not going to the net. It seems to me that our two tank fruit are again not playing with the intensity this team needs. By my eye Taylor Hall is outperfroming both of them significantly. Cozens play is a breath of fresh air comparatively. He's nowhere near ready to be a featured player, but the effort is there. When/if he starts winning puck battles we are gonna really like this guy. His game is very ROR like. Olofsson had a good game. Staal wasn't very visible again. Disappointing. Dahlin...... I complained ad nauseum about Jack and Sam not having true mentors, and that it was a mistake that draft position was prioritized over having mentors for our two future stars. Dahlin needs a mentor even more than Jack did. He is getting hoodwinked by veteran players on the other teams. There is no cagey vet on this team to show him how to avoid it. To teach him how to anticipate it. To communicate on ice with him to prevent it. It is definitely stunting his development. We never did have the foundation to build upon, and now our stars have hit their prime years and we still don't have a foundation for the next batch of talent that is ripening now. We don't have an on ice foundation, and the continued hiring of inexperienced team management means we don't have a good foundation off ice either. This team has not learned from its mistakes. This is why I've taken a show me approach to these off seasons. You guys get on your emotional roller coasters. You should know better by now.

He doesn't win many puck battles but he sure gets in there and makes the effort.

Hall seems to work the paint more than Jack does. He continues to be more dynamic than Jack so far this season too.

Did that happen during the Buffalo back-to-back? Who laid those hits?

Ba dum, tsh!

Need to see him at C at this level. He looks good at W, and looked phenomenal at W in the tourney.

Friends of ours had COVID back in early April. They both lost sense of taste and smell. We visited them in August. He was just starting to get smell back bust still couldn't taste anything. She still had no sense of taste or smell. They loved the kabobs I made. 🤣

Was my thought as well. Pure speculation though.

Fantastic observation

I’ve gotten so used to watching online streams from questionable sources that I hardly noticed the ads.

I’m only good for the easy ones. What can I say?

It's been a decade of Ground Hog's Day.

You've summed up my concerns regarding the team rather succinctly. I've just lost the emotional edge your post includes.

Partially hiding the quote window when you are editing inside of a quoted post sucks. Oh well. Won't try that again.

I know. The blue plate special starts at 3, innit?

I would call what I saw last night struggling. But I think he should stay in the lineup in the short term, albeit in protected minutes. There is no doubt in my mind that some of what I perceived last night is due to his lack of time in camp, thus the cautious optimism. Still, he struggled.

Said noone. Why the need to go to the extreme to defend something that is a nuanced ?

Our captain did not play at the intensity level we saw out of Hall last night. At least that's how I saw it.

My takes.... Ugly, ugly 1st period by pretty much everyone. They looked like they had a 311 day layoff and 50% of the team never played with their linemates before. I thought Hall looked much more dynamic than Jack. I need Jack AND Hall to be that dynamic. Skinner's talent is too valuable to put with plumbers but he's got to adapt to what the rest of the team is doing too. I don't have an answer, but the guy does make ***** happen. Dahlin's D zone game was not very good. Staal's giveaway in front of the net was troubling. Risto's critics were justified last night. Cozens looked to fit on his line. I don't think he's ready to move into Staal's spot though. But he looked OK. Lost alot of puck battles I thought. Kept right after it though. He certainly wasn't the worst player out there. I really hate that teams can lay out guys like Staal and we just don't have an answer. Not only do we not have a guy to respond, but we also don't have a guy to do in kind. Wouldn't mind a couple of guys on our team that have the capability of being on the other end of those plays. I think we haven't seen one of our guys concussed for the lat time this season. PP1 looks like it'll score its share of goals. My goodness that 1st period goal was a pretty play.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of it either, but I can't say with any confidence that I know what's the better move overall.

Quite a few teams on that list that traded a significant number of 3rd rd picks. At 19% average its a low risk asset to move. And yeah, Buf is definitely below average by a fair degree in the 3rd round.

I guess I wasn't as struck as some of you. He looked to me like he was a step behind in the neutral zone and D zone. He almost appeared slow to me, and he's never looked slow to me any other time I've seen him play. He played better in the O zone but there were a number of times where he was clearly physically overmatched. He lost alot of puck battles. But he also looked like he had a good sense of play. He went to the rights spots and put his nose where it belonged, so that's good. His line was probably the most effective line of the night for Buffalo. He seemed to mesh well with his linemates. And he hustled. He competed. Overall my initial reaction is pretty neutral. I'm cautiously optimistic that we'll see obvious growth this season.

I wanna throw the other perspective out there. Skinner almost certainly doesn't need anyone else to be effective, but his two linemates do need him to be playing within the same system they are playing for the line's effectiveness to be maximized. I'm fairly sure Ralph's point here is that Skinner would be drawing down what Ralph wants Jack and RW1 doing with his freelance act. Same with Staal and Sam. So Ralph puts someone on those lines that will commit to the system to allow those two pairs to maximize their effectiveness within Ralph's system, And Skinner gets moved somewhere that has the least impact on the other two players. So why doesn't Ralph adapt to Skinner? If the team is built for Ralph's system except one guy, why would you change the system when it is just one guy, AND Jeff's certainly capable of adapting himself to that system are both valid responses. I understand and sympathize with both sides to the conversation here. There are plenty of successful coaches who adapted to their stars, Muckler being one, and also plenty of successful coaches who bent the team to the coach's will, Trotts and Laviolette come to mind immediately. Kreuger is of the Barry Trotts mold obviously. Lots of criticism here for Ralph not willing to adapt. Less so for Skinner not willing to adapt. It's interesting for sure. And in a short season there is virtually no time for this to be worked out.

They sure don’t look like a group that has played together long.