Drunkard

Bogosian's contract is no where near the anchor that the contracts of Moulson, Ennis, or Gorges are. It's only 3 more seasons and he's won't even turn 30 until it's over which is still considered prime years for defenseman. Bogosian was serviceable while in Atlanta and Winnipeg under however many coaches they had over that time period and he looked fine under Nolan when he first came to Buffalo. It was only under DB's jacked up hail mary/fast break style system that he fell apart. I'd much rather see Vegas take Ennis, since I don't think there's a chance they'd take Moulson.

Any dollar suppression in his contract would have to be offset by a shorter term. The only way he'd sign for less is if the contract is shorter and he has another chance to cash in down the road while he's still in his prime. I'd rather not take that risk.

8 year deal at somewhere between $7-9 million per season is my guess. It damn well better be an 8 year deal though. Keep him locked up for his entire 20's.

I agree to a point, but I would also place a value on positions of need, whether it's forwards, defensemen, or even handedness. If our pipeline is chock full of right wingers and we're short of left wingers and I'm drafting next and the two highest guys on my board are a right winger who is rated a 8.7 and a left winger who is valued an 8.6 or 8.5 there's a good chance I forego BPA and grab the left winger. It all depends on how closely they are graded.

Do you have reading comprehension issues? I said I'd love to see them bounce back, not that I expect it to happen. That being said, I'd still protect Girgensons and Bogosian from the expansion draft at this point. I'd protect Girgensons because he's cheap and I'd rather expose guys like Ennis and your hero Moulson and I'd protect Bogosian because we don't have anyone better except Ristolainen and McCabe who I'd also protect. For the record I expect guys like Ennis, Moulson, and Gorges to continue to be the salary cap anchors that they have been. Girgensons may not rebound, but he's still young and cost controlled so he's not really a concern. If he gets pushed out of the lineup by guys like Nylander, Baptiste, and Bailey you can always expose him to waivers and send him to Rochester if nobody claims him. Sending him down would have minimal salary cap implications because he shouldn't earn much more than a player on an ELC.

I think the player evaluations/draft grades are in for a positional valuation shift similar to a market correction in real estate or the stock market. People say to draft BPA because you can always balance things out later with trades but when defenseman command such a premium on the trade market, it shouldn't take long for that to be reflected in other areas. Defensive prospects of equal "talent" will be seen as more valuable than their forward counterparts. It's only a matter of time.

A buyout would be stupid because while it cuts the cap hit basically in half it extends the term out twice as long. So instead of having Gorges cost us $3.9 million against the cap this year and finally being done with him we'd essentially deal with half his hit this year and half his hit next year. Moulson's 2 years at $5 million essentially become 4 years at $2.5 million. We've got Eichel and Reinhart on ELC's and McCabe is on a sweetheart of a deal so it's best to absorb these bad contracts while we can rather than dragging them out into the time periods where we'll be paying those guys real money. Instead of buying these bums out we should be looking to unload them on teams that have the cap space (Arizone, Jersey, Vegas, etc.). Toronto's biggest coup wasn't winning the lottery for Matthews it was finding ways to get out from under all the bad contracts they had (Clarkson, Princess Phaneuf, Kessel, etc.). Age mostly. Moulson is already way over the hill and Bogosian is still in/near his prime age as a defenseman.

That would be nice. I'd love to see him and some of the other guys who struggled under DB rebound.

Sweet. So now he's destined to be as awesome as Zemgus the Destroyer or whatever you tagged him as before his game fell off a cliff.

The new GM will also have to kiss McDermott's wrestling ring (since he doesn't have any for football). I give Pegula a hard time for his Pittsburgh fetish but at least they've won. Now we're trying to emulate a team that's never even won anything. This should end well.

He hasn't won any games yet either though. You're setting the bar way too low. Because Buffalo (or something). Buffalo - where Pittsburgh cast offs and also rans come to get paid.

Maybe in a deal for them to take someone else he can go to Vegas but the Sabres better not just leave him exposed in the expansion draft. Not that he's all that good but we need to protect all the younger cheap guys to encourage Vegas to take one of our overpaid contracts off our hands. O'Reilly Okposo Kane Foligno Girgensons Larsson Carrier Should be our protected forwards so we can cross our fingers and hope they select Moulson or Ennis.

Well played, PA. It should also brought up that he would have never gotten the job to begin with if not for the BS pro Pittsburgh nepotism.

This to a T. Based on talent/potential Guhle may have to play in our top 4 on the left hand side behind McCabe. If we can bring in another guy to play on the left in our top 4 though it would be possible to shelter him on the 3rd pair while also bumping Gorges down to either 7th defenseman or (preferably) down to Rochester.

You should never down play the pure awesomeness that is Jimmy "Top 6" Vesey.

While that may be true (I'd love to see a breakdown over time) the GM can usually control that by who he decides to even bring in for an interview. They can't hire someone the GM dislikes if they never get invited to come in and meet the owners in the first place.

Why would he go all the way into the woods when he has all those giant hats he can use instead?

McDermott isn't going to like that.

This isn't new. They use revenue sharing as their primary justification to continually raise ticket prices. I like it when my welfare queens are billionaires. Discipline - to charge fans more despite an increasingly crappy product Structure - to hold firm to revenue guidelines in order to get that sweet, sweet, free money Communication - to tell the fans you basically have no choice but to raise prices Character - to have no issues passing the collection plate to the fans and the league and to maintain a straight face while doing it

Done. You seem to have an eye for cross promotional marketing. I'm thinking Tonka sized fracking drills for every child in attendance at all Bills, Sabres, Amerks, and Bandits games. Hook 'em while they're young right? We should also replace Sabretooth with our new mascot Fracky the oil rig. Take a page out of the Joe Camel playbook. A real character driving organization if I ever saw one. How would you like to be in charge of marketing?

I will trade Eichel (hopefully I can hoodwink Minnesota for Jason Zucker and his +34) but I can't extend Moulson. He's a (-) player. Unless religious idols get an automatic +5 added to their stats. That would turn his -4 into a +1 and in that case I can go as far as 10 years $100 million. I hope he'll take that given the demand on the market.

Unfortunately my heathen religious views are too well documented to be hired. Plus I accidentally brought white wine to the interview and I declined to purchase the snake oil that Russ Brandon was peddling in front of the building before hand. These factors resulted in them escorting me from the building before I could preach the gospel of +/- and warn the Pegula's that Eichel is an entitled prick while McDermott has earned the right to choose his own boss based on his impressive record as a head coach in the NFL. 0-0 man. He's undefeated!

Based on +/- they are all dead weight, except Taylor Fedun and his impressive +3 in 27 games. We need to ditch everyone else and build around him.

We still love you, man, but that doesn't change the fact that Pittsburgh was the tankiest tank that ever did tank, and their reward for it was multiple Cups.

I think so too. He was solid in Winnipeg/Atlanta and he looked great when we first traded for him. If we can sign Antipin and he can hold down the #4 spot I think our defense will seem much improved by improving the system alone under a new coach. Sure another top 4 guy would be preferred for depth, injury fill in, and to bump Antipin or Bogosian down to the bottom pair if/as needed but it's not like a top 4 of: McCabe Ristolainen Antipin Bogosian Is going to be horrible. Given the expansion draft, most teams will be going the 7-3-1 route anyway so there's a good chance their top 4's won't be that much better than that.