dudacek

I don’t see any reason for the Sabres not to entice R2 with a 1-way deal next year. From the Sabres perspective, he’s a good AHL player who can fill in in Buffalo and May still have some upside. They can afford to pay him an NHL salary in the minors. From his perspective the cash should be enough to give North America one more shot.

This would be pretty much my ideal semi-reasonable summer: Sign Fleury 2 years, $6.5 per to replace Anderson Trade 2024 VGK 2nd and Anders Bjork to Chicago for Connor Murphy and Brett Connolly (buried, cap dump) Sign Vinnie Hinostroza 1 year, $1.5 million Sign Curtis Lazar 2 years, $1 million per to replace Eakin Sign a handful of waivable vet tweeners for depth to replace Tokarski, Subban, Hayden, Butcher, Pysyk and Caggiula (or just re-sign them if they are willing to take a chance on Rochester.) Sign R2, Bryson, Murray, Biro and UPL to cheap, short-term deals. Sign Victor Olofsson to a 4-year $4.5 million deal Sign Tage Thompson to a 6-year, $6.5 million per extension Draft Jiricek, Gauthier, Beck and Miroshnichenko with our first 4 picks. It would leave us above the floor at about $65 million, with a depth chart (not lines) looking something like this: Skinner Thompson Tuch Asplund Mittelstadt Olofsson Girgensons Cozens Okposo Quinn Krebs Peterka Lazar Hinostroza * Murray Ruotsalainen (Caggiula) (Hayden) Samuelsson Dahlin Power Murphy Bryson Jokiharju Fitzpatrick *(Butcher) (Pysyk) Fleury Lukkonnen *(Subban) (Tokarski)

So did I see the @Derrico family on my TV last night - young Dad, dark rim glasses, white Sabres sweater with blue sleeves, sitting with Mom and kids?

Dell’s style is so bad. He’s constantly overplaying things and losing his angles and even his net entirely. Games where he gets lit up are inevitable. But you may be right. Aggression is less of a liability behind teams that lose coverage constantly like the Amerks, and teams like Belleville lack the skill to exploit him, so when he guesses right he can look spectacular. In terms of what makes an NHL goalie, UPL is far superior IMO. And I think he’s better built to take a structured team for a long playoff run.

Watching the AHL games I have this year, you don’t see many teams packed with top prospects. Biros and Fitzpatricks sure, but the Peterkas aren’t all that common.

Murphy missed 30 games 4 years ago and 25 this year. He’s missed a combined 40 games his other 7 years combined.

Has Laaksonen been a healthy scratch? They dressed 7 D tonight and none of them were him, and that’s not including Mule and Davidson, who might be back for Utica. Having Eliot, Teves and Tischke ahead of him would be troubling.

Do people not consider Murray, R2 and Laaksonen prospects any more? You’ve also got Biro, Weissbach and Rousek expected back.

Happy for Murray. He hasn’t looked good. R2 on the other hand…not surprised he set it up.

First playoff series win for the organization since 2011. The tide has finally turned.

Belleville has probably been the better team when cheating is allowed. There are some incredibly blatant non-calls. Lets finish this.

I don't see Asplund getting pushed out by anyone for quite some time. Character forwards who provide outstanding defence and 25-30 points in a bottom 6 role have jobs on every team as long as they're affordable. The only other player on the team or in the system right now who meets that profile is Girgensons. Unless his game falls off, he should be here until he prices himself out of a job.

Am i correct to conclude you don't invest a lot of time in player interviews?

@Thorny posited that the higher a team is picking in the draft the more likely they would be to cave to consensus. "We can't take him here, the fanbase would kill me." We saw something similar when Forton wanted McAvoy in 2016 and acquiesced to consensus. ***** consensus. Do your homework and take the guy you love. Live and die with what you believe, or fire your staff and take the next available guy on GA's consensus board.

I’m seeing similarities to 2017 this year, where the middle 3rd of the round is intriguing and both Sabres picks could be better than many ahead of them. Vegas won’t be picking in the top 10 next year. Take the pick and grab this year’s Robert Thomas or Nick Suzuki.

As far as the pipeline goes, Portillo, Levi and Johnson are still in it. Next year you are going to see people paying more attention to Rosen, Poltapov, Kisakov, Bloom, Nadeau, Costantini, Huglen, Rousek and others, many of whom could be on the Amerks in 23/24. And 4 shiny new toys will be added in the first 4 picks of the draft. 2021/22/23 that should keep the pipeline gushing for a while.

Make the change and we are in agreement. My issue is that fans treat them like a BPA list. That's why we get things like the mass freak out over Quinn.

The issue is not about the pipeline, its about the Amerks. It's mostly about Peterka and Quinn expected to arrive in the NHL early and Johnson and Portillo staying an unexpected year

The bolded entirely supports my point. Some scouts had Makar as high as 3. Some had him as low as 17. Your board (the consensus) whiffed by having him at 7 because it gave as much weight to the bad scouts as it gave the good ones.

I think you missed my point. The Internet would have melted down if Makar had gone #1 that year. That’s because the internet had put its trust in “the consensus” instead of any smart scouts advocating for Makar.

Started listening to the pod a few weeks ago. Enjoy it. I like Joe. He’s a step up from most of the familiar faces. I’d rather they bring in a new voice than move an old one.

I never perceived that. Considered them a terrible expansion team with terrible management.

I'm interested in all of the lists, but that's really the only one that I invest much care into, because it represents a consensus of what the pros are thinking. Whether you like or hate Button or Scouch or Pronman, or whoever, most of the other lists are the products of one hard-working individual, or a small staff that cant touch the resources of an actual NHL team. And even with McKenzie, his list is an amalgamation of resources that likely have a wide range of credibility. Consensus is a faulty standard when consensus indicates Nolan Patrick is a better prospect than Cale Makar.

Depends on how you define tanking I guess. At its essence, I think it's about that point where a switch flips and an organization is not actively trying to win. If it's defined as being deliberately bad today in order to get better in the future it happens every year, although GMs usually wait until the deadline. Montreal and Philly tanked out the season after their seasons fell apart. Arizona entered the season tanking. If you define it as finishing last at all costs, it's only ever happened twice IMO: Lemieux and McDavid.

Personally, I'd get rid of it; It doesn't seem very effective in preventing tanking (the reason it allegedly exists) or encouraging parity (the reason the draft allegedly exists) But drilling down to the essence of what @SDS said up thread: the NHL sells hope. Does the lottery generally provide more hope or less/ I'd say more, so it will continue.