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Oh, and Lehner was out - still. SMH. The guy has been out most of the year from a self-inflicted stretching injury at the beginning of the season for pity's sake! He can't help that he's injured, but maybe the Sabres need look elsewhere in the off-season? Skill is important but durability is a close second. The most skilled goalie in the world isn't much good to a team when he's sitting on the bench is he? If he went out due to a huge collision in the crease defending against a goal, at least it would make it a little more palatable than going out from an activity that was basically on-ice Pilates, for cryin out loud!

Yup. That's a good point, he did kind of give up on the play at that point and looked at the officials while play continued - rookie mistake. But - he was fired up for the most part - too bad most of the team wasn't. Detroit is rather infamous this season for slow starts in the 1st - often falling behind the opposing team in shots on goal by 2 to 1 or greater margins. It was totally reversed against the Sabres; I think it was 12-5 in favor of the Wings at the end of the 1st. dunno if it falls on the team, or Bylsma, or both for not taking advantage of an opponents' demonstrated season long weakness and coming out with guns blazing. And Howard was in the net too - once the Sabres started shooting (last 3 minutes of the game) they started scoring. Even Howard, though, can look good when the opposing team only puts 4 SOGs in 20 minutes. smh A couple funny moments - before warm ups, there was a woman with a Hasek jersey on who kept pestering the Crowd Manager who was sitting next to me (I was right on the aisle) if she could lean on the tunnel railing when the Sabres came out for warm ups. She was like "What if I stand here and lean?" or "What if I keep one foot back by the seat and one foot out in the aisle?" Sigh!!! The crowd manager, who told someone later he'd been working at Joe Louis for 30 years, just smiled and shook his head no to all of her requests. And then another guy kept asking the crowd managers if he could talk to the Sabres to ask to buy a hockey stick. lol Uhm, NO!!!

Another piss-poor effort by the Sabres. I was at the game, in fact we had terrific seats in the 3rd row on the aisle next to the Sabres' bench. . The scoreboard doesn't reflect the offensive sleepwalking by the team thru the first 57 minutes. They only made 5 shots in the first, and 4 shots in the 2nd period. When Detroit went up 3-0 on the empty net goal (more poor play on the Sabres part), the Sabres had only made 5 shots on goal in the first 17 minutes of the 3rd period. A penalty by that idiot Gorges caused the 3rd PP of the 1st period, and a goal. You can't keep running up all those almost back to back PPs and expect to not get scored on. I wasn't impressed with either Bogosian or Gorges. Maybe because they're now officially eliminated from the playoffs (like that was ever a possibility with this team?) there was a lack of motivation? I would blame that on the coach - he should have them motivated and ready to play every time - if nothing else, some of these guys should be playing like their job was on the line in the off-season. Guys who WERE motivated - because they showed emotion - Eichel and Kane and Reinhart. They were pissed off in several instances - one where Eichel was clearly interfered with but no penalty call.

I notice that Kane, Eichel and Reinhart scored zero points tonight. Zilch. Zip. And they'd been on a red hot streak. Bylsma and his line changes.... Is this character really the Coach of Coaches for the Sabres? Our "Coach of The Next Chapter"? Is he to the Sabres what Quenneville was/is to the Blackhawks when he was hired in 2007? Or is he the new Ted Nolan?

Well, with Bylsma's line change - we won't see an amazing last second pass by Kane to Eichel for the win again, will we now? lol.

Big time face-palm for this decision. smh! Would Babcock have done this if we could have got him?

We should keep this topic alive and kicking forever, for the dark times when we despair of the Sabres ever being good again, and we need hope and joy.

My first impulse was to laugh at your joke. Then I realized... it might not be a joke; and that Disco could actually do something that awful. :cry:

LOL at a the idea of a bidding war for Fitzpatrick, if it does happen. What would the GMs involved be thinking? "We MUST have mediocrity at ANY price!!"? lol That guy is a career journeyman ham & egger backup.

Bylsma seems to enjoy tinkering with the lines - but I hope he leaves Eichel/Reinhart/Kane on the same line for the foreseeable future. This is the best Sabres combo I've seen in years, and appears to be getting even better.

Thanks! Definitely an elite goal.

Game winner with one second to go in OT! Wow!!!!!

Pretty much a gift call from the officials to Carolina - there was no intentional tripping or hooking and even worse they scored a goal as a result.

What great teamwork and a beautiful goal!!! Pretty as a postcard

Great work by Foligno!

If they're a ~90 point team next season, but not in the playoffs, then the rebuild will be on track, and I'll be pleased. If they're an ~80 point team next season, then I'll be writing "There's trouble in River City...." Next season will be crucial in judging the rebuild.

Hardcore, man. @#$%ing hardcore! :)

I've no concerns about the Tank itself. The Tank - no question - was the smart and right move at the time. Now we're in the stage of evaluating; how well did we use it? How effective are the results? That's what we'll be gauging GMTM on in 2016-17 and 2017-18. GMTM told us it would be faster than 5 years - well, this was year 1, and now the clock is ticking. Hopefully we have a lot more success next season than this we did in this season.

Yup. Look at their stats in 2005-06 and 06-07; they were pretty decent even on a squalid team. Who have we got, on the roster today, that we can build with in 2017? Reinhart, Eichel, ROR I would say. Kane.... maybe. Anyone else? Even 2 years before the ownership change and the real rebuild began, Chicago had more latent talent on the roster going into the rebuild than do the Sabres today, at least as I see it. Yup, I think definitely ROR - Kane - maybe.... BTW, I just crunched some numbers; projecting out for the remainder of the season, point estimates are as follows based on average points per game season to date; Buffalo -74 Calgary 74 Winnipeg 72 Edmonton 71 Toronto 68 So it looks like 25th or 26th place finish and 74 points.

That would have been 2007-08 when Kane and Toews had their rookie season. Chicago did have a few good players on the roster or in the minors even in their awful 05 and 06 seasons - Seabrook, Keith, Byfuglien, Bickell, Sharp that would prove to be important in their upcoming Cup run in 09-10 . Heck, they even had Corey Crawford as early as 2003 Is there anyone on this roster, other than Eichel/Reinhart, who we see as capable of supporting a real future push for the Stanley Cup? Foligno? Moulson? Gionta?

To want someone injured because they don't play for us; it's childish. I don't think going to Edmonton made McDavid happy either. I'm not sure I'd be happy to see even Marchand or Lucic seriously injured; I might view it as karma to an extent, but I don't think it would make me happy. I'd rather see guys like that beaten fair and square, not by injuries.

Another difference-making goal from a power play caused by a dumb Bogosian penalty. The other night he shot it into the stands for no good reason, and the resulting PP goal ultimately gave the other team the win. Maybe don't hack guys that aren't even near the puck in the back of the legs with the stick? :rolleyes:

Chicago Blackhawks went from a NHL Cellar team, to winning the Stanley Cup, in 3 seasons, or 4 seasons, depending on where you start measuring 2006-07 - they were 71 points and 3rd worst team in the NHL - I consider the rebuild started AFTER the end of this season; because that's when they had an ownership change, and management change; 2007-08 - in the offseason, ownership changes, they start the rebuild - 88 points - no playoffs, but 19th place in the league. They still hadn't even changed their coach yet - they still had Savard as coach - the coach of previous managment. 2008-09 - they hire their franchise coach, Joe Quenneville, 4 games into the regular season. Now things really take off. 104 points, 6th place in the league and they make it all the way to the conference FINALS. 2009-10; 112 points - 3rd best regular season record in the NHL, AND Stanley Cup Champions! That's 3 years by my count. Some argue that it's 4 years; that the rebuild started after the 05-06 season, but I don't think so. Nothing had changed management wise in the team between the 05-06 season, and 06-07 seasons. But regardless, this was a FAST rebuild. Hell, they were at EIGHTY EIGHT points and 19th place in the NHL and they still had Savard, who wasn't retained the next year The Sabres already HAVE their FRANCHISE COACH this season! The Sabres coach of choice; Dan Bylsma. The coach whom GMTM believes will carry us to the Stanley Cup finals. The Hawks didn't get their Franchise Coach until 2008-09, and the Hawks made 104 points that first season with Quenneville at the helm! I think I'm going easy on the Sabres by not comparing the 15-16 Sabres to the 08-09 Hawks; but even lining up this season's Sabres to the 07-08 Hawks, helmed by the soon to be fired Savard, we're falling behind; they were 88 points and 19th place - we'll be lucky to hit 76 and 25th place. GMTM needs to keep the Sabres train on schedule, and get some scoring power on the ice. His rebuild needs to show a lot of results next year! If we only crawl up to an ~80-82 pt level in 2016-17, I'm going to start losing real faith in the direction of the GMTM rebuild.

So what are we looking at next year? 80 points and 21st in the standings? Gonna take quite a few years to get to be a contender in the playoffs at that pace. GMTM said this was going to be a fast turn around - I think we should hold him to it in 2016-17. We should be at least in the running for a WC spot then.

The gauge I've been using is the league standings rather than last year's team. In that regard, we're still pretty far down the ladder; we've seen some improvement, but not as much as I'd hoped -While I never considered playoffs in 2016 - I thought it ridiculous that anyone was.... I hoped we'd hit 80-82 points, and a ~20th in the standings. We've had some real bright spots with Eichel and Reinhart - but we're going to need a heckuva lot MORE talent to put together a serious playoff ready team. They're a good nucleus to build around.... but a lot more building must be done. We should look at every single player in our lineup thusly; is this player realistically capable of supporting our team in defeating Chicago, Washington, Dallas, St. Louis, and the other top ten teams in a playoff game in 2018? IF not, then why keep them?