SabresBaltimore

Another 1 seed falls as Cornell goes down. Notre Dame and Minnesota Duluth are through to frozen four. With Providence out, do the Sabres have any prospects left in the tournament? Here's today's Elite 8 games: 4 Boston U. (Hockey East) vs. 2 Michigan (Big 10) Mar 25 4:00PM (ESPN 2) ------------------------------------------------- 1 Ohio St. (Big 10) vs. 2 Denver (NCHC) Mar 25 6:30PM (ESPNU)

Yeah, it was hard to get a shot through and like you said Hawkey stopped the ones that did, including a few really good chances. I'm hoping they'll be good again next season. I'm not sure how much turn over there will be. It sounded like Clarkson's top scorer was a 22 year old sophmore whose being heavily scouted. It wouldn't surprise me if he leaves for the pros. They also talked about having a lot of "old" players so I'm not sure if most of the team is upperclassman. To be honest I've followed the women's team far more closely the last few years than the men's. Even when I saw the men's team was doing well this year, I didn't really pay too much attention to the roster. NHL Network shows some college hockey, but it nevers seems to be ECAC. Most ECAC hockey seems to be on NESN or some other Boston area network. In other games, right now Cornell is losing 2-1 to Boston College in the third. I'm definitely rooting against Cornell. :) Tonight's Elite 8 Schedule 3 Minn. Duluth (NCHC) vs. 4 Air Force (Atlantic) Mar 24 9:00 PM (ESPN 2) ------------------------------------------------ 1 Notre Dame (Big 10) vs. Providence (Hockey East) Mar 24 6:00 PM (ESPNU)

Bummer. Clarkson lost 1-0 to Providence. Minnesota-Duleth and MSU-Mankato are heading to over time tied at 2.

The #1 Overall seed in St. Cloud State is out. I didn't watch the game but Air Force seemed to beat them quite handily. Meanwhile, it took Notre Dame almost all of the first over time period to beat Michigan Tech. Clarkson just started. Let's Go Tech!

Puck drops on the first game in about 30 minutes. I may watch simply because if Clarkson wins later tonight they'll play the winner tomorrow night for a chance at the frozen four.

Ah, OK. Anyways..I'm excited for the tournament! I may only watch the Clarkson game though. Hoping there will be a few more of those :) Notre Dame is going to be really tough to beat though, assuming they make it past Providence.

What I meant was going to college to me seems to give the player more control of how/when they go pro than juniors. Some players are good enough for the AHL, but not good enough for the NHL yet after 1 year. Juniors doesn't allow that if you're 18/19. I think that's dumb/hurts player development. If they are good enough for the AHL, they should play there. What good does 1-2 more years dominating in Juniors really do them? If they went to college instead, they could just leave college after their freshman year to play in the AHL and hope to prove themselves/earn a callup. Personally I don't really care about them becoming FA after 4 years in college. What I meant was if they don't make it right away/at all they have the fallback of a college degree.

Oh, and this may just be me talking out of my ass, but I feel like US Collegiate hockey is on the rise. Is that due to the rise of Big 10 hockey/the aforementioned D1 expansion? Personally if I was a Canadian kid who wanted/expected to go Pro, I'd rather do US college hockey over Canadian Juniors for 2 reasons: If going pro doesn't work out you spend 4 years playing and end with a degree to fall back on. If it does work out, you can leave school early without penalty. This includes going to the AHL to develop/get paid sooner. It's always annoyed me that our Juniors prospects have to play in Juniors or for the Sabres until they are what 20? I forget exactly, but those contracts seem to hurt player development.

I was looking at Clarkson's roster. They have 3 Finns, a Latvian and a German to go along with their typical Canadian heavy (17 players) with some Americans (4 + 1 dual citizen) mixed in roster. Looking back at old rosters though, having Finns isn't a new thing, just something they hadn't done in several years. During the lean years, it seemed to be a lot more Americans. I wonder if the success of the woman's team has had any effect on their recruiting for the men's team at all. Probably not, but it can't hurt to show such a small school can still compete with the bigger ones.

I would watch more Woman's hockey if it was easier to watch. Or at least Clarkson Woman's hockey. I graduated in 2004, so I just missed out on them having a team. I always feel bad they seems to have a much smaller crowd than the men despite the fact that they are the far better team, especially the last 5 years. They had a decent sized pep band in Minneapolis, but it sounded the pep band that went to support the men's team in Lake Placid was bigger. To be fair though it's probalby way cheaper/easier to go to Placid from Potsdam. I feel like the woman's game was gotten a lot more exciting the last few years. In the Olympics it usually comes down to US and Canada, but the Finns have a decent team now as well. One of Clarkson's top scorers is from the Czech Republic. Professionally first you had the NWHL paying its players and now the older/more established CWHL is now paying its players. I do know that for the first round of the NCAA tournament, Clarkson's website had a free stream of the game. It looks like it's maybe the same feed they run on the closed circuit campus TV station. The audio was the radio commentator I think. I need to see if that's available for all the games, or if they made a special exception for the NCAA tournament. Typically I just follow them via the Watertown news and UHCHO website. On the men's side, ECAC doesn't seem to be shown nationally. At best NESN shows a few games for like Harvard or Brown.

Yeah, I went back and did a conference breakdown. Just the automatic bid for them this year. Everyone else has at least 2.

The bracket was released. As a Clarkson alumni I'm super excited they got an at-large bid despite losing the ECAC final to Princeton in OT. That put's 3 from the ECAC in the bracket too. Princeton beat Cornell in the ECAC semis, but Cornell was ranked 2 in the country coming in. Conference Teams Atlantic - 1 Big 10 - 4 ECAC - 3 Hockey East - 3 NCHC - 3 WCHA - 2 The Big 10 is leading the way, with 4 teams (including 2 of the top 4 seeds). Here's the full bracket: https://www.ncaa.com/interactive-bracket/icehockey-men/d1 ------------------------------------------------- 1 St. Cloud St (NCHC). vs. 4 Air Force (Atlantic) Mar 23 4:00PM (ESPNU) 2 MSU-Mankato (WCHA) vs. 3 Minn. Duluth (NCHC) Mar 23 7:30PM (ESPN3) ------------------------------------------------- 1 Cornell (ECAC) vs. 4 Boston U. (Hockey East) Mar 24 1:00PM (ESPN News) 2 Michigan (Big 10) vs. 3 Northeastern (Hockey East) Mar 24 4:30PM (ESPN News) ------------------------------------------------- 1 Ohio St. (Big 10) vs. 4 Princeton (ECAC) Mar 24 3:30PM (ESPNU) 2 Denver (NCHC) vs. 3 Penn St. (Big 10) Mar 24 7:00PM (ESPN3) ------------------------------------------------- 1 Notre Dame (Big 10) vs. 4 Michigan Tech (WCHA) Mar 23 3:00PM (ESPN2) 2 Providence (Hockey East) vs. 3 Clarkson (ECAC) Mar 23 6:30PM (ESPNU)

The men definitely have a tough draw. I'm just happy they finally got back after 10 years. The ECAC final 4 was on some channel I'd never heard of before called Eleven Sports. It wasn't live, but I watched both games. They looked very uneven. The went down 4-1 to Harvard on Friday only to score 3 goals in 4 minutes in the 3rd period. Then they scored super late in the final against Princeton, only to lose in overtime. The win against Harvard was enough to lock-up an at-large bit. Back on topic, there was a pretty good article on the Clarkson woman on USCHO yesterday: http://www.uscho.com/2018/03/18/nothing-comes-easily-for-womens-hockeys-latest-dynasty/ Oh and if anyone didn't see the goal: http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=22825585 Elizabeth Giguere is only a freshman too. I think their entire top line is back next year. Gabel is a junior and Michaela Pejzlova is a sophomore. Clarkson has a really tough road ahead next year losing 2 of their All-American team (http://ahcahockey.com/allamer/2018.php) players in Tiley and Harmon. Gabel is a Junior though. They may have to rely more on scoring next year to win games. I have no idea what their goal tending will look like next season, and Harmon provided a lot of points to go with her really solid defensive play. I wonder if Harmon will make the woman's team next Olympics. I'm hoping she plays for the NWHL next year. She was drafted by the Beauts. Then again last year's Captain (Caley Mercer) was too, and she entered the CWHL and is playing for a Chinese Team in that league instead.

Well it's a rematch from the ECAC final. Prior to Clarkson winning in 2014, all the winners had been from the WHCA, so either way the ECAC gets it's 3rd title. It's still way behind, but good for the league, and hopefully also for woman's collegiate hockey. I do find it pretty funny that the coverage is on Big 10 network, and the 2 Big 10 associated schools were eliminated. Last year they just showed the final, this year we got all of the frozen four. I think they signed a four year agreement. I think the men's tournament will be on ESPN. Anyways, Let's Go Tech!

As a Clarkson alumni, I'm rooting for the repeat.

Thanks!

I'm simply comparing the number roster size this year (26) to the projected roster size for next year (16) given current contracts. But that must be counting IR, since max is 23, so really the number is 7 not 10. However having exactly 23 people signed would give us no depth. Total contracts (which includes prospects and minors, etc) we're down from 45 this year to 26 next year. 45 seems to be the standard across the league.

I hope you're right, but until one of those things happens, I'm going based on what the current numbers say, which leaves us with not a lot of cap space to sign a lot of players for next season.

No one will take Molson($5m) from us. I'm not sure we could get rid of Bogosian ($5.1m) either, especially after his injury this year. Maybe if he comes back and has a good remainder of the season someone would want to take him (assuming Botteril wants to trade him). We could probably trade Pominville ($5.6). Who do you see getting moved away to free up cap space next year?

Can we really afford to keep Kane? Next year we have just under 18 million in cap room and have to sign roughly 10 players. If we give Kane the big payout he's going to want to stay here, I'm not sure that leaves us enough to sign all the other players we need. Now after next season we gain 10.6m in cap space when Molson's contract and Pominville are done. So we sacrifice next year and play a bunch of cheap players and wait for 2019-20 to sign what we need? And that all assumes Kane stays healthy. He's yet to play a full 82 games, and only has played 70 or more games in 3 of his 9 seasons.

I'd hate to lose him, but I think it was already inevitable. I'd rather get something back from him than nothing. Why would Kane want to re-sign in Buffalo? Especially after how awful we are this season. And in traditional Buffalo fashion he's having a possible career year in the last year of his contract. I'd have no confidence that this year isn't just a blip though. He's only had 30 goals once (he's averaging closer to 20/year), and he's never been close to a point/game player. Plus he's got injury issues (has never played a full 82, and has only played 70 or more games in 3/9 seasons). The injuries are probably why he's only hit 30 once, but it doesn't change his ppg production. The only way I see him staying is if we give him several dump trucks of money. Will he be worth it, or will he be the next Molson, Leino, etc? I'm already worried Okposo is moving to the overpaid category too. We'll see if this season is just an anomaly or if it was last season that was the anomaly for him. Plus, we have a lot of free agents this off-season (although tbh, I'm hoping we don't resign many of them and sadly Molson still has 1 more year), but we'll still need to sign roughly 10 players, with just under $18m to work with. If we give 8-10 of that Kane, that's less than $2m/person. If the timing was better, next year Molson frees up $5 the following year, and Pominville 5.6M, which would let us be able to manage another big contract.

Can't wait. I'm hopefully going to get up to Buffalo at the end of the month for a game, but for now Center Ice is a go!

I'd like this idea, especially if it keeps him around the Sabres organization after he retires as a player. If your injury scenario takes place though, would we have to sign him to a new/different contract and would doing so prevent him from going to the Olympics?

Thanks!

As nice as losing a big ugly contract (Molson, Bogosian) would be, I'd be happy to lose Kulikov over both Ullmark and Carrier. It's going to be interesting to see all the wheeling and dealing between now and the announcement of the Expansion Draft results. Although I'd expect them to just talk to Kulikov now while they have an exclusive window and wait to sign him in July 1st and still take Carrier or Ullmark from us for the expansion draft.