SabresBaltimore

I liked exactly one of those players when they were in Buffalo.

Oh him. I totally forgot about that guy already. Whose the Nashville equivalent of Tom Brady that's going to set Derek Grant up to score all these goals?

I don't get the reference/joke.

I'm hoping we can keep this winning thing going. It's not going to be easy though. Nashville is a good ways behind both Minnesota and Chicago in their division and has St. Louis nipping at their heels. They are 7-3-0 in their last 10 with a 3 game winning streak, so they've been playing pretty well too.

Agreed.

So I guess he's not sick still?

Foligno has had a good season imho. He works hard and I think he deserves to be on the second line right now. In the long run though I don't want to see Foligno and probably not Carrier there either. At least once Nylander is ready. Both are probably bottom 6 guys on a good team.

Here are the projected lines:

Well lets hope they bounce back after that last game. My hopes of a playoff spot (which were already pretty low) might be gone completely now, but maybe they'll make it interesting down the stretch. We've seen them play good, complete games this season, just not consistency, and often not when it counts the most. I'm hoping they at least make progress at consistency for the rest of the season. It looks like Ennis is back tonight, and may play tomorrow, but apparently they are taking it slow. Nilsson may be out with an illness so Ullmark has been called up.

This is also the anthem of Buffalo Sports, at least in the last decade. If you're so convinced we won't make the playoffs, why are you bothering to watch?

Yes, but especially against Toronto. If we go 4-1-0 (making us 4-2-0 for the season) in our 5 games that's 8 points to their 2, putting us only 1 point ahead of them (assuming we match their record otherwise down the stretch). However if 1-2 of those 4 wins are OT wins, it diminishes the value greatly.

I'm going to say 90 points.

I think the critical deciding point will be how we do in our 5 games against the Leafs, the one game against Philly, and maybe the 1 game at the end of the season against Tampa. However that game will likely be important regardless if we're still in the playoff hunt at the end of the season.. Would I put money on us making the playoffs? No. Am I hopeful we'll still have a shot next month? Yes. March? Maybe. April? Tough to say..

Basement team or not, we have a chance at the playoffs, making us a bubble team. We're only 5 points behind Toronto too (but they have 2 games in hand). We're 7 points behind Philly for a wild card spot (with 3 games in hand) We're 8 points behind Boston (with 4 games in hand) Winning this game means a lot. But then so did winning that back to back against Boston, which we didn't do. More than anything we need to start being the teams ahead of us. We can't do that with Boston anymore, but we've still got 4 more games against Toronto (not counting tonight) coming up, and 1 more against Philly. We're 5-4-1(.55 points) in our last 10, and we're 10-8-4 (.545) since Eichel came back. That's not great, but it's certainly better than the 7-9-5 (.452) we went without him. If we went .55 all season, we'd have 47 points, putting us almost tied with Toronto for the last playoff spot. I prefer to be optimistic that things are turning around, and we'll at least have a shot at a playoff spot in March.

I'm not sure how I feel about Byslma, but I'm not really convinced that we'd be in a playoff spot with Babcock. Maybe though. I'd certainly have preferred him to Byslma based on their past records. For as bad as we've played at times, we're really not that far out from a playoff spot, making us a bubble team. I keep hoping Byslma will open up the offense instead of trying to play a defensive style of game because we don't have a very deep blue line and on paper we have a pretty solid top 3+ lines, especially with Ennis back if he can play the kind of game that's brought him success in the past.

So you think if we had Babcock, we'd be a playoff team right now?

I got to watch yesterday after I got back in town, but I missed those 2 pretty bad looking losses on Thursday/Friday. I'm hoping that we play another strong game tonight, especially since it's Toronto. Apparently Toronto moved into the playoffs too. If they make the playoffs and we don't I'm going to be frustrated. They got rewarded for tanking, while we seem to be somewhat punished for it..

I'm going to miss the next two games, but hopefully we can keep some momentum going.

Ah yeah, I guess we'd just to give him a qualifying offer. Goalies don't have a minimum game requirement apparently.. One goaltender who is under contract in 2017-18 or will be a restricted free agent at the expiration of his current contract immediately prior to 2017-18. If the club elects to make a restricted free agent goaltender available in order to meet this requirement, that goaltender must have received his qualifying offer prior to the submission of the club's protected list.

Well RFA aside, the exposure rule says 17-18: iii) One goaltender who is under contract in 2017-18 So we'd still have to resign one or both of them I think..but I'm bad at the contract stuff..

Well that simplifies things greatly. I'd protect him anyways. Let Vegas have Bogosian or Gorges if they want.

Both of them are UFA next year. We'd have to sign 1 or both of them, and if we only sign 1 of them, we can't protect them.

Yeah, my original list looked mostly like that (minus Carrier since I think he's safe anyways with Gionta instead if we resign him, which I'd like to do for the right price). I'm also not sure I'd protect Lehner. The problem is, I think we're forced to protect Gorges and possibly Bogo based on their contracts..

Yeah. I'm curious about that too. Technically this is the 4th season he's played some games for us, but it was 7 in 13/14, and only 2 in 14/15. Did those fall under his 10 game tryout?

Probably, but it was on my brain, so I was curious if other people had thoughts on it. The list would certainly be fluid until the deadline. Interesting. I didn't know that (again I'm bad at this). Honestly if we don't have to protect him, I wouldn't bother. I suspect his injuries, and general performance in the last few years along with the price of his contract makes him unappealing, but I could be wrong.