DarthEbriate

Is Pegula going to stay and watch the game in person? Or did he just mosey through Montreal for his Sabres appearance of the regular season? Montreal smells all the blood. Youppi revels in blood. Habs 6, Sabres 1

This looks right. It's easy to give up 3 goals in 3 minutes when you've got all those pucks in play.

After the riot, sitting on the curb with hands zip-tied, bleary-eyed from the waves of tear gas, @Weave waits to be put on the bus to somewhere for processing and is heard to utter, "I've lost my love for the riot. I don't want to be here anymore." The Sabres cop cuts the zips and cheerily replies, "Well, off you go then. Don't forget to come to Fan Appreciation Night in April!"

You don't trade away a top 5 pick (draft #6 after another team moves up in the lottery). That's a player you can immediately plug into your starting lineup. He's on an ELC which provides economical advantages compared to other teams. And he's effectively learning on the job. It's the efficient way to go.

Vegas is about 6 weeks away from being in good enough shape record-wise to LTIR someone with a recovery time that aligns with the start of the playoffs. Then, they've got that convenient month of prep time before the trade deadline.

Yes. Yes. Not yet. The loser of Habres-Sabres tomorrow will be in last place in the Atlantic.

Ah, my bad. I listed instead of quantifying. The top-15 picks are the ones you expect to contribute in the NHL and any lower picks being just gravy. The Lightning have had to have some of those amazing picks (Kucherov, Point) because they've only had 4 top-15 picks since they bottomed out for Stamkos/Hedman. Those other four are Connolly, Koekoek, Drouin, and Foote. Drouin and... nothing. All told, the Lightning have had 6. The Sabres have had 11. It should be enough high-end talent to build a solid core as the Lightning did. And then you can hit on a couple mid-round home runs to boot (Hagel). The issue, as always with the Pegula-era Sabres, are the players aren't necessarily a good fit, there's a bad culture, poor leadership, and GMs changing up the team to match their visions and therefor jettisoning the not-my-guys of previous regimes, and so on. And palm trees. Edit: Had to do some more research for this one. Reinhart was on the 2nd with Krueger, but finished the season under Granato on the top line between Skinner and Olofsson. Asplund-Mittelstadt-Thompson rounded out the top 6.

Heck, I could be GM for the Sabres. There's no reason to suspect it would take me longer than Adams to make the playoffs. Future internet posters could all say "yeah, they made the playoffs, but it was with Adams' roster." As if that mattered. I wouldn't even need to be the owner's toady!

Hagel is a tier below, but he's certainly been a good pick (for someone else). The problem is, unlike Tampa, the Sabres didn't need to hit lower round home runs because the following top-15 picks are still active in the league: Myers, Ristolainen, Nylander (sorta occasionally), Reinhart, Eichel, Mittelstadt, Dahlin, Cozens, Quinn, Power, and maybe Savoie someday.

They really are on the Power timeline. When Power is 27 years old, that's when the GM and owner expect this team to be competing for championships. Don't worry, because Dahlin and Samuelsson will still be under contract in 2029-30.

GM Sheevyn is on record as saying he has been provided all the resources he needs and does not have an internal cap because he's been saving that money for future long-term contracts. If we take him at his word, (and we would be so very, very wrong to do so), then it is his fault for all the innumerable missteps along the way since his hiring, from never getting a starting caliber goaltender either extended (Ullmark) or who was under 38 years old (and Anderson was no longer a 1B option, he was a solid 2), not getting a veteran defensive D for Power, not addressing a gaping top-6 hole ever, waiting and overpaying for 3 seasons of Girgensons/Okposo on the 3rd line compared to their production, etc.

Perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them. GM Sheevyn and Darth Pegulas the Wise should've said: To the forwards: score 8 goals next game and I'll trade the player with the most points to Florida. To the D-corps and goalies: get a shutout next game and I'll trade one of you to Vegas.

But a future-focused draft-and-develop team that doesn’t have access to palm trees would love to acquire some draft picks.

So… they’ve canceled 3 practices since the collapse against Colorado? Seems like Appert could’ve used some of that time to work on the power play without Dahlin on the point.

Exactly. Adams is unlikely to go anywhere except up the hierarchy. Pegula is too distracted by the Bills’ prosperity to worry about a pathetic little hockey team.

Yup. 9 games ago they were 3rd in the Atlantic and needed a veteran defensive RHD to pair with Power. A couple of those teams have up a bit, but no one has gone on any run. It's the same GM that had a team 1 point shy of a playoff spot and lost a scoring winger in the offseason to surgery (before UFA) and made no moves to the forward ranks except to re-sign Jost. Never seized any opportunity. Unless the Sabres were to go on a 12-game winning streak to get them back to wild card pace, the season is already over.

Sneaky, sneaky Toronto. Good on them for scheduling to antagonize their divisional opponents. I wonder if they've done something similar to Boston in the past.

Fear leads to the Cap Side. See, there's two sides to every Schwarz Concept: the Cup side and the Cap side.

The main punishment... is for Benson (and his points totals this season) and his skating mostly with Cozens and the ghost of Quinn. He's third in LW time on ice and like everyone, he's provided little to nothing (1 goal) on the power play.

2/22/2011 - Introductory press conference “Starting today, the Buffalo Sabres' reason for existence will be to win a Stanley Cup.” - Terry Pegula The payroll went down coming out of the tank -- rookie deals for Eichel, not trying to win, etc. Got up to 10th with Eichel making good cash... 6/17/2020 - Zoom conference "I mentioned three words: effective, efficient and economic. I'm the last guy to know anything about technology. I can't even mute this thing (Zoom) we're talking on here. But I can tell you this, with all the existing technology that exists in the world of sports today, we can move forward much leaner than we operated in the past and much more efficient." - Terry Pegula; from Matthew Fairburn's Athletic article (I had to pull it from a Bleacher Report article). It went on to describe they were getting leaner (axing the scouts/AHL staff, for example). Then, right back down to bottom 4 in spending. I don't know if Pegula has even had an on-record presser/appearance or statement about the Sabres finances since, but he certainly hasn't said anything to the contrary of EEE.

GM Sheevyn is afraid he’d get roasted by the press and fans if he attempted such a maneuver.

You could have Benson crash the crease in practice and make Power’s life a living hell. But Power would probably end up getting hurt if Benson went all-out pest on him. Worst-case: Benson would get injured overexerting himself.

It’s not the points so much as the number of teams between the Sabres and the WC (initialism intended). Particularly when those teams all have a knack for picking up loser points.