mjd1001

Well, we all know this and its been posted in other threads...but to the topic, why they may not be good? Day ONE of camp. Tuch nursing an injury. And UPL. and Greenway. Already.

As per my above post, I don't either, but the contract may or may not look that bad by the end of it if the cap does what they think it will. For example, lets say he got 8 years at 9m per year. That is a lot, and toward the end of the deal when Tuch is 36-37 its likely to look bad. I don't think its outrageous to say the cap might/should be at least $140m in 8-9 years from now (considering they are estimating it at 113.5 in just 2 years) Well, last years cap was $88m I think? A $9m deal when the cap is $140m is the same percentage of the cap as $5.6m was last year. That wouldn't be that bad. I know a lot of assumptions there, but you pay in the back end of a deal to get the guy signed up front.

I'd love a shorter term deal from the Sabres point of view. If he went long term and got $8.5m per year (maybe more), with the cap going up so much that won't look that bad in a few years. But at the same time, I'd rather have the short term deal to take someone to 33-34 years old and then re-evaulate from there.

I really hope that Thompson and Norris aren't on the same line from day one of camp. If it ends up that way fine, but try some different combinations first.

So UPL injured.. Greenway injured... Tuch has something, And this is on day one of camp. What's the over and under on number of days before Norris or Dahlin comes up with something also? It's frustrating.

That Greenway extension is looking to be the worst signing of the past 12 months at least.

Im surprised it took this many years for tickets, even for a home opener, so be so far behind the rest of the league. Lets see, at $33 per ticket (I'm assuming no taxes/fees on that?) If I wanted to go with one other person, wife, kid..whoever. $66. Add in parking (is that up to about $20 now?) Lets assume not much in the way of concessions and certainly no full meals, but maybe one drink and one snack per person. At arena prices that is another $30-$40 for 2 people? So, for the team that hasn't made the playoffs in a decade-and-a-half, in one of the 'worst' arenas in the league, getting some of the worst seats in the house and having some pretty undesirable food, I might still be looking at $150 per night or more? On a weeknight/worknight/schoolnight? When I could watch it at home for free and if the game is awful tune into the Thursday nigtht NFL game instead? I'm not a person that goes to games anymore, but even if I was, between the quality of the team, the quality of the Arena/Arena experience, they would have to give me SOMETHING for me to spend any money to support them.

Doan is going to be one of the main things I watch in Camp. I could see him struggle to make the team and ending up going to Rochester.. I also could see him being a definite top 9 forward that contributes to this team winning. He is the guy, more so than other players like Helenius, Wahburg, Rosen, and Östlund....that I see the widest range of outcomes from come opening night.

10 reasons they could continue to regress 1. The Atlantic division is deeper than ever. Det, Mon, and Ott are actually improving while the Sabres have regressed The Sabres have regressed? I personally don't think the on ice talent/mix has shown a lot of regression in the offseason. And detroit is kind spinning their wheels, maybe not bad but I don't see a jump out of them. 2. Adams traded away another young developing scorer, who has improved each of his 3 NHL season, for two depth players who may or may not have upside. I'd also say Kesserling is more than Depth. 3. McLeod is almost certain to regress. He is a career 11.9% shooter who had a career year last year when shooting 20.9%. I'm guessing his shooting percentage may be a bit lower, but I think he could also have more ice time and shots to balance that out. 4. The goaltending is woefully inadequate. The save % of our 4 goalies last season were as follows - UPL .887, Levi .872, Georgiev .875, and Lyon.896. League average last season was .893 in all situations. If it doesn't get better, yes, this is a reason they will be bad. 5. Norris unlikely to play enough games to adequately replace Cozens. Norris has never played more than 66 games in a season and has averaged only 47 games a season during his time in the NHL. Remember he was shutdown after only 3 games last season following the trade from Ottawa. Cozens was a net negative. He HURT the team when he was on the ice. The team is better having any guy replace him who doesn't make the same mistakes. 6. The entire failed coaching staff returns including special teams failure Appert and defensive failure Wilford. I'll say this might be an issue. I don't know much about the ins-and-outs of NHL coaches, but I would have liked to see some changes. 7. The team again refuses to spend to the cap and with the cap rising quickly, the Sabres are likely to fall further behind. Remember that teams that don’t spend to the cap rarely make the playoffs. I think they are pretty close to the cap. 8. The defense remains defensively suspect. Byram, Power, Samuelsson and Bryson are still inept defensively. Kesselring and Timmins maybe upgrades defensively over Joki or Clifton, but neither has ever been a full time top 4 defenseman. Timmins has averaged less than 16 minutes a night for his career and last season was his first in 6 years as a full time NHLer. Kesselring played under 18 a night last season and while he did fill in the top 4, as soon as Utah got healthy he was relegated to the 3rd pair. He did have a solid all around season, but it’s fair to wonder if he is ready to pair with a player as defensively inept as Power for 22 minutes a night. It’s also fair to question whether the addition of two 3rd pairing D is enough to elevate a group as terrible as the Sabres have been defensively for years. Yes and no. They need to be better, but this D-group takes a lot of s**t when the failing should be put more on lack of support from the forwards. I personally need to "see" Kesserling play well on this team though, I do agree he was really only a fill-in on the top 4 last year. 9. I am a big fan of both Benson and Kulich, but Sabres are betting on their continued improvement, plus rebounds from injury prone guys like Quinn and Norris, plus continued success from Zucker and McLeod, to keep the offense working. Also don’t forget we don’t even know who the 9th top 9 forward will be; will it be the injury prone and scoring challenged Greenway or a bet on another young player with 62 games of NHL experience in Josh Doan. That’s a great deal to ask and comes with a high risk of failure. If the offense regresses, it raises the odds of another regression by the team significantly. Agree on a lot of this. You want Kulich and Benson to get better, but they won't be better until they actually do it. Norris has to play a full season. Quinn I don't have much confidence in. Greenway I don't think should have been re-signed. This can be an issue. 10. Kevyn Adams is still the GM. Doesn't matter that much if the moves he made improve the on-ice product.

They haven't lost a game yet. I'm not going to be negative just for the sake of being negative yet.

I get the impression Eichel really likes playing in Vegas (the city) and the organization isn't bad also. The only way I see him leaving is, well, 2 ways: 1.) Vegas isn't big on giving him top dollar, for a guy who HAS had injury issues and is entering his 30's when the new contract starts. 2.) He wants to play in Boston.

Every time they update the software on my phone. I don't need my phone to sort all of my pictures for me and to take them out of the main gallery and throw them into sub galleries. I don't need my phone dialing screen to look different. Where for the past.... I don't know how many years...I swiped up to answer a call and down to reject it.. I don't now need to swipe right to accept it and to simply press a red button to reject it. When I want to attach a picture to a text... I don't need to have my pictures in the bottom 15% of the screen where I now have to select another thing to swipe to open up my gallery further. And this one totally boggles my mind. I open up my contacts but it doesn't show contacts. It shows my call history. There's a tab for contacts. I pressed that and it's selected and it still doesn't show my contacts in alphabetical order. If I want to see my contacts in alphabetical order, I now have to touch my screen three separate times. Basically with each and every update for the phone, it now takes more taps and more swipes to do what I was able to do with less taps and swipes the year before. Maybe I can dig into settings to simplify this or get it back closer to the way it was... But after every time you do an update I should also have to dig through my settings and try to figure out how to fix what you now broke in the name of an upgrade.

On a side not but related....sometimes the networks take it too far. About 7 or 8 years ago the Indy500 was on TV and I was watching. Like it often happens, 2 cars were fighting for the lead with only a few laps left, swapping the lead ever 1/2 to lap. Some geniuses decided to not even do 'split screen', but to put 2 pictures on the broadcast....one in the upper corner, one in the lower corner. So what you ended up seeing was some empty space and each picture was only 1/3 the size of the screen. What was the split screen for? Well, if you wanted to watch the last couple laps, the cars fighting for the lead, it was now in the upper left corner of the screen, maybe taking up 30% of the screen. The other view? Close up of the faces of the wives, with their hands covering their mout looking nervous. Auto racing is famous for that. I don't remember if its worse on the Indycar broadcasts, Nascar, or F1, but on occasion they will show you the winner cross the line, and there are other cars still finishing the race, still fighting for position. But nope, the Camera cuts to the wife/girfriend of the winning drive so we can all see how happy SHE is. Doesn't matter if your favorite driver was in the middle of a pack fighting for a top 10 finish that may move them up or down in the standings. Gotta show everyone how happy the wife is 3 seconds after the winner crosses the line. I get it pre race or post race. I don't like it but I get it. But when a big race is on the last lap or finishing, no one is being 'drawn into' the broadcast at that moment for much other than to see who wins and how they do it.

No idea what this poll is about...so...while i like polls, I can't vote honestly.

Unlike most other people.. I don't really need him to be physical at all to be happy with his play. If he scores 10 to 15 goals... Gets 30 to 40 assists... And most importantly uses his size and reach to get to loose pucks and get them out of the zone before the opponents can get to him... Then I don't need him to be physical. In a way... Him learning to use his reach to clog up passing Lanes and to reach loose pucks and tip them away from the defender more effectively than a smaller guy does.. That's a form of using his size in a way I would accept. All things being equal it will be great if he would be physical and hit more, but if he does the other things and uses his size positionally, he can be an effective two-way defenseman without it.