Thorny

What a salty tone seeking to downplay his achievements lol all of the vets on the team credit him for being central in the room, as does Cassidy. - - - the sabres and Eichel had a falling out. There doesn’t need to be a bad guy. It’s all I’ve said all along. We can argue back and forth on it still, but I think we can put the “what kind of player is Eichel” to bed after this dominant playoff run so far, 200 ft. THE most important stage. Led team in points in regular season, leads in playoffs. Outplayed McDavid. When the bar from some was “cancer you can’t win with”, I think it’s finished.

Still drawing a blank on 19/20, eh? he was changing then. He had changed then. The easiest thing is to just admit that season happened. He was still young, that’s usually when the development DOES happen waaay improved defensively. Even traditional stats like plus minus back that up. And that was on a not good defensive team. His post game interviews were *significantly* improved that year, which I’ve tried to mention 10s of times. He wasn’t all the way there, but it’s not like he became a new player this year. What we saw was expected upscale relative to supporting cast improvement, coaching included. It’s not like he didn’t further mature this year, but that’s still expected given traditional development curves and the experience of coming of age as an NHLer

Hill made a couple saves in the third where my jaw literally dropped

An absolute defensive clinic by Eichel vs McDavid to wrap it up. Now 3rd in playoff scoring for active players, behind Hintz and Tkachuk. Hill with an excellent game. Oilers FRAUDS

Jays win walk-off bottom 9 thriller. Sweep the Braves. Insanely tough division but 6th overall in mlb RN

Connor McPowerplay guarantees the Oilers best game tonight. We’ll see what the penalty breakdown looks like

Volume 2 https://thehockeynews.com/.amp/news/why-the-buffalo-sabres-will-be-stanley-cup-champions-in-2020 that he doubled down in 2019 is hilarious https://thehockeynews.com/.amp/news/the-sabres-will-maybe-possibly-probably-not-win-the-stanley-cup-in-2020-just-like-we-predicted

I’m worried we’re going to get the Hockey News kiss of death this offseason. We do look loaded for a run. But if the hockey news gets ya, take the date as a Summer solstice. It‘s when we’ll be brightest, but also when, from there on out, the daylight upon our window begins to fade.

I’m not even convinced a lottery DOES disincentivize tanking: you could easily get teams who originally wouldn’t think they have a chance at reaching the depths of their competition realizing the lottery stops that one team from locking it up (particularly b/c they draw twice) Not to mention the truly cursed “why make it and lose in round 1, I’ll take a shot in the lottery” line of thinking

Proving my point Anomalies. And guess what, the Sabres and Yotes were bad when they tried NOT tanking, too: you can’t legislate poor GMing out of the league. They were going to find their way to the bottom Tank or no Tank. That’s why they tanked in the first place! Symptom, not cause. They couldn’t COME UP WITH A BETTER PLAN

What are we concerned about? Competitive balance? The integrity of the game? Teams FREQUENTLY prioritize some un-named future before the results of today, ahead of the product they commit to the ice in front of their fans, and the ensuing competition of that day. Kevyn Adams has done this every single year under his Plan. “Tanking” is just the extreme, blatant occurrence of that: so extreme in nature obvious from the fact * we don’t see it very often*.

Nah. The lottery is an attempt to fix something that wasn’t broken. An exercise in addressing anomalies at the expense of the macro

What they should do, and hear me out, is award the highest pick to the team that finishes last

I also turned 13 on Friday the 13th. Weird. Also left handed and born on national left handers day which imo is a doozy

Always get a dead Weight in the pit of my stomach when I think of that 3rd period in general. Oddly enough when someone says “puck over glass” my mind first goes to Lydman’s: I *believe* this was game 1 vs Philly, same year. And I believe they tied it. But it’s a good memory, cause we all know how that one ended

Keep in mind it’s largely a 2 goalie league. It’s not a qb/backup qb dynamic. Forecasted plans from the GM should assume reliance on both position slots

I understand the wwe wanting to get Roman Reigns to 1000 days as champ because it’s a scripted narrative but rostering KO in an effort to get him to 1000 games should be *so* far from the top of Adams’ mindset

I’d argue a good backup is a need

Even the Bruins, rostering Vezina nominee Ullmark, with his ridiculous stats, playing behind a sick team that put up a historical regular season *heavily* relied upon their G backup, Swayman, (who played in *45 percent* of the games this season) and ran into trouble trying to start simply Ullmark in the playoffs. The Buffalo Sabres also need a very good backup, workhorse Levi or not

In a year where we need to make the playoffs I sure don’t see an issue with aiming for something a little better than someone we “can live with”, particularly when his numbers are only trending down, and his production rate was actually a good deal lower than Cirelli, Van Reimsdyk, Dvorak (who all missed a substantial amount of games), and when he’s 35 and no where close to committing the two-way game of a J. Fast (who I still really like btw, remember advocating for him). Even the husk of Eric Staal out produced him by rate. But to each their own. - By points per game Okposo was 310th in the league, for Forwards. Solidly 4th line and dipping. - KO ranked 22nd on the Sabres with a -7 rating - in KO’s second half of 2022-23 season, over his final 41 games he registered 11 points and was a -12.

In my estimation, more likely: somewhat hurt. Sometimes you actually see better results over a short time frame in the playoffs relative to regular season, while replacing a player because all the minutes get lumped onto their best players, more so than evenly dividing them (while playing the regular season long game). That would be my distinction between “significantly” and “somewhat”. I don’t think the Oilers are significantly better than the Golden Knichels but I do think they are somewhat better. Therefore in the pick ‘em that results from isolating the Nurse variable you suggested I’ll take the team with a guy somehow playing better than their already rostered McDavid, particularly with Peetranjello (sp?) likely out