Thorner

Gabe Vilardi has *8* goals

I lean towards value so considering our D depth, OUR rookie of the year will be Power, id imagine, prob by a fairly significant margin His play early has done nothing to change my mind on the likelihood of that

Seems to be his MO Seems to almost always start slow

He could have been had LT when Adams first came on, Reinhart said as much. The working theory though is that, by summer 2021, Reinhart made it known he was done

Didn’t someone say Power would be our best D coming into this season? Checks notes. I think it’s still Dahlin. Also, Dahlin had a phenomenal rookie year, advanced metrics or otherwise. Seems to be some lingering confusion

Nice like Sam Reinhart, maybe

Basically he’s saying Tage would have Matthew Tkachuk’d the Sahres’ ass if we didn’t lock him up when we did. This is interesting. He’s theorizing they got the idea/worry from Tkachuk, who was one year out from UFA, but honestly I bet you it was as much Reinhart, who did exactly the thing in question

Elliot Friedman on the show just said, re: the Tage contract, that because he was a bit older, he was close to free agency, and that part of what went into the Sabres thinking was it was either give up a big deal for him or they’d “lose him.” Is this accurate? Haven’t heard this

This is sort of where Marek is coming down. STL already “won” the trade as they won the cup - it worked out for them, can’t take that away. But with the emergence of TT, he’s thinking and I agree with him that the trade can still end up working out, for us, too, in the long term. Mentioned that the play he was most impressed by yesterday wasn’t his points but him protecting the puck from Dylan Larkin during a particular sequence. With Tage’s emergence we are getting to (are at?) the point where we can, and might as well focus on how the trade has benefited us, but in truth it doesn’t eliminate the negative side of the equation. The move was still very damning for the team *at the time*, a time when we WERE trying to win, and nothing changes that. Botterill didn’t make the move with the intention of the team remaining bad and him subsequently losing his job. We dealt ROR at the *exact season* where Jack came off his ELC, took on his 10 mil deal, and went through the common-for-great-players 4th year development bump and elevated to point a game, bonafide first line C. At that exact moment, when we’d have finally had a true 1 AND 2C, we dealt a conn smythe level player and lined up Marcus Johansson behind JE instead. The trade was bad at the time, nothing will change that, despite KA and his team coming on board and transitioning Tage to C and salvaging Botterill’s trade. That’s not to say I would necessary take it back: the multitude of butterfly effect moments over the last several years that brought us to this moment where we *appear* to be in the best spot we’ve been in a long time are vast and impossible to predict. But the old “I wouldn’t change anything”, while apt, doesn’t mean there weren’t wonky evaluations along the way. I think now we are where we should be, and that’s the big thing.

Marek starts his show off today with “Let’s revisit the 2018 ROR deal”

Ok

Asplund elevates his line mates? Im shocked. Hopefully that’s the end of Asplund being rotated out

GDT being unreadable for out-of-towners aside, this game was awesome.

With Fitzgerald registering an assist on goal 1, Samuelsson is the only remaining Sabre to not register a point this season - - - Damn, gonna have to take a leaf from dudacek’s book and stay out of these threads during the game, unfortunately. Goals are getting posted before any earthly stream showcases the moment. The goal scorer or negative exclamation gets posted before nhl.com even updates Will check in after the game

Pilut looking better isn’t surprising

Looks like we’ve returned to the portion of the season where Tage scores every game

I don’t think I really “get” Peyton Krebs yet. Seems to be a “main character” on the team, regardless of play/production. Signs of a good leader? Is he more of a future 30/40 point guy maybe, but with character? The only concrete data point I see so far is that he has a tattoo of himself. So at least we know Krebs likes himself some Krebs.

6 wins in 10 is a playoff pace 2 bites at that apple in the next 2

I listed to LaFleur’s comments at half and I don’t think it was defeatist as much as realist. He was talking about how they need to fight for every inch on every play to keep their dignity so they don’t get blown out - I think he thought, and I think he was right, that their best chance *was* with running the ball. Their only chance was that, and Buffalo imploding, which didn’t really happen. I think if they drop back and pass with Rodgers ala of old, Buffalo tees off on him in half two and it gets ugly

There are times I find Cozens would benefit from being a touch more patient on some plays - he has the vision to capitalize on a developing play, but he sometimes seems only concerned with pushing the puck forward-and-centre as quickly as possible. Its easier to develop id wager than trying to force a guy to get more straight ahead, push the pace effort in one’s game, so I don’t think it’s a significant/will be a lingering issue, but I’d like to see him use his line mates a little more and maximize his offensive range

“No downside” lmao Johnson could and would be suiting up right now for us

A shellacking thus far

Good luck to the Buffalo team. Don’t believe they’ll need it. Go pack!

But apparently we have 12 forwards better loll

I understand who Kevin is. We follow each other on Twitter, me and you I mean, so I know you know that. He obviously does know his stuff. Doesn’t mean he isn’t wrong sometimes. He was WILDLY wrong on Dahlin. But my point was that quoting my post and saying “read this tweet”, in a dismissive way, doesn’t really add anything to the discussion. What you followed it up with was more along the lines of what I was looking for, even if I disagree with most of the arguments you made about VO