Thorner

It’s actually not as strong a correlation as you’d think.

Everyone said all this stuff. None of the fixes are complicated. We don’t get to throw our hands up in the air and say, “well, HOW?!l” when you spend in the bottom 10. That’s usually what happens. I disagreed with it cause I don’t care about the injuries aspect. It’s not a key variable, all teams suffer them, it’s not why we lost, Jersey has injuries too

We’ve essentially run back the roster again. This is what I meant by it’s tough to project better until you actually see it. It’s tough to expect different when the true potential catalysts for change remain untouched. Talking about a revamped 4th line is just dog days message board fodder, we have to admit that to ourselves. You don’t break a 13 year playoff drought by tweaking the least important sports on a roster you tweak the least important sports on the roster when that’s all you can find a way to do. We didn’t maximize our spending: again, why do we think we can win WITHOUT prioritizing it? How much hubris can one team have? But, it’s only 2 game. While the warning signs are flaring, perhaps this is a misreading creeping in and this team really will round into form in a timely manner. It’ll still a tiny sample size, as I mentioned yesterday

If you are counting on a coach to do this you’ve already lost. This isn’t a viable avenue for success. “It’s going to take the coach a long time to single handedly revamp the output of our entire roster by standing behind the bench and yelling at them.” isn’t an actual strategy and isn’t rooted in reality. If a coach has to do that much heavy lifting, the issue is the roster. You are cheaping out on the sum total of 20 sports and trying to buoy the whole purely through the coaching position. It doesn’t work with a star player, never mind a guy who doesn’t play. And “it’ll take time” (during year 5) need not apply unless the sentence is “it’ll take time for this roster to mould into shape for a playoff berth THIS season.” There’s no more runway

lol that’s Bull

Guess I’m not really waiting a few games before commentating..whatever. I’ll keep it brief i was impressed by JJ’s pass on the goal You know who looked good? One Bowen Byram. My worries about what the ETA is for his return to form being proven needless would be a massively positive development. I actually thought UPL was swimming around a lot, he’ll improve. The biggest thing possible for line 2 will be Tage performing as a superstar. Would probably buoy both lines, in effect. Truth is, most times, you need a star on offence to keep the whole machine turning. We didn’t have depth when we had the star in Jack. I think we have the depth now. But no performing star. Not yet. When Tage *was* a star 2 years ago we should by rights have made it if not for key errors from the GM, especially in goal. Can Thompson be that star again, and for a good while? We’ll see soon to be honest. The runway of his prime isn’t on its early days.

Right but I just mean if you look it up, October 4 is said to be the first official day of regular season

If I was a fan of the panthers, I wouldn’t be concerned after a loss. I don’t think you really understood my post playing competitive sports, which I’ve done all my life, has literally nothing to do with my post or analysis of the situation at hand

I mean, everyone should be “concerned”. It’s not like the default is that we are good until proven otherwise, it’s really the opposite. If we are thinking playoffs are even a 50/50 consideration, any loss is “concerning”. What we don’t possess is knowledge that the team will in fact be bad this year. There’s concern for what we will be, as it’s so up in the air, but when you’ve only played one game it’s definitely still exactly that: up in the air. Far too much emphasis is being placed on one game, on that I agree and spoke to earlier. It may be true the team will take time to learn Ruff’s system or whatever, but it’s a self imposed staffing decision, and unfortunately for us doesn’t mitigate the necessary results in any way. These standings points aren’t less important because we are gelling or something, and obviously no excuse has been provided The online world will dollars to donuts swing entirely the other way if we win tomorrow. “We back” will be the refrain. Everyone knows the script. Send me a pm if so inclined. You have my twitter, too.

Well, it has officially started, but I take your meaning

He’s stood out the most today of the 3 easily

Wasn’t gonna post during game but here’s 1: It’s one game not meant to belittle any reaction. They are justified and deserved. The team may suck this year and have for far too long but you can’t glean much from 1 game. You just can’t. We walloped NJ in game two with Marcus Johansson as our 2C and everything seemed great, a few seasons ago It’s too soon to say on THIS year

You won’t know if there’s a goal at all never mind who scored it

BENSON! there, I beat Brawndo

Just straight up on sportsnet in Canada lol

This is incredible.

So it’s not about IF the Sabres make it, it’s a question of by how much

Go team! Hopefully they get off to a quick start, I feel it’s probably a reasonably big deal for this squad. Let’s have a good season! I’ll check back in with you folks in a few games. Keep fit and have fun

Put aside the Ranger. Become who you were born to be.

It’s not. That would be what we call a coincidence. We missed the playoffs by 1 point, 2 seasons ago. It wasn’t an insurmountable point as long as one Jeffrey Skinner remained on the roster. That would defy logic.

Reality is often disappointing

Don’t think about it..just go: 3-2-1…and say the guy who you’d trade first. Then do it again. Then you’ll know. its sort of like the coin flip trick

Apologies, “rank” would work better Ranked bottom 10 league wide in spending. So, our relative range

Can’t remember the other, the Caps?

I don’t really like the “after they traded Skinner” thing. “Trading Skinner” isn’t the magic formula for spending less and winning: 2 occurrences are what we’d call a coincidence. There are plenty of years where Skinner would be a capable player on a playoff team, see: every year. He’s not worse than the worst guy on every playoff team nor is he some sort of horrendous cancer than stops a team from winning. We did that with Jack. It’s just a silly thing to harp on. Yea, maybe we are configured overall similar in some ways to Carolina. That would be worth thinking about. But Carolina is the exception that proves the rule, and the majority of teams that are structured like them DIDN’T make the jump I’m not saying we won’t. But attaching that to Skinner is twitter-Esque, no offence, low hanging fruit