msw2112

I think it's fine to rotate and see how it plays out. Obviously, the hope is that Comrie will emerge as the better goalie and become the #1, but there isn't enough sample size yet to know for sure. They know what they have in Anderson. He can provide some quality minutes and veteran leadership, but at this point in his career, he isn't going to be stealing any games for the Sabres. I belive that UPL will work his way into the mix. Despite his poor play in the AHL, when he's been healthy and given the opportunity to play in the NHL, he's been pretty good.

I'd like to keep Girgensons on the roster. He's a solid veteran player. He provides leadership, hustle, two-way play, and some level of scoring ability. You need to have a few veterans on the roster. He's a good bottom six forward and his contract is not outrageous. I don't think he was part of the problem, except that perhaps, at times in his career, he was cast as a top 6 player and not a bottom 6 player, which he has turned out to be (and is paid to be). Eventually, as some of the younger guys mature and take on larger roles, he will work his way off the roster, but not this season.

As much as it's hard to say this after all these years, I trust the current Sabres brass. They are not just throwing money around for no reason. Thompson did not need to be extended as early as he was. They did it for a reason. They have seen enough in practice, in games, and off the ice to feel that such a huge extension was warranted. Unlike the recent past (see Skinner, Jeff), this was not a contract made out of desperation, it was one made out of a well-thought out process. The guys in charge who evaluate hockey talent believe that making this investiment in Thompson was a wise one, so I'm going to agree that he's going to be a good player for a long time and not a 1 year wonder. (And, for the record, I voted 1st line/65 points, because I'm very pragmatic).

I agree that the over is an easy take. If they had 75 last year, there's no doubt they will exceed that by a decent amount.

There's an excellent chance that Power is the best rookie next season. That said, he's not a pure offensive defensman. He generates a fair amount of offense, but is also defensively sound. He's a great 2-way defenseman. As such, he may not put up the types of stats that win awards and I think the award will go to a forward or a defensman who may be a lesser player, but have greater offensive stats. Whether he wins the award or not, based on his play in the limited sample at the end of last season, Power is going to be a very good one and I am very happy they Sabres have him. Along with Dahlin, the Sabres potentially have two of the top young defensmen in the league. And we have other good ones too - like Samuelsson.

I thought that ESPN+ had most of the games last year and was a viable alternative to the NHL Center Ice package. Is that not the case this year? Or maybe I had it wrong. I was planning to subscribe to ESPN+ this year to get the games, but if they only have 8 games, it's not worth it. Maybe those 8 are only the games that are ALSO on Hulu? Obviously, I am not in the Buffalo market, hence the need for an out-of-market solution. I've been unwilling to pay for it the last several years (for obvious reasons), but I'm back in this year and just looking for the best solution. Center Ice is only $60 or $70 and I can DVR the games that I miss or am late to watch (which is most of them because I live in the west). As a side note, I have read that an issue with ESPN+ is that it shows the real-time scores at the bottom of the screen (including for the game you are watching) even if you are watching the game on delay. For me, watching most games later, that's a deal breaker and Center Ice/DVR is the choice. Sorry if I veered slightly off topic, but I would appreciate any insight from the board.

From what I have seen and read, UPL has played well when given a chance to play in the NHL, but his problem has been staying healthy. Oddly, he hasn't performed as well at the AHL level. The Sabres have invested a lot in him with a draft pick and development time, and have some question marks in the goalie pipeline (none of Levi, Portillo, or the guy they drafted this year have signed with the team yet), so it makes complete sense to keep UPL around for another couple of years and see what he can do.

I know absolutely nothing about this player, but I know that the Sabres have drafted a lot of smaller, skilled forwards and could use some bigger and/or more physical guys to balance out the lineup. Perhaps this guy is that type of player. Obviously, he has to be able to play hockey at an NHL level too, but every guy in the lineup doesn't need to score 25 goals and be an offensive star.

Good for Terry. Now he doesn't need to drill another oil well to pay Tage Thompson. Instead, he can buy out a few life insurance policies.

This is a good statistic to cite for this thread. In light of this statistic, I have two comments, both of which favor the contract extension: 1. If Tage ends up producing 29 goals per season for the rest of his career, this will be a fair contract. There are not too many guys in the league who can consistently score at that level. The way that salaries continue to escalate, I'd argue that a 30-goal scorer is a $7M player. So his goal scoring production could dip from last season and this would still be a fair deal. 2. If his career shooting percentage is 11.6% to date, I suspect it will get better than that. In his first few seasons, he was playing a) further down in the lineup, b) for a different (and much less effective) coach, and c) at a younger age, when his physical and mental game were not yet ready for full-time NHL duty. Even if last season's percentage was on the high side, I would argue that his percentage prior to that was on the low side. Aside from Thompson's production, this contract was a good one for the team culture. They are betting on a guy who they acquired at a young age, who worked his way up the lineup, has committed to the team/coach/system/culture, and now has produced. It sets the tone for other guys to do the same.

He's also a pretty good hockey player. He's not a Hall of Fame type of talent, but he's got a nice combination of size, grit, and skill, in addition to his positive attitude and leadership skills.

They showed me several things in the last year or so: 1) significant improvement as a team on the ice, including a strong finish and victories in key "rivalry" or "big" games (Vegas, Toronto overall, Toronto outdoor game, RJ night, final game of season); 2) significant improvment for individual players, both younger players and established veterans - Thompson, Dahlin, Okposo, Skinner, and others; *3) competent handling of several challenging trade scenarios (i) the Eichel fiacso culminating in a successful trade (in which they made chicken salad out of chicken s&^t), (ii) getting a nice haul from Philly for Risto, and (iii) getting a first round pick and a top goalie prospect for Reinhart; and *4) APPARENT competent handling of the draft. 3 and 4 get the asterisk, because we don't yet know what Kulich or Levi will develop into, but as of now, all signs are very positive, and the same applies for the remainder of the draft. So I understand still being in "show me" mode, but I also believe they have shown me a lot of positives in the last year.

I agree that the Sabres will be in the hunt right down to the end, but will probably fall short. Two reasons: 1) there are so many other teams that are ahead of the Sabres right now. The Sabres are making great strides and will draw even with, and eventually surpass many of these teams, but probably not next season. 2) goaltending. The Sabres have mildly improved their goaltending with the Comrie acquistion, but it's still a huge question mark. While the Sabres hopefully get competent goaltending this year - which I think they will if Anderson and Comrie stay healthy - I don't see them having a goalie who can steal a few games for them and get them over the top. I'm pleased with the general direction of the organization and am fine with sticking to the plan, but I'm also realistic as to where this team is relative to the rest of the conference. I'd be overjoyed if they exceeded my expectations.

Hey, this is over the line and unfair. We all know that the Sabres are not at fault for your stubbed toe. That said, any mishaps in your recovery will be the direct fault of the Sabres' training staff.

I'm a lifelong Sabres fan and a decades-long Michigan fan. I really want Portillo to end up on the Sabres. I think there are several reasons why he might: 1. He's said to be close with Power from their days together at Michigan 2. He's said to be close with Dahlin and his family through connections in Sweden 3. The Sabres have no clear cut #1 NHL starter at this point, so there's opportunty (albeit with competition from UPL, Comrie, Levi, etc.) I don't know what the goaltending situation is with other NHL teams, but I would assume that most teams (unlike the Sabres, as of today) have a NHL-caliber starter and all teams have backups and young guys in the pipeline. So I don't know that the opportunity to play/start would be any better with another team. He's be competing for a job wherever he went. 4. The Sabres organization seems to have turned the corner and has a promising future with all of the young talent and prospects 5. Portillo has never said, to my knowledge, anything negative about the Sabres or that he was uninteresed in signing. He has stated on the record that he wants to work on his business degree at Michigan, which has one of the top business schools in the world. If he turned pro, it's unlikley he would be able to do that for many years. He also might want to take one more run at a National Championship. Michigan got very close this year and is always loaded with talent and has a shot. And one reason why he might not: 1. He'll be a UFA and another team might make a better offer that suits him and his family more. I hope he ends up with the Sabres, but I have no control over the situation, so I'm not going to be too concerned about it. I think that Adams and the Sabres organization will handle the situation with dignity and class, trying to sell him on coming to Buffalo but not overdoing it to the point of pushing him away. We'll see what happens. As to the original tread - UPL - I think he has NHL talent. In the limited action he's seen in the NHL, he's played well. I'm just not sure he can stay healthy for long enough to establish himself and the organization may move on. Some guys are injury-prone and it plagues their careers. He may be one of those guys. Of course, I hope he stays healthy and becomes a quality NHL starter.

It's betting on futures. I agree that Cozens has not fully emerged yet (I think he will in time), but I don't think Thompson is a fluke. He had enough skill to be a first round draft pick and he has size that you cannot teach. Many taller guys like that took a few years to grow into the bodies and their games. Chara comes to mind. Of course, Tyler Myers was rookie of the year and regressed, so there are always opposite examples, but I believe that Thompson is legit and the longer they wait to pay him, the more he's going to cost.

No need to be sorry for stating facts. As I stated above, consider the contracts compensation for services rendered (THREE Cups). Those players earned those contracts, whether they came before or after winning their 3 Cups. We can only hope and wish that the Sabres would dole out large, long-term extensions to its top players after winning 3 Cups.

I thought that might be true when I wrote my post, but didn't have the time to fact-check. No need to hate yourself or sit in the corner in shame for pointing out facts. Consider the big contracts payment for past services rendered. If the Sabres win the Cup this year (or any year), then pay its stars, and don't win another one, I'll still be extremely happy, as will the majority of the fans and the franchise itself. And if they win THREE? It's almost unimaginable.

The Blackhawks won 3 Stanley Cups, so I would say that the Kane, Toews, Keith and Seabrook deals worked out OK for them. Yes, they are now rebuilding, but with 3 Cups, who cares? And had the Sabres extended Drury and Briere properly, perhaps they, too would have won a Cup. The key is to extend guys before they become UFAs and have all the leverage. Skinner was a UFA coming off a 40-goal season, after previously having been a top 10 pick, Rookie of the Year and multiple 30+ goal seasons. This board tends to ignore the fact that while Skinner may not be a $9M player, he is a $6M-$7M player - at least pre- and post-Kreuger - so his deal is not a complete waste. An overpay by a (then) crap team with enough cap space that needed to retain a star player, yes, but not that outrageous when looked at in full context. Okposo is another guy who was an overpay, but sometimes teams need to overpay to attract top free agents to smaller markets and/or less-competitive teams. The current version of Okposo is actually playing close to his contract with 20+ goals, and lots of leadership and intangibles. He's a big reason the team has come together the way it has. So, yes, I think the Sabres need to extend some of the young, talented guys, even if it invovles some level of risk. By signing them early, if the guys pan out, the deals will be bargains down the road. No doubt, some won't work out as well as others. One more overlooked point is that NOW is a good time to sign these deals. The Sabres currently have a lot of cap space and with the ESPN deal and the "end" of the pandemic, the NHL is likely to gain quite a bit in popularity and make a lot more money in the next few years. The salary cap is likely to go up a lot, which will result in much more lucrative deals for players. Better to sign them now before the cap increases and the cost of labor increases with it.

The Sabres have a ways to go to get there, but I hope they develop a Bills-like culture. Most of the Bills core players WANT to stay with the team and sign reasonable, team-friendly deals to stay with the team, when they know they could make more elsewhere. Matt Milano is a good example. Dion Dawkins is another. Josh Allen's deal is suddently a bargain. Diggs has a fair deal, compared to the top of the WR market. Assuming he recovers from injury and returns to form, Tre White's deal is very fair for a top-tier CB. And so on. The Bills are not low-balling these guys and offering them insultingly low deals, they are offering fair deals that pay the player well, but also don't hurt the team financially. It's a win-win. If the Sabres can get over the hump with this team and become a playoff participant and ultimately a Cup contender, most guys will want to stay and make take a little less to be a part of what's going on in Buffalo. Me-first guys who hold out for every last dime and/or abandon the team for greener ($) pastures may not be the type of guys you want on your roster. Guys who have earned it deserve to be paid, but should look at the team as a whole when negotiating their deals. Keep in mind, I am not talking about guys like O'Reilly and Reinhart that wanted to get away from the train wreck that the Sabres were just a couple of years ago. That's a different situation. But if the team is doing well and on the rise, and would be desirable team to be a part of, and guys are pushing the envelope too hard on salary, that's where a team has to wonder whether it's better to cut bait and trade the guys for what they can get.

I feel like some guys have already "broken out" such as Dahlin. I'm not sure that a rookie playing his first full season can be considered a candidate to "break out," because there's no baseline to break out from. That's why I didn't vote for Quinn and JJP, for example. I went with Mitts and Krebs. (And although Krebs hasn't played a full NHL season, he was a reguar for pretty much the entire 2nd half of the season, and played more than a handful of games. He was more than an AHL callup.) I think that if both can stay healthy and play a full NHL season, they will produce solid middle-6 numbers. 20+ goals and 50+ points each and maybe more. Krebs also has a good 2-way game. I'm not sure if Mitts does, but he does seem to be a lot more willing to get into the dirty areas as he matures.

This guy is a true oddity. He's playing mostly in the ECHL and doing well, but not necessarily lighting the place up. In the few stints he's had in the NHL, he's actually played some pretty good games. In any event, as I always say, not every player you sign is going to be an All-Star. Teams need depth at the end of the roster and in the minor league system. Houser seems like a good fit for that role. I agree that if he's seeing significant playing time in the NHL that the Sabres are not going to be in a good place.

Good to have Pilut back in the mix. Not every player is going to be a top-6/top-4 skater. Teams need depth too. Also, it's possible Pilut has developed and improved (or will develop and improve) and could be more than a servicible backup.

Maybe one of the salary sheds will be a veteran goalie? A RHD? To be clear, I am fine with the Comrie and "Boosh" signings (we've got Boosh!), but adding 1 more veteran goalie and/or RHD might not be a bad thing. If Adams does NOT want to do this, because he wants the young guys to play, gain experiecne, and grow together as a group, I am entirely fine with it, but if they want to bolster the roster a bit wtih some veteran talent and it fits in with the plan, I'd be good with that too.

"We've got Boosh?"