Alaska John

I wonder what happened to that wardrobe of his.

I love that second suggestion, but why not make it really interesting and put the ball pool in the middle of an ice rink and make the GMs get to the pool, find their ball, and get it to a hockey goal? And the GMs have to be in socks, no skates or shoes. Watching some of these guys slide around for 100 feet would be a ratings bonanza.

The comments about culture really struck home. In many cases it isn't a particular person who's to blame for teammates not feeling comfortable, it's a general attitude among everyone that doesn't foster respect and trust. For example, teasing is allowed to go really deep and personal, and that the receiver has to just take it and stew about it. It takes leadership to shut that down when it starts to happen. I am not saying Eichel was the person who made everyone uncomfortable, because I don't know that, but it does look like Eichel was the person who failed to stop it. The Bills were mired in bad culture for years. Well, decades. Then finally some older, really good players stepped up (Kyle Williams, Lorax come to mind, and probably some decent players like Tyrod Taylor too), the bad apples got tossed from the barrel, and the field was ready for a new crop of happy relationships.

He used to do his shows at the Katherine Cornell theater at UB, at the Amherst campus. I loved seeing that after I'd moved away from Buffalo because I used to go to classical piano recitals in that theater when I was a student there. He was funny, smart, talented.

I'm struggling to understand two things. One, why do they play so badly at home? Two, what the hell happened a couple of weeks ago? The Sabres were actually in a playoff spot on the NHL website for part of a day. They beat Toronto and apparently figured that was all they needed to do. Are there any theories about either of these?

I think a lot of Sabres fans are going to fire themselves. They'll walk away shaking their heads. Do you recall, it was just a couple of weeks ago that the online NHL standings had the Sabres in a playoff position? What happened? Did they all get sleepy? Is there something in the locker room food that's slowing them down and letting them make stupid mistakes?

Total collapse. What on earth happened to this team? Maybe they figured the lottery was a better long-term play than squeaking into the playoffs and getting wiped out by the Bruins in four games. Well, if that's the thinking, it's terrible.