Marvin

Much as I like to think that, the original sin that year was yanking Mike Peca around. Then again, you have to wonder how penalties were getting called with Lemieux's return and Bourque going to Colorado.

My coin stood on edge for this. For the moment, Team Tage Thompson takes the trophy. (Given how fractious we seem to be, some consonance seemed appropriate.)

If Botterill had traded O'Reilly at the draft, Montreal would have had to pay the $7.5 M.

When he went to Edmonton.

Aim for people on the outs with their organisations. I'd target Strome and Domi and hope I get lucky.

If I remember correctly, he IS worth more, but it is not liquid. From what I heard, he should sit on that stuff while his other normal revenue streams (energy, entertainment, hospitality) take a bath for a year or two.

We are creating some because we envy those who have had news because of the extended playoff. My friends in Detroit, New Jersey, and San Jose are griping the same way we are.

The trade of a 1st round pick for him did no good either: he had to be the 2nd coming of Dominik Hasek to quiet some of the boo-birds. That had to weigh on the team in general and him in particular. I can imagine him thinking that he was never going to get mentally healthy in Buffalo.

Speaking from experience: The treatment of mental illness is really up to the potential patient. Even if someone recommends that you get treatment, you have to want to. I don't know what the Sabres actually did or did not do, but ultimately Lehner had to be the one who wanted to get help. Especially when you are potentially at the top of your profession, as even marginal NHLers are, it is hard to admit that you need help -- particularly if you view your mental illness as part of what made you a success.

Uncles: Peter, Marion, and Anton were brothers. The other "lines of brothers" who had been in the NHL by then were Bill, Bob, and Barclay Plager of the St. Louis Blues and Doug, Max, and Reg Bentley of the Chicago Black Hawks (Reg only played 11 games, though).

Zemgus Girgensons (2016-7) was a regular centre more recently than Mikael Granlund (2015-6).

Until we get a real centre spine, wingers even as good as Gaudreau don't interest me. I am that fed up.

The Sabres really have been an overall planning, strategic, tactical, and analytical failure in myriad ways for multiple years. Here's my 1/50 of a dollar. I was philosophically opposed to The Tank. It is one thing to rebuild and accept a couple of down years, as long as you acquire your next generation of players in large enough quantity that you can afford the odd miss, the losses due to injury, the learning curves, and the like while filling the NHL team with high character veterans who will take pride in teaching the youth. (Think the 1995-6 Buffalo Sabres.) It is quite another to underman the team with Benoit, Meszaros, and Strachan and then undermine it by trading away players who cause, heaven forfend, wins. That makes the team a joke internally to the veterans you brought in. The youth who make the team (Girgensons, Larsson, Grigorenko) may be permanently stained by this stink and may never recover until they leave. I consider this a broad strategic and tactical failure. Even if I am correct, this is not fatal if your planning and execution afterward are solid. Once you have made the decision to rebuild, you should plan on their being a lot of youth. You can't hire a youth-averse coach like Dan Bylsma. When you have a lot of high-end skill, you should not get a coach whose system de-emphasises possession like Dan Bylsma's. And, with an all-out tank, you have so little talent in the system that you need to husband all your draft picks and other resources so that you can tolerate injuries, the odd bust, etc. and not spend them on players I like in ROR and Kane until they can put you into the playoffs. Nor can you spend assets like a misbegotten youth just because you can. Moreover, as defence takes longer to develop, you need to field complete defences to help the youth break in more gradually. On all these points, Murray failed. But just because you make a commitment to a modern system does not mean that the previous regime's evaluations were useless; it just means that you need to take it with a grain of salt. In any event, there is still no excuse for failing to have 4 lines of actual NHL-quality players in the NHL 3 years running. You can't be behind the 8-ball on goaltending ever. And whatever you do, you can't trade away proven players for scraps, no matter how you and/or your owner feel. It would also have been nice to not force your coach to have 4 of the bottom 10 Corsi forwards in the league on the roster at once. And when he manages to win anyway nd then keep the team in playoff contention for months, you can't undermine the team by failing to use your assets to fill in the gaping hole you yourself had created at 2C. So Botterill failed across-the-board.

IMHO, +/- is a very tricky stat. I consider it a primitive metaphor for a statistic -- it was the first attempt to measure skaters beyond simple goals + assists = points & penalty minutes. As such, it is quite crude. First, you need to put every team on the same scale with Adjusted Plus-Minus, which I commented on in the Analytics group. This puts the entire league on roughly the same scale. Even then, it's still imperfect. Good teams tend to have a bunch of players just below an adjusted 0.0 while they have a few players well into the plus. Conversely, bad teams tend to have several players near an adjusted 0.0 while they have many in the debit column. And after that, you still need to be aware of player usage and their team situation. Dave "Cementhead" Semenko got good ratings as Gretzky's bodyguard. Wayne Gretzky's plus-minus dropped fairly steadily over his last few years because he was not a defencive stalwart in the DPE and he was tasked of carrying a team when his back wasn't up to it in more ways than one. However, IMHO, if he had been in Buffalo int 1999 between Sanderson and Barnes, they might win the Cup.

Is Ehlers a centre? If not, then no.

The BUFFALO media are hard? Really? The pressure from the fans is apparently tough because we are so desperate for a championship. The Buffalo sports press are only hard when you are Tim Connolly they are on a vendetta.

Ad arguendum, if we get a 2C, a bottom 6 C, and slot Cozens on 3RW, the line-up is less wretch-inducing: Skinner- Eichel-Reinhart Oloffson-2C-Johansson Kahun-3C-Cozens Thompson-Lazar/Asplund-Okposo A decent 3C should not be hard to get. It's the 2C that's the problem -- again. Hell, it should not be as hard to fill out the bottom half of the roster as Botterill made it seem. IMHO, ANY potential 2C, even Strome and Domi, should be an option for the Sabres. Heck, getting a pair of 3C's would be an improvement. I have preferences for Danault and others, but beggars can't be choosers.

If that comment is true, then his reputation as a good GM should take a permanent hit -- but it's not happening. That is such a good trade for the Sabres that could have helped offence, keep Pilut here, balance out the defence, and, ugh, I just want to cry.

It is possible that if Tampa wins, then their players on the NTCs might be willing to move to the "right location." High state taxes and a dysfunctional organisation are not optimal selling points, though.

Are you clairvoyant? It's like I wrote this.

He is from Buffalo. He was in Austin for a while and lives in Boston now, which I think explains his accent. He's had that guitar for at least 15 years, so it's distressed for a good reason. 😉

If this rumour is true, then he deserved to get canned. You don't say things like this to a co-worker, let alone a boss, unless you want to get canned. The more interesting question is if this rumour is false (i.e., either the original source is mistaken or the reporter had it planted on him/her), then the more interesting question is why the originator create the rumour.

This is where i was with LOG - I will live with their offencive deficiencies (and all three were trending towards 25 points this season, which is above 25% of all forwards) because they got singularly unfavourable zone starts and match-up assignments yet were better than even-money to end in the offencive zone against top lines after each shift. On point-scoring alone, they come out as the highest-end 4th line. Add their defencive prowess and ability to flip the ice and you have at least an average 3rd line.