Marvin

I sure did. IMHO, it was a thumb in the eye of the people who attacked us as well as a psychological lift to the country. Ditto the NFL games the weekend after 9/11 and so on.

I think the balance between including and excluding politics is currently much harder than we think it is. The players are bringing their politics, sociology, economics, etc. into sports; the people who want to keep it out are SOL. It's impossible right now. You can't stop them unless you stop watching. The only sport I have successfully boycotted is MLB after the 1994 strike. (No one cares.) I recommend that we understand that politics of some sort have always been part of the game. IMHO, that is the only way that we can accept labour strife, sports-based jingoism, and social protests in stride and keep our tempers down and some modicum of sanity when we see the stuff around the game.

I vote 2020 to be considered as the vilest profanity. This year has been abso-2020-lutely bull2020.

Ugh, iCarly?

I must comment. Every time a cop pulls me over and I am not with my wife, I surreptitiously call her on the phone and leave the line open in case I die. Who else thinks about this? Thanks, SwampD.

Let me let you in on a secret: the only difference between me and the rioters is my financial situation. I am not going to excuse anything I have done. But I understand race riots from the inside. I have been angry enough to lash out. If you have not had that barely-concealed, always simmering anger at authority figures who persistently harass and harm you and your friends for no reason, you probably won't get it. Songs like "911 is a Joke", "**** the Police", and "Fight the Power" are your anthems. So before you make too many generalisations about them, ask a fellow Sabres fan about it. And I guarantee that the players feel that too. And I went to the hospital, got sedation, and now see a therapist and a psychiatrist to deal with it. Sometimes, in righteous anger, you take pride in what you did. I brag about why I am banned from the Smithsonian. I am proud that alt-righters threatened my life at a 2nd amendment rally. So the rants and lectures that we should just let everything be are wasted on us. (I use "us" here because the players, protesters, etc. speak for me too.) We have heard them our whole lives. If we are going to be boycotted, murdered, etc., we might as well go down fighting for something worth the price.

I have complicated views. Every police(wo)man I have met wants their precinct to be as clean as the ol' one-two from Barney Miller. That is one of the hardest jobs I can imagine, so I contribute to any fundraiser they have when I can. Thus, when I went protesting, I wore a mask and worked with police to weed out potential trouble-makers. I have also been so mistreated by police that sometimes, I need to listen to It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Fear of a Black Planet, and Straight Outta Compton every now and then like I had to after the Kenosha shootings. Thus, I also support #BlackLivesMatter and the protests of the players. I was the first non-Caucasian in Amherst. As such, I am the most westernised of the orthodox Sikhs in the area. Thus, I feel a responsibility to those who don't interact with the general community as much to teach them how to mix and assimilate better, speak up for them when they don't know how or can't, and, in short, lead. I speak at interfaith gatherings around town to try and increase understanding amidst all the division. Being the person with the "A" or "C" on your figurative jersey is hard. I understand that they feel because they have the means, visibility, and platform to do so, they feel the responsibility to protest for those who can't afford it. They are not protesting just for themselves -- even those who had their legs broken, heads beaten, and the like -- they are the voice of those without a say. They know that they need to be Tommie Smiths and Juan Carloses of this day and age. The players have the same problems I do magnified thousands-fold. I totally feel what LeBron James tweeted about the shooting -- while a white killer of two was brought peacefully into custody by the same police department the same night. That is ludicrous -- the injustice of the difference was a bridge too far. It does not matter if you like it or not; they feel that responsibility to their voiceless fellows -- period. There was already opposition to even restarting. They restarted in good faith with the hope that their peaceful protests would stop crap like Kenosha. From their point of view, their peaceful, quiet protest did exactly nothing. Their conclusion is action that incurs the broad rant of @Randall Flagg is all we have left.

If this belongs in the politics board, please feel free to move it. I want to point out that politics and sports have never been separate except in our minds. The entire 20th century of sports was subsumed within the political problems of the day. For instance, it is flat out delusional to ignore the Cold War, stagflation, and the Iran Hostage Crisis when someone my age remembers the Miracle on Ice so fondly. Other examples are too easy to think of: the 1936 Olympics, the creation of women's competitive sports, the propaganda of the Cold War in international tournaments, the eventual acceptance of South American, then African, and now Asian teams in the World Cup of Football, to now with the #BlackLivesMatter protests. The mix of politics and sport is not new. There is also no purity of sport, except in our childhoods. Owners treated the players like dirt until Curtis Flood sued to create free agency. We thought about how great it would be to play for the Sabres. Meanwhile, Mike Robitaille used to pump gas in the off-season because he was borderline illiterate and couldn't get another job. Competition begets toxic competitiveness in some people, so Canadians excuse Bobby Clarke for breaking Kharlamov's ankle in the 1972 Summit Series. Canadians also accepted not having Bobby Hull and others on Team Canada while the Soviets had a player boycott because of the power struggle lost by Tarasov. In the 1990's, I as an expatriate Buffalonian was expected to take verbal abuse and apologise for bringing the country down because the Bills lost 4 Super Bowls. In grad school, a Buffalo Bills coat was an open invitation for people to throw iceballs at me or to try and run me over with their cars. I quit playing bridge because some novices violated the ACBL's rules on behaviour to openly denigrate me at a game in Columbus Ohio because I was a Bills fan. For some reason, being a Bills fan meant I wasn't as good a bridge player as the guy who trained Meckstroth-Rodwell thought I was and that I needed to be put in my place. More coming.

Sorry to see you go. The issue is that sports are played by real people. When those real people are affected by external events, then sports takes on a meaning more than entertainment. This goes back to before 1936 Olympics in Berlin to Smith and Carlos in the 1968 Olympics past the opening ceremonies of the 2016 games. Even when the game is being played, you can still feel external intrusions. At the Red Army - Sabres game from 1980, there was a sign in Russian that said, "Better Dead than Red" and a second sign in Arabic that said, "God Is Great - Kill the Commies." The best that you can do is put the external disturbances out of your mind as best you can when the game is being played. Good luck to you.

Awesome! Thanks, PA.

The NHLPA is considering a day or two off as well.

I never have. My stoner friends told me that I didn't need to -- I normally could think in ways they associated with altered states of mind. I still haven't figured out if that was flattery, befuddlement, or something else...

Greg Klyma is a folk musician who grew up in Buffalo and now lives in Boston. His YouTube video last night has a tribute to Rick Jenneret at 5:38. He has the same feelings towards RJ that I had when I lived out of town.

Why not target Tierney or someone similar as well? I could stand Eichel-Danault-Tierney as my top 9 spine. You could plan on Cozens being in Rochester; if he forces himself on the roster, then so much the better.

Roger. Wilco. Out.

Weave a safety net for Weave.

I was pondering that last night. It seemed to me that the easiest thing would be to rotate divisions. for inter-divisional play. The teams play 8 games in 16 days, have a few days of travel, and then repeat. You could also have multiple bubbles and get all the inter-conference games out of the way early to cut down on travel.

You mean the 1998-9 Sabres with more talent? Yup.

I hope your are right. I just can't see it with the perception of us being on thin ice with Eichel.

IMHO, any trade to get a current, real, #2C with some term will require #8 and one of Olofsson, Reinhart, or Cozens just to keep them from hanging up the phone. We have such an obvious sense of urgency not to piss off Eichel any more that other GMs would be derelict in their duties not to ask for three high-end assets to start things off.

I expect #8 and either Reinhart or Olofsson are a bare minimum opening offer. No one except Buffalo gives up #2C's for a smattering of picks, depth, and garbage. One other thing: if you are a cap-strapped team, are you selling your #2 Centres or #2 Wingers? I expect the Sabres to be able to pick up some decent wingers on the cheap: Move and RD and I could have about $18M to deal with (I personally would move Risto and then rebalance the toughness and smarts with everything else.)

We can talk about Paul Reinhart...?

This is where I am, so let's do a thought experiment. For argument's sake, let us assume the price was really steep and we overpaid: Monahan for #8, Reinhart, and Olofsson. I will fill the resultant holes internally and not use Larsson, Girgensons, or Vesey (our top-performing bottom-6 players) to see what our baseline is. I will round all salaries upward to millions and a decimal place to get an over-estimate of the projected salaries. These preconditions lead to the following beginning roster: Skinner (9.0) - Eichel (10.0) - Ruotsalainen (1.0) Johansson (4.5) - Monahan (6.5) - Kahun (1.0) Mittlestadt (1.0) - Cozens (1.0) - Thompson (1.0) Asplund (1.0) - Lazar (1.0) - Okposo (6.0) 12 F -> 43.0 Dahlin (1.0) - Jokiharu (1.0) McCabe (2.9) - Miller (3.9) Montour (3.4) - Ristolainen (5.4) 6 D -> 17.6 Ullmark (projecting 5.0) Hutton (2.8) 2 G -> 7.8 Total: 68.4 + adjustments Here's what I see: We have over $10M in cap room before we even get off the ground. At least 1 of Montour, Ristolainen, and Miller is gone, so there should be money to upgrade somewhere aside from the cap space. The top line should score a bunch. The 2nd line isn't horrible. The 3rd line should get favourable match-ups. I am not reliant on the 4th line, so we are not going to have long stretches of multiple consecutive games of them being the 2nd best line we have. IMHO, that heavy price is worth it. We still would have enough room to do one or more of: Add a good goaltender Get better wingers (I think teams are more likely to dump wingers for the next couple of years, so I think the resulting holes are easier to fill.) Rebalance the type of defencemen we have Improve the bottom of the roster (either adding on top or at the bottom) As painful as my proposal is, I think it is worth doing. I doubt anyone else will cough up that much; the only question is who offers and immediate replacement in a hockey trade of centres.

They should have removed him long before for abject incompetence.