Marvin

Welcome to the board!

Lundell to me is the classic "Jason Botterill" pick: low ceiling but high floor. If we don't have a 2C by the draft and if he is the top C at #8, I want the pick traded for a real 2C who has a few years of team control. Unfortunately, the screw-ups of Murray with the defence and goaltending and Botterill with the forwards and goaltending have made me impatient.

Pronger and Samuelsson come to mind.

And then there's Maude.

Oh. My. God.

Cool. Just a week or so of convalescence.

I believe they have been worn in preseason games, but I would not want to be held to that. I think anything pink, particularly alligator shirts, is hideous -- especially when it is Pepto-Bismol pink.

The NHL has allowed them for breast cancer and other health-awareness type things. If the Sabres came up with a charity jersey for the United Way or Roswell Park Cancer Institute, my gut feeling is that the NHL would let it happen.

And why wasn't I? I am as picayune about grammar as it gets! ?

In case I don't find your first post, welcome to SabreSpace!

Clarification: We could have had both Vanek and Byfuglien (8th round) / Pavelski (7th tound) if we had valued them a bit differently. I would not trade Vanek for Byfuglien either.

And here I was thinking that they might try two different deals for two guys like Strome (prospect and RD) and Domi (requires #8) and use them both at C and see who works out better while slotting Skinner, Reinhart, Olofsson, Johansson, Kahun, Cozens, et al. to slot around Eichel-Strome-Domi. The 4th line is something like Asplund-Lazar-Okposo as a 4th line.

Bergeron went in the mid 2nd (#45); the Sabres first two picks were #5 and #65; we had traded away #35 to Nashville in a slew of trades that got us Jochen Hecht and Dan Paille. More to the point was missing out on Joe Pavelski (7th) and Dustin Byfuglien (8th). This kind of ex post facto wishing might look great now, but in 2005-6, we had the up-side.

A hockey trade where both teams benefit does not bother me. If the Sabres dump excess D for someone's surplus F and we get a balanced, competitive team that makes the playoffs and is a real threat to grow into a contender while the other team improves, that should be fine and dandy.

I presume the idea is that they are here and the team suddenly improves, they get the credit, and they resign here. Risky, I know.

I do. It looks about right. I would need to do an RGB check, though.

When this came out of the oven, it was a hot pre-hockey cake: https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/236298311678076745/

You pay the ante; you take your chances.

That crest is really nice. The extra textures and sharper colors really add something without distracting from the look.

Gotta start somewhere.

It's a paradoxical cliche, but: all other things equal, offence can win games but defence can win championships.

For reference: There are statistics that teams can keep and people measure which may or may not be useful. I have no problem with someone having their own numbers to track that s/he thinks are useful. However, the most common advanced stats are that common for pretty good reasons: they are easy to measure and serve as a solid proxy for important parts of the game that correspond to winning. As we noted, based on simple raw numbers and on the most common advanced stats, there was no excuse for Botterill to have wasted Pegula's money on Frolik and Simmonds, let alone have Thompson and Mittlestadt in the NHL yet, and really devalues getting Sobotka and, to a lesser extent, Berglund in the ROR steal deal. For those with inside information better than mine, how much of the analytics side was Botterill using invalid statistics, rationalisation for a bad move, or just plain ignorance that led to the ignoramus-like moves? For everyone, what are some statistics and/or representations of data that you believe are largely valid? I am here to learn and understand what people think on a myriad of topics related to the numbers.

I remember when the slug came out after Larry Quinn had the original road jersey on display at a press conference as the "new 3rds". That sucked. One thing that bugs me is that they seemed to know the navy colour scheme didn't work: the 40th anniversary, the 50th anniversary, and the two Winter Classic jerseys were far more popular than the ones they normally used. Although they were not my taste, I think they consider having the shoulder patches have the red-black-grey of the demonic goat and crossed sabres as a nod to those fans. JMO.

Not yet. This year: John Carlson, Roman Josi, and Victor Hedman. I think he can get into this group within a couple of seasons.