Marvin

This is a hard one. I have so many candidates. 1974-5 had two fatal flaws: goaltending and coaching. In spite of that, if the Sabres had been 1st OA, they draw the Islanders in the Semi-Finals and the Flyers would have got the Habs. Assuming they get to the Finals, they either had home ice against Philly or, more likely, face the Habs, whom the Flyers couldn't handle. You can quote John Greenleaf Whittier's "Maud Muller" here. ("For of all sad words of tongue or pen / The saddest are these: 'What might have been.'") As several commentators such as Dick Irvin, Tom Mees, and the 1999 staff of The Hockey News called the 1974-86 Sabres things like "the Sabres' analogue of the 1988-99 Bills", I am giving them a long look. The three teams 1975-8 suffered because of the division we were in with that first round bye, just as the Flyers and Islanders hurt each other. Trading away Peter McNab to the Bruins hurt a LOT. The 1977-8 team had far better goaltending than 1974-5. One wonders if Gerry Desjardins's eye injury is the difference in 1977. Several Islanders players still can't figure out how they beat us in 1976. I can make the case that all 3 of these teams plus the next 2 I mention were better than 1974-5 overall. The 1979-80 and 1982-3 teams were both very good. The long layoff in 1980 killed us. I still hate Brad Park, but to this day, I wonder more about how quickly that team regressed instead of improved. After the rebuild post-Bowman we have some interesting entries. 1989-90 cemented my hatred of divisional playoffs. #3 vs. #4 or some such in round 1? Argh! I think they are a step below every other team I mention, but boy, they deserved better. 1992-3 and 2005-6 are the two unluckiest Sabres teams. Key injuries killed them both. If we can ponder the hypothetical of Hasek in 1993, can I get some love for the hypothetical of LaFontaine in 1994? Also, can someone explain to me why 1995 was so much worse than I thought it should have been? 1998-9 needed a bit more offence, but that's hard when you are outspent 2-1. And I guess since the NHL stopped enforcing rules in the DPE, the tainted result makes sense. To add insult to injury, several Dallass players said they were so hurt that the Sabres could have run them over in a game 7. 2000-1 angers me the most. Gilmour's quitting barely registers because the total stupidity of the Mike Peca situation bugs me to this day. If he's in the line-up, this team could get my vote. 2009-10 and 2010-11 both have arguments for them because of key injuries even with the Centre issues. Heck, a healthy Jochen Hecht in round 1 could push those teams a long way. If I have to pick one, I am going with 2005-6. Game 7 against Carolina was the first time I had cried over them losing since Brad Park. Depending on hypotheticals, I could choose 1993-4 or 2000-1.

The Beatles resembled a boy band in the same way that ABBA resembled Starlight Vocal Band as a band of two couples.

IMHO, "Fair" is far too generous.

Does anyone believe this? I personally don't. Can you imagine if the league plays only 74 games and somehow the Sabres sneak into 12th place (3 games out, 2 in hand on Montreal; need to beat out New Jersey)?

Any timeline for potential clinical trials for the above?

TL; DR: Overall: No. The media had a part in exacerbating every negative point about TC (and the Rochester core, for that matter) in Buffalo. They did not create something that was not there. (You know this is trouble when I need a TL;DR for all the TL;DRs that follow.) I had season tix from 1999-2004 and partial seasons from 2005-2013. Fans routinely parroted negative stories from The Snooze and BBSes; eventually, I could tell the source without reading them anymore. Early on, Connolly's injuries bothered me a lot less than his horrendous play and party-going nature. His drinking was an open secret downtown until his first bad concussion; I had always gathered that he cleaned up his act afterwards. Having said that, he was often his own worst enemy off the ice (particularly from 2001-3) and on the ice (especially 2007-11). After the Co-Captains left, the Rochester core got more blame and a lesser percentage fell on Connolly. Even so, his injuries would have bothered me a lot less had the team added another 2-3C and viewed him as a great supplementary rather than as a core piece. That would have mitigated the negative influence of his injuries while making his positive influence much more, well, positive. TL;DR 1: Some of Connolly's problems were his fault, just as the Sabres failures after the Co-Captains before the tank belong with "The Failed Rochester Core." But external factors don't help -- particularly dumb choices from management. "Dumb Choices By Management" will be an ongoing theme. I can't imagine anyone liked how Mike Peca was treated, let alone that he had to be traded. Hence, TC and TP already had to do the impossible: they both had to be better than Peca, hit harder than Peca, fight more than Peca, and the Sabres had to win more than they had when Peca was on it - and had to make up for Dominik Hasek forcing his way out because of how Peca had been treated. Every failure of the Sabres with Connolly and Pyatt matched every success of the Islanders with Peca, and the Snooze played it for all it was worth with the print version of "click bait". And I'm not even counting that lingering feeling that, had Peca been on the team in 2000-1, the Sabres might have won the Cup and Hasek would not have left. (I personally agree with this.) The negative energy was there at the first preseason game and increased non-stop at Peca's Islanders kept burying the Sabres in the rear-view mirror. Bucky and Sully wrote extensive polemics on how bad Connolly was when he was one of the Sabres' better players in 2001-2. They gleefully savaged him in 2002-3, where he might have been the worst player on the team during the bankruptcy. Missing the 2003-4 season might have been the best thing for him. The fans and the Snooze treated them like it was their fault for the Sabres' problems. TL; DR 2: Fans took out their frustrations with the 2001-4 Sabres on Connolly and, to a lesser extent, Pyatt -- whether they were deserved or not. Their own shortcomings and characteristics as players and rumoured off-ice behaviour make the situation worse. During the co-captains era, I did not get full seasons because I thought Connolly belonged nowhere near an NHL roster. Early that season, I commented that I felt I should apologise to him because he was way better. After the harangues I got from fans because he was "clearly a passenger for Drury and Briere" and various other things to denigrate his play and after being directly made fun of by a Snooze reporter on WGR a few games later, I almost gave up my 1/2 seasons for free. Any credit he got was begrudging, and always downplayed because he wasn't really responsible for it for whatever reason. (PHam, I am looking at you too.) After the Co-captains left, Connolly and Roy now drew the ire of the fans that were more about Quinn and the rest of management. Quinn made this worse by his relationship with Connolly's family and how he seemed to value Connolly over both co-captains combined. The success of the Rangers and Flyers over the Sabres they left behind stuck in our craws even worse. And the Snooze writers let us know it: they would gratuitously bring up the co-captains when there was nothing else negative that they could write. Much of Sabres fandom had the same issues -- two sites closed down in this time; the reasons given by their hosts included Tim Connolly's presence over Drury and Briere. To add insult to injury, fans knew that his concussion history severely limited his long-term prospects. We knew that counting on him to be a consistent 2C was crazy because he seemed to be reckless with his own safety and seemed to try too hard to prove himself over the negativity that wafted through the crowd whenever he went on the ice. (I couldn't miss it; I can't imagine he did.) When he played, his play was typically of a high standard -- he defended like a top defencive centre while consistently scoring at a high pace. It wasn't his fault that the higher-ups in the organisation were too stupid to rely on him in spite of his injury history -- and then they compounded the offence by elevating Gaustad to 3C and not drafting a C between Luke Adam and Mikhail Grigorenko. And, on top of it, fans and the media started to vent about the "Rochester Core", who really started to take it on the chin as a group. This was extraordinarily unfair to Vanek and Miller, very unfair to Pominville, and merely unfair to Roy, because these players often carried the team on their backs even through terrible injuries (especially Vanek in 2010 against Boston) and willed them towards playoff spots (Vanek, Pominville, and Miller in 2011) or through gross negligence by the GM (all 5, particularly Miller, for 2007-9 and 2011-2). TL; DR 3: Fans took out their frustrations with the 2007-12 Sabres on Connolly, Roy, Vanek, Pominville, and Miller. Connolly's injury history belay management's inertia to get another quality middle-6 C. Their collective problems started with management screw-ups, but the Buffalo media pushed an unfair amount of blame onto them. Surprise: IMHO, the Buffalo sports media never - and I mean never - artificially created negativity within the fan base; said negativity was already there and often for good reason. However, they exacerbated it seemingly at every turn and had picked out Tim Connolly as their primary scapegoat. When he was gone, it was "the failed Rochester Core." Both of these are gross over-simplifications; e.g., who failed to deal with the lack of centres for that core?

Connolly, and to a lesser extent Pyatt, got hatred because they were the return of the Peca trade. The treatment of them by the local press - particularly Bucky and Sully for Connolly - was unconscionable. WARNING: Very controversial opinion forthcoming. I applaud the Pegulas for their treatment of the local press after they bought the team. IMHO, these SOB's deliberately undermined the team for a decade after that trade and set the stage for the current toxicity because they did not want Connolly to be a part of it. They brought up the co-captains unnecessarily to stoke the anti-Connolly hatred. And it worked irredeemably well -- this board proved it in no-trumps for years. And I do mean irredeemably. I evaluate Connolly differently from others. He was mediocre to terrible until he re-invented himself as a checker who could score. Thank Lindy Ruff for that. He could replace Briere or Drury for extended periods in *their* roles. That is a truly rare ability. I personally believe that if he is not injured, then we beat Carolina anyway even though we were down 4 defencemen in game 7. He and Chris Gratton (!) are the perfect 3C's for any line-up, depending on how you want to structure your team. When they went on the ice to protect a lead (along with combos like Drury-Grier-Pyatt), I used to just relax back in my seat because the lines Lindy made with them LOG-line quality forecheckers - the game was in the bag.

You can listen to Tim Ryan and Ted Lindsay on The NHL on NBC for Game 1 of the 1975 Stanley Cup Semi-Finals in its stead. It is on YouTube. Dig the iron-on nameplates.

He $#!+$ in the woods, doesn't he? ? Already there.

There is precedent for cancelling the playoffs even after they have begun: during the 1918 Stanley Cup Finals was stopped after Montreal Canadiens defenceman "Bad" Joe Hall died from the flu. The series was tied 2-2-1.

In defence of the CDC and WHO: They do the best they can with the information they have. They are working with data from several recalcitrant countries and are making the best of it. They have some of the best virologists, epidemiologists, etc. on the planet. Their training is to not exaggerate. Their analyses deserve our due respect; the confounding data and the limitations of their data mean they also deserve the due skepticism. We should err on the side of the side of safety and discretion when we have gobs of misinformation and conflicting reports. This is potentially life-or-death. Please treat it as such.

Note: as a rule, I take Communist China's numbers with a huge dollop of salt. Given their history with epidemics, natural disasters, etc., my rule of thumb is the number of people infected is ten times what the rest of the world is told. At best, they show up a day late and a dollar short with information until either enough time has passed, something more important happens, or people get so concerned about their own countries -- then the truth is quietly released.

It isn't just that, unfortunately. One of the American economy's greatest strengths is people taking risks to make their dream company go. That means that risking extended exposure is part of doing business because the purchases that can make or break your company don't care about flu, coronavirus, or kids with chicken pox. I know of one run by a friend of mine which has this exact problem. They made a decision to ignore the experts and keep going to work to produce their product. This will keep them from going broke and get the cash to pay for health insurance and the next few payrolls.

I like Linus and agree that he is in the 19-24 range of starters, but has been improving. I like the ideas of another clear 1B or former starter to push him and replace Hutton. Indeed, I bet Hutton would be better in short NHL stints if he were successful in the AHL next season. If we get the Markstrom-like growth, let's just celebrate our good luck.

We get a real 2C and if Kahun grows into that role, we breathe a sigh of relief that JBottom is gone.

I wouldn't plan on it, but maybe he can.

Norm Wullen could work the crowd into a frenzy. Along with the odd rink dimensions, funky boards, rattling glass, very cozy confines, ending home-and-home series at home, not to mention the team itself, the organist was part of the home ice advantage. He kept the crowd engaged when the game sagged. He often played "Halleluja" Chorus from Handel's "Messiah" on a Sabres' game-tying goal. "Ooh! Aah! Sabres on the Warpath!" when the Sabres took the lead. Just amazing.

For the record (probably 16 rpm as JBottom looks like he learnt how to put a team together off the back of a cereal box), the NHL record for most consecutive regulation losses in a row is 17, set by the 1974-5 Washington Crapitals and equaled by the 1992-3 San Jose Sharts. The Sabres of 2014-5 are tied for 4th with 14. The NHL record for longest winning streak is 17 by the 1992-3 Pittsburgh Penguins.

As a math person, I go the other way on this: things like grit, determination, etc. DO turn up in the numbers if you know how to measure and infer them. Managers I know of have attempted to model and quantify factors that allow them to measure grit. Indeed, there are at least two books on management and managerial decision theory that explain how to quantify grit, mental toughness, etc. in the corporate setting. These are done via indirect means, but with quantifiable metrics. Example 1: I worked on a project where one person who moved from one part to another invariably got people to feel happier about their productivity, even though the concrete metrics initially looked mixed. Eventually, we saw that the parts she worked on might come out a bit more slowly, but NEVER failed QA and performance tests. Then their code was updated to be used by other groups within the project. We determined that she increased the mental discipline and quality of thought wherever she worked. We checked with her superiors and, after some reflection, they agreed. Example 2: I was at a company where we hired this kid fresh out of college. He was added to a software project with a pile of legacy code that other people more-or-less had given up on. Two months later, that group had made more progress with this person than they had the previous year. Moreover, the enthusiasm of the group was higher and they were now pushing through issues rather than putting them off. The kid had added grit, determination, and mental toughness. They even said so at the salary determination meeting. You would need to do this with hockey as well. But to model these well, you must choose the proper metrics. I know a couple of Big Data companies in Buffalo that would like to hire you if you can get the Sabres to buy in.

You young whipper snapper! (Whistles some chaw t'backy into a spittoon.) Channel 17 was one of the first 10 stations in the country to get Jon Pertwee! By cracky, my copies of "Doctor Who and the Silurians" and "The Ambassadors of Death" even have WNED and Mark Russell promos on them.

Thank you. The oldest saw about analysis is, "if your assumptions are wrong, then it is likely that your conclusions will not be very good either." IMHO, JBottom is here with his data analysis. PSE may also need more and better minds involved in the data mining, machine learning, and statistical analysis process. I have no idea how we could not competently fill in the bottom of the roster and not have 4 natural NHL centres on the roster 2 years in a row.

I remember Girgensons getting a delay of game penalty by flipping the puck over the glass at other end of the ice.

Just wondering why it has been impossible for JBottom to make a second LOG-type line since he came on board. Is it really that hard to do in the off-season?

I remember one of the small, but funny moments because it turned me against Bylsma. I didn't believe Pens' fans' complaints about his system until I went to a preseason game against Columbus before the 2015-6 season. After the 4th time that a defenceman just flipped the puck out of the defencive zone when he was not under pressure and had open teammates he could have head manned to, I started laughing at the system like the villain in a black-and-white serialised melodrama. Sadly, that season was the high point of the current dry spell. I can't believe it has got worse, let alone this much worse.

Sabrepede. It is one of the funniest things I have ever seen on the ice.