Marvin

The problem with the Sabres is probably "crucial scoring" (again, courtesy of The Klein-Reif Hockey Compendium) - they don't get either tying or lead-giving goals in 1 goal games and yield them on a consistent basis. Indeed, given their first period statistics, the frequency with which they pull the goalkeeper, and the lack of overtimes, I would not be surprised if they were dead last in the league. Some of that comes from the obvious: injuries, the multitude of down years, and power play problems, but they could create some more luck by crashing the net more consistently.

A change in Power Play coaches is maybe all we need to make the playoffs? Try it now by hiring Bob Woods.

Is it true that no team that has played abroad to start the season has made the playoffs?

We could always give Zemgus some more shifts. I'll show myself out.

I am a tea snob. Great Value is fine. 😉 I understand your point: offence does not truly exist in a vacuum; it exists to score goals. I think most fans are conditioned to view offence as chances. I think virtually all of the hockey talking heads view offence as being reflected by chances. Looked at another way, when the Sabres routinely won games with few shots and amazing goaltending (say, Game 2 of the Ottawa series in 2006 or any random game of 1995-6), I always said that the opposition generated a lot of offence in spite of Hasek or Miller.

This is more of a philosophical discussion. I assume shots, zone time, and possession that advanced the puck as "offence". So possessions with organised plat that lead to missed shots fall under my definition of offence. It is certainly reasonable to talk about offence only as productive offence; i.e., leads to actual scoring.

He is in for...?

On the first part, I totally get you. Even when the team is good, you feel weird rooting against your friends and associates. It must be even more frustrating now. On you second point, remember that the sun then becomes a red giant and starts burning helium.

Sentimentality isn't understandable? It is to me. However, it was Granato's and Adams's jobs not to be swayed by that.

This is like the 4th straight game when Peyton Krebs showed some of the skill that made him a 1st round pick. It is one of the few good things to happen since the break.

So, what do we need to do to get that kind of commitment to 200' play without fear of physicality out of the entire line-up?

I hate that stigma. I tell everyone: if you are not in a field with good job prospects in and around your major, then consider learning a trade. There is nothing dishonourable about being a plumber, electrician, or whatever. And if you want to be a good capitalist pig about it, tradespeople often make more than college grads in white collar jobs and they don't have the debt load. He'll never have a girlfriend who graduated from Harvard Law or Stanford Medical, though. If he is set on going to college, then until he is fairly certain what he wants to do later, then go to a state school and save the money. Gen Ed courses at all but the highest and lowest schools are pretty interchangeable. We use the same textbooks, teach the same courses, and give similar exams. Also, he can learn a trade and go to college later for the joy of it.

We can dream.

.944 SP with 1.56 GAA and he's 6-5 with only a 2.20 GAA in the losses. I can't stop shaking my head.

Did you know that an anagram for "Hello" is "o Hell"?

This is interesting. All 4 of the standard leading indicators for a recession went red from 2020-2022. But they are currently flat, which normally predates a recovery. And a lot of the usual other bad things that predate a recession have not happened. It is possible that there still will go into a recession, though. I am hoping for hiring to accelerate as interest rates fall.

Same here. I am pushing 60. I am thankful that I can still be a competent grunt at any lower to middle level if need be.

I did say that I am taking the posters here who have consistently turned up correct internal information before at their word. They also have written about the problems that Buffalo has historically had with recruitment, which partially exonerates Pegula and Adams from their critics. Conjecture this might be, but they obviously know more than I do. The first obvious question comes with XGMJB's dismissal and GMKA's ascension because Adams was willing to be a good soldier. The current rebuilding plan with its spending limitations is GMKA's deciding under Terry Pegula's direction. It is reasonable to draw the inference that Terry has some veto over what GMKA does. From a hockey point of view, I have to ask if running back exactly the same forwards from the end of last year to this season was unduly caused by (very understandable) sentiment rather than cold hockey logic for Terry (and Kevin and Donnie too, for that matter). It is reasonable to assert that the bottom part of the forward roster could have been improved upon and that it could have made a difference this year.

The latter part. It is human nature. Also, considering @Brawndo's and other's information, there is also a natural question of whether some personnel moves are unduly influenced by Terry's sentiments rather than by pure hockey decisions.

I am a generalist with more strength in middleware, primarily with Java, although I have some C# plus too many other languages to mention. I have been a DBA (Oracle, DB2, Ingres), SysAdmin, tech support, Full stack developer (my front-end experience is kind of old, though), QA, DevOps, team lead, substitute Scrum master, substitute project lead, with some predictive analytics to top it all off. Basically, tell me what you need and I will figure it out.

The Sabres are the only team in NHL history to win 10 games in a row and miss the playoffs (Housley's second). That season is also the highest winning percentage at Thanksgiving for a team that missed the playoffs after The Big Lockout. Just doing the mental computation: even if the Sabres win 10 in a row, they are likely to still be about 4 points out of a playoff spot.

I found that one generative AI fell for traps that I laid for it with a sample project I had worked on a couple of years ago, so it currently can not replace IT reliably. It learned off of publicly available code, which tells me that there are a lot of companies using known inefficient or flawed algorithms because the programmer was unaware of the limits of the obvious, naive solution. On the other hand, having the AI write the tedious boilerplate code to get me started writing an API with a standardized project configuration and set-up was soooooooo cool. So if people are willing to think and be careful, then IT could see a big boom with coding with AI's help. But you just know that some companies will use AI as an excuse to cut their IT departments at some point, which could bite them HARD because the odds are that they won't think about the ramifications carefully.

The consulting firm that I work for is doing a big round of IT layoffs. I am worried because I have been on the bench a while. I am lucky that I can work anywhere in the entire tech stack, so AI might survive this round.

Money wasted

Just wondering: wouldn't the original way to spell Brind'Amour's name be Brin D'Amour (a wisp of the smoke of love)?