quill

The answer is to listen to your heart and do what it's telling you to do.

Player development is fine and important, but not when the majority of players on the team are always in the development stage year after year. Every year for the last 14 years the average age of our players has been about 25.5 years of age on 8 of those years and about 26.5 years of age on the other 6 years. When a team is the youngest team for a year or two and then develops into an older, wiser, better team, that is great, but when our team is almost always the youngest team year after year for 14 years in a row it's no wonder why we never get better. Add to that our chronic goal tending problems and it's easy to see why we are the habitual poster child for bottom dwellers in the NHL

If UPL was 22 or 23 years old, I'd say he would just need more time to develop before ruling him out, but he's 26 and at this point it looks like he's done about as much developing as he's going to do. He just doesn't have any consistency, nor does it look like he has enough hockey smarts. He is simply unreliable.

He probably won't make us any worse. We need someone a heck of a lot better, and more predictable, than Levi to make us better.

I don't know if Lindy should stay or not, I like him, but I do think that there isn't a head coach in the NHL who could've worked miracles with a team that has no goalie.

The only thing that needs to be understood is the fact that this team needs a solid number one goalie. Period. Not that James Reimer could do what he's been doing for an entire season, but he has made the point obvious that the missing ingredient of this team over the last bunch of years is a good goalie. Without a solid number one, it's hard on the players and next to impossible for the coaches.

With the exception of the last month Cozens was with us, when he finally started to play hockey, he was a non factor and I don't miss him one bit. Not that I'm making any correlation, but coincidentally, when Cozens was shipped out, Quinn turned on the jets and hasn't slowed down.

If anything, get rid of Samuelsson for another d-man just like Clifton. Clifton was a bull out there tonight.

Excellent game for the most part and great job by Reimer. Once again the Sabres are proving at the end of the season to be the best team not to make the playoffs, and any first place team in the East is breathing a huge sigh of relief for it. How unfortunate that is for us.

AFAIC, Power can go if we get enough for him, but Byram is quickly turning into the 2nd most talented defenseman we have when it comes to his ability to skate the puck from end to end, and he isn't afraid to get his hands a little dirty, unlike Power. Byram has gotten better and better all season long.

Imagine how disappointing it will be for Alex Ovechkin that UPL most likely won't be playing tomorrow.

Will management ever wake up and realize that we will never in a million years go anywhere until we have a legit number one goalie? Whoever takes over for Adams should do whatever it takes to put a consistently solid goalie on this team even if it means having a barn sale to get someone. There is nothing that takes the air out of a team of players more than having a goaltender who stinks half the time. No wonder our skaters often get so deflated out there.

Yup, Byram was great. Benson is fun to watch. I think once he gets more experience the goals and assists will start piling up. I love he way he gets under the opposition's skin and doesn't ever back down. I might be going out on a limb but maybe someday he'll develop into another Theo Fleury type player. With Quinn he sure has some good moves and the talent to put the puck in the net, but I wonder if his serious injuries that kept him out of so many games have taken too much of a toll on him to be able to play effectively in a full 60 minute game yet. Clifton. He's not the most talented in the world, but he does have some talent to go along with his assets, and he's been looking pretty good as of late when he's forced to carry the puck up the ice. He's as physical as we've got and has a huge heart. He's been my favorite Sabre all season long. I totally agree about trading our pick for an already established player, maybe someone in the mold of Zucker. Let's face it. Buffalo, with the state the team is in now, is about the last place that any first round pick touted to become a future star player would want to come to play when they know they could eventually make a small fortune in endorsements playing for a big market team. We can't remain this young forever always waiting for an entire team of youth to develop.

Amen to all of that. When a team has the youngest players in the NHL it can give us hope that we'll develop into a soon to be strong team, but when a team's average age stays at something like 25 years of age for 3 years in a row, never getting any older, it should be obvious that KA had failed along the way to supply the missing ingredient of at least a few solid veteran players soon enough to complement the mix of young talent we've had. His recent moves with keeping Zucker and Greenway, though, were smart at least.

Exactly. Not only does UPL have to be better, but if this team continues to be crappy our goalie will have to be great for us to have any chance of making it into the playoffs next year. Can UPL develop into a great goalie?

Nice try, professor, but that just might be the dumbest, dorkiest, completely irrelevant reply I've read on any sports posting board ever. Congrats!!

Great win in dramatic fashion with the emphasis on dramatic. Fights, camaraderie, come from behind win, the Eichel factor, and just a new found never give up attitude today. In such a downer of a season, that had to be the most satisfying game of the season for any Sabres fan. I wonder how many fans screamed FU Eichel! when Luukkonen made the final save in the shoot out. I also wonder how many Golden Knights will be nursing their bruises tomorrow courtesy of Malenstyn, Clifton, and a couple others. Team toughness seems to be finally in the air, evident today and even in some of the recent losses. Dahlin was great as usual but I think Bo Byram was a huge standout today. He just keeps getting better and better, absolutely loaded with talent.

Whether Dahlin said it or not, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he wants out of Buffalo. Thing is that any star player who considers themselves a superstar knows that they can make a ton of extra money in endorsements by playing on a big market team like like Boston, Philly, New York, Toronto, LA, Montreal, Colorado, etc. rather than on a small market team like Buffalo. There are always exceptions to the rule, but nowadays no matter how much a star is making, more money in their pockets is often more important than remaining loyal to one team, unfortunately.

that somehow they manage to stay in Buffalo so we at least have an NHL team here still.

One example of what just a skater can do: Mark Messier did it with the NY Rangers in 1994 and he didn't just drag them into a playoff spot. He dragged them into winning the cup.

Yes but not nearly as sick as I felt perusing some of your recent posts.

I think what the Sabres need is the same thing they've needed for a long long time, a goalie who is great, not a goalie that is only above average. I like UPL. I think he is a good goalie with good potential, but a crappy team like the Sabres needs a GREAT goalie to stand any chance of winning, developing, and advancing. The only way any crappy team in this league will have any chance at all of making the playoffs is by having a goalie who can keep the good teams from always beating them, a goalie who can stand on his head and consistently make the big save when called upon to do so, which in time would make it easier for the young talent to develop and shine.

It made me sick to see Cozens score the winning goal last night. Cozens wasn't the main reason the Sens won. Ullmark was the reason the Sens won. The Sens were outplayed by the Red Wings all night long and Ullmark kept the Sens in it all night. On his winning goal, Cozens didn't do anything unusual. He was left all alone and was set up beautifully by Soderbloom. All he had to do was shoot it into an empty net. What makes me just as sick as seeing Cozens score that goal was seeing Ullmark stand on his head all night and remembering how the Sabres let him slip away through our fingers.

I'm glad the Sabres are investing in Greenway. It's so hard to find players his size who can actually skate, can be physical, and play smart hockey with the puck. Watching him play on this team, yes he's not some super fast skater or elite puck handler, but I've noticed when he does get the puck he usually makes smart passes and he rarely gives the puck away like so many of our more talented skaters do all too often. I think he'll grow into an even more valuable asset for us if this team can soon become a playoff caliber team. From what the other players have said about him in past interviews, it seems he is a well liked teammate.

Good point but I don't think it's just the 3rd period. From about the halfway point in the game it often looks to me like it's just as much about conditioning as anything. With the exception of a few players who consistently work hard, quite a few of them don't look like they're in good enough shape to play at the NHL level for 60 full minutes. Either that or they don't have the will to win. Or both.