Sabre Dance

Why? Because it adversely affects the Sabres? Hey, the 2015 draft is still a year off. If Mom moves the cookie jar to the top shelf because you've been sneaking cookies, should you be mad at Mom for moving it or yourself for sneaking the cookies?

Well, the old saying is that if you play with fire, you get burned. Ever notice that the ones whining the loudest about a change in the rules are the ones that have been abusing it the worst?

Wait, it's OK for the Sabres to purposely be bad so they can get a higher draft pick, but it's not OK for the league to try to encourage teams playing to win instead of lose? Of course, if the league changes its rules to better the chance of the Sabres getting a #1 pick, I'm sure everyone would be fine with that? By the way, you realize that today is the 2014 Draft and that this 2015 thread is more active? Wow.

The Sabres could draft Bo frickin' Derek for all I care - since everyone seems to be on board with the tank, wake me up in 3 - 5 years when the team is relevant again. :yawn:

Frankly, I don't plan on following this team very much for this season at least, and maybe more. Moral superiority? No, I just think it's an insult to fans (paid ticketholders or not) to assemble a team which does not represent your best effort to produce a winner every season. I'm very surprised at the number of fans and media who are so willing to write off several seasons for the HOPE of getting better. Nothing in life is guaranteed....

So, whatever happened to pride? So, Sabre fans (those with and without season tix) are going to be asked to watch their team play another atrocious season of hockey for a 1 in 4 chance they will get the first overall pick (providing another team doesn't tank more than they do)? Let's take a quick look at your 2013-2014 Stanley Cup champs, the LA Kings. On their roster, they have 10 first round picks - five of their own choosing and five that came in as trades/FAs. The five players they picked themselves were selected 2nd, 11th, 13th, 17th and 30th overall. The players who were picked by other teams were selected 3rd, 11th, 19th, 24th and 28th overall. So, a two-time Cup championship team has two players, that's just TWO that were picked higher than 11th overall. Is it really worth watching this team embarrass themselves AND the City of Buffalo for another season just for a 25% chance they may get the first overall pick? Ben Franklin said "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Draft smart. Makes trades. Sign quality free agents. Demand a honorable effort from your players every game. That's how you start a rebuild.

There were a number of things that happened after that goal that raised suspicions. If the goal was in fact legal according to the "mysterious memo", and that fact was stated immediately after the game ended, why did the NHL feel the need to have Colin Campbell do TV and radio interviews all the next day explaining why the goal was in fact a legal one? (The Sabres had a goal called back in an eerily similar situation against the Flyers in February. Perhaps that dissallowed goal was why the league issued the memo in March?) The real story is this: it was after 1 AM, many fans had already left, both teams were nearly spent and both the NHL brass and the TV folks wanted to go home. Unless Brett Hull picked up the puck with his glove and threw it into the net, any goal, no matter how borderline, was going to count. .

Outcome uncertain. Ask again later. :lol:

Pegula owning the Bills....hmmm. Yeah, that'd be great because, you know, he's really turned the Sabres franchise around. So, Terry is still on the low end of the learning curve when it comes to owning a sports franchise and now we want to throw him into the REAL deep end of the pool with owning an NFL franchise. There is one bright spot - he won't be able to take a middling franchise and turn them into a laughinstock because, well, the Bills are just about there already. (Thank goodness Hollywood picked the Browns for that draft movie instead of Buffalo, hey?)

I agree, that goal #3 should probably have been disallowed; but the goal WAS allowed right or wrong. The Rangers then needed to prevent them from scoring goal #4 to tie it and didn't. Plus, NY had over a period to score on LA and didn't. So, although I can feel for the Rags (sort of), they can't blame it all on that one goal.

For my part, I will paraphrase the title of the thread and say, " I sometimes break wind." :rolleyes:

In the best Cliff Claven tradition, pterodactyls have as much to do with Buffalo as Sabres, Bandits or in fact, the American Bison. No "buffaloes" ever lived in the area; as far as I know, there were no well-known sword-makers and while I'm sure there were (and are) bandits, I'm pretty sure they did not use lacrosse sticks as their weapon of choice. (and please don't take me seriously - it's late in the workday and I'm getting bored... :D )

OK, well here goes: 1) Although my degree is in laboratory medicine (and I only took one college course in computer science), my current job is in computer user support. 2) I moved to Arizona in the Spring of 1993 for a job. I hated the job AND Arizona and moved back to Buffalo in October - just in time for winter! 3) Once I hit 50, I decided that I was no longer going to do anything I didn't really want to do (and didn't need to offer an excuse). The phrase "We're not going to be doing that." entered my lexicon. 4) Friday nights used to mean Happy Hour and staying out until 4:00 - now it means laundry and falling asleep in front of the TV by 9:00. 5) Way back when America Online (AOL) was the way everyone connected to the internet, I stumbled across Jennifer Aniston's member account. I emailed her, but I'm still waiting for a reply.... 6) I usually play golf only once or twice a year, but (so far) this Spring, I've purchased five pair of golf shoes (but no golf balls). 7) I've been to New York City three times, but the longest I've ever stayed was 24 hours. 8) Even in the wintertime, I prefer to wear short sleeve polo shirts. 9) For the first time since 1988, I purchased a car rather than leasing one. and 10) I never met a brownie I didn't like. :D

Let's see... I was only 17 when I took the Erie County EMT course (in 1974) and worked briefly for an ambulance company. My degree is in laboratory medicine and I worked in a hospital lab and later at a commercial lab. Then I got a position as a clinical data manager for a cooperative research group, first involved with cancer research and later with HIV/AIDS research. I am now a technical support person for a cooperative cancer research group (web support, etc.) Even though my day-to-day no longer involves direct (or indirect) patient care, I still have to use my knowledge of health care often. Our office is on the Roswell campus, so we do see patients as they come in to the hospital for treatment. (In my stint with the previous cancer group, our office was located in a suburban business park. I can't tell you how much more satisfying it is when you are so close to the patients receiving treatment. It reminds us every day the reason why we are doing our job.)

Sorry, a little late to the party on this one, but I've a pertinent comment... I've found without fail that friends are the least likely to know what you are looking for in a date/mate. The last time a friend tried setting me up was a disaster. He called to have me meet him at a local dinner spot. When I arrived, he was with his girlfriend and another woman. We had a quick drink at the bar and then sat down to have dinner. In the first ten minutes sitting at the table, this woman wound up insulting me, my (deceased) father and labor unions in general. I was so angry, I excused myself from the table (ostensibly to go to the rest room) and I got in my car and left. I did apologize to my friend, and he also apologized to me as he had no idea this woman was going to behave so badly. Needless to say, that was the last setup he tried.

Amen, Paul Stewart, Amen. You hit the nail on the head. My dream is for Lucic to get traded to the Flyers and the first time they play the Bruins, Lucic goes after Marchand. One can dream, can't they?

The Bruins have always pulled this kind of crap reaching all the way back to the '60s. The Flyers are even worse. I think because these teams do it all the time, the officials let a lot of it slide. If the refs called everything they saw, the Bruins would have someone in the box all the time. You know that's not going to happen. (Oh, and I'm sure that Jeremy Jacobs being the Chairman of the NHL Board of Governors doesn't hurt, either).

Kids say some amazing things - a few years back, I was at a friend's house for dinner. The topic turned to old TV shows and M*A*S*H was one of the topics. Then my friend mentioned the short-lived spin-off, AfterM*A*S*H. So, his daughter turned to us and said "AfterM*A*S*H... that's kind of like the aftermath..." My friend and I turned and looked at each other. Honest to gosh, his daughter was right on the mark, but neither of us caught that even after all these years. We just thought it was the series after M*A*S*H, never thinking that it had anything to do with the aftermath of the war. And his daughter was only 12 at the time.

Welcome pack, BTP00 - Darcy who? :)

So, if you think that hanging out with four attractive young ladies is too much, I'd be happy to, you know, assist with one or two.... :) Hey, at least I tried...

I liked the old days where the goalie wore #1, the defensemen wore numbers from 2 - 9 and the forwards wore 10 and up. You could tell the player's position just by his number (the NFL still kind of follows this - receivers are in the 80s, RBs in the 20s or 30s, etc.) When backup goalies became common, they got #30. Now, with so many numbers retired, larger rosters, etc. anything goes. 99 should remain untouchable though. When I was a kid, Roger Crozier wore #1 for the Sabres and Dave Dryden wore #30. With the chutzpah only a kid can have, I considered I had as much talent in goal as both of them put together. So, I wore #31. And that's still my favorite number.

I'm glad someone finally brought up the Bruins - they seem to do awfully well with every move they make. They even turned Dan Paille into a decent NHL player. No reason to think the Sabres HAVE to suck for two or three seasons before turning it around. Tanking and then trolling for the #1 overall pick probably has the most chance of giving you some top-notch talent, but trades and free angency work also IF you have a GM who knows what he is doing and a scouting staff who can identify talent other teams may have overlooked. Darcy certainly painted this team into a corner over the past several years of his tenure and (IMHO) sold the "tank" to TP and the rest of the brain trust. Now that the team is skidding along on its a$$, I think maybe they realize the fans may be losing interest quickly (I know I am). I have no interest in watching another season like this one. I want an NHL-caliber team, not an AHL one. Meanwhile, I'll be watching Jeff Dunham on Netflix instead of Sabre games. (Oh, that Peanut! :lol: )

In deference to Wings post from last week, I won't complain about the weather (but a blizzard in mid-March? Yeesh!). So, last Friday I picked up my new car (good). I sold my motorcycle so now I have enough room to park the new car in my garage (good). The car comes with summer-only tires so I can't drive it in this mess (bad). I still have my 4WD truck (good) but when I was cleaning the snow off the windshield this morning, the snow brush hit one of the windshield wipers and broke the plastic doohicky that holds it on the wiper arm (bad). I had a new wiper blade in the garage (good) but it is two inches too long for the truck (bad). I put it on anyway. I'll buy a new, correctly-sized one tomorrow when it is warm (relatively speaking). And then I had to shovel the driveway because the snowblower is now blocked in by the new car (which I can't back out of the garage because it has summer tires and no grip whatsoever on snow). :doh: All that and it is 75 and sunny in Key West. :wallbash:

A few years back, the Maple Leafs had a game where they were celebrating their origins and were wearing Toronto St. Pat's uniforms. (I was watching on HNIC) They brought in as many former players as they could, as well as a gentleman who was related to one of the former players who had passed away some years before. They were introducing these alumni players one-by one. When they introduced the aforementioned gentleman (whose name I don't recall, sorry) he keeled over in the bench. The introductions continued while they tended to the man on the bench (well, he was on the floor of the bench). They performed CPR and defib'd him while the pre-game ceremonies continued. Later in the game, they announced that the gentleman had passed away. If any game should have been stopped (or at least the pre-game ceremony cut short), it should have been this one.

It looks like the snow is tapering off here in downtown Buffalo. I can't really say how much has fallen, since it has been blowing around so much but it doesn't seem to be more than three-four inches. Most of my colleagues headed for home already, but I'm going to hang in there until 5:00. I don't know what it is like elsewhere in WNY, but if the worst is over (which it looks like it is, except for the wind chill) this blizzard was not what it was advertised as. I hope everyone out there is OK, safe and warm....