Robviously

Still, the three desirable players are Parise, Suter, and Doan, and I don't know if any of them are a love connection with the Sabres. Suter doesn't really address our team needs and Parise/Doan may have better options. I wouldn't be shocked if we don't sign any UFAs, and I'd be OK with it this year. Yes.

Rose Ceremony!

I think it's really early to say we're back to the pre-Pegula days. It is possible for the Sabres to pass on this year's UFA options. There are only a handful of guys who would make us significantly better and none of them have signed anywhere yet. The Sabres also have too many players on the roster as it is right now (too many D-men and too many forwards if they intend to have Grigorenko start in the NHL) so working through trades does seem appropriate.

If we can't sign Parise or Doan, I'm fine with the Sabres not signing any unrestricted free agents this summer. (Obviously I'd be happy to add Suter as well but the Sabres don't seem interested and I'm not sure how he'd fit in either.) I really think they panicked last year when they couldn't get Richards and convinced themselves Leino was an upgrade over what they had, which sucks both from a salary perspective and because I don't know what to do with (or expect from) Leino for the rest of that contract. I spoke too soon. I would have loved to add Parros to the fourth line. I wonder if the Sabres were interested in him.

Earlier in the thread: Although I did like your joke about the "levelheaded commentary" from the Sabres fan base. Good one.

c) Lifestyle. Buffalo is an awesome place to live, but it's not for everyone. If he likes the idea of being the biggest hockey star in a smaller city, he'll like Buffalo. (See: Mario Williams) If he doesn't like that, there's no way he's coming here. Also, he's married so it'll really depend on what his wife wants. If Pegula wants him, we know the money will be there.

If you're married with kids and want to live in a hockey-crazy town, Buffalo is a good fit. If you're single and want to live somewhere exciting, the Rangers are probably your pick. And if you just want to win, Detroit or Pittsburgh will be your pick. Those teams contend year in, year out. The Sabres just seem dysfunctional, although I'm not sure if players around the league feel that way or if only I feel that way because I follow them closely. On the other hand, maybe the hype about Parise wanting to play with Stafford is true. Or maybe Parise wants to be teammates with Ryan Miller again (after the Olympics). I'm friends with a former NFL player though and he thinks ego is a huge factor. If a team rushes to talk to you at free agency and makes you feel like you're the best player in the world and that they want to build around you, it really makes a difference. I'm not sure if that'll work for Suter and Parise (who may have multiple teams contacting them immediately) but it did sorta work for the Bills getting Mario Williams how they did.

I don't see why we can't make a similar offer. If the Sabres want to open up space under the cap, they have guys they can move even if they won't get maximum return for them (which would be a small price to pay for landing Parise). Regier confirmed that the Sabres made a pitch for Jordan Staal so I'd assume they'd also be interested in Parise. Him picking Buffalo over other teams is the challenge.

I'll be thrilled if the Sabres land Shane Doan. He's 35 but I think he's got a lot left in the tank. He's exactly what the Sabres need both in terms of how he plays and veteran leadership. Putting him on a line with Vanek and Hodgson would be great. I have no interest in Parenteau. He's this year's version of Leino, not really an upgrade over anything we have and probably not capable of raising his game any higher than it was last year (though we'd try to convince ourselves he could). If the Sabres didn't have their heart set on giving Grigorenko a 9 game audition (and maybe Girgensons too?), I'm pretty sure Armia would get a 9 game tryout to stick with the team. After this year's draft, I'm pretty sure they'll let him go back to Finland and play in the pro league there for one more year (supposedly it's better than the AHL anyway). I'm not convinced he's ready for the NHL anyway.

Oh, no: Paul Hamilton just said the Sabres could have had Shane Doan for Peca back in 2001. Apparently that deal was on the table but we picked the Islanders deal of Pyatt and Connolly. I get why Regier picked the Islanders offer (Connolly seemed like a top center in the making and Pyatt was a power forward prospect) but that could have been a spectacular trade for the Sabres (and makes me wonder how it would have changed everything else about the next 10 years).

Ha, at this point last summer, there were plenty of Sabres fans desperate to trade Pominville away for anything. (It's sort of impressive that he was named the new captain after such a tough season.)

I would LOVE to have Parros on the 4th line this year. He's a scary guy with attitude and, yes, he's exactly the guy you want around when the Bruins are in town.

According to Paul Hamilton, Ruff doesn't like a "strong captain", meaning a captain who will openly disagree with him. If that's true, it reflects really poorly on Ruff. Our team has been soft mentally for years. I'd prefer a captain actively leading the team, even if his vision clashes with Ruff's from time to time. Having strong leadership that comes from a player matters because the coaches don't really matter that much when the game is going on. Again, it's just Paul Hamilton's thing but it sorta makes sense when you consider that we haven't had a mentally tough team in so long. I hope it's not true.

I would think we'd re-sign at least one of those guys though. (Depending on how the next two years go, we might want to keep all three.) I'm not desperately waiting for those three contracts to run out the way I was with Connolly or the way I basically am with Roy and Leino.

He's scored over 30 goals each of the past four seasons and delivered over 100 hits each of the last three seasons (I don't have his hits for seasons before that). His 31 goals would have made him the Sabres' no.1 goal-scorer last season. He's 6'2" and 200+ pounds. And he's 25 years old. You really don't want a guy like that? http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/players/3776/career;_ylt=AnLAvv_L0e6Y98sXdFENUH1ivLYF Unless his personality is a total train wreck, he'd be a killer pick-up for the Sabres.

OMG PASF!!!! It's probably two things: We finally have a schedule that works for him and he's probably longing for a fun season after calling so many mediocre/frustrating ones.

You sank my battleship. :(

That would be ridiculously awesome.

:lol: :lol:

Again, by this measure, you can't criticize anyone for any action because you can never know how things would have turned out had that action not taken place. Do you also take a "we can never know" approach to Smoot-Hawley? Yes, we CAN know how well those policies worked. We have a decade of Hoover/Roosevelt policies and we have every other decade of the 20th century. We also have hundreds of years' worth of economic data for countries all around the world. You're really selling decades of economic research short. And if you really think government doesn't have a major effect on economy, I'm not sure what to tell you. We split two countries in half in the 20th century -- Germany and Korea. In each case, both halves were identical in terms of culture and demographics. The difference was government. And in each case, one half of Germany/Korea ended up way better off than the other half. The part where government made a difference in the economic well-being of each country is as obvious as, well, gravity.

I'm not sure why you can write it off as a "conservative talking point" when it's empirically true. No recovery took place when the New Deal policies were in place: http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1528.html The Great Depression was basically two recessions (1929 and 1938) with little recovery in between. How is that a success? And we can know how his policies worked. Crack open any Macroeconomics textbook and you can pick up the broad strokes of how government policies affect national economies. It's silly to say "well, we'll never know" because by that standard you could never criticize anyone for anything. (Not even after you knew the results?) Everyone acknowledges that Herbert Hoover's policies did not help (Smoot-Hawley, for example) and FDR's own people acknowledge that his policies were an extension of Hoover's. There's no mystery here. In his defense, he latched onto ideas that were popular at the time (both economically and, obviously, politically). That doesn't mean they worked, and that's pretty easy to see in retrospect.

If you like U.S. History, all of the Oxford History of the United States books are outstanding. Check out Battle Cry of Freedom. If you admire FDR as a wartime president, you really need to read what Lincoln went through. (He literally had to run for re-election during the war (1864) against the guy who served as his top general when the war began - McClellan.)

His economic policies are relevant today as an example of what not to do. It's not a coincidence that the Great Depression didn't end until World War II hit and we gave up on the New Deal. If you want a balanced look at what went right and wrong during FDR's term, try this: Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford History of the United States) by David Kennedy http://www.amazon.com/Freedom-Fear-American-Depression-1929-1945/dp/0195144031/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334889787&sr=8-1 Or if you want a counterpoint on why the New Deal didn't work, there's this: The Forgotten Man by Amity Schlaes http://www.amazon.com/The-Forgotten-Man-History-Depression/dp/0060936428/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334890038&sr=1-1 I just finished Shelby Foote's famous Civil War Trilogy. Absolutely outstanding and definitely worth your time if you're willing to take on ~3000 pages of history over three books. It lived up to the hype. http://www.amazon.com/The-Civil-War-Narrative-Vol/dp/0394749138/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334890121&sr=1-1

Assuming they close out Vancouver, there's probably about a 0% chance the Kings trade him this summer.

Most of them seem to think Hodgson wouldn't be making a huge difference for them. The part that hurts (Vancouver) is that none of them seem too thrilled with Kassian thus far. EDIT: Also, I want to thank you for not letting posters have graphics and animations in their signatures here. That's really tough to look at for even a couple minutes.