2022-2023-2024-2025 NHL Season

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

The Yankees have been doing a little less buying of other team's All-Stars lately. Cole is the only one I can think of at the moment.

What I do not get and understand is that every year they pick up these guys that are nothing special and get career years out of them, they just totally turn them around. I had Clay Holmes on my team for text baseball when he was a Pirate. I dropped him the next year, he was nothing special. Somehow the Yankees get a hold of him and he has a stretch of three years where he was one of the most dominant relief pitchers in baseball. HOW? WHY? HOW? It took a year, but they did it with Aaron Hicks. WHY? HOW? WHAT? HOW? There are more examples I can't think of.

I have to attribute it to coaching, the Yankees have, in my opinion, some of the best coaching in all of sports which is why they have been in the playoff mix the last decade. The Blue Jays ended 22 years of futility when they unlocked Bautista and Encarnacion and the Yankees do this with guys every single year. When we blow it up in Toronto and start over I hope we just get a group of coaches from the Yankees and promote them because whatever they are doing is incredibly effective and valuable.

The Dodgers, though. Just signing everyone else's All-Stars.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

This is my new favorite goal.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Wait NO THIS IS MY NEW FAVO GOALO

[AArdvark]

Schweet goal! The passing has improved

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I think Owen Power is a really, really good player.

It just so happens that the two times the Sabres got the #1 pick, the best guy available was a defenseman. I think that goes a long way towards why they are in the spot they are in. I think, ideally, you want the first pick to be a playmaking first line center that can score and pass. Well, the Sabres never got that at #1. I just went to refresh my memory about the two guys taken after Power. (Arguably, the Sabres did get that with Eichel and Reinhart, but let's let that go for a second.)

The first was Matthew Beniers for the Kraken. He has more "points" than Power in roughly the same number of games. I know hockey stats have gotten away from +/- a bit, but while Power has fewer points, he's managed a +22 on three awful teams. Hockey Reference has a column for "point shares." I don't know how that is determined. Power has the most in his draft class so far. I guess that's good?

[Da King]

Peyton Krebs has some really good offensive skill. Unfortunately he always seems to be the 7th best forward on teh team, doesn't fit the mold of a 3rd liner, so he gets stashed on the 4th line. His attitude is great, but they are really wasting his skill.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I hope every time Dahlin punches a teammate in the face they score. I think they'd figure out the magic link in 3 games. For the third game, he'd punch every skater in the face before the opening faceoff and we'd acore 17 goals.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Every fan playing scoro during the intermission would have a choice to make.

[Da King]

When people get punched, EVERYONE wins.

BTW, The Sabres are back to .500. My faith in Lindy is restored, and we WILL make the playoffs this year.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I saw your tweet about the Amerks goalie getting rung. I ripped my phone out of the wall and started to slowly walk back home to kill that Harpur guy.

See you in six weeks. (I'll do a light jog, most of it will be downhill.)

[Da King]

Brutal play. I hope the fucker gets suspended 20 games for that.

(In reality, MAYBE he gets 2-3 games. The league is soft.)

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I saw Dale Hunter hit Pierre Turgeon live on TV as it happened, I think, and that was our "Oswald getting shot on live TV" moment. I guess it wasn't exactly the same as I can't totally recall if we were watching that game as a group in college. But I think we were.

This is just as bad in my opinion. With it being the minor league, just van him for life.

[AArdvark]

Van him down by the river!

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I do hope he gets hit by a van.

[Da King]

Brutal play. I hope the fucker gets suspended 20 games for that.

(In reality, MAYBE he gets 2-3 games. The league is soft.)

He got 4 games.

If we're going to allow this, then we need to return to 80s-style hockey and let them literally beat the shit out of each other.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

(I am letting go of the fact that a great goal by Dylan Cozens was taken away because the head office said that one of our guys was in the crease. Let's just let that go.)

The Blues ran our goalie with less than a minute left in a tied game. The Sabres played keep away with the puck so that they would have the man advantage for the full two minutes in overtime. It worked - and Dahlin blasted a goal to win the game 4-3.

Maybe playing keep away in that manner is something drilled into kids since they were toddlers in skates. Maybe it was our coach. Either way, pretty damn masterful way to end the game. Back up to .500, a game out of a playoff spot and one of the teams ahead of them, Boston, has a -16 goal differential on the season and is 8-8-2.

The Sabres have been in much worse spots in November.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I saw that the Sabres were up 4-0 at home against the Avalanche and thought, hey, maybe I will get tickets for when they come out here.

Then I checked in on the game and they were down 5-4. I can't sanction this. I'm taking a year off from seeing them.

[Da King]

It hurts. So much.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I saw that the Sabres were up 4-0 at home against the Avalanche and thought, hey, maybe I will get tickets for when they come out here.

Then I checked in on the game and they were down 5-4. I can't sanction this. I'm taking a year off from seeing them.

They had multiple goal leads at multiple points, let a tying goal in with 6 seconds left and got smoked in overtime. It's not that the Avalanche are better, they are. (And it's frustrating that they rebuilt themselves in THREE YEARS starting in 2014.) It's that the Sabres essentially lost in the same exact way twice to the same team.

I am glad I did not spend the money and time to go to the game. When I saw that Buffal were up 1-0, I did not go downstairs to watch the game because I knew that there was a chance that they would get a lead and lose it in the exact same manner. SO much shit happens twice in life that it is obvious that we are in some kind of lazy simulation.

I am ok if the Sabres go on a long losing streak again. This season can't be saved. I mean, it could have been saved, but it won't by this group. I don't know who the top guys are that are coming out, but I am rooting for a top three pick at this point. If the obvious guy to take is a defenseman, than trade either the pick or Power or Byrum and get a FREAKING difference maker up front.

I think Buffalo should use prospect capital to trade for a first line forward. We've been waiting forever, taking advantage of a situation where the player is fine but needs to move is what has to happen. What Vancouver is going through: two top guys that don't get along, both of whom are pretty much better than anyone we have - is EXACTLY where our GM should strike. It is what was done to us with Jack Eichel and Ryan O'Reilly. We should be trading for J.T. Miller or Elias Pettersson, I honestly don't care which. One or both of them probably has a no trade list that Buffalo is on. Miller is older and probably an obnoxious psychopath. Pettersson seems to be more reserved but this team needs a vet who hates losing. I really don't care which.

But we won't get either.

[Da King]

We need to start planting palm trees.