BillsFan4

picks (plural)?

Still no confirmed return on Reinhart. The rumor is Frank Vatrano, Devon Levi (who elliotte Friedman confirmed is part of the return) and a 1st (that may be conditional). 🤢🤮 Reinhart is RFA though and may be refusing to sign long term with any team. There’s been speculation for a while now that he wants to sign on the west coast to be closer to home. No excuses for a bad return on Eichel though. He’s under contract 5 more years.

anxiously waiting to hear what the return is...

Miller truly gets what Buffalo is all about. Well said Ryan!

I’ll always respect Risto. He always gave it his all every time he stepped onto the ice, regardless of the Sabres record at the time. He didn’t sulk/pout or pass the blame.

I am shocked Risto brought back the 13th overall pick. Home run by Kevyn Adams! Please don’t ruin it by trading Eichel for a mediocre return. Just because we got #13 doesn’t mean we can now trade Eichel for less. Hold strong on that asking price Kevyn! exactly what I’m hoping is the case.

7 forwards, 3 defenseman and a goalie. or 8 total players and a goalie. I wouldn’t have wanted to lose Mittelstadt. I thought he was playing some good hockey last season. He finally looks like he’s coming into his own. Sabres are super thin on players with top 6 C potential too. If they trade Eichel and Reinhart, then Mitts and Cozens are pretty much the only 2 left with top 6 potential, and that includes our prospect pipeline. What will piss me off is if they now end up trading Ristolainen for a crap return, like 3rd or 4th round pick (or something worth less than having a young, NHL ready right shot defenseman already on the roster to replace him). Would’ve rather just left him exposed over Borgen if that’s the case. But I heard buffalo’s asking for a 1st + prospect for him. Hopefully they get something decent in return for him.

the only guy I didn’t want to lose, so I’m not surprised Seattle felt the same (that he was the only player worth taking). I followed his development for years. Was finally going to get to see him in the NHL this year. Guess not. He probably would’ve been in the NHL a year+ ago if not for Stupid botterill trading for a pile of crappy veteran nhl defenseman. He’s not waiver exempt though, so if Seattle waived him at any point Buffalo can just claim him (we have #1 priority).

Sabres expansion pick is one of the only ones that hasn’t leaked yet. Guess it’s easier to keep under wraps when you only have like 3 people working for the front office... 😂

I really wish Cole would take his own advise... I have no idea what he thinks he’s trying to accomplish with all these social media rants, but whatever it is he’s failing miserably at it.

mildly surprised they didn’t (idiotically) protect Girgensons over Asplund... lol. Hopefully Adams has a deal in place not to lose Will Borgen. Other than him I don’t care who Seattle takes from our exposed player list. Taking Skinner would be amazing but it’ll never happen. At least not without Buffalo throwing in a big sweetener. available players: Drake Caggiula (F) Jean-Sebastien Dea (F) Cody Eakin (F) Steven Fogarty (F) Zemgus Girgensons (F) Andrew Oglevie (F) Kyle Okposo (F) Tobias Rieder (F) Riley Sheahan (F) Jeff Skinner (F) C.J. Smith (F) Will Borgen (D) Brandon Davidson (D) Matt Irwin (D) Jake McCabe (D) Colin Miller (D) Casey Nelson (D) Michael Houser (G) Carter Hutton (G) Dustin Tokarski (G) If anyone’s curious Here’s the protected/exposed list for every NHL team: https://media.nhl.com/public/news/15205

my thoughts are that it probably just got more expensive to re-sign Dahlin...

https://www.espn.com/nhl/story/_/id/31823310/in-eulogy-matiss-kivilenieks-praised-saving-many-lives-fireworks-blast ugh 😢 so tragic.

Nice! Congrats Dorsey! I’m guessing that they’re preparing him to take over as OC when Daboll most likely gets a head coaching job next offseason. But I also wonder if it had anything to do with the interview(s) he had for OC positions this past offseason? I wonder if they possibly had to promote him in order not to lose him? Or maybe he wanted some assurances that he would be the next OC here if/when Daboll left? Im guessing it’s most likely just McDermott wanting to be prepared for when Daboll leaves though. McDermott is definitely one who plans ahead.

https://www.golongtd.com/p/why-damar-hamlin-is-exactly-what good story on Hamlin’s upbringing. Worth a read. definitely rooting for him!

Kucherov already half in the bag by the time he gave his (shirtless) press conference. He didn’t make any friends in Montreal.... “Montreal fans were acting like they won the Stanley cup last game. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Their final was last series, ok?”

Some of my family and friends have been using a service called “EyeStreamTV” for well over a year now and they all swear by it. Ive been wanting to try it for a while. You get literally every channel - 900+ channels + PPV events. All the premium movie channels. All Bills + Sabres games. All for like $40-50 a month. And if you refer people you get it cheaper. Iirc if you refer 5 people you get it for free. I don’t see how it’s legal but apparently it is.

This is starting to remind me of the old rumor (that eventually became a running joke) that Olli Jokinen was getting traded to the Sabres.

some info on him: https://www.post-gazette.com/sports/penguins/2020/12/01/pittsburgh-penguins-sam-ventura-nhl-hockey-analytics-puck-player-tracking/stories/202012010022 he’s the guy who originally founded war on ice and iirc was one of the first big analytics hires in the NHL. Jason Nightingale (our long time analytics guy) promoted to assistant director of amateur scouting. So I’m assuming analytics will play a large role in the Sabres drafts under Adams. Hopefully that ends up being a good thing... I’d say it can’t get much worse, but as we know, it always can. 😂 Ventura seems like a competent hire so I’m hopeful (for now).

oh man. 😢 How sad. edit:

Yikes! I had forgotten how terrible his blue line acquisitions were. And to make matters worse he had some sort of rule about not drafting defenseman in the top 1/2 of the draft. I think it was the year they passed on Sergachev that he made the comment about how Buffalo had to draft later in the 1st before he could draft a d-man. 🤦‍♂️ wonder what he would’ve done in the Dahlin draft? I will give him credit for a few things, though. - the ROR trade was a home run (before pegula/botterill f’ed it up) - at least he seemed to have a vision on how he wanted to build the team. More than I can say for whatever the **** Botterill was trying to build. - drafting for skill in the late rounds, which led to the Olofsson pick. that’s about all I can think of off hand. 😂 it’s pretty incredible to think about how bad the GM’s have been since Darcy Regier. I still wonder what type of team he would’ve put together if given the 5 years he wanted. Couldn’t have been much worse, right?

https://theathletic.com/2680565/2021/06/30/live-qa-john-vogl-answers-your-buffalo-sabres-don-granato-and-jack-eichel-questions/

Side note - this makes the 7th different head coach since the Pegulas bought the Sabres in 2011. 😬