Ryan O’Reilly – Page 2 – Faxes from Uncle Dale

Lineups & How Teams Were Built

Everything Else

Game #2 – Hawks vs. Blues Q&A: Some Ex-Roadie On The Side Of The Highway

By Sam Fels October 6, 2018 1545 0

Chris Gift usually dances for nickels on the side of I-55, after a successful career as cod piece cleaner for various hair-metal bands in the 80’s. He also contributes to St. Louis Gametime. Or he used to We’re not sure and we’re definitely sure we don’t care. He’s at Twitter @ChrisGift.

Signing Tyler Bozak and trading for Ryan O’Reilly. What got up Doug Armstrong’s ass?

We’ve learned to have disdain for ownership groups, regardless of sport. Look at your group of owners in Chicago without the last name of Ricketts. Reinsdorf, Wirtz (ok, Rocky is much better than Bill was), McCaskey, and whoever owns the Fire probably aren’t the most popular folks in town, and with the ton of cash that each team makes, the amount of frugality that owners have is shocking at times.

Blues Chairman Tom Stillman isn’t like that. Since he took over for Dave Checketts in 2012, Stillman has been in on, or attempted to be as active as possible in making the team Cup contenders. His first acquisition was rolling the dice on pending UFA Jay Bouwmeester from Calgary and getting him to sign a deal before he hit the open market. Tthen there was acquiring Ryan Miller from Buffalo, and also getting Paul Stastny from Enos Kroenke’s Denver Avlanches – speaking of disdain for ownership groups. The key sticking point of the O’Reilly deal was the $7.5 million roster bonus ROR was due on July 1^st. To paraphrase Armstrong, he called Stillman, said he needed $7.5 million and before Armstrong could even get to the first word of the next sentence explaining it was for ROR, Stillman told him “no problem.” Stillman has deep pockets, and his minority owners have deeper pockets.

Last year’s pfffft of a season, and the undefeated Father Time approaching on some of the core may have been the kick in the ass that did it for Armstrong and ownership. What really got us was the decision to finally cut bait with Patrik Berglund. More accurately, I think the surprise is that Army found a way for a team to take two God awful contracts (Vlad Sobotka’s contract blew as well as Berglund’s) and get more in return than the bag of pucks that we all anticipated.

Slowly but surely the team’s core has both aged and turned over. Berglund, TJ Oshie, David Backes, Jerry Halak and Brian Elliott are all gone. Bouwmeester is 35. Alexander Steen is 34. Even some of the “younger” player are starting to get a tad longer in the tooth. Alex Pietrangelo is 28 already. Jaden Schwartz and Vlad Tarasenko are 26. There’s a window for winning with this team, not gaping because of the strength of Winnipeg and Nashville, but there’s definitely a window.

The O’Reilly rumors flew around all season last year, but not just in St. Louis. When the draft came and went, and there was no movement on the ROR front, we thought it was on life support at best. When Bozak and David Perron signed on July 1, and the sun set that night, we thought that was it. Then the “holy shit,” moment happened to see ROR coming to St. Louis. It went from a plain “holy shit” comment to being capitalized, underscored, boldfaced and whatever the fuck else you do to show exhilaration and joy and when the news of Buffalo’s return on the trade included taking Berglund and Sobotka. It had to be a total Andy Dufresne celebrating freedom in raw sewage and a thunderstorm by escaping Shawshank for Armstrong. Tage Thompson is an above average prospect that needs to mature mentally and physically and eat a TON of wings from the Anchor Bar. The Blues were touting Thompson, Jordan Kyrou, Robert Thomas, and Klim Kostin as the organization’s four best prospects. To acquire talent, two shitty contracts and two draft picks wasn’t going to do it. One of the four had to go. Thompson was the only one with NHL experience. With first round pick Dominik Bokk, and Erick Foley (acquired for Stastny) being added to the prospect reservoir, it was adios Tage.

Why is Jake Allen still here and still starting?

Wait, you don’t call him Jay Gallon anymore?

If this was the olden days, and twitter was limited to 140 characters, the answer would be something like “Carter Hutton was too expensive. Ville Husso isn’t ready yet. Jordan Binnington isn’t good enough to play in the NHL, and warts and all, Jake isn’t awful.”

Allen has his flashes of total consciousness, but there are also times when he looks absolutely lost. Ken Hitchcock damn near ruined him with his mental games a few years ago and Marty Brodeur worked with him to get his shit straight. Both of those guys are gone now, so Hitch can’t fuck him up any more and Brodeur can’t pull the insta-fix anymore (something tells me that in the goaltending brotherhood, that an off the record text message or tip from MB30 is never going to happen).

Counting OTLs as losses, he was 27-28 with a 2.75 GAA last year. Mike Yeo had to go to the bullpen far too often. Granted the relief was damn good in Hutton, and Chad Johnson is nowhere the backup that Hutton was. There will be nights this year when it is 10 minutes in and the team is down 3-0, and it’ll be Jake’s game, like it or not.

The Blues look a little short on the wings as far as scoring. Tell us why we’re wrong. Only about this and not life, please.

Writing this prior to the season opener against Winnipeg, all is wonderful. Tarasenko is going to score 40 by Christmas. Pat Maroon will put up video game numbers and be the toughest power forward player this town has seen since Brendan Shanahan.

To use coach speak, the sum is probably greater than the whole of the parts. Bozak, Perron and ROR will make the power play better (it finished 29^th a year ago).Having ROR, Brayden Schenn and Bozak in the middle on the top three lines is a scoring luxury. Plus, the fourth line isn’t going to be the typical knuckle dragging Neanderthal, an AHL player playing over his head, and a Kyle Brodziak type grinder. Think youth and speed on the fourth line this year. The fourth line is scheduled to be Ivan Barbashev, Thomas, and Sammy Blais, to start the year. Two players coming off pretty serious injuries hope to crack the top 12 at some point this season if healthy. Acquired from Washington for Kevin Shattenkirk, shoulder surgery kept Zach Sanford out of everything but the first shift of the first day of training camp in the fall of 2017. And don’t forget Robby Fabbri who managed have two ACL surgeries since just after the Winter Classic in 2017. Fabbri’s knees seem to be fine this camp, but he’s having a hard time with nagging injuries like hips and backs from getting back into hockey shape. Arrmstrong has mentioned November for Fabbri. Both Sanford and Fabbri can play, and play really well if healthy. If healthy. If healthy .

There’s scuttlebutt that at some point this season, Steen may move to the fourth line if one of the aforementioned youngins’ makes strides to capture top-nine minutes. Steen on the PP, PK and fourth line may be just about right for this point of his career.

This is clearly a go-for-it year for the Blues. Can they really overcome the Preds or Jets?

Funny way of asking for a prediction. The offseason has been very optimistic around these parts, but the reality is that there was a ton of work to do before being able to be on par with the Preds or Jets. Have they done it? I’m not sure, but I’d like to think so. Seeing ROR for a season instead of twice a year will be nice, but he was a good player on a shitty team. Can he be a great player on a good team? Can Allen give a solid season without drama or injury or having will Yeo have to try to make the best out of a few weeks of Chad Johnson?

The defense is awfully thin. Pietrangelo, Colton Parayko, Joel Edmundson and Robert Bortuzzo are all solid. How much does Bouwmeester have left? Can Vince Dunn have as good of a sophomore season as his freshman year? Is Carl Gunnarson going to be healthy enough to not be a liability out there, or can Jordan Schmaltz mature into a top-six D this year. Chris Butler looked overmatched out there last season, and the team is damn near capped out, so making a big acquisition to help the defense will take some salary cap magic to work.

Worst case scenario, I can’t see the Blues finishing in anything lower than third in the division. Even if they play great and finish second, they’ll still have to go through both the Jets and Nashville to make it to the Conference Final. That’ll require a hell of a lot of good play and good fortune to beat both of those teams in the playoffs.

My guess is they have a hell of a first round series that they might win. That series will probably tax them to the point that there’s nothing left against the other divisional heavyweight and they bow out in the second round.

Now with all that piss and vinegar of a prediction, this edition of the Blues has the most talent since the ’16 team that beat Chicago and Dallas before losing to San Jose in five games.. As unpredictable as hockey in general, and this league in particular can be, I don’t think a Conference Final run or a Western Conference title is out of the question.

Game #2 Preview Suite

Lineups And How Teams Were Built

Everything Else

You Share The Same Fate As The People You Hate – ’18-’19 Team Previews: This Time It Will Be Different

By Sam Fels October 2, 2018 1843 0

Every season we hear that. And sometimes, I’m suckered into believing it. And I think this year more than most. And then I remember it’s the St. Louis Blues, and it can’t possibly be true. Maybe one day the laws of the universe will change, and we’ll all feel even more unmoored than we do now. But until that happens, the only structure we have that keeps us from unending madness is the rules we’ve always known. And one of those is that the Blues will always fuck it up. They will never get out of their own way. Until they do, we cannot reason anything else. Were we to, we would simply bend the world in a way it was not meant to go and the pillars of society and life would indeed crumble and all there would be is chaos and limitless abyss.

What’s dispiriting though is that the Blues this past summer showed the urgency that we ached for the Hawks to show. They knew they were weak down the middle, so in came Ryan O’Reilly and Tyler Bozak. Those were two players we wished the Hawks would make a run at. The Blues didn’t hang on to prospects that looked like they had over-ripened. So away went Tage Thompson and a couple high draft picks, because now is the time for the Blues. We stared at Dylan Sikura’s vacant gape on its way to Rockford. They treated missing the playoffs last year like an insult and something to be eradicated immediately and thoroughly. The Hawks signed Cam Ward and Brandon Manning. You see the problem here.

Anyway, let’s get in up to the elbow, which if you do in St. Louis leaves you with tuberculosis.

2017-2018: 44-32-6 94 points 226 GF 222 GA 51.7 CF% 51.4 xGF% 7.1 SH% .928 SV%

Goalies: And yet it doesn’t matter how you redo your bedroom or living room of your house if you keep introducing various insects and rodents and sharp weapons to your foundation. So here we are again with Jay Gallon in net. The Blues are so determined to make it work with him for the 24th year in a row that it’s gone beyond Tin Cup hitting his ball from the fairway instead of taking a drop. Except this might be the time the Blues run out of balls in the bag.

Jake Allen was bad last year. .906 SV% is bad. Carter Hutton was better. And yet it’s Carter Hutton who goes, just like any other goalie that’s dared to play alongside Allen. He can’t be moved. He’s a southern congressman at this point. No amount of incompetence or bewildering actions will ever remove him.

Allen has been above-average in exactly one of his now five NHL seasons. At this point the Blues must know what he is, which is not enough. It’s not that the physical tools aren’t there. They most certainly are. He’s big, he’s athletic. But he’s always going to do just enough to kill you. Shame they put in all this work to end up where they always do. Really is.

Anyway, backing him up this time around with certainly an eye on usurping him is Chad Johnson. Johnson was woeful in Buffalo last year but serviceable or more in Calgary the year before that and Buffalo again two years ago. Maybe Johnson is just non-threatening enough to get Allen to relax while being able to take 15-20 starts without throwing up all over everyone. I don’t know. But this looks to be Problem Area #1 again for St. Louis, who just seemingly never learn. This time it will be different.

Defense: I don’t know how many different ways we can phrase this for however many years, but the Blues defensive unit just isn’t as good as “experts” will tell you. Alex Pietrangelo somehow conned the world into thinking he’s a Norris-level defender–probably by being big, a decent skater, and Canadian–but that’s utter horseshit. He’s fine. He’s there against the best competition, but he doesn’t roll them over. He never has. He’s a rhythm guitarist miscast playing solos. And paring him with Joel “Assuredly Has Had A Bug Caught In His Ear Before” Edmundson isn’t going to change that.

Colton Parayko is the only puck-mover they have, and his game in his own zone is somewhere around DEFCON Dumbass. I still don’t know what it is Carl Gunnarsson does, and neither do they. Jay Bouwmeester is dead, has been dead, will continue to be dead, and the Blues will continue to play him more minutes until even the worms peaking out from his eye sockets ask to be left alone finally. Vinnie Dun (HEY GABBAGOOL! VINNE DUNN OVA’ HERE!) could be another puck-mover they need, but Mike Yeo apparently can’t escape the stench of Ken Hitchcock and still won’t trust him with more than 13 minutes per night.

It’s probably not as bad as we make out, but it’s certainly nowhere near great. Considering the crops of forwards one sees most nights in the Central, that’s an issue. This time it will be different.

Forwards: Ok, so the center-depth is greatly improved. Brayden Schenn was a steal from Philly, and now they’ve added Bozak and O’Reilly. Bozak really flourished behind Matthews and Kadri in Toronto, and here he’ll get to be behind ROR and Schenn. It’s really a swift move.

However, looking deeply at it now and the winger situation….ooooh boy. Vladimir Tarasenko will still score a ton, whether running with Schenn or O’ Reilly. Jaden Schwartz is still their most creative player. Fabbi Robbry or Robbry Fabbi is back from injury, providing more dash. But that’s just about it. They’re brought back David Perron, and they’re going to have a quizzical look on their face in January when he’s on the bottom six with 17 points and taking the most mystifyingly dumb penalties imaginable. Alex Steen was in need of hospice care at the end of last year and that’s not going to get better now. Patrick Maroon is here, which is just so St. Louis Blues I don’t think I can stand it. It’s a less than impressive group, so the centers and Tank are going to have to have premium years.

Outlook: Overall, they’re just a touch short of Nashville and Winnipeg. But they’re pretty much ahead of everyone else in the division, which sets them up to get thwacked by one of the aforementioned in the first round. Same as it ever was. The wingers don’t look like they provide enough, the defense is slowish and not all that skilled, and even if those things reverse there’s always Jay Gallon walking around with his gasoline can, a book of matches, and a vacant look in his eye. They made the right moves this summer. They just didn’t make enough of them.

This time it will be different…it was ever thus.

Previous Team Previews

Detroit Red Wings

Buffalo Sabres

Boston Bruins

Florida Panthers

Montreal Canadiens

Ottawa Senators

Tampa Bay Lightning

Toronto Maple Leafs

Carolina Hurricanes

Columbus Blue Jackets

New Jersey Devils

New York Islanders

New York Rangers

Philadelphia Flyers

Pittsburgh Penguins

Washington Capitals

Vegas Golden Knights

Vancouver Canucks

Colorado Avalanche

Dallas Stars

Minnesota Wild

Nashville Predators

Everything Else

Let’s Go Around The World

By Sam Fels July 5, 2018 2320 0

If the Hawks basically sat out the free agent period, let’s spin around the league and see what’s what now that the important stuff has shaken out.

-Clearly the biggest story of the upcoming season is going to be the Toronto Maple Leafs, and not just in the heads of their fans and media (which is really the same thing anyway). Whatever you might think of “Computer Boy” Kyle Dubas or their enclosed world view, this kind of “Fuck It I’m Throwing Deep” move is really rare in the NHL. Steve Yzerman gets praised for doing it, and really all he’s done is trade for Ryan McDonagh (though he might get Karlsson which would really be a one-up on the Leafs and send a good portion of their fanbase into their toy-filled basement…oh wait they never left there).

The question is how much better does this make them. Because they’ve lost Tyler Bozak and James van Riemsdyk to accommodate John Tavares, and that’s some 50 goals or more going out the door. Sure, Tavares improves whatever winger he’s with but almost certainly not to the level of the departed JVR.

And the Leafs still don’t really have anything on defense, though that unit was improved by stripping it of Roman Polak because Mike Babcock will play him. They’re still counting on a step forward from Morgan Rielly, but I think we know what he is at this point which is a pretty good rhythm guitarist but not a lead. Maybe a similar leap from Travis Dermott fills in these gaps, and as the Penguins and Knights have proven you don’t have to have a star-studded blue line to win, just one that gets it up to the forwards quickly and doesn’t wet itself in its own end.

Of course, those teams has top-end goaltending, and I don’t know how many Game 7 meltdowns people have to watch Freddie Andersen have before concluding he’s just good enough to break your heart. He’s only 28, and I suppose this is the time where he would turn the corner if that’s going to happen. Still, you’re not getting past Tampa or Boston without goaltending, you’d think they’d know that already.

-Meanwhile, a little closer to home the Blues have also been aggressive, taking the ballast from the Leafs’ ship in the form of Tyler Bozak and trading for Ryan O’Reilly. This makes the Blues the most solid down the middle team in the division this side of Winnipeg. And yes, even more than Nashville because Ryan Johansen is facedown in a pile of ding-dongs right now and Kyle Turris just has that same bewildered look on his face. The Blues will still self-destruct trying to prove once again that Jay Gallon won’t shoot them all in the face accidentally, but they’ll probably rack up 100+ points before that happens. The Perron contract is stupid because he’s not spasming that season again and he’ll just fold under all the selfish penalties he takes, but they’re getting Fabbi Robbri back and if they can keep something from falling off Jaden Schwartz again they’ll be pretty dynamic. Sucks when they show more urgency than the Hawks do.

-Meanwhile, in the darkened and abandoned garage that has been the state of the Islanders for a good 30 years now, Lou Lamiorello continues to piss on his Hall of Fame pedigree by taking a team backwards. It’s one thing to lose out on re-signing Tavares, because hey that happens. But then to back it up by bringing in the stone-handed and stone-headed combo of Matt Martin and Leo Komarov, and then complain that every player is overpaid, sets this team back even more. As we’ve stated, Nofera-Lou hasn’t done anything in a decade to convince anyone the game hasn’t passed him by, and once he’s done turning into the Isles into something so foul they stop construction on the new arena halfway through maybe everyone else will realize.

Contrast that with Stan Bowman actively cheering Artemi Panarin to hit his bonuses in the press even though it would cause him a headache, or how the Hawks and other teams are so happy to pay their players, and maybe you start to see why most think working for Lou is a miserable experience. But it’s the Islanders, so is anyone really going to notice?

Everything Else

Game #72 – Hawks vs. Sabres Preview/Leather Tanning: Lonely Afternoon

By Sam Fels March 17, 2018 1693 0

vs.

RECORDS: Hawks 30-33-8 Sabres 22-36-12

PUCK DROP: High Noon

TV: WGN, NHL Network outside the 606

FIGHTING ON ARRIVAL: Die By The Blade

I’ll start this one with a story about what this one feels like. Many years ago, I was sitting in an OTB with my father and Freddie The Beard, something of a Chicago pool room legend now. Both avid horseplayers, as was I. Arlington ran a race with four horses, apprentice jockeys, on the turf. Freddie, never one for subtlety, turned to Tribune Horse Racing columnist Dave Feldman (at the time probably something like 138 years old) who happened to be sitting in the same room, and yelled, “Hey Feldman! Use your connections to get us more of ‘dis! We like ‘dis! Four horse race with the apprentice jockeys…on the turf!”

That’s how I feel about this one. This is a game going on because the schedule says it has to. No one particularly wants to watch it (and I’d be surprised if more than a few didn’t want to play it), and yet here we are because this is where we are. Hawks-Sabres. Saturday afternoon. March 17th. This is what we chose.

Both of these teams have dreams of Rasmus Dahlin, though the Sabres’s is much more likely. They are marooned to the bottom of the NHL standings, and really only the Coyotes are keeping them company down there. It has been nothing short of a disaster in a season when they were supposed to start to at least maybe think about considering taking a step forward in their rebuild.

It’s hard to know where to start. The goaltending has sucked, as it will tend to do when leaning on Chad Johnson and Robin Lehner. The defense has sucked because it was based on Rasmus Ristolainen playing like a top pairing d-man and quite frankly he’s never nor will he ever be that, despite some early season flashes. It had Zach Bogosian and Justin Falk and Jake McCabe as well at times, so you can guess what kind of smell that created night after night. The forwards lacked punch, as Eichel and Okposo have missed time and there’s just not much else. Sam Reinhart is still finding his feet, and also trying to figure out which Reinhart he is. Benoit Pouliot and Jason Pominville are either old, simply plugs, or both. It is not an inspiring bunch.

Because of that, and the moves at the deadline that saw Fuck Head Kane The Younger amongst others moved along, the Sabres are turning more and more over to the kids. Bailey, Baptiste, Eichel, Reinhart, Rodrigues, Guhle, and Ristolainen are all players that are under 25 that will kick into the lineup when healthy. The Sabres are going to find out what they have, because it’ll be good info and also will give them the best chance to end up with another Rasmus. You can never have too many Rasmuses (Rasmi?)

For today, both Eichel and Okposo look like they won’t make the bell coming off an ankle sprain and brown brain, respectively. Which means the outfit the Hawks will see today is decidedly punchless. Ryan O’Reilly is simply doing miraculous work as the only forward who’s been above water in his underlying numbers, and he also murders the Hawks. But he can only do so much. Then again, things seem to always go stupid at HSBC Arena. The Hawks never have it easy there.

For the Hawks, JF Berube will get his turn at the wheel after Forsberg’s wheel kept on turning in net on Thursday. And then we’ll cycle back through this again and again for another three weeks. We’re almost there, people. There really aren’t any other lineup changes to be made with Duclair injured. Q shuffled up the lines during practice yesterday and below the top one they’re a real piece of work. But who knows how long he’ll stick with them because that’s his thing.

Let’s just get through it.

Game #72 Preview

Lineups & How Teams Were Built

Everything Else

Game #29 – Sabres vs. Hawks: Q&A With Die By The Blade’s Melissa Burgess

By Sam Fels December 8, 2017 1672 0

Melissa Burgess is a contributor to DieByTheBlade.com (still our favorite hockey blog name). You can follow her on Twitter @_MelissaBurgess.

Maybe it only seems like the Sabres are in year 87 of a rebuild, but with names like O’Reilly, Eichel, Okposo, Ristolainen, Kane why has this season been such a balls-up?

Honestly, I wish I knew. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t frustrating. Every season, we talk about the rebuild, and every season, the results are the same. This year realistically should be different. The Sabres have all this great offensive talent, like the names you mentioned, plus a new head coach in Phil Housley. But some nights, it seems like they’re just kind of skating around rather than actively playing the game, fighting for the puck, battling in the corners. The opposing team will score goals that leave me scratching my head, thinking “… how did [goalie] not save that?”

I don’t think anyone really expected the Sabres to be playoff contenders this year, but many expected them to at least battle, or be able to compete against other NHL teams. Instead, you’ve got all these seemingly-great players who are barely showing up. Eichel is hit-or-miss. It took O’Reilly seven games to get his first goal of the season, and Okposo 12 games. Overall, sometimes it seems like they lack heart. It doesn’t mean they want to lose, per se, but just that the passion and energy to win isn’t there.

Throw in more off-ice team-building exercises. Shake up line combinations in practice and in games and figure out what works. Make players want to be here, and make them want to fight for their spot. Do whatever it takes, because the team needs SOMETHING to get going here.

Speaking of Ristolainen, he’s in the top three in the league in minutes per game. But is he actually worthy of that kind of load?

The short answer, in my opinion, is… yes. As I write this, Ristolainen (27:00) is second in icetime leaguewide, behind only Ryan Suter. Suter’s averaged four seconds more ice time per game than Ristolainen, in eight more games played. He’s been a critical point of the Sabres’ defense and is really, observably, one of the anchors of Buffalo’s blue line. He’s also quite effective on the power play, with 10 shots and 2 takeaways with the man advantage this season.

Is it ideal to have one player skating in nearly half of every game? Probably not. Ristolainen actually played 30:42 in the win over Colorado on Tuesday night. Is there a concern about overworking him? Is it realistic that he could play those minutes every night? Probably not. But is he worth playing that much? Absolutely.

Before the draft of ’15, it felt as if Eichel was right there with McDavid. Run CMD has an MVP and 100-point season to his name. Eichel has had effective, quality seasons as well, but not quite the heights of McDavid. Is that a question of teammates? Just a different learning curve? Something else?

I understand where it’s easy for people to put Eichel and McDavid up next to each other, since they both came in the same draft year and all. But in reality, they’re two very different players. McDavid grew his offensive prowess playing in juniors alongside other young guns like Dylan Strome and Alex DeBrincat. Eichel played in the USA Hockey system and only one year at Boston University.

Ultimately, I think what it comes down to is… well, a lot of things. First, you’ve got to consider the different conferences. Yes, you’re seeing a lot of the same opponents overall, but the styles of play and competition in the Eastern Conference as opposed to the Western Conference aren’t the same. Look at the overall league standings from last season. Three of the top four teams in the league were from the Eastern Conference. Six of the league’s top ten scorers came from Western Conference teams. Do we ever take into consideration not just teammates, but who teams are playing against, and the level of competition there?

It’s also a matter of considering how they’re being used on their respective teams and alongside their teammates. Look at last season, for instance. McDavid had 100 points (30-70) in 82 games. He averaged 21:08 ice time per game. Eichel had 57 points in 61 games; if he had played a full season, that may have amounted to about 77 points in 82 games. His average ice time was 19:55, slightly less than McDavid. Of course, both have been playing on teams that are pretty much at the bottom of the league. McDavid is also significantly a passer, which is pretty evident by the fact that he had 70 assists last year. They’re just different players at the core, and they’re going to be utilized differently in different systems, and having unique learning curves.

With Evander Kane having the numbers he does and this being the last year of his deal, are the Sabres going to flog him for whatever they can get at the deadline?

I don’t think you can just let Kane go for anything. Botterill (Sabres GM) has to really carefully consider what he’s doing here. Yes, Kane is having a good year. Yes, this is the last year of his deal. But at what point do you decide “okay, this package is good enough to make this trade” over “we’re going to try and re-sign him?”

I wouldn’t be surprised to see him traded at the deadline, but the problem with that is, you may not get as much for him since he could end up just being a rental player somewhere else. Focusing on his on-ice skills, Kane’s one of the best players on the Sabres right now – you can’t just give him up for nothing.

If you were GM, what are you doing to move this thing along so the Sabres can once again be a playoff team in what is a pretty crap division?

Night in and night out, I seem to be saying the same thing as I watch games: something’s gotta give. Okay, maybe I’ve been saying that for years now. And the team has tried different things – new coaches, new players – but the bottom line is, they can’t keep being at the bottom of the league, and the division. It’s obviously easier for a team to let go of one coach versus swapping out 20+ players, but getting rid of the coach isn’t always the right answer. Players have to be committed to the team’s system, and have to want to succeed. Right now there’s a level of frustration building around this team, and although the circumstances aren’t great, maybe that frustration is exactly what they need, to give them that extra spark, that extra push.

If I’m GM, I think I’m trying to move Robin Lehner for the right price. He’s played most of the Sabres’ games this season but still fails to show consistency and lets in a lot of goals that shouldn’t have been. I’m also getting Josh Gorges out of the picture, as he really just seems to be slowing down the team’s defense. I think the other thing that can be done is to really make guys fight for their roster spots. Just the other night, Zemgus Girgensons was a healthy scratch. He has four points this season and, quite frankly, needs to be doing more. So you scratch him, have him sit a game or two, and hope that brings some spark when he returns.

Game #29 Preview