Sestito'sHandMadeVodka

Damn, hardie was our pick. We'll grab Dmitri Ovchinnikov from Sibirskie Snaipery Novosibirsk

My original post here was dumb and I can't count, I deleted it.

oooo boy this draft is gonna get weird. Mainly because the bottom playoff teams IRL have almost identical points (71 and 72, chicago and montreal). So you can order the teams with "fewer than 71" points from both conferences, and have the lottery normally. Not so in puck! We are the 23rd best team, typically good for 9th best lottery odds. BUT! of the 8 teams worse than us, 3 of them are in the qualifying round of the playoffs, and therefore not lottery teams. Does that mean that we get the 6th best lottery odds? And then, if the teams that are worse than us don't win the lottery, and don't advance past the playoffs, do they get a better draft pick than us? That feels wrong! They got playoff games (in a year where, literally anything could happen, anybody could win, and all our strategy was for naught) and we didn't. But also, do we get a better draft pick than a team that objectively did worse than us in the regular season? That also feels wrong! There's no good answers, and I'm trying not to make a case, despite having a vested interest, but I feel like this situation, between art, burrows, matthews and me/sygvard is gonna get at least a little weird and it will be impossible to please everybody.

Plz let us get rid of him mods. Plz plz plz. He's been messing with our trading capabilities

Yeah, as a huge leafs fan, and huge fan of sandin, we were willing to give him up despite his huge upside because of how hard D-men are to predict in terms of fantasy scoring. He could be an incredible top-2 d-man, but unless he is either laying lots of hits and blocks, or getting big points on the PP, its always possible he's far better IRL than he ever is in fantasy. Enjoy RNH!

We made some waiver claims a while back....those happening soon?

Honestly never thought he'd make it, but he looks real good as a 4th liner.

That's cool and all, but his contract was up this year, they weren't going to pay him, they got a blue chip guy back for him, he was actually kinda bad, and "leadership" is a meaningless narrative 90% of the time

It's that made space between retentions, raises, and hoping your players are great but also not so great that you can't afford them. I have a feeling that we're going to be entering a new era of higher parity. I feel a team like Buffalo may take a step forward just because the really great teams can;t keep all their players without their retentions, and take a step backwards.

I do!

That guy, just bouncing around with a pocketful of hope

What's the deal with @JE14? He never posts and all his draft picks were done through the mods. Does he only deal in private messages?

When we almost took Ottawa, I was pumped for Spooner. Thought he had real upside. Turns out being the worst defensive forward in the league has some career inhibiting effects

Just saying, 4.6 million of Corey Perry (8.6 minus 3 million retain minus 1 million minors) got a 5th. 3 million of steve mason plus a contract spot dump ALSO got a 5th. These were/are (jury's out on perry) useless players. Giving the league salary cap space will not cause those prices to go up. They will go down, further than where they are. If you want to see capped out top teams dump their assets for peanuts, keep things exactly the way they are now. Those prices are higher than if the league generates ~155 million (5 million x 31 teans) in cap space almost overnight.

Not to distract from this, but can buffalo dump radovan bondra? https://www.eliteprospects.com/player/157407/radovan-bondra He's playing in Czech Republic now. Also, Pickard is listed as being on no team, not Detroit (probably fabntrax's fauly) And Brady Tkachuck's Entry level contract says he's unsigned, not an RFA at the end of it.

It also, FWIW, overly rewards teams who have overspent in the arms race that caused this problem in the first place. I don't think bailing those teams out is the right way to go about fixing it. And its not like real life, where the CBA changed, hence the compliance buyouts to fix contracts that used to make sense, but didn't with the new CBA- these problems are entirely of our own making.

Can we....know what this is? Also, I gotta kinda agree with Azzy on this one. We have been a team that has taken on contracts to help clear space for others. We have managed it well, finally getting us into a little trouble this year, and probably getting worse over the next year, but anyways.... The value of cap space in this league has gone down over the last 3 years. Used to be you could get a 2nd or a 3rd for 3 million dollar cap savings. Nowadays, people are refusing to pay more than a 4th or a 5th. We took 3 million of steve mason for a 5th (bad deal in hindsight), because we honestly didn't think there was a better use of the cap, casue people weren't paying. Look at the past couple cap dump trades. People are not giving big assets, and doing this will free up more contract space, which will depress the market even further. It does help the teams in cap hell, because of how much cheaper (asset wise) it will be for them to unload salary. Spinning this as if it helps the teams with space more than the teams who can first, dump a bad contract, and then 2nd, dump more salary as a soft market gets even softer is incredibly disingenuous.

Congratulations to newly signed Buffaslug Ilya Mikheyev, for taking the most important step in any young Russian's career: Taking a post-breakfast selfie with Mike Babcock at the Egglicious all day breakfast cafe just north of the mastercard centre. Congrats Ilya. That's a cool shirt.

An actual real, good condition! It's a miracle!

Buffalo wasn't as bad as Ottawa or Colorado - We had 4 good players, Wheeler, Rinne, Backes and Marchessault. That was...literally it though.

I like to think the over the hill gang/did they win a cup is a reference to the 1967 leafs, a group of old timers often called "the over the hill gang"

We also traded borgman plus a late 2nd to him for a late 1st, which ended up well for us. Dude Opened up with terrible deals for us -he offered us three tweeners, one of whom produced NEGATIVE Fantasy points for a retained risto- I think @Sygvard called it "a flaming pile of league minimum garbage". Once we got through that unpleasantness he was actually pretty reasonable to deal with.

Well, I may have spoken too soon. Updated Roster: Brady Tkachuck - Mikko Rantanen - Nikolaj Ehlers Travis Konency - Ryan Nugent-Hopkins - Brendan Gallagher Ilya Mikeyev - Adam Lowry - Brock McGinn Jason Dickinson - Ryan Poehling - Brendan Perlini Extras/Callups - Pyatt, Hawryluck, Dahlen, Zegras, Robertson, Tory Krug - Rasmus Ristolainen Jaccob Slavin - Nikita Zadorov Mirco Mueller - Shayne Ghost-bear  Extras/Callups - Roy, Rykov, Bouchard, Merkley, Sandin, Addison. Lots of those players fit your criteria @Salter, and we're always willing to deal.

@Sygvard and I may have stumbled bass-ackwards into being a good team. Well, better than finishing 19th I guess. Without further ado, your 2019-2020 Buffalo Sabres (with a couple moves to bolster the defence possibly pending). Jonathan Marchessault - Mikko Rantanen - Nikolaj Ehlers Brady Tkachuck - Ryan Nugent-Hopkins - Brendan Gallagher Ilya Mikeyev - Adam Lowry - Travis Konecny Brock McGiinn - Jason Dickinson - Brendan Perlini Extras/Callups - Pyatt, Hawryluck, Dahlen, Poehling, Zegras, Robertson, Jaccob Slavin - Rasmus Ristolainen Mirco Mueller - Nikita Zadorov Matt Roy - Dan Hamhuis Extras/Callups - Rykov, Bouchard, Merkley, Sandin, Addison Pickard Montoya Mason Kahkonen Woll Korenar We may need a goalie, but we don't consider the issue pressing as we do have some good prospects in the pipeline. And still 7 picks in the first three rounds of 2020 (including 2 in the first!)

Saw a thing about how Yzerman just loves to swing in the 1st round. Sometimes it works (vasilevsky) and sometimes it doesn't (Brett Connolly 6th overall, Tony DeAngelo) but he's got guts