We recorded a special bonus Instigator Podcast this week in order to talk about the recent rumors involving Evander Kane and Sam Reinhart. Specifically we try to determine what the overall strategy would be from the Sabres perspective in any such deal.
This week’s podcast is slightly different. We wanted to honor Gord Downie’s passing by opening and closing the episode with The Hip, so the intro is longer than usual. On the Sabres front, we talk about the west coast road swing and the holes in Buffalo’s lineup that continue to hinder the team’s ability to progress.
It was a brutal weekend for the Sabres, dropping games to the Islanders and Devils in brutal fashion. We take a look at what’s gone wrong over the first three games and what the Sabres can do to right the ship.
It’s been three games and there are plenty of questions about Buffalo’s goaltenders. So I reached out to Greg Balloch of In Goal Magazine to talk about Robin Lehner’s shootout struggles and more. Greg gives incredible insight to the strong and weak points of Lehner’s game, where he sees Lehner taking the Sabres and even offers up some thoughts on Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen. Greg also went deep into effective and ineffective goaltending statistics, providing a better way to look at goaltenders at the NHL level.
We are back again to offer up some more detailed thoughts on where we see the Sabres finishing this season. Along the way we celebrate Jack Eichel’s new contract and all that means for the future of the franchise.
We’re back for another season preview, laying out how we see the league shaping up for the 2017-18 season. We have a couple of playoff teams missing out and a couple of new playoff squads compared to last year in our final predictions.
Training camp opens this week and the Sabres prospects were back playing competitive hockey. In addition to discussing the Prospects Challenge, we touch on the coming changes to game presentation, the addition of giveaways and offer up some reaction to the Winter Classic logos that were released last week.
Sabres Development Camp wrapped up with the French Connection Tournament yesterday and in the wake of another mid-summer peek at Buffalo’s prospect pipeline, Chris and Tyler share their thoughts on who stood out from the crowd over the weekend. In addition, we offer up some thoughts on the contract status of Robin Lehner, Sam Reinhart and Jack Eichel. Although we don’t spend very much time on #15.
With the expansion draft nearly here we sit down to offer up our own mock drafts before George McPhee announces the Golden Knights roster. We attempted to follow as close to the currently reported deals as we could in order to put ourselves in a similar situation to what McPhee will be facing. Additionally, we break down Buffalo’s acquisition of Nathan Beaulieu along with the other pre-expansion trades that went down over the weekend.
Here are links to each of the mock drafts we put together:
With the Cup Final complete, Jason Botterill has serious business to attend to. Naming a new head coach for Buffalo and Rochester are just two of the items. In recent days, Evander Kane and Robin Lehner have found their names in the rumor mill while nearly every team in the league are working to solve their respective expansion challenges. We take a look at what options are available to Botterill via trade and which options seem more and less realistic with just days left until the deadline for expansion.
Two in the Box 