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andrewuttaro · 5 years

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New Look Sabres: 2019 Free Agency

The wise words of noted NHL insider Elliotte Friedman go “When you’re drowning in this league other teams don’t throw you a life jacket, they throw you an anchor.” In spite of a handful of decent to great players getting traded in the last few weeks for peanuts, generally speaking it’s very hard to pull off a trade that is a lopsided win for your team. Free Agency is worse. Free Agency is like opening a septic tank looking for a diamond ring and jumping in expecting not to get covered in shit. The last big Free Agency signing the Sabres pulled off was Kyle Okposo. All the off-ice stuff you want to say about the Sex Man aside: that contract sucks ass. It was bad the moment it was signed. That’s what most free agency signings are like. Jason Botterill approaches this offseason publicly saying he wants to focus more on the trade avenue. That’s smart. I’d prefer he not give out too much money in free agency like his predecessor did with Okposo. However we are a fanbase that has run out of patience eight years out of the playoffs. Significant roster moves are paramount right now. How we got here is actually pretty simple. The tank worked (let’s not relitigate it) and rebuild 1.0 was accelerated by Tim Murray with the Ryan O’Reilly and Evander Kane signings at the cost of a wave of prospects and picks. Rebuild 1.0 failed. That failed initial rebuild was what brought Kyle Okposo here as a free agent. He’s now our very own salary cap albatross circling in the skies above the nearly dead Buffalo Sabres that were so stripped down in the tank they’re aimless even with some talent on the roster. We’ve all run out of patience. Rebuild 2.0 under Jason Botterill has gone better but, and this is a big but, the second half collapse of last season was decisive. It ended Phil Housley’s coaching career in Buffalo, and it burned a lot of the fan goodwill Jason Botterill had held onto through the legendarily bad season that earned us Rasmus Dahlin. Another bad season probably costs Botterill his job. This is the situation that gave birth to the buzzword of Sabres twitter: “Roster Surgery”. Bill Schake analyzed it best. Chad DeDominicis’ right hand man essentially said roster surgery is a great way to put it because there is so few tradeable assets left on this team it will take some cunning, creative moves to make real change. It’s truly surgery of the roster because its hard. It’s going to be harder than it’s ever been in the Eichel Era this summer to make this team look competitive past Valentine’s Day. So what changes do we have to talk about as we enter the long, dull portion of the NHL hockey calendar?

Well… Rasmus Ristolainen was the one big tradeable asset I was alluding to… and this past weekend… the Sabres signed Marcus Johansson. Ok so, the trade we’ve been waiting for didn’t happen before the posting of this article. Lord knows it will after this goes up and I’ll have to wait until the Offseason Retrospective to write about it. But let’s not poo-poo a great signing just because it’s not a trade we want. In fact, this specific blog is called 2019 Free Agency so let’s talk about Free Agents for a bit. Marcus Johansson, apart from adding yet another Swede to one of the most swede-heavy rosters in the National Hockey League, adds much needed left-wing depth to the top six. He’s considered a veteran at 28 and has only gotten to twenty goals twice in his nine seasons in the NHL. Nonetheless he was kind of the best guy left to add to the wing for the Sabres once July 1st came and went with pretty much only AHL-level moves. Johansson is defensively responsible and gets those zone entries which is something this team needs guys not named Jack Eichel to do better. Also he is apparently known for his versatility. He hasn’t played at center in recent seasons but that is a trick in the hat knowing Casey Mittelstadt may still not be ready for that 2C slot. That is the topic of some Sabres twitter debate but it seems rather immaterial right now to me with so much offseason left to go. The natural next topic of conversation here feels like it should be Jimmy Vesey and Colin Miller. However, those are technically trades although they were so well extracted they almost feel like signings. As I said earlier, I’m all for not giving up too much money in free agency, particularly if the team isn’t exactly “going for it” right now. So how about I rattle off the free agent signings Jason Botterill did make on July 1st in spite of most of them being long shots for the NHL roster: Goalie Andrew Hammond, Center Curtis Lazar, defenseman John Gilmour, Jean-Sebastien Dea and sorta Dalton Smith (Smith was an Amerk this past season and was resigning technically). Those first two guys are the ones you’re thinking of. Andrew Hammond was the “Hamburgler” in Ottawa a few seasons ago and Curtis Lazar was the guy who ate a hamburger off the ice during that same craze. Just like the Ottawa Senators both guys have not been all that good since. Hammond is the better of the two and is probably going to platoon it in net with Ukko Pekka-Lukkonen in Rochester this coming season. Lazar… is worth a shot I guess. John Gilmour was one of the better AHL defensemen for the Hartford Wolfpack last season and I’m told has the best chance of the group to make the big club. The other two guys I just don’t feel any need to talk about. That feeling is not because they’re minor league moves: you dipsticks complaining about the Front Office making moves mostly helping Rochester need to cool your jets and count your blessings! Take a good hard long look at that Okposo contract and then shut up!

I spent most of last year’s Free Agency article ranting about the Ryan O’Reilly trade. After how his season ended this year that whole conversation turned into a toxic waste dump a la your local minor league baseball franchise announcing a Pride Night on Facebook to absolutely terrible comments from the most bigoted boomers on the internet. I won’t be addressing O’Reilly because I feel we’ve done that to death. This is Buffalo Hockey though so of course there is another retread conversation fraught with potential toxicity to talk about: Jimmy Vesey. First things first, don’t hold three years ago against him. That move for his negotiating rights was the kind of stupid but exciting move that Tim Murray specialized in. That saga doesn’t matter now because Vesey is an established pro now and if we’re being totally real here the players don’t care. Jack Eichel is just happy to have another BU guy, I’m sure! Bury those bad takes next to your Leino jerseys. Nothing screams top line about Vesey’s game so don’t pencil him in right next to Eichel as if it’s a sure thing. I’ve heard him called a middle six acquisition which I think is a great way to put it. We’ll see what Training Camp holds for him. Colin Miller on the other hand you can definitely pencil in as a top four pairing defenseman. He isn’t clearly the best line mate for Rasmus Dahlin but he’s a strong candidate. His trade to Buffalo for a 2021 second round pick and a 2022 fifth round pick is Botts picking on a team in cap jail more than what you might call highway robbery. It’s kinda funny that team in cap jail is the Vegas Golden Knights but after the 2018-2019 St. Louis Blues happened I’m sure they’ll be back in the Final next year. On this team Miller is second only to Rasmus Dahlin on the defensive depth chart and top of the right-handed side of that chart. There are four right-handed defenseman who are NHL likely now beyond Miller: Brandon Montour, Zach Bogosian and Rasmus Ristolainen. The talk about a Ristolainen trade went up naturally after the Miller trade and yes, I’m still on the fence about it. I don’t need him gone, especially with a new coach coming in, but I don’t want 2022 to get here and everyone in the league know he’s ass and end up trading him for a couple of late round picks. If we’re going to get a king’s ransom for Ristolainen, it’s probably this summer or the 2020 trade deadline at the absolute latest. By the time you’re reading this the deal may already be done. Oh, I forgot to mention the Miller trade pissed off Leafs fans! I love pissing off Leafs fans. Fuck them, right?

So there it is: New Look Sabres 2019 Free Agency! Well… how about some fun signings not related to the Sabres? Even after the Leafs traded away Nazem Kadri for a decent to good defenseman there are still smart folks up there saying the Leafs are worse man-for-man compared to last year. Delicious! Robin Lehner openly declared his displeasure for how the Islanders let him go before signing with the Chicago Blackhawks. That’s interesting on two levels because the Isles probably aren’t done this offseason in a big way and Lehner now goes from a great defensive team on Long Island to a very porous defensive system in Chicago. We’ll see how it works out for him; I kinda want him to succeed still but one way or another we’ll see if last season was a fluke or not. Tyler Ennis singed with the Ottawa Senators. That maybe the one weirder jersey to see him in then Toronto. Finally Mike Smith goes from Flames to Oilers while Cam Talbot goes from Oilers to Flames. Should we call that Albertan Roulette? Bringing back home to Buffalo please like, share and comment on this blog. Get that hype going for the new season. I won’t be writing much on this blog until late August, but I think that’s okay because we all could use a break from Hockey. Also if you really want my Sabres takes you can always get them @UttaroSports on twitter. In the meantime, enjoy the summer! Let’s Go Buffalo!

Thanks for reading.

P.S. Linus Ullmark was among the Sabres who filed for salary arbitration. I could’ve used this PS to talk about Remi Elie electing for arbitration which is much more humorous but Ullmark is my boy, so I hope everything goes over well for him come these hearings in… August. Huh. Let the long summer begin!

#hockey #blog #nhl #buffalo sabres

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flauntpage · 6 years

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Brad Marchand Licking Everyone is the Height of NHL Stupidity

Licking people can be good or bad, depending on the context.

In the context of a lover awakening you in the morning, it can be a terrific way to begin the day; in the context of a stranger on the subway running his tongue over your neck and smelling your hair, you should find a police officer immediately. Brad Marchand, the most-talented rat since Splinter, has become something of a licking pioneer in the 2018 playoffs because he found the coveted Licking Gray Area where you gotta hear both sides on FORCING YOUR TONGUE ONTO PEOPLE.

Marchand in the first round ran his tongue over the cheek of Toronto’s Leo Komarov; in the second round, Marchand found a way to make it more erotic by licking the lip and chin of Ryan Callahan as if the juices of a pear were dripping down his mouth. Neither lick resulted in a penalty but the incidents will be long remembered for creating a centrifuge of hockey stupidity.

I honestly can’t get over how dumb all this is, and I write about the NHL for a living. Some people’s beats are politics, entertainment, war—mine is dumb shit the NHL does. I have such a high tolerance for sports league stupidity that when other sports writers gripe about catch rules or poor refereeing or free agency collusion, I can lean over and say in the most worldly tone possible:

“Oh yeah? Any of your leagues have one of its highest-ranking executives tell a guy voted to the All-Star Game he should withdraw because he’d embarrass his wife and kids and have it go public, only to have that player win All-Star Game MVP? And have the executive somehow gain more responsibility in the years that followed? Yeah, didn’t think so. That’s the NHL.”

Then I’d go back to drinking my bourbon alone as the other sports reporters asked each other in hushed tones how that story could be true since the NHL folded a decade ago.

This Marchand stuff is something else entirely. If this were a horror movie, I’d be the old man that scares the young reporters by exchanging my usual stone-faced cynicism for terrified bewilderment at all the stupidity around this story. It checks all the usual NHL boxes and several new ones. Just thinking about all the stupid involved is overwhelming.

Let’s look at each stupid thing separately. We owe it to ourselves.

Brad Marchand — The epicenter of dumb. You can bet that when he first thought to do this, he could not have been more pleased with himself. You’d have to meet a writer from Family Guy to find a person more self-satisfied by a bad idea.

I get why Marchand does it. He’s in close proximity to someone he does not want to fight, but instead of talking shit or skating away, Marchand’s flight instinct has been replaced by a licking instinct. There’s probably some animal in the wild that uses this technique to fend off larger predators, and Marchand learned about it at 3 AM. on NatGeo and decided to add it to his repertoire of forearms to skulls and low-bridging guys.

All the licking never had its desired effect—drawing the opponent into a retaliation penalty. Hockey players will take their skate off and chase you around if you hit them with a legal check but nobody took the bait on Marchand’s licking, which makes the licking doubly dumb. God, I hate this story.

Boston Bruins — Marchand has been putting his mouth on hockey players for years. It started with teammates and slowly evolved into frenching guys on the other team. Marchand kissed Komarov earlier this season, so when he licked him in the playoffs, people treated it like the next step in a burgeoning relationship instead of something that needed to be immediately curtailed. You’d think either coaches or teammates would pull Marchand aside and tell him to knock it off for the benefit of the team, but no, they did not.

This is like Tom Wilson’s attempted murders only on a smaller, weirder scale; if the Capitals had told Wilson to rein it in, maybe he doesn't get suspended three games in the second round. Nothing happened after the second lick of Callahan so it didn’t really hurt the Bruins, but could you imagine losing a series because your best player was in the penalty box for 17 minutes or suspended a game for LICKING SOMEBODY???

More importantly, if coach Bruce Cassidy told Marchand to cut this out after the Komarov licking, I’m writing about something else entirely right now.

Ryan Callahan — I understand that discussing someone licking you during a fight is virgin territory so you don’t have a go-to response to the question, but positing that a face lick is the same as someone spitting in your face is idiotic. They are at best distant cousins in the world of saliva attacks and there’s no reason for this comparison when you are well within your rights as a human and hockey player to say, “Please stop licking me.”

This is like going to HR because a co-worker stole your lunch but instead of simply discussing the infraction you find yourself saying, “What if he had shit in my lunch, huh? And I ate that shit lunch? That’s the same as stealing it!” No it’s not. Stop it.

The NHL — It’s really weird writing about the stupidity of something NHL-related and the NHL itself is basically an accessory after the fact instead of the perpetrator. It should have done something immediately when Marchand struck in the first round, but this is the league that looks for ways to avoid suspensions for head hits, so it’s not surprising it looked the other way on this and hoped it would go away.

However, this is also the league that saw its best player a few years ago have to miss time with the mumps like some goddamn weary traveler on the Oregon Trail, and yet it saw no problem with the unwanted transfer or saliva from player to player in the playoffs. There was a report that Marchand received a warning from the NHL after the Komarov encounter in the first round, but he denied it. Or maybe he lied about that and actually was warned, ignored the warning, licked away again, and instead of suspending a borderline Hart Trophy candidate for his insubordination, the NHL pretended the first warning never happened so he wouldn’t miss an elimination game Sunday afternoon.

Yep, that’s right: this was the Licking Conspiracy section of this story. I hate this. I am as dumb as anyone involved with this.

Outraged media — Look, you shouldn’t lick people that don’t want to be licked. That’s an unwritten rule in hockey but it’s very much a written rule—a law, even—in regular life. So I’m not unsympathetic to people that have a problem with Marchand licking people. I agree he shouldn’t do it!

But the outrage caused by the licking in comparison to, say, unnecessary hits causing brain damage, made everyone look silly.

“MY HEAVENS! MY STARS! WHERE ARE THE MANNERS ON THIS LOATHSOME BRUTE!?!? WHY WON’T A WHITE KNIGHT RIDE INTO TOWN AND DISPENSE JUSTICE ONTO THIS CRETIN AND HIS WAYWARD TONGUE! WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!! HOW FAR HAS THIS NOBLE AND PURE SPORT FALLEN THAT NO ONE WILL SAVE US FROM THIS INTERLOPER’S PERVERSE SALIVA!!”

"Yeah, but what about the head hits causing concussions and brain damage?"

“Hey, nothing we can do about that. Hockey plays, you know? Sometimes they go wrong.”

"But it seems like you’re more upset with licking than—"

“WHY I DO DECLARE, THE FIEND HAS LICKED ANOTHER! [faints]”

I give up.

Marchand defenders — On the other end of the spectrum are people refusing to acknowledge licking people without consent is bad because it’s not as bad as the aforementioned head hits. A thing can be not as bad as something else and still be bad. I don’t want a slice of pineapple pizza any more than I want someone to hit my knee with a hammer. We shouldn’t have either thing in our lives.

Two other quick ones — No, taking away the instigator penalty would not allow players to police this sort of thing. People act like the NHL was this peaceful world in the 1980s and not a lawless land of perpetual assaults when there was no instigator rule. It would be like using a bazooka to kill a fly and you can’t even guarantee you’d kill the fly.

Also, the NHL’s public relations department and NBC announcers Kenny Albert, Pierre McGuire, and Ed Olczyk seemed to be under orders to not use the phrase “licking” when using or discussing the formal warning. NBC showed extreme close-ups of Marchand’s tongue but nobody said the word “licking.” We all saw it! You can say the word!

At least the Bruins were eliminated and this story is now over.

Due to an editing error, a previous version of this article said Marchand licked two Tampa Bay Lightning players. It has been updated to reflect that he licked a player on Tampa as well as a Player on the Toronto Maple Leafs. We regret the error. Seriously, though, we really weren't kidding about how this makes everyone look bad.

Brad Marchand Licking Everyone is the Height of NHL Stupidity published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

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amtushinfosolutionspage · 6 years

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Brad Marchand Licking Everyone is the Height of NHL Stupidity

Licking people can be good or bad, depending on the context.

Then I’d go back to drinking my bourbon alone as the other sports reporters asked each other in hushed tones how that story could be true since the NHL folded a decade ago.

Let’s look at each stupid thing separately. We owe it to ourselves.

This is like Tom Wilson’s attempted murders only on a smaller, weirder scale; if the Capitals had told Wilson to rein it in, maybe he doesn’t get suspended three games in the second round. Nothing happened after the second lick of Callahan so it didn’t really hurt the Bruins, but could you imagine losing a series because your best player was in the penalty box for 17 minutes or suspended a game for LICKING SOMEBODY???

More importantly, if coach Bruce Cassidy told Marchand to cut this out after the Komarov licking, I’m writing about something else entirely right now.

Yep, that’s right: this was the Licking Conspiracy section of this story. I hate this. I am as dumb as anyone involved with this.

But the outrage caused by the licking in comparison to, say, unnecessary hits causing brain damage, made everyone look silly.

“Yeah, but what about the head hits causing concussions and brain damage?”

“Hey, nothing we can do about that. Hockey plays, you know? Sometimes they go wrong.”

“But it seems like you’re more upset with licking than—”

“WHY I DO DECLARE, THE FIEND HAS LICKED ANOTHER! [faints]”

I give up.

At least the Bruins were eliminated and this story is now over.

Brad Marchand Licking Everyone is the Height of NHL Stupidity syndicated from https://australiahoverboards.wordpress.com