#eastern conference wildcard race

[any-apples]

guys this is so backwards. the whole east (pens, red wings, caps, isles, flyers) are like trying to crawl away from the playoffs. like. the flyers lose to montreal, then chicago, then the isles, then buffalo AND THEY'RE STILL IN A PLAYOFF SPOT because the caps don't want it and the red wings don't want it. the pens haven't played like they actually want it. and the flyers sure as fuck haven't played like they want it.

all of these teams are running away from these spots. like full on sprinting. and the hockey gods just pick them up by the backs of their shirts and drop them right back into the spot and laugh at them and their suffering.

fate is gonna drag us in kicking and screaming. wild shit.

[blusical]

The Eastern Conference Wildcard race summarized:

"here take the wildcard" "no fuck this wildcard i dont want it you have it" "ew no fuck this wildcard you take it" "fuck no you take it"

[gritty-big-naturals]

the eastern conference wildcard race is hands down the most bonkers shit i’ve ever witnessed

[geminusrufus]

eastern conference really had itself a night, huh?

Bruins noticed they could nab the presidents trophy after all -- weren't sure they liked that

Caps can only beat one team consistently and it just happens the be the one team that keeps crawling back into the wildcard

Panthers (7th in league) decide not to bully the Senators (26th) too hard

Flyers give up against one of the only teams in the league worse than the Senators

Devils are officially eliminated from the met race (finally). Once they lose their rematch with the Leafs tomorrow, they'll be eliminated from the wildcard race (finally)

The best of the good teams (Rangers) lose to the best of the mid teams (Islanders) -- the power of incredible violence apparently has its limits

It looks like the middle child league will be biting and kicking for the wildcard spot until the final game. Assuming everyone beats their easiest opponents and loses to their toughest opponents (per the strength of remaining schedule calculator), islanders take met3 and wings get wild2. BUT if the red wings lose 1 extra game, and nothing else changes, caps are still in the wild card!

Obviously none of this final, it just goes to show how close the race to a first round elimination is.

[hockeyknowitall]

would you be willing to explain how wildcards work? my friend is having a super difficult time understanding it

Yeah it can be confusing, i’ll use the eastern conference tot make it more understandable.

Think of it this way. The top three in each division make the playoffs that’s completely independent of the other division.  The wildcard standings are the top two in the conference not including the top three of each division. So think of them as two separate races. 

It can get confusing because one division can have higher point totals than the others so you could end up with a wildcard team with more points than the top of one of the divisions. So each team is basically battling for the wildcard spot and for the a spot in the top three of their own division. nothing else matters.

COnsider all the teams not in the top three of their leagues like in a whole separate category and they have to play well enough to get out of there. For instance right now the top three atlanti teams are the Lightning, Maple Leafs and Senators. They’re playing against each other in terms of point totals right now. all the other atlantic teams are playing for the wild card spots against the metro teams in their same predicament. Once they beat everyone in the wild card race then they start trying to move into their division.

Basically I think if it comes from a place of not understanding how you make the playoffs the NHL website has this really convenient line for you and it basically says any team below this line is not in the playoffs any team above this line is in the playoffs. so focus on your teams points  totals and the next closest team to them that’s above that line and what they have to do, to get above that line. If it’s about not understanding why and how it works. well. that’s the NHL. but I hope I cleared it u. It might be easier to know specifically what they find confusing about it.

[andrewuttaro]

New Look Sabres: GM 49 - CBJ - Blizzard Puns

It seems like it was a whole different world back when the Buffalo Sabres took on the Columbus Blue Jackets in Game 11 this season. That was a narrow 5-4 loss for the Blue and Gold to an Artemi Panarin OT game-winner. That was before the win streak when we were all content to just look for signs of improvement. Oh times have changed! In past years these teams would meet for Wednesday Night rivalry on nights NBC should’ve been airing a couple Canadian teams god forbid and we would joke about the intense history between the clubs, our breaths full of sarcasm. Then each team would go on their merry way; Columbus to a first round exit (narrower and narrower every year) and Buffalo onto miss the playoffs. To each his own it was. Now the Sabres need some W’s in these eleven post bye-week games against beatable opponents as Chad DeDominicis at Die By the Blade recently noted. Now I look at Columbus with actual aggression. Not only that but if the Sabres do pick it up again down the stretch for these next two months leading into the playoffs there is a chance these teams play in the first round. Oh yes, let’s do some playoff trash talk: Columbus, you’ve rallied behind this team and every season they’ve looked like a deep playoff contender while the next calamity was waiting around the corner. Sabres fans don’t need to remind you that you’ve never won a playoff series because we know that’s why the trash talk in this series is a one way street. Your club can probably go win the Eastern Conference if your two best players didn’t demand out of town. Buffalo cannot imagine being afraid of the Jackets in a playoff series and the facts of the matter is there’s no compelling reason to be: Sabres in 6! That felt a little mean but it’s been tough times lately for the Sabres so deal with it. Game on!

I had the good vibes coursing through my veins to start this game! I sincerely missed this team and they didn’t make me regret those feelings. The second line of Sheary-Mittelstadt-Rodrigues came streaming into the Blue Jackets zone and went right to the net. Casey Mittelstadt’s shot didn’t get through but Evan Rodrigues was right there behind him to clean up the rebound and get Buffalo up 1-0. That goal was a little over two minutes into the first. Hardly a minute later Columbus has their go in the Sabres zone when Ryan Murray took a shot from the blue line that Pierre-Luc Dubois redirected in. 1-1 game.  It was at this point my early concerns about the Sabres possession game began to disappear like the green grass under the blizzard. The Sabres took over O-zone possession and began to push their luck on the O-zone chances a bit more. Rasmus Ristolainen got a puck from the wall over to Sam Reinhart parked right in the slot all alone and 23 sunk it past Sergei Bobrovsky. 2-1 Sabres and it’s worth mentioning this period was looking like a return to form for Carter Hutton as Columbus returned the chances with some consistency. Tage Thompson got the puck from a marauding Rasmus Dahlin and looked like a tower smacking home the 3-1 goal for the visitors. On another night of questioning why Lawrence Pilut is benched once again it’s nice to be refreshed by another questionable Housley deployment from earlier this season. Don’t worry; we’ll get back to that later.

Speaking of Tage Thompson, he got penalized late in the first for goaltender interference. The play actually looked like what you want from Thompson, crashing the net and all, but it gave the Jackets a powerplay bridge into the middle frame where Nick Foligno cashed in. I didn’t see it because my stream crashed but the replay looks like he got a sausy tap in. Don’t take time to complain because before the cannon blast dissipated the Sabres responded on a Jeff Skinner race to the back of the net. It’s 4-2 now only a minute into the second and I feel great if this is the Sabres team we’ll see down the stretch here. Then the game turned into a shooting gallery: the nightmare of any goalie’s save percentage. At this point the shots from both teams totaled less than 35. Halfway through this game that changed, perhaps more from a Columbus angle. Brandon Dubinsky put a puck on Hutton up close and somehow it trickled in. The floodgates seemed to open then for the home team and Hutton is suddenly under siege as the defense in front of him got sloppy. Cam Atkinson got a charitable deflection off Reinhart and stood all alone face to face with Hutton. Atkinson won the stare down and this game is 4-4 through forty minutes. Yikes. In past years the Sabres are scared now in this situation. Personally I two just wanted them to hold the line and be conservative. This team needs wins now! The beautiful thing about the final period is that it showed this Sabres team doesn’t get scared. The pressure poured out from the Blue and Gold like the heavens had an ocean of snow to drop. Yes, I’m doing a lot of blizzard metaphors today. Just like how scoring opened, it closed with a Sabres second line we’ve criticized a lot for being nonexistent when it was needed. Evan Rodrigues goes in on Bob and it bounces off the pads. This time it was Conor Sheary there to pick up the rebound: 5-4 Sabres. The rest of the period was stressful; I made the mistake of blasting workout music and nearly soaking my shirt through with sweat. Columbus pushed hard, especially in the last two minutes with an empty net behind them but Hutton stood tall. The Jackets made their losing streak three games though and it ended 5-4 Sabres.

As we talked about briefly at the start of tonight’s blog the Sabres need to get on a roll and win some games out of the bye week to get back into the thick of the playoff race. There is a unique little window we find ourselves in right now where most of the teams ahead of us in that race are on their bye-week while Buffalo is playing games. This win tonight helps close a gap between the now 56 point Sabres and the final wildcard spot at 58 points. Most notably Montreal is not playing games right now and that is probably the team you need to peel out of there. Purely on a head-to-head basis the Sabres have been a better team than our surprising friends up in French Canada but games in hand and clutch wins in tough games make the difference in a race as tight as this. For such a tight race one might wonder why Lawrence Pilut, a rookie to North American ice whom has better advanced stats than a certain Kings defenseman who just got traded into the division, was scratched. I am not going to defend Housley’s decision to not play our favorite Press Box Pilut but I’m willing to be patient in the light of the memory of how the Thompson experiment panned out. You may be yelling saying the Thompson experiment was playing him not benching him but of all the shit Housley has to fix right now I am not going to waste energy bemoaning a game-to-game deployment choice over say… the consistently bad powerplay. I’m picking my battles; this stretch ahead of us is going to take a lot of my emotional energy and trust me, I love you Pilut, but your time will come.

The Sabres played an aggressive, pressurized game tonight and that’s encouraging going into Dallas tomorrow night and a super busy February to follow. We’re not used to a genuine playoff race here in Buffalo so let’s save our energy for the slugfest that lay ahead. Drop a like on this blog for my mental energy and a share/retweet too if you really need me to keep it up going into this stretch. Comment too if you got some chirping to do. I let some snarls rip on our boys tonight too; it wasn’t a perfect game by any means. That maybe something we’re apt to remember going forward here: it doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to work. Points! Points! Points! Make them rain down like this endless column of snow!

Thanks for reading.

P.S. I don’t regret not writing on the NHL All-Star Weekend. It’s been three days and I still can’t come up with takeaways. I guess that’s the point… that it’s all pointless.

[365footballorg-blog]

Transfer Transformation: 3 teams take on new look after secondary window

August 9, 20184:43PM EDT

A panoply of movement during MLS’ Secondary Transfer Window will shake up the playoff race in both conferences, but three teams in particular will take on new looks on the fly. What to expect for LAFC, Portland and Montreal?

Coming home to Southern California, @Chris_Ramirez17.

📰 https://t.co/H9F8GMf5df#LAFC pic.twitter.com/d046OjgcuY

— LAFC (@LAFC) August 7, 2018

Major additions: Andre Horta (Benfica), Danilo Silva (Internacional), Christian Ramirez (Minnesota), Josh Perez (Fiorentina) 

Major departures: None

It’s possible that three of the four players that LAFC brought in during the secondary transfer window will be regular members of Bob Bradley’s first-choice XI this season.

Horta was signed as a Designated Player to be an integral part of the team but he’s still acclimating himself to the league. Without injured midfielder Mark-Anthony Kaye, Eduard Atuesta may be ahead of Horta in the queue for midfield minutes to balance the team with his defensive ability. But Horta will have every chance to earn minutes. In the team’s first game without Kaye against the Red Bulls, Bradley opted to start a midfield trio of Carlos Vela, Lee Nguyen and Benny Feilhaber, showing he’s clearly unafraid of overloading on attacking quality.

Silva ostensibly was added for depth, but a few good performances across one of the leakiest defenses in the league could see him nail down a regular place in the team, not to mention his ability to play defensive midfielder. Despite having last featured in MLS when the Red Bulls were still the MetroStars, the veteran shouldn’t take too long to integrate to the team.

Ramirez and Perez are the wildcards. The latter was a highly rated member of various U.S. youth national teams and has spent the last three years in Italy, but faces an uphill fight for minutes in 2018 due to the quality in front of him. The former was strongly rumored to leave Minnesota United this window, though Sporting KC and Colorado Rapids were logical favorites to land him.

Instead, LAFC swooped in and added Ramirez to an attack that already boasts Vela, Diego Rossi, Adama Diomande and Marco Urena. Diomande picked up a hamstring injury last weekend – perhaps increasing the urgency for Bradley & Co. to land another striker. Or LAFC just figured the player was too good to pass up on. LAFC’s attack, as it has been all season, surely is one to keep an eye on.

Portland Timbers

“We believe [Conechny] has the tools to become a dangerous attacker in this league moving forward.”

Coach Savarese is excited about this young talent, and it’s easy to see why. #RCTID pic.twitter.com/9i7fs81ii0

— Portland Timbers (@TimbersFC) July 17, 2018

Major additions: Tomas Conechny (San Lorenzo), Jorge Villafaña (Santos Laguna), Lucas Melano (Estudiantes)

Major departures: Vytas (D.C. United), Fanendo Adi (FC Cincinnati)

On a 15-match unbeaten run, Portland went from strength-to-strength during the Secondary Transfer Window. Since neither key departures made much of an impact in 2018, neither Villafaña nor Conechny will be tasked with replacing an excess of outgoing production. Vytas started 19 games in 2017 but played a grand total of 21 minutes this season. Adi, a Timbers mainstay for four seasons, had made just one league start since May before being acquired by FC Cincinnati. 

Villafaña, a member of Portland’s 2015 MLS Cup-winning team, will expect to be in the team every week. This leaves Zarek Valentin, who has started Portland’s last 19 games, as an overqualified backup. Conechny, meanwhile, won’t be much expected to make an immediate impact. The 20-year-old attacking midfielder is likely to be given time to acclimate to the league, plus dislodging the attacking trio of Samuel Armenteros, Diego Valeri and Sebastian Blanco – as well as the returning Lucas Melano – is an arduous task.

Montreal Impact

LIRE | @AJA. @Arsenal. @ManCity. @bncalcio. Et maintenant @impactmontreal.

Bienvenue à Montréal Bacary Sagna! 😍 >> https://t.co/IeIyMAvS1G

Welcome to #MTL Sagna! >> https://t.co/Nw9ZgkIAzu#IMFC pic.twitter.com/SjqwQl8nAo

— Impact de Montréal (@impactmontreal) August 8, 2018

Major additions: Bacary Sagna (Benevento), Michael Azira (Colorado), Quincy Amarikwa (San Jose)

Major departures: Dominic Oduro (San Jose), Raheem Edwards (Chicago)

Essentially, Montreal added a starter and swapped one pair of depth players for another pair.

Sagna improves the team from day one. They’ll need it, too, as the Impact are precariously clinging to one of the last two playoff spots in the Eastern Conference by two points, ahead of Philadelphia with Toronto and D.C. threatening to ascend with late surges. Remi Garde has stabilized the defense by playing more rigidly and Sagna will further add quality and vast Premier League experience to the defensive ranks.

Oduro played just 35 minutes for the Impact this season and Edwards had fallen out of favor before being traded. Azira, 30, had played 2,500+ minutes for Colorado in each of the last two seasons but had a dramatically lessened role this year, while Amarikwa found himself in a similar situation in San Jose as Oduro did in Montreal. 

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Transfer Transformation: 3 teams take on new look after secondary window was originally published on 365 Football

[thrashermaxey]

No Man Is An Island

  Happy New Year! One New Year’s resolution that I hope to keep is to spend more time on each of my fantasy leagues. During the season, I normally set my line-ups every Sunday for the following week, but I often find that in week adjustments are not happening. As well, I rarely initiate trade offers due to a lack of time to dedicate to each league. With the second half of the season nearly upon us, I hope to be able to commit sufficient time to each of my six fantasy hockey leagues and bring home at least one title.

  This week, I’ll be looking at the New York Islanders and their surprising offensive output.

The Isles are third in goals scored per game with 3.44, behind only Tampa Bay (3.74) and the amazing (there is no other word for this team) Vegas Golden Knights (3.51). The reason the Islanders are not higher in the standings is that they are tied with Arizona for the most goals against per game with 3.54.

  The net result has the New York Islanders currently hanging onto the last wildcard spot in the Eastern Conference. There are several teams nipping at their heels, including the defending back to back Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins. A playoff berth is far from assured with more than half a season to play.

  One of the biggest individual surprises of the season has to be Josh Bailey. He closed 2017 with an incredible 11-game point streak, recording 19 points. Bailey’s 50 points are second in the NHL to the Lightning’s Nikita Kucherov and his 56 points. Six of the top ten scorers in the NHL are from three teams. Kucherov and Steven Stamkos (49 points), Bailey and John Tavares (49 points) and the Flyers Claude Giroux and Jakub Voracek, who have 46 points apiece.

  Bailey has spent the majority of his even-strength shifts with Tavares and Anders Lee. While he ranks second in league scoring, Tavares is tied for third and Lee sits 15th overall. Bailey has 21 power play points, tied for third in the league with Kucherov. Only Stamkos and the Pens Phil Kessel with 24 and 23 respectively have more points with the man advantage.

  With 50 points in 39 games, Bailey is on pace for 105 points. That total is unlikely as the 28-year-old is only six points back of his previous career high of 56 points set last season. December saw him score 22 points in 15 games. In October and November, he recorded 14 points in 12 games each of those months.

  My money has December as simply a hot month for Bailey. I see his points per game numbers coming down somewhat. Do I think he will hit the 100-point mark? Definitely not, but at this point, it would not be surprising if he finished inside the top ten. This unexpected scoring surge will have a significant effect on the pending unrestricted free agent’s next contract. With Tavares, Jaroslav Halak and Bailey’s contracts all expiring, has Bailey played himself off the Island?

  Most of us aren’t really surprised at where John Tavares is in the scoring race this season. The first overall pick from the 2009 NHL entry draft was coming off of two sub-par years of 66 and 70 points. That’s well off the 86 points he put up in the 2014-15 campaign.

  Unlike Bailey, there is a certain confidence in predicting Tavares surpassing the point per game mark as he’s done exactly that two time previously and missed it by a single point twice more. On pace for 44 goals and 103 points, but coming off of a very hot December, where he had 21 points in 15 games, JT has a legitimate shot at setting new career highs.

  The real question is, can the Islanders re-sign their franchise player, who is due to become an unrestricted free agent at the end of this season? Even if Tavares decides to re-sign, the team will have to nearly double his current $6-million annual stipend. At least Nikolai Kulemin’s $4,187,500 cap hit comes off the books at the end of this season. One thing is certain, General Manager Garth Snow will have a challenging summer ahead of him.

  The third wheel on the Isles top line, Anders Lee is also in the midst of a career season. He has 39 points in as many games and is on pace to obliterate last year’s career best 52 points. A big part of his success can be attributed to being a part of the seventh ranked power play. Lee has 12 points with the man advantage, which is only two less than his total from all of last season.

  Lee is on pace for a 50-goal season and has a 24.7 per cent shooting percentage. That is above last year’s 17.8 percent and more than 10 points higher than his 14.6 per cent career average. Consider it a wildly successful season if he finishes with 40 goals.

  While it’s highly unlikely that he will end the season with point per game numbers, it’s not impossible to envision a 70-point campaign. It’s not like head coach Doug Weight is going to break this trio up for any length of time unless he wants to lose his job.

  One guy that doesn’t get much love in fantasy hockey circles is defenseman Nick Leddy. His durability is something you can count on; heading into this campaign, he’s missed a total of six games over the last six seasons. Leddy’s point totals have gone up four consecutive years and he’s on pace to best last season’s career high 46 points.

  Since coming to the Island from Chicago, Leddy has seen a jump in his ice time to a team leading average of 22:34 minutes per game. He also tops the team in power play ice time, averaging 3:36 minutes per contest with the man advantage.

  Over a 19-game stretch from October 26 until December 7, Leddy recorded 22 points. Unfortunately, the flip side is that over the remaining 20 games, he had only four points. Even with this in mind, I’m still on board for a 50-point campaign.

  All the best in the new year! Thanks for reading.

from All About Sports http://www.dobberhockey.com/hockey-home/eastern-edge/no-man-is-an-island-2/

[andrewuttaro]

New Look Sabres: Midseason Thoughts

Happy New Year! The Buffalo Sabres game against the Florida Panthers tomorrow will be their 41st game. By my calculation that’s the halfway point of the season and I think my math skills are at least good enough for basic division. This landmark of the season had me thinking we ought to take a look at the season as whole here when we’re about halfway certain what it’s going to end up looking like. Yea, perhaps we can be a little more than halfway certain with our predictions at this point but just let me show off my basic math skills, ok? I initially started thinking about the grand scheme of things about this season back after the Sabres met the Leafs the first time at the start of December. True rivalry games like that always get me thinking. There is a lot more to digest about this season based on the first half than my most optimistic self would’ve thought in September. I remember predicting the Sabres would have a winning record in October like I was going out on a limb. The expectations clearly changed this season, early on two: like the first twenty odd something games it became clear the corner had finally been turned. There’s a lot to that and I will dive into some of the minutia of that in later thoughts but perhaps it’s wiser first to reflect. Before I started New Look Sabres I wrote hockey articles on and off for different outlets and even freelance like this. I have no writing degrees so my thoughts were encapsulated in slick declarative titles: 2013-2014 was the Dawn of the Tank, 2014-2015 was the War of the Tanks, 2015-2016 was the New Guard Rising, 2016-2017 was the lost season and 2017-2018 was… *shutters* … the trash season. Jack Eichel’s rookie year had its optimism as you can see but the seasons to follow showed the things wrong with the team needed fixing. Certainly not all those problems are fixed but what might this season be called? I feel that the first half of this season has already given us a pretty solid idea…

…2018-2019 is the Reclamation. The season the Sabres reclaimed not only relevance but the mantle of the minimum level of quality Sabres teams have had over the last forty nine years. Moreover, the Buffalo Sabres as a club reclaimed their fans: not just the diehards who look at draft rankings in January, the casual fans and the ones who just don’t want to be miserable watching hockey. The runner up name was the Found Money Season. That’s where my first thought starts. This team has turned a corner; they’re a playoff contender now. At least they acted like it in the first half. Expectations should remain there. Make the playoffs, please oh please make the playoffs; divisional or a more likely wildcard, just make it. Anything that happens beyond that is a gift; found money if you will. If the Sabres win a game there: excellent if they win a round, fantastic! If they get swept, okay whatever. I want to say this now not just to get ahead of crazy March and April sound bites but to remind us all not to sell the farm. The playoff race, the playoffs themselves and everything that comes before is a learning experience more than anything else. I would say some young guys on this team don’t know what the Stanley Cup playoffs are like but really it’s true with every member of the Sabres core including Jeff Skinner. Pominville is really your only guy who’s not a former Blue who can tell you about that. Bank points through the second half, make the playoffs and from there on out its whatever this season. No expectation past game 82 except learn. Learn what it means to be in the playoffs and play like it. The second half will be decisive if not for playoff positioning than simple team building. Not the roster building GMs do, no: Build Buffalo Sabres hockey. Learn it, and then teach us what it’s like. Playoffs are just proof of competitiveness, that’s all the Sabres need to prioritize right now on that front: growth in competitiveness.

They’ve found some kind of groove already this season but in the second half the Sabres need to lock down their style, their game, their groove and put it to the test in the playoffs against whoever they face. It seems cruel to use this phrase sometimes as a Sabres fan knowing what we’ve been through but we’re still in a building year. I am not going to be offended if Jason Botterill goes out and acquires a small piece or two but it better not be expensive and it better not be a rental. Reward these guys with a weapon that will be here a little while. Rental players you get for a playoff run or a season and a half rarely make the huge difference you want them to make. Reinforce the defense or shore up secondary scoring if you make a move. That’s how you’ll reward a Sabres team that turned it around this season. The Playoff window is just opening, the Stanley Cup window has not opened yet. Don’t buy a lot by selling futures when our focus is experience and growth as a team. So yes, reward them for what they’ve done with a cheaper move but don’t make the move that will be seen as demanding a deep run at the Cup. That rewarding the group is important in its own way. Maybe, although cheap wouldn’t be the word I use to describe it, that reward is signing Jeff Skinner since he wants to stay? Hmm.

My second thought I already touched on a little bit: it’s consistency. This Buffalo Sabres team is remarkably streaky and that’s fine when there’s enough wins in there to make it work but that’s not a habit of Stanley Cup teams. Consistently winning, or being damn close to it, requires not just one line action like we saw almost exclusively in December, but secondary scoring and a defensive core that contributes as well. Some of that you develop and call up in house but maybe, once again at a good price, you bring in a piece for the parts here that are not producing at all. My third point is a discussion of goaltending. The Carter Hutton-Linus Ullmark tandem has been top ten in this league in goals against and save percentage. Given where each of those guys is in their careers you expect a drop off at some point. That drop off has not come yet and any strategizing for it seems a little moot right now. That said, it would be good if Ullmark good get more starts in the second half. An 8-1-3 record in his 13 starts is safe enough a bet to trust him. Trust in him will build confidence and if he is the goalie of the future in Buffalo, which I truly believe he is, he needs that. Yea, he got pulled before the third in that one game, he’ll have his mistakes like any goalie does but I could not feel happier about the Sabres situation in net right now.

My fourth point: SIGN JEFF SKINNER! LOL, no that’s important but it’s not actually a midseason thought. No, I want to talk more generally about the season now; where we’ve been and where we’re going. The beginning of the season can really be thought of us as before and after Jeff Skinner got put on Eichel’s wing. After that 5-1 rout on the road against San Jose Phil Housley took a blender to the lineup and got some good results. Four wins came in the next eight games and then the next major phase of the Sabres season happened when everyone kicked into over gear and the ten game win streak hit. For three weeks the Sabres felt invincible beating teams like Tampa, Winnipeg and San Jose pulling in every Western New York Hockey fan that had since gotten tired of Sabres sorrows. The five game skid that followed the win streak wasn’t as bad as it felt and the wins came back although Buffalo is still in a post-win streak hangover from a standings perspective barely playing .500 hockey since the big one. From here on out the road map to the playoffs is simpler than seven years outside the playoffs might lead you to believe, at least until the end of January. It’s banking points, particularly in Western Canada before the bye week late in January, before suiting up for a stretch run in February and March that only sees two breaks of more than two days. The back half will be a crucible after the bye week and there will be teams, even ones not names Boston, Montreal or the Islanders, who will give you fits and make you work for that playoff berth we’ve all been dying for.

This blog is going to change a little bit in the second half of the season as well. Hopefully it won’t be a crucible to get through but I am making myself think harder for my comedic bits starting now. Instead of the burn book for all our reasons to hate divisional rivals in those games, each game against an Eastern Conference opponent will feature a bit on what facing them in the first round of the playoffs would mean. This will be understandably silly against some opponents like Ottawa and New Jersey but it should be fun. Some programming notes: seasons for this blog will revolve around the post season. The blog season ends when the Sabres are eliminated from contention for Lord Stanley’s Cup whether that be March *shutters* or early May. The blog season will formally end with a 2018-2019 Season retrospective followed by a break before the draft that may or may not see some kind of “Playoffs according to the Sabres” and or another Schedule breakdown depending on when that releases. If you care enough about the blog to read through that then thank you, I wish you had cared enough to drop me a comment or two going into this but I’m not bitter: it’s a super chill hockey blog, I don’t expect my writing here to attract deep thought. That said, deep thoughts appreciated.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. I want to signal boost the opinion that if the Sabres do not make the playoffs in 2019 then Phil Housley’s job should be at stake. A collapse great enough to ruin the 11 point lead on a playoff spot they had in November is already well in progress. Lots of hockey left but there’s the objective.