QCity

So devious. Never play cards with this Ertz fellow.

Football stadiums do not foster economic growth in their surrounding areas, and in some cases they may actually hinder it. Look no further than the current stadium built 50 years ago -- there's been nothing in the area for 5 decades save for a few bars, gas stations, and a 7-11. For some reason many fans think building a stadium downtown will transform the area into this year-round hub of entertainment, but that's not the reality of the situation -- it's misplaced wishful thinking. Now a baseball stadium, a facility that is open 6-7 months of the year with 80-90 sporting events is a completely different animal, and I think that may mislead some people. So if you want to quantify a baseline economic impact with hard figures, it isn't difficult. There's a ~$180M player payroll and the majority of those guys are in the high tax brackets. That's not counting coaches, front office, marketing, administration, and all of the other staff that come together to make this operation work. It wouldn't surprise me at all if that $1.4B was paid for in organizational income taxes alone over a 40 year period. But good luck selling that to NYS taxpayers, and I don't blame them. The optics of the Pegulas building a mega-yacht sure doesn't help.

I've always said the model for a stadium here should be the Seahawks' partially covered open-air stadium, although 60,000 seems a bit low to me.

Nobody is trading for a 34 yr old DE with an $8M cap hit. This is Addison's last year here and although he'll be listed as a starter, he will likely play ~55% of the snaps like he did last season. Not unfathomable to think this could be Hughes' last year as well. The young bucks need to step up.

Dak and Zeke have all the personality of a bag of wet hair.

Who says fans overreact to preseason games?

https://theathletic.com/2773179/2021/08/20/nfl-100-at-no-20-the-relentless-bruce-smith-dominated-blockers-to-record-levels-of-production/

Yup. Sold some jerseys. Give it 3 years and he'll be trying out for kicker.

If it's a huge get together like 4th of July I'll typically pee in my friend's pool 2 or 3 times, and that's before I get in the water.

Jerry repeating the same speech he's been giving for years - that he would do anything, anything to win another Superbowl. I wish some reporter had the guts to ask him, "Jerry, would you ever consider removing yourself and all of your family members from their high organizational positions and bring in experienced, qualified people to run the team?" No? They you clearly wouldn't do anything to win.

You'll get no argument from me on those points. The team employs a soft perimeter game and doesn't play with any passion or fire. But it starts with goaltending. Here's a crazy stat from last season that has been getting some mention on the internet and local radio. Last season when Ullmark was in net the team was playing at a ~90 point pace over a full season. Now think about that for a second. After that trainwreck of a season when our best player (Eichel) was hurt, our best stay-at-home defenseman (McCabe) was lost, Hall checking out, the 4th line Skinner controversy, Covid shutting the team down for 2 weeks, and being coached by Ralph Freaking Krueger, the team was on a ~90 point pace with Ullmark. Hard to believe. Now, 90 points won't get you into the playoffs -- but that's what they call a bubble team, not a dumpster fire. Franchise players usually aren't desperately trying to leave town when you have a chance. The flip side is that when Ullmark wasn't in net, they played at some ridiculously low win rate (worse than tank team point totals IIRC). Remember that 18 game losing streak that cemented us as the laughingstock of the league? It started 1 game before Ullmark was injured, and it ended 2 games after he came back. And I don't even think the guy is a top-10 goalie, probably around #13-15 IMO. I know FA isn't over and there are deals to be made, but right now our goaltending is actually worse than last year. It's not fair to the new kids coming up, the coach, or the fans.

That's a very good price, their patience paid off.

I know everyone budgets their money differently, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find people that think $1.00 a month is greedy. Right now Fairburn and Buscaglia are writing ~2,000 word reports on every day of training camp, which I think is worth a buck. I cancelled my sub last summer during the pandemic and after about a month they hit me with the "please come back" email and $1/month deal, I bet you get an email right before the season starts.

It's not culture, it's goaltending. They need goaltending. They haven't had a top flight netminder since Miller was shipped out. They only player close to above average in net was the last 2 years of Ullmark, but he got hurt twice. It's really not that different from the nearly 2 decades of mediocrity the Bills went through, as the problem with the Bills was always about the QB but they just couldn't get it right. They were always trying to win without a QB, and the Sabres have been trying to win without goaltending for the past 8 years. Based on their recent front office decisions, it looks like they will continue with that strategy. It's maddening.

I'm just tagging this thread for the memes.

Peter missed the mark on this one. The guy's on the wrong side of 30, wants more money, and was only able to play 5 games last season. Any trade would have to include an extension that likely has us taking $20M cap hits for the next 3-4 years. And it costs us a 1st rd pick? Nahhhh.

Since this is an NFL forum, maybe some folks will find this NHL explanation enlightening (then again maybe not). It has nothing to do with mind reading and everything to do with communication. The NHL differs significantly from the NFL in that a player's trade value is heavily influenced by his contract. Much, much more so than in the NFL. Right now Reinhart does not have a contract and has 1 year left of RFA. He told Adams that he intends to test UFA (which every player a year away typically wants) which means he's either going to sign a 1-yr deal until then or go into arbitration. The difference in trade value between Reinhart on a 1yr deal and say...a 6-yr deal is like the difference between a $5 bill and a $20 bill. Florida just gave us a $5 bill under the assumption that there is concern he will walk after 1 year and he may be only a rental. If next week Florida announces that they have signed Sam Reinhart to a 7yr contract, then something went seriously, seriously wrong in the Sabres front office, and Adams basically got played for a sucker. Look at the Seth Jones (a player also 1yr away from UFA) trade that happened last week. That trade returned Columbus the 12OV pick this year, a 2nd round pick this year, a 1st round pick next year, and Adam Boqvist - the top prospect in their system. That is what you call a Kings Ransom. Why did he get that much? Well, you could argue that he's a better player than Reinhart and that it's a defensemen's market right now and you wouldn't be wrong, but that's not the major factor behind that haul. The major driver was that they did a sign-and-trade i.e. both teams, the player and agent got together and worked out a long term deal as part of the trade. In this scenario all 3 parties got what they wanted. The Blackhawks got the player they wanted locked up long term without the worry of him bolting after a year, the player got a massive contract, and the Blue Jackets got an impressive amount of picks and prospects back. What would this deal look like if there wasn't a contract extension in place? Well we can only speculate but it would likely be closer to the Risto deal and in no way, shape, or form would it include Boqvist. In that same line of thinking if Reinhart was traded with an extension in place it would almost certainly have to include one of Florida's top prospects, perhaps even Lundell! Are these deals easy to pull off? No they aren't and they don't happen often because of the difficulty involved since it typically makes sense for a player to just wait until UFA. Also it takes a pretty astute GM to pull off this maneuver. Anyways at this point it's all speculation and it's still assumed that Reinhart will sign a 1yr deal. Yes!

If he signs a long term deal with Florida it's a huge red flag. I'm talking air-raid siren warning here. It would mean we just handed a division rival a long-term cornerstone piece for rental prices aka pennies on the dollar. It would indicate that Adams misread everyone's hand at the table and is a tacit admission that he doesn't have the experience or chops to pull off a sign-and-trade.

He sounds like he's running for office in the deep south at this point.

https://www.theringer.com/2017/8/22/16184984/mcdonalds-fries-malcolm-gladwell-house-of-carbs

Nope, and I doubt you'll hear any complaints from them.

Their facilities are state of the art and quite lavish too, I find it somewhat interesting to see the environment they train and practice in.

If you want more insight to the type of coach Granato is and have some free time...