after losing briere and drury you just knew this was going to happen…

vanek — a restricted free agent — signed an offer sheet with the edmonton oilers this morning for…

wait for it…

7 YEARS and $50M 

wait for it…

the sabres matched the offer within minutes which is one of the richest and longest sports contracts in buffalo sports history.  and that includes the bills.

personally, i think that:

• it was a no brainer after losing drury/briere
• the contract includes 3 years of time where he would have been eligible for unrestricted free agency
• the money paid out over 7 years is pretty reasonable IF vanek can continue to produce like he did last season (43 goals…)
• the money paid out is actually front loaded so that in 7 years, he will be making less than half of what he will be making next year

however…  there are some downsides here.  the oilers (and GM kevin lowe) have set a bad precedent on being predators in the RFA world.  it may come back to haunt them when someone signs jarret stoll to a $50M offer sheet.   vanek is now making more than double what the next highest paid sabre.  that could cause a few rifts — both with the team and with the fans — if he does not produce…

i’m glad to have him back in the fold…

check out this article — “woe is buffalo” from page 2 at espn.com…

i have read it a few times.  more than a few times, actually.

i was bummed when the sabres season ended.  another promising season…   but all season long, i had a bad “feeling”.  why didn’t the sabres lock up drury and briere before the season started?  when briere got $5M in arbitration i could almost feel it coming.  darcy should have given him a long term deal right then.  the train was already off the rails.  and drury?  rumour has it that he was offered, and agreed to, a long term deal early in the season, but…  darcy never sent the contract.

now?  both of them are gone.  briere to the flyers for 8 years and $52M.  drury to the rangers for 5 years and $35M.  the sabres could have had both of them locked up at 2/3 of that cost if they had done it at the beginning of the season.

as the season was drawing to a close, i, as a long time fan, was willing to part with briere.  he had a great season — 95 points and MVP at the all-star game — but i knew — we all knew — that $5M was not going to get him back.  he may have gone with a hometown discount for nearer to $6.5M for a long term deal.  in the cap era, that number was not going to work — assuming the sabres were going to re-sign drury, not to mention vanek and roy (both RFAs).

whoops on that assumption.

the sabres alienated drury and, although they were willing to match the offer from the rangers, he was already gone — to his “hometown” team — leaving behind 3 years in buffalo that only further cemented his “captain clutch” moniker.

now what?  the sabres signed…  adam mair (perennial 3rd/4th liner with grit), peters (ye olde enforcer), teppo (a D man pushing 40 years old) and mike ryan (a promising AHL’er that spent some time up with the big boys last season).

vanek?  nothing.

roy?  arbitration.  paetsch?  arbitration.

wonderful.

i have a lot of faith in the abilities of the team.  they CAN do well.  but, as the ESPN article points out, the sabres have given up being a surefire cup contender for next season for a “i hope so…  maybe…” season.

woe is buffalo, indeed.

in our first season without danny, we, um… really missed his goal scoring.

we finished with a pitiful 33 goals for in 17 games.  ugh.

on the bright side, adam (our goalie) is DA MAN finishing with a 4.19 GAA (adjusted for the forfeit game).  that may sound like a lot, but a) he kept us closer than we often deserved to be and b) the best team’s GAA was 3. 41.  D5, traditionally, has a lot of goal scoring… 

our final record:  5-12-0-0  (wins-losses-ties-overtime losses) netting us 10 points on the season.

the top team (hudson hawks) finished 13-3-0-1 for 27 points.

beyond the loss of danny, we certainly suffered from losing a few folks in-season (kyle, bobby, etc…) and were often crushed by the small rosters we were bringing to the games.

homer’s is combining with the blue bombers (as usual) to play D6 for the 4-on-4 session in the summer…

back in the fall!

… or “expanded by a room”.  or something.

homer’s goes down by a score of 1-0 to expand the room in the last game of the spring season.  we iced 9 guys to their 7 and there was a lot of ping pong action in the neutral zone.  we definitely had our chances.

personally, i enjoyed taking faceoffs against another skilled faceoff guy.  it was almost “chess-like”.  i took about 70%+ of the draws with another 10%, or so, being even.

8 out of 10 teams make it to the playoffs.  (which is totally wrong, but i’ll save that for another day…)  we were in a tie for 8th going into the game, but, as luck would have it, the 9 and 10 teams played each other and we all had a 1 point spread.  with our loss, and the 9th place team winning, we fell to 9th and out of the playoffs.  somewhere where we did not deserve to be anyway…

i’ll do a wrap-up of the season in a separate post…

overtime losses are a killer.

after an entire adrenaline filled game and a lot of good back and forth, the blue bombers lost in a shootout to CanAm this week.

final score:  5-4

i think we were a tad complacent for some of the game — mostly because we already know who we are playing in the playoffs (and we have known for several weeks…) and folks are “trying” different things in their respective games.  if we play like we did against CanAm in  the playoffs, we are going to get killed…

well…  notsomuch “dispatched” as “beat”, but i’ll take what i can get.

this was a re-scheduled game.  and we played on a wednesday night at 1130pm.  we did get 8 guys out there…  including the return of, newly married, rich…

we played tight and “found” a way to win.

homer’s on the winning trail…  3-2

a revitalized homer’s — buoyed by some strongly worded emails by several team members — showed up to PLAY on sunday against KPMG.

i brought in a good friend to the team (and a member of the blue bombers) — jamie — who had just played a 400pm game. his vision and patience really helped the guys and helped me reset the tone for the squad. jamie did take a bad hit that jerked his knee and ankle around, but he continued to play…

we went with two centers — myself and jamie — and had one short of my “perfect roster number” (13)…

the best part was…  we were down 3-0 about halfway through the game.  and then lightning struck as we scored 3 goals in 43 seconds to tie it up…   nice!

homer’s takes it down: 4-3

the streak continues!

this week, the blue bombers took down the avengers by a score of 6-3.

it is always great to play against the avengers — with peter in goal for them and zach (a homer’s hero) lining up on the other side of the ice.

personally…  i scored what could only be termed as a “STUPID GOOD GOAL”.  from behind the offensive goal line, near the corner boards, i put it off peter’s skate and in the net.  i felt very “chris drury”.  ahem.

yes. forfeits.

1130pm games are always tough. we play on sundays. it’s not the easiest thing in the world.

then again, we have 22 people on the roster who have all paid a nice chunk of change to play…

where they were on sunday…? no clue. because only john, brian, fordo, adam and myself showed up.

having only 4 skaters and a goalie is an automatic forfeit which gets recorded as an 8-0 loss.

we ended up scrimmaging with the hudson hawks for the 90 minutes of ice that we had. pretty cool to “practice”, but we were all dog tired by 100am…

we got killed.

not a lot to say other than…

we got killed.

SI usually has a strong roster and this game was no exception.  what KILLS me more than the loss is having a lackluster showing from our roster for a 400pm game.

final…  SI 9 — HH 1