There is an insane number of games tonight that impact the Sabres. (pt differential in parentheses)

Montreal (-1) vs NY Islanders (even)

Tampa Bay (-1) vs Rangers

Toronto (10) vs Philadelphia

Winnipeg (4) vs Washington

Nashville vs Ottawa (9)

Rooting interests are fairly clear for all these save Montreal v Islanders. Know I'll be doing a lot of channel surfing this evening, and thought a multi-game thread would be fun. Have at thee!

For those of you who know who DaveArt is you know he's the preeminent mask artist around. Turns out he just finished painting a new design for Jhonas Enroth. Check after the jump for the picture.

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This is a question that has popped up in my head a few times. While losing Vanek for the last 3 games has hurt, we've got 5 of 6 points. When Miller went down last year, Enroth stepped in and basically won us a spot in the playoffs. It sort of seems like whenever someone big goes down, the rest of the team steps up their game. I don't have a lot of information, but would rather get a conversation started about this.

What do you think?

It would take us 13 days to get into the top 8 in the East.
(Also we'd suffer no more injuries and get some speedy recoveries.)

Projected Standings After February 11.

Team -- (W/L) -- Points

1) Rangers -- (4-0) -- 77
2) Bruins -- (1-2) -- 68
3) Panthers -- (2-1) -- 63
4) Flyers -- (1-2) -- 68
5) Penguins -- (1-1) -- 66
6) Devils -- (0-3) -- 61
7) Senators -- (0-3) -- 61
8) Leafs -- (0-4) -- 60

9) Jets -- (3-1) -- 60
10) Capitals -- (0-2) -- 58
11) Sabres -- (3-0) -- 56
12) Islanders -- (2-1) -- 54
13) Habs -- (3-1) -- 53
14) Lightning -- (0-3) -- 51
15) Hurricanes -- (0-2) -- 49

Projected Standings After February 17.

Team -- (W/L) -- Points

1) Rangers -- (2-1) -- 81
2) Bruins -- (1-2) -- 70
3) Panthers -- (3-0) -- 69
4) Flyers -- (0-2) -- 68
5) Penguins -- (0-2) -- 66
6) Sabres -- (3-0) -- 62
7) Devils -- (0-2) -- 61
8) Senators -- (0-2) -- 61

9) Leafs -- (0-2) -- 60
10) Jets -- (0-3) -- 60
11) Capitals --(0-3) -- 58
12) Islanders -- (1-2) -- 56
13) Habs -- (1-2) -- 55
14) Lightning -- (2-1) -- 55
15) Hurricanes --(1-1) -- 51

Game by Game breakdown of the next 13 days after the break.

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Three Stars of the Game Selection, I mean.

I looked at Yahoo! Sports selections for Sabres/Habs game last nite: they have Price as 1st star, Erik Cole 2nd, and Goose 3rd.

I can somewhat understand Price - who had 37 saves - getting a star {though not the first, not in a game he lost.} But Cole - who was off the scoresheet - getting 2nd over Gaustad {who had a 3 point night including the GWG} is a load of BS.

This was reminiscent of Game 1 of last year's Sabres/Flyer playoff series, where James Van Riemsdyk somehow got first star, despite being off the scoresheet {as were all the Flyers, since the Sabres shut them out.}

I know, I know -- you're about to scream, "it was the local media that made the choices" . . . and therein lies the problem . . .

Which is why I propose new rules for the assignment of the Three Stars of the Game, effective immediately:

- the NHL, through a rep assigned to each game, not the local media, will make the OFFICIAL selections for each game, and media outlets that report on the game in BOTH cities, as well as national sports media {Yahoo, NBC, ESPN, TSN, etc.} MUST use the NHL selection. Any outlets that don't, will have their NHL reporting credentials pulled for the next game. Repeat violations will result in creds pulled for longer periods.

- relating to the above, I realize local hockey writers, being "homers", will want to emphasize the contributions of the home team's players, even in a loss . . . that's fine -- just do so in the opinion pieces and/or recap that follows, not the star selection.

- a player from the winning team always gets first star -- NO EXCEPTIONS.

- a team that gets shut out gets no stars -- the only possible exception(s) being

a goalie on the losing side of, say, a 1-0 shutout;

a player who turns in a hat trick in a losing effort

in those cases, it would be reasonable for them to be given a star for their efforts in a losing cause, but neither the goalie should get awarded a higher star than the player who scored on him, nor should the player who turned the hatter get first star if at least one of his goals wasn't the game winner.

.

For those of us caught in between the Time Warner MSG war and unable to watch the Sabres or other teams MSG covers.

I am mad as H-E-Double hockey sticks and not gonna take it anymore!

I really don't care who's in the right, but it is time to make them both pay.

My campaign is simple, If you own stock in either of their companies......SELL IT!!!!

It's not just enough to switch to DirectTV or Fios.

Many of the 2.3 million caught in this battle have neither option which makes MSG suck.

MSG also pulled this with Dish Network.

Time Warner is too cheap to come to terms with NFL Network, so I feel pretty confident MSG is gone for good too on Time Warner.

The way to make them pay is make February 14th National FU MSG and Time Warner day if they can't resolve this by then.

The way this works is simple, if enough of us who own MSG or Time Warner stock who are sick of this crap sell their stock on February 14th, it will drive down the stock price due to the volume.

This will in turn trigger computer selling of both stocks by Hedge funds, Pension managers and Investment banks, further driving down the price. People will begin shorting both stocks once this occurs, driving the price even further down, forcing both MSG AND Time Warner to have to use assets to cover any loans from drop in stock backed price.

The reason I have chosen February 14th, is we can show them the same kind of love they have shown us.

If we can get enough affected people on board we can make them pay for the missed games.

Even if you are not affected by the MSG TWC standoff, you might want to climb onboard if you own Time Warner or MSG stock or risk facing a huge loss in value of your stocks in these two rotten greedy companies February 14th.

Tell everyone if you've had enough, post to facebook, twitter about this, make a website, make this go viral if you are sick of it, send it to everyone in your email list, or make a comment link to this post in any story you can comment on that is related to this standoff or any teams affected by it.

Thank you for your time to read this and participation in this event should you choose to.

I have had enough, it's time for Darcy to go. Though I feel others won't feel the same (Ogre39666 and and . lassathrax) So I ask others? When is it time for a new GM? A year ,or 5 years with no playoffs? 2 years, 5 years? When would YOU PULL the trigger? Darcy has had some good years here and there, but the team is broken, changes need to be made. i've had enough of this GM, so tell me when is it time to make a change at GM?

Last Friday Eric Duhatschek of the Globe and Mail wrote an article about the NHL player escrow checks and other CBA details. A mildly interesting subject but that's not what caught my attention. Embedded within the article's second page resides a snippet chronicling the Sabres disappointing season. It is here that Duhatschek falls into a trap of his own making; the strawman.

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You can have your protests, your walkouts, your boycotts. Those never work, and are frankly for way more proactive people than myself. Everybody knows that the best way to express one's displeasure is through song, so here is what I propose:

For every home game for the rest of the season, we make sure that they play this song

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Heads Will Roll (via YeahYeahYeahsVEVO)

until heads actually do roll in some form and a change is made. For those who don't know, the Sabres created the Sabretunes twitter account which takes song suggestions from twitter users. You can make a song suggestion by tweeting the name of the song to the account.

The best thing about it is how subversive it is. I'm pretty sure I've heard the song before played at the arena. It could also just as easily refer to the other team, but those in the know will know what is actually going on. So who's with me?

Why bother with a fancy table, we're playing the Blues at 8pm and everything sucks. Let's at least start off cheerful. We usually do well with pictures of Derek Roy as a ridiculous anime character, but he hasn't scored in forever. We sometimes have Thomas Vanek with the world on his shoulders, but he hasn't scored much either. So I vote we start with random memes. For that, here's a picture of a kitty:

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