More photos » by Frank Gunn - AP

about 1 month ago: Top NHL draft prospects, from left, Victor Hedman, Evander Kane, John Tavares, Matt Duchene and Brayden Schenn, pose for a group photo after watching the Detroit Red Wings practice in Pittsburgh, Pa. on Tuesday June 2, 2009. The NHL Draft takes place June 26-27 in Montreal. (AP Photo/The Canadien Press, Frank Gunn)

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The NHL off-season officially began on Saturday morning.  The off-season officially began on Saturday but the Sabres off-season began well over two months ago.  Many teams have made the off-season memorable by firing coaches or signing bad boy goalies.  The Sabres big news was that they were retaining their GM and Coach.

We will still be without hockey for a couple more months but it's finally the fun part of the summer.  The NHL Awards are later this week, the NHL Draft is next Friday and free agency begins in just over two weeks.

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I have been receiving Press Releases from the KHL since the began late last summer.  Up until now there was never anything to talk about but today that changed.  The KHL held their first ever Draft and they selected a mixture of young Russian players and players they are hoping will jump ship to the KHL.  Jhonas Enroth was among those players selected, he was selected in the third round by Atlant Moscow Reg.

It is unlikely that Enroth would leave the Portland Pirates and play in the KHL at this point in is career.  It will definitely be an option for him or any other player that feels they are not getting a fair shot at playing in the NHL.  There is no indication that Enroth is unhappy with his role in the Sabres organization. 

The Sabres have made it clear that they feel he is the Goalie of the future.  He is the goalie of the future but that begs the question, when is the future?  Enroth may not be willing to wait for the future and may see this as an opportunity. 

There are still a few questions that need to be answered.  Will the Sabres just blow this off and continue with their business?  Will this force them to move Enroth along at a quicker pace?  Will this give the Sabres a reason to trade him away instead of losing him to another league? 

It will be an interesting situation to watch but from a distance.  I don't think that anything will happen immediately but it still deserves attention.

Dirk has an interesting post on the KHL draft at On the Forecheck.  He also posted the entire press release if you want to read it.

SB Nation and Yahoo! Sports have partnered to add our blogs to the respective team pages on Yahoo! Sports.  On the Buffalo Sabres page at Yahoo! Sports you will now see a widget that features DBTB and the most recent posts we have written.

New Users:  Welcome to the DBTB Buffalo Sabres Community.  We encourage you to take a look around and discover all the cool features we have to offer.  You can contribute by leaving a comment or writing your own blog post by using the Fanposts.  The best part is that the best Fanposts will be put on the front page and featured.

We will offer you new original content on a daily basis and will also give you Game previews, recaps and our very poular game threads.  If you have any questions feel free to e-mail us and we will be happy to answer your questions.

Check out the DBTB Community Guidelines and of course the SB Nation Welcome Guide.

The DBTB Community:  It is possible that we may see an influx of new traffic and users.  We encourage you to welcome any new users and help where it may be needed.

We are extremely excited to be a part of this new partnership and what it could mean to help expand our community.

Read more about the partnership at the SB Nation Blog Huddle.

There have been a lot changes here at Die by the Blade since the blog started in July of 2007.  The site kicked off with the Drury/Briere thing and is hopefully on it's way to seeing it's first Sabres playoff game.  For almost 19 months it has been just me posting here at Die by the Blade but that will all change now.  Please join me in welcoming Zach to the team here at Die by the Blade.

Zach has done an outstanding job blogging at Dueling Sabres and now he is bringing his expertise here to Die by the Blade.  Zach plans to maintain Dueling Sabres (blogging about the Buffalo Bandits and other Buffalo Sports) while bringing his Sabres posts here for your pleasure. Zach will be posting here under the name of coolman856 so make sure to give him a warm welcome when you see his posts.

As the site has grown over the past couple of months, it became clear that I could not do it alone.  Adding Zach to the team is the first step in what we hope to be big things for Die by the Blade and all of SB Nation.  Remember that nothing ever remains the same and there may be plenty of upgrades for you real soon.

Give Zach a warm Die by the Blade welcome.

It seems as though Lindy Ruff has had enough of this team losing and he is making changes.  Some of the changes are necessary due to injury but others became necessary because of poor play.  Ales Kotalik will be out of the lineup for several weeks with a hamstring injury and Tim Connolly is out with an upper body musculoskeletal injury.  Connolly has recently been listed as week-to-week with his most recent injury.

Unless the Sabres decide to call up a player from Portland they will have to use every healthy forward on the roster.  The biggest change is the demotion of Derek Roy to the second line.  Lindy Ruff has made it clear that he is not happy with the play of Roy while 5-on-5.  I have been an avid supporter of Derek Roy but he has struggled lately and needs an adjustment.  I still believe in the talent that Derek Roy has but he is hurting this team right now.  Lindy feels that he may be pushing too hard and that a lesser role may help him get out of it.

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I wasn't going to talk about the All-Star game on this site because I think it is a boring exhibition but this year it's even worse.  The Montreal Canadiens are set to play against the Western Conference all-star team.  It seems that either Montreal Canadiens fans have voted in record numbers or there has been some voter fraud.  I understand that the NHL wants to get the fans involved in the process because they are hoping to sell this game to the fans but the current situation has (or should have) all hockey fans turned off to the whole idea.

Canadiens fans have voted in record numbers and have the entire starting lineup just about locked up for all Habs players.  Alexei Kovalev, Saku Koivu and Alex Tanguay lead the forwards in voting while Andrei Markov and Mike Komisarek lead the defensemen.  Second year goalie Carey Price is leading all goalies despite not being anywhere near the best goalie in the Eastern Conference.

This isn't a knock on the Montreal players who I mentioned, in fact they are all very good players that I would love to have on the Sabres, the problem is...they aren't the best at their position.  As a Sabres fan I would like to say that a Sabres player deserves to be their instead but reality is that there are plenty of candidates more deserving in the conference before any of the Sabres or Habs players.

Alex Tanguay has started the season by scoring eight goals and nine assists which is pretty good, problem is that Evgeni Malkin has seven goals and 23 assists...get my point.  Alexander Semin (called out Sidney Crosby and Thomas Vanek a couple of weeks ago) is off to an outstanding start with 13 goals and 14 assists.  I don't need to go on because I think you get the point.

As for the Sabres players on the ballot...Thomas Vanek is 8th in the forwards with 51, 621 votes, Teppo Numminen is 6th in defense with 47, 023 votes and Ryan Miller is 3rd in the goalie voting with 51, 135 votes. 

It is with great pleasure that I announce that James Mirtle has joined SB Nation as the Hockey Group Manager.  James has proven success in the hockey blogging world and is mentioned amongst the best hockey bloggers in the world.  If you are a fan of hockey blogs you probably know James, Paul Kukla, Greg Wyshynski, and Eric McErlain.  It was a big day when Die by the Blade became the first ever hockey blog on SB Nation, it was a big day when SB Nation added more hockey blogs, it was a big day when SB Nation upgraded to the new and improved SB Nation 2.0 and it's a huge day today for the future of the SB Nation hockey blogs.

If you don't realize how big this really is just go over to the other hockey blogs and see the reaction to this enormous news.  It's time to head over and join From the Rink, the newest SB Nation hockey blog...by James Mirtle. 

It look slike the Sabres will have one captain and they will stick to him...that man is newly acquired defenseman Craig Rivet.  It's not an entirely surprising pick but I thought they would stick with someone who has been around the team for a longer period of time.  They have also named Jason Pominville, Jochen Hecht, Jaro Spacek and Teppo Numminen assistant captains.

There is no doubt that a player like Craig Rivet will command some respect from his teammates and he will be a calming presence in the locker room as well.  It's not clear if this is a permanent move but it certainly appears that way.  I'm sure that Lindy Ruff will hold a press conference shortly to officially name Rivet captain and announce the opening day roster.

{Update}:  This is a permanenet captain as per Lindy Ruff press conference from the Arena.  The management and coaching staff decided that there would be one captain for the entire season and then they allowed the players to vote.  Rivet was named captain after the players voted him to be captain.

Listen to Lindy Ruff audio

Listen to Craig Rivet