Morning Skate: Division

It is Wednesday, my dudes.

Yesterday’s news in NHL circles involved our ol’ pals, the Buffalo Sabres, who signed forward Tage Thompson to a big contract extension.

In reading about it, I didn’t realize how strong a season he had last year - 68 points in 78 games for that Buffalo team is no small feat.

It got me thinking about Buffalo, and how they’ve kind of been the “other” team in the Atlantic this offseason.

The Leafs are the Leafs, the Lightning are the Lightning.

Florida has added some pieces after their flame-out in the playoffs. The Bruins have done some tinkering of their own.

Further down, you have the (in some circles) offseason darling Ottawa Senators, then the “they should be better this year” Detroit Red Wings.

Montreal will probably still be bad, but they had the #1 pick.

Then...there’s Buffalo. I don’t mean that in an insulting fashion, I’m just not really sure where Buffalo stands after the offseason.

It seems like it’s going to be another year in their rebuild, but that seemed likely last year too, and they went and finished fifth in the division.

They have some nice pieces (Thompson, Owen Power, Rasmus Dahlin), but are probably still a few years away.

I feel like the NHL is more fun when Buffalo is good, so we’ll see how it goes.

Also, in poking around Die by the Blade’s site, I found that the Bruins apparently will be playing in Buffalo’s prospect tournament again this year, so that’s good.

Today’s discussion topic

You can discuss Buffalo, the prospect tournament, the Atlantic in general...have at it.

Also, kudos to you folks for the “rules proposals” discussion yesterday, there was some interesting stuff in there.