For most NHL fans, recalling the career of retired goalie Clint Malarchuk conjures some of the most horrifying images in the history of the game. Thanks to an errant skate blade, Malarchuk was slashed across the neck during a 1989 game between his Buffalo Sabres and the Boston Bruins. If not for the quick reaction of the team's medical staff, Malarchuk surely would have died on the ice.

Calling the incident horrifying isn't an understatement. According to reports, nine fans feinted after watching the accident, while another two suffered heart attacks at the Aud in Buffalo.

Now, 19 years later, Malarchuk has cheated death again, this time at his own hand. Here's the AFP account:

Ex-National Hockey League goalie Clint Malarchuk was recovering in hospital from his second nightmarish accident in 19 years after accidently shooting himself in the face with a hunting rifle on Tuesday.

The 47-year-old Malarchuk was rushed to hospital here after he shot himself with a .22-calibre rifle at his residence, The Record-Courier newspaper reported Wednesday.

[...]

Malarchuk's wife, Christy, told police her husband had been out hunting rabbits at the time of the shooting. She said the gun accidently discharged while he placed it on the ground between his legs.

Malarchuk currently serves as the goalie coach for the Columbus Blue Jackets. For a look at that incident again from 19 years ago, see the video after the jump.

Well, Sabres fans the questions about who will and who will not be in the lineup on opening night are pretty much answered. WGR550 has reported that the Buffalo Sabres sent eight players back to their AHL affiliate in Portalnd on Friday. They are as follows: Chris Butler, Nathan Gerbe, Tim Kennedy, Mark Mancari, Matheiu Darche, Dylan Hunter, Marek Zagrapan and Mike Funk. Mancari and Darche have both been effectively waived. Here's hoping Mancari doesn't pull a Pominville for someone else. Not likely, honestly.

With the injuries to Paul Gaustad and Tim Connolly this team is now officially short at center depth. It looks like recent waiver-bait Matt Ellis will be manning the third pivot until one of those guys is ready to play. I doubt Connolly's situation is serious at this point of one of Gerbe or Zagrapan would still be in Buffalo getting more experience for opening night. I'm sure there are a ton of people who would have liked to see Gerbe on the roster but, truthfully, the jump from college to the pros is a big leap and even a few months of living the grind of life in the 'A' is valuable preparation for the NHL. For the team it gives them time to sort out just who does and who does not what to be here come the deadline in February.

So, there will be just 2 scoring lines going out against the Wings on Sunday as a bottom 6 of MacArthur-Ellis-Kotalik / Peters-Mair-Kaleta is not going to scare any many goalies in this league. It also looks like they'll be keeping 8 defensemen as Mike Weber is still with the big club. I wouldn't be surprised if that changed by next Friday.

The Buffalo Sabres announced today that C/LW Paul Gaustad had surgery to repair a ligment in his right thumb. Goose prevailing wisdom was that he injured it when he jumped Marc-Andre Bergeron after Bergeron submarined Danny Paille bruising Paille's thigh in the process in Monday's exhibition game against Minnesota. That's apparently not the case according to Lindy Ruff.

"It's not something he could play through," head coach Lindy Ruff said. "It was something that came up...When we had the MRI yesterday, it was found he needed to have it operated on."

It was originally thought that Gaustad injured his thumb while taking on Marc-Andre Bergeron after the Minnesota forward laid a hit on Daniel Paille. But according to Ruff, it wasn't during the fight, but in the previous shift that Gaustad claims he hurt it.

Among the many issues surrounding the Sabres to start this season are their depth at center, on-ice leadership and toughness. Gaustad provides all of that and a whole lot more. This will be the first big test of this group in how they deal with him not being in the lineup. This is yet another example of why the NHL's pre-season schedule this year is monumemtally stupid. 20 days of camp with 7.4 games per team

Where's the training portion of training camp?

Welcome to the NHL FanHouse 2008-09 season preview. While other sites are previewing "30 teams in 30 days," we decided to take advantage of the extra time off before the start of the season to bring you all 30 previews over the next three weeks. We're counting down in reverse order of finish from last season in each conference every weekday from now until October 3. Look for an Eastern Conference preview every morning and a Western Conference preview every afternoon. Click here to read them all.

Who's In: Patrick Lalime, G (FA-CHI), Craig Rivet, D (Trade-SJS), Teppo Numminen, D (Return from Heart Surgery)

Who's Out: Joceyln Thibault, G (FA), Dmitri Kalinin, D (FA, NYR), Steve Bernier, RW (Trade, VAN)

What's Changed: Not a whole lot, frankly, unless one considers the number of players the supposedly stingy Sabres have under long-term contract now. That, coupled with the lack of tragedy during training camp (*fingers crossed*) should help lighten the mood in the room just a bit. But, honestly, that's just the way this organization wants it (especially in comparison to last year's off-season). With 20 of the 30 people who suited up for the Sabres in 07-08 having been drafted by the team, this is the textbook example of a team that promotes from within.

Recently extended GM Darth Regier believes in building via the draft and come what may that's going to be how he does it. I'm sure nothing has made Regier happier than resolving the dual-affiliation with Rochester which has been hampering their ability to develop prospects properly. During this summer they finalized changing their AHL affiliation to Portland and retained the same staff that helped feed Anaheim a Stanley Cup.

Half of the longest tenured GM/Coach tandem in the NHL is set to keep his share of that title as the Sabres announced today, along with the unveiling of the 3rd jerseys, that Darth Regier has had his contract extended by 2 seasons, keeping him in the role he's had since 1997 through 2011. According to Managing Partner/Co-Owner Larry Quinn this extension was agreed to back in April, but was finalized only recently.

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Regier and his ability to steer this franchise through an ever changing landscape of the NHL and the macro-economy. If you listen to the press conference announcing this extension, it was dominated by majority owner Tom Golisano and his return to New York State politics with his P.A.C. 'Responsible New York.' His comments about the operating environment in Buffalo reveals to me just how much of a challenge he believes it is. Given that Golisano took a lot of heat publicly about his passivity towards past contract negotiations his appearance at this presser, I think, was a necessity.

While Regier and Quinn stood out front to take the brunt of the outrage from last summer's happenings, Golisano remained silent and that silence infuriated a lot of people. It is the nature of things, regardless of whether you think it's fair or not.

After a number of reports about their look, the Buffalo Sabres finally unveiled them formally at The Bank this morning culminating in the worst kept secret in the NHL since the last time we went through this with the Slug. Recalling the days of the French Connection and Marty Biron's debut wearing #00, the classic crossed swords is matched with the exact shade of blue of the current 'Everyday-wear' sweaters.

Initially on seeing this in the leaked camera-phone pics I didn't think much of them, but while perusing the photos in preparation for this post i have to say I agree with GDub at Puck Daddy and just retire the Slug and go with this. This is a hockey sweater. The midnight blue and yellow are a great compliment and there's no mistaking who it is skating up and down the ice.

For all of the NHL's talk about modernizing the look of the game and the league, the truth is that hockey players look better in sweaters with big, horizontal stripes and simple designs. I could definitely do without the piping, which only reminds me of salt rings after I've sweated too much in the Florida sun while weed-wacking the yard...

...maybe that's too much information.

Speaking of too much, a customized version of one of these babies will only set you back $350. Only. Of course, with the sterling work of GM Darcy Regier this summer one now has a veritable plethora of players whose name and number you can choose from and be safe from looking like the bald-headed wonder I saw a few years ago at the Ice Palace in Tampa; red-faced, drunk and screaming (or is that triply redundant), "BI-RON, YOU SUCK!" all game long while wearing a #26 Ekman 'Ning Sweater. Yes, that pre-dates the guy currently wearing that number.

At the same time the Sabres announced an upgrade to SabresTV: the inaugural edition of which can be found here (note the number of people who turn out for a training camp scrimmage).

Ta,

P.S. I think Heather B. from Top Shelf just died and went to heaven.

This afternoon WGR out of Buffalo reported that the Sabres had signed RW sniper Jason Pominville to a 5 year extension, less than a day before the deadline imposed by Pominville himself on negotiations earlier this week. The 26 year old former 2nd round pick signed a 5 year, $26.5 million contract, in four of which he would ahve been an Unrestricted Free Agent. Given that he's been putting up nearly a point per game making a little over $1million per season, he might have been the best deal in the league.

His interview from this afternoon with Schopp and the Bulldog is here.

Again, as with the recent signings of Ryan Miller, Paul Gaustad and Daniel Paille, GM Darth Regier has stuck to his plan of locking up the talent that this team has grown from within, especially that core of guys who were so succesful together when they played at Rochester of the AHL.

While getting re-acquainted with my favorite hockey blogs of yore in a vain attempt to catch up on the great work being done out there in the time I was away from the world I came across this recent post from D-Lee at RedBlackHockey about the rumors floating around Minnesota's Marian Gaborik. For you 'Canes fans in the audience give it a perusal. But in that post he linked to something even more ridiculous, an obvious fan article at BleacherReport trying to make the case for how the Sabres would be trading a premier player like Gaborik for spare parts like Maxim Afinogenov and Tim Connolly/Ales Kotalik. All protests to his making this stuff up out of thin air aside, Andrew Mason makes the following Eklund-esque pitch:

The Sabres, on the other hand, have plenty of cap space. They currently have nine million dollars free as of today which is a good chunk of change. They can easily sign Gaborik to a long-term deal for whatever he wants-especially if they trade Max plus either Kotalik or Connolly, which would free up an extra $5.23-6.23 million.

No way does Darth Regier trade $6 million in salary to add $7.5 million, which is what Gaborik's payout will be this year (No, this was not a front-loaded contract, as it should have been). And, while the Sabres may have a bit of cap space to work with this season they are, as of the Numminen signing, $2 million over their much-maligned personal cap of $50 million. Regier will try to get value for Max and if none is available he'll hope for a great contract season and bid him a fond farewell at the end of it.

Trading for Gaborik doesn't address the lack of center depth on this team, which wouldn't be an issue if Tim(may!) Connolly wasn't one hit away from mopping floors at a hospital... on the graveyard shift. Further stretching the feasibility of this idea is the need to extend of home-grown RW sniper Jason Pominville, who is going to cost them a pretty penny (north of $4 million for 5-6 years if they're lucky). Regier is going to be loyal to the kids he's helped groom from within. There's no way he pushes Pominville out the door to take on Gaborik, unless the Wild are paying part of the salary, which is not allowed under this CBA.

Lastly, I just don't see Regier trading one guy who can't perform in the playoffs for another at twice the price. So, in my mind this one gets a big E5 and a double helping of Mediterranean Sea Salt.

Ta,

It's been in the works for a while now, but yesterday the parties made it official by agreeing to a one-year $1.1 million contract to bring more-than-veteran defenseman Teppo Numminen back to the Blue and Gold for 2008-09. It seems the stumbling block was the outstanding grievance that Numminen filed with the NHLPA over his suspended salary from the time he began practicing with the team in November of last year:

As part of the deal, the Sabres reached an undisclosed monetary settlement with Numminen to resolve a grievance the player filed against the team in November. The grievance was over the Sabres suspending him without pay in September after doctors ruled he required surgery following a routine checkup at the Cleveland Clinic.

Numminen claimed the Sabres owed him a portion of his $2.6 million salary once he was allowed to practice with the team on a non-contact basis in November. The Sabres didn't activate Numminen until the final week of the season, and he played 16 minutes in Buffalo's regular-season finale against the Boston Bruins.

The grievance didn't deter Numminen from expressing hope that he would return to Buffalo for a fourth season, something he told management in April.

I'm glad that things have worked been worked out like adults in the end, as I suspected all along they would be. The 'cheap' and 'amateurish' Sabres could have taken the grievance all the way to arbitration in order to prove a point or further do Bettman's dirty work in undermining the relevance of the NHLPA, but instead they must have felt that Teppo's presence in the locker room was worth working out a deal now so that he could get properly prepared for training camp, which is just a few weeks away.

The Sabres now have 7 defensemen on the roster and only Andrej Sekera is capable of being sent down without clearing waivers. 8 if one includes Mike Weber. Sekera's the odds-on favorite to make the team out of camp, but with Teppo on board I expect a fierce battle for that spot. It's not in anybodies interest to keep both Weber and Sekera with Paetsch and Numminen on board. The kids need minutes on the ice to learn and they'll get a ton in Portland as the #1/#2 guy, as opposed to the #8 guy in Buffalo.

Ta,

In trying to fill the nigh-legendary shoes of the recently departed Randy Cunneyworth (I can't describe how hard my wife still laughs over the man's name... she's sometimes easily amused) for that hockey hotbed of Atlanta, the Buffalo Sabres today went with the next best thing in terms of organizational continuity in signing coach Kevin Dineen to continue in the role he performed while the club was affiliated with the Anaheim Ducks.

Dineen's been the coach since the start of the 2005-06 season overseeing the development of Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry and Dustin Penner, to name a couple of notables. This past season he led the Pirates to a 45-26-5-3 record and the Eastern Conference Finals of the Calder Cup Tournament losing in 7 games to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. Overall, under his guidance Dineen led the Pirates to a very impressive 135-76-13-15 record with 2 ECF appearances. But, regardless of what else he ever does, Kevin Dineen will always be remembered as the guy what scored the last goal in Hartford Whalers history, before Pete Karmanos broke the collective hearts of the guys at ESPN.

One of the reasons that the Sabres did not renew their relationship with Rochester was due to disagreement with the management as to who should pay for veteran talent, which led to the ridiculous dual-affiliation with the Florida Panthers. Darth Regier has commented on many occasions that this sub-optimal situation has been detrimental to the development of many of their prospects. Now that the situation has been rectified with both affiliation and coach, the team moved quickly to fill in the Pirates roster with older AHL Veterans, having signed Matthieu Darche 2 weeks ago and today signing wingers Colton Fretter and Colin Murphy.

As with everything Sabres, the guys at HFBoards have an "All Things Portland Pirates" Thread going, including current roster and potential line combos (Hola! Chain and Co.).

Lastly, this just in over the wire, one of my co-conspirators in all things Sabres just let it be known that his family grew in size by one at 4:14pm today, signing the Lil tyke to a lifetime contract replete with no-trade clause and a generous meal per Diem.

Ta,