Ryan Miller's fancy new contract made several concepts arrive at my ADHD station in almost record time, so I figured I'd sort them out for you, fresh from the bowels of HSBC Arena and a press conference with Sabres general manager Darcy Regier.
First off, I'd equate today as one where you've decided to re-upp on friendship with someone, in this case an entire city. I'm going to ignore for a second that Miller seemingly spent a good portion of last year using the vast area above his left shoulder and below the crossbar to attempt to convince me he wasn't the All-World goaltender he looked on track to become for two seasons as the Sabres' net-keep.
No, I prefer to focus on the idea that Miller essentially declared that Buffalo's a pretty great place to be, even though he wasn't born here. Like I wrote earlier, he still wants to be friends, even if he's that friend that you always think wants you to leave his house so he can read Shakespeare. It's a little bit of, "I'm pretty nice, but I'm pretty private." A clean freak in the rust belt, maybe?
"I feel like I'm at home. I feel comfortable. I like the fact that people are friendly. I like the fact that I can go up to Wegmans and get some food and people want to talk about hockey, but they respect that you go in there to run some errands. They just want to say 'Hi' quick, and that's something unique that you don't get in too many NHL cities."
Another point is that if you think Miller didn't learn from Brian Campbell's non-monetary situation, you're out of your mind, and your insanity would be evidenced by this quote from Miller's interview with Howard Simon and Jeremy White.
"It's a decision I had to make -- where do I want to be," Miller said. "In my heart I want to be in Buffalo, and I wanted to get something done. If it had gone in a different direction, if I decided that maybe free agency is a good idea, it would've been distracting. We would've entered the season without a contract done., there (would be) all kind of media speculation of what's going on. Even if I wanted to stay in Buffalo and see what kind of shift (the market) makes. It's tough for that perception because it's just the way of the new salary cap."
Lastly, It's okay to feel great about having your starting goaltender locked up for a while, but keep this in mind -- there are now nine players (Miller, Jaro Spacek, Craig Rivet, Thomas Vanek, Maxim Afinogenov, Tim Connolly, Derek Roy, Toni Lydman, Jochen Hecht) on the roster making over three million dollars, and Jason Pominville is still out there with Henrik Tallinder making $2.9 million.
It's a very scary new old NHL, and the Sabres are in unchartered waters again. I just want everybody to know that if the league freezes out the Sabres from being competitive or takes away hockey again, I'm going to go ballistic, grow a huge beard and start writing books on why bobsledding is the coolest game on ice.
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