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I’m pretty sure Peterka, Clifton, Lafferty and Cozens weren’t good without the puck. Im told Kesselring, Doan, Timmins Danforth and Norris are better in that area than the guys they are replacing. We shall see.

From upthread discussion: scoring less is fine if they also give up fewer goals. All acquisitions this offseason should combine to be at least a little better in the Goals Against department. How much better do they need to be? Last season, if you were under 240 GA, you were in the playoffs (Calgary at 236 was out, and massive outlier Montreal at 261 was only team over 240 to make it). The last 3 seasons, the Sabres have given up 2710, 2402, and 2368 shot against. They're improving! But the goaltending has been at best middle of the pack (16th) in team save percentage (.899% in 2023-24 when UPL was great the 2nd half). The team % I'm using includes ENG. So, if the Sabres goaltending is at .900 (better than ever recently), they need to reduce their SA to 2288 to get down to 240 goals allowed. That's carving an additional shot per game off what they allowed last year. That's doable -- particularly if Byram-Dahlin is a tandem for another 500 minutes of ice time because their top pair from game 1. But -- boxing out, tying up folks, forcing offside by standing up at the blue line, and occasionally wrecking someone for an easy puck win by your teammate -- would go a long way toward reducing high danger shots. Tick that save percentage up, and sub-240 GA is also realistic. Has any of our goalies ever had a great save %? UPL did a .917 in a 9-game stint in 2020-21. His .910 season isn't great and that was even with him playing fantastic for 3 straight months. Possess the puck, reduce shots against (by over 100 to be safe), and reduce high danger chances against. Can this revised roster do that?

Nathan Paetsch

Serious question: wasn't it just like a week or 2 ago that the Sabres were crawling with young, talented, highly-drafted forwards (some of which were supposed to be consolation prizes for being forced to trade Eichel and Reinhart)? But now there is a big hole in the top 6 and not enough offense? It kinda feels like when Botteril accumulated too many RHDs, then squandered them via terrible GMing, leaving a hole at RHD.

You know what won't improve the play on the ice? Doing the same thing from the last 4 years for a 5th year in a row under the same coaches, we do know that.

YES, it would improve the blueline play on the ice. 100%. It would change the way they practice. It would change the skills they're working on in practice. It would alter the empahsis of how they play in games. Send him and Appert into the sun and replace them with COMPETENT coaches and the team wins absolutely minimum 4 more games. From a baseline of 85 points. Now 93 points doesn't get you there typically (though it would've at least 2 of the last 3 years); but even if that doesn't get you there. How much puckluck does it take to go from 93 to 96-98 points? A heck of a lot less than it does to go from 85 to 96-98.

Last time I looked the coaches aren’t on the ice during the game. I get it…they could replace him, but would it improve blueline play on the ice? Who knows?

He is not that bad 🙃 - Really should see improvement of him with Kessering ( if they don't put him with Dahlin).

The Amerks coaches seem to be better at teaching defensive play than the Sabres coaches are. Since we apparently can't replace Wilford, maybe we could demote him and swap him for Prospal or whomever it is that runs the D down there?

You have one of the 5 best D in the entire league eating up 26 minutes. On their best day, this D is far from 'meh.' Fix the coaching and maybe it's better than 'meh' on an average day.

See you in possibly 3 years, hopefully the AHL coaches will be better at developing you as we don’t need another Power here.

…and despite all that hype, the blueline is meh…on their best day.

Because as @LGR4GM mentioned, it's the way things are done and there is literally no downside to it. Have to look closer at the new CBA MOU, but ELCs might have fewer/lower bonus opportunities to them. (There were changes made, haven't had a chance to look closely at what they are.) So, the player might've had a big incentive to get this inked before September 2026. The contract is for close to (if not actually at) the rookie max and also has $1MM in performance bonuses. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary to see for a 1st round draft pick. So much for the in-draft memes claiming he didn't want to be a Sabre.

Just ok, he should have been long dealt by now and each of or lines RHD should have gotten upgraded defensively by either UFA or through trade. Kesselering was solid but Timmins is average at best from everything I’ve read on him and Byram is know more as an offensive defenseman. Are we any better off than last season defensively? Doubtful.

You get the concept that the Power and Dahlin contracts are specifically designed to be overpays in the early years and bargains at the ends? With that in mind, simple math says 7D, 23 roster spots equals about 30% of the cap on blueliners. So with a cap of $95.5M, the median would be around $29M on your D corps this year. The Sabres are currently spending $33M, which will jump a bit (probably less than a million) when Timmins signs and Jones gets sent down. Would agree that they are probably close to the high-end in terms of top 3, which shouldn’t be a surprise given that all 3 signed relatively recently, all 3 carry the pedigree of being the 1st defencemen taken in their draft year, and 2 of the 3 are getting paid for UFA years.

Ah ok I will try to work on this tonight. Welcome to the 2010s, Eleven!

There is no conflict.

You can log onto imgflp with your Google ID if you have one (I think some others too) and use that to create an account. Then you can upload pics or gifs as templates. It's how I make the goal memes.

Cackling Brian Duff making it seem like the Sabres aren’t spending out of the ordinary on the blueline. I’d like to know how many teams have a top 3 blueline cap hit greater than the Sabres(25.6mil)? I bet…not many, if any.

Yeah but I want the Byram pic.

Go to a meme generator page such as https://imgflip.com/memegenerator and see if the gif is uploaded without the text. This one is pretty close: https://imgflip.com/memetemplate/320298782/Princess-Bride-Land-War-in-Asia-gif It has a caption but you can put a bigger caption over it.

Team plays with more mojo with Greenway is out there. We’re reaching critical mass of players with that sort of effect. Bryson being the remaining total drag out there. Samuelsson is minimized. Power and Byrams faults is they play without bite and teams get cocky then they get lost chasing. A few more finished checks here and there and teams don’t try that ***** as much. But the flow falls apart as they’re covering for so many weaknesses. its at the point where Dahlin doesn’t play offense like he should be because he’s covering so much. If we traded out Byram the defense is just too thin. We’re better for it for two years. get a forward who actually forechecks with grit on every line and defenseman who don’t skate circles and the whole game gets easier for everyone Optimism comes from the mix being changed. You can still have some skill guys but they can’t be a majority; everyone can’t play the perimeter only one

We didn't have to but there's no cons to signing him. His ELC will slide this year and next year if he isn't in Buffalo (which he shouldn't be) and so it just is more housekeeping than anything.