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This is what Lindy has pinpointed as the Sabres biggest problem and you've heard many players talk around. As far as they coach is concerned it boils down to players not understanding how to manage games. it's not so much about structure and effort, its about making safe, boring decisions when you've got the lead: not cheating on offence, not turning pucks over at the bluelines, getting it deep and getting off. Not forcing your goalie to get into hero puck mode. Cozens, Quinn, Samuelsson and Clifton IMO were the worst offenders. Two of them are gone. Peterka and Power were good players that needed to improve in this area, Lafferty and Malenstyn bad players who needed the same. Two more gone. Will the changes be enough to reach critical mass for the team as a whole? Will the critical mass be enough to get the goalie back on track? To me, those are the questions that will make or break the season.

Thank you for sharing. 21 out of 30 is below average (which we all might have assumed and meets the eye test). But your larger point about medium and high danger being an even bigger struggle is validated by the 40 game filter. 26 and 29 is just plain unacceptable. Perhaps his percentages in medium/high danger areas improve slightly, but the only sure fire way to improve the numerator (high danger goals) seems to be to reduce the denominator ( HD chances). These underlying numbers you shared make me feel more and more like the season rests on a strong start by Six-K.

I know it's been touched on many times as part of other threads, but I wanted a full discussion on the addition by subtraction for next year's roster. We dropped quite a four boat anchors and by my math we picked up one. Clifton Lafferty Cozens Gilbert I feel like Danforth is the only new guy we got that will be drag on the team (I've got no idea what they were thinking with him). How much does losing these guys improve our goal differential?

Moneypuck however, allows you to do that if you want to play around. https://www.moneypuck.com/goalies.htm UPL ranks 21 out of the 30 goalies who played 40 games in low range shots, 26 on medium and 29th on high-danger The previous year he was 24, 5th and 19th out of 34 qualifiers.

I totally get what you're saying, but the stat isn't presented that way. They weigh the save percentage equally whether its over 20 games or 60 on NHLedge. You'd have to see if there's some way you could filter it to only include "starting" goalies.

This is how I would divide the power play units

It's an opinion and doesn't come from a link. The returning defenseman hopefully improved the unit and we got a player who plays hard and two-way game. If the unhappy player didn't want to be here, then so be it. I wish the departed player the best and am happy to move on from his unhappiness. The last thing that this team needs is an unhappy player in a constant battle with a coach who isn't satisfied with his all-around game.

Analytically speaking the Sabres best hope might be this: Owen Power career 51.9% Corsi despite playing with a rotating cast of bad partners over his first three NHL seasons Jack Quinn significant drop-off across the board in all three categories after being a positive player in all three over his first two seasons. Mattias Samuelsson, see Jack Quinn Along with Dylan Cozens, these seemed to be the skaters who suffered the most from the coaching change and the players with the most analytical potential to bounce back

Now nobody actually thinks the team improved by swapping Peterka for Doan and most of us could get invested in Cozens for Norris and Jokiharju for Kesselring no matter what the analytics say, but that's fancystats for you.

Analytically speaking, and superficially at 5 on5: Norris for Cozens appears a wash Doan for Peterka a small gain Danforth for Lafferty a small gain Kesselring for Jokiharju a small gain Timmins for Clifton a significant gain It kinda follows the Athletic analytics model: they got incrementally better overall, but not enough to make up the gap needed.

Link?

An argument can be made that in the JJP trade we sent out the best player in the exchange. On the other hand, a good argument can be made that the trade made this a better roster by addressing other areas of need.

Josh Norris is a mediocre forward at best analytically. His numbers have fluctuated over the years, but he was at 48% Corsi, had 45.3% in xG% and a bad 40% in ESGF% last year Justin Danforth is only slightly better: 48% Corsi, had 50.1% in xG% and 44.8% in ESGF% Conor Timmins was good: 52% Corsi, had 51.6% in xG% and 56.5% in ESGF% Zach Jones mediocre: 49% Corsi, had 47% in xG% and 50% in ESGF%

Bump up in role could indeed work.

The player made it abundantly clear to the organization that he didn’t want to be here. He wasn’t willing to sign an extension and was willing to ride out his contract another year to be an UFA. So he got dealt for a reasonable return. And it should be noted that shortly after the trade he quickly signed a new deal with Utah. I’m more than satisfied with the trade.

Remember the deluge of daily DOGE twitter posts boasting about all their discoveries of fraud and abuse? The more they blew their own horn, the more convinced I was that they are a big nothing burger. Not only haven’t they saved much but, as in the case of the NSW, their cuts actually cost us money. I predict other cuts will end up costing us more as well.

Hey where the heck is @Marvin

Doan and Kesselring ranked 1st and 5th respectively on Utah in terms of Corsi at 58% and 54% They were 7th and 3rd in ESGF% at 53.7% and 56.5% And they ranked 1st and 7th in terms of xG% at 60.6% and 53.3% Neither player was getting the most mportant minutes, but they were clearly winning the battles in the matchups they were seeing.

I rest my case i’ll let your fantastic posts re: what Benson contributed last year as my evidence for why this is unlikely and a poor way to contract a team with an eye on securing winning

Doan

My point was: 1.) it wasn't a failed plan 5 years in a row. 2.) UPL has only had 2 seasons as a 'starter' (more than half the games) and in terms of being very good vs. very bad, hes at 50%. I'm not saying he is going to be good, but I'm not writing him off as 100% bad. His "good" year he was just as 'good' as he was 'bad' last season.

For the sake of argument let’s say Benson’s offence drops off precisely zero when compared to JJ’s. Goals, assists, all of it. Benson steps in and *is* JJ at F, with the same old good D he provided last year who did we add that is the new Benson? Or rather, provides what Benson did last year? We can’t use him twice in the calc: remember, Benson is Peterka’s offence now. We didn’t lose Benson’s D, either. But we need to replace Bensons O now

Analytically speaking, the Sabres have dumped 3 of their 6 worst ESGF% players: Lafferty, Clifton and Cozens. Two others in the top 6 — Bryson and Malenstyn — have been pushed down the depth chart. Clifton, Malenstyn, Lafferty and Bryson were also four of their worst five Corsi players and four of their worst 5 xG% players. The most prominent departure, Peterka, actually had a very solid ESGF% of 54.2%. His Corsi was 49% and his xG% just 45.3%. In terms of real goals, when these players were on the ice at ES, the Sabres were outscored: Cozens 46-56 Clifton 41-51 Bryson 27-38 Malenstyn 17-33 Lafferty 11-26 Peterka was on the ice for more goals against than any other forward, but at 82-77 was a + player overall.

I think if you feed Benson the minutes Peterka got, he'll reproduce that playmaking. I think Buffalo doesn't need to replace the rush offense. They to have another style to play.

Which new player that we added at F is as good of a rush creator, and which F that we added is as good as he is at playmaking, whatever level you’ve determined that to be? Is Peterka’s playmaking regimen replacement level? Is his playmaking “not as good as the numbers might suggest”, or is it “replacement level and thus negligible to the success of the team”. this is the discrepancy I see