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Balance may have been the deciding factor. For all the floating Tuch did, his line had the highest xGF and their XGA suffered only bc of the egregious giveaway by Tuch leading to a goal by Boldy. The First line with two kids and Tage got dominated when playing against Kaprizov/Yurov/Zuccarella, and their XGF/XGA and Corsi bears that out. But the newly constructed Third line with Doan/Östlund/Tuch seemed to pick up the slack. It seems Minnesotas scouting saw the McLeod line has been high scoring as of late, so they tried to match up defensively to shut them down, and they did for the most part. That lines Corsi was 21%. Abysmal. Curious if Ruff tweaks it with two games of subpar performance and the possibility of Norris coming back into the mix next week. I think this confirms that Östlund can play center at this level, especially if he has two veteran wingers to support him. He probably goes back to Roch when Norris comes back as Taro noted earlier but his play and those silky mitts on the game winner makes me think his development is going well.

Is the power harvested from Niagara Falls maxed out?

amazing accomplishment. w/ 50% teams making the playoffs yearly . thats a 1/1000000000000000000000000 chance

Wide shots get 0xgf because they miss the net. I'd guess the Sabres sh% isn't very good. Xgf% is not accounting for sh% and most models don't account for screens or pre shot movement. It's not a perfect stat but my guess is Buffalo has a sh% issue that theoretically will improve.

Having your so called "best" players like Tage or Dahlin fighting is not the answer...watch Boston...they have guys who can fight and their stars like Pasternak never fight nor does Boston want them to. Guys who are not fighters can get seriously hurt fighting a fighter.

Living up here in Ontario (north of Toronto) I am stuck with watching the Leafs lots and they always bitch about their goaltending whoch is funny cuase in almost every game they are greatly outplayed and outshot yet their goalies keep them in until Leafs score on one of their few shpts. Even now I am watchibg Caps/Islanders and everyone wonders why the Caps are winning but their goalie is keeping them in the game, then Caps score of course. The Sabres get lousey refereeing and even worse goaltending more often then not. Mind you lots of other teams (see Edmionton) have goaltending problems too..we are not alone. Adams is at least trying to find one goalie who can actually be consistant and win us games once in a while like other goalies do for their teams

Goons aren’t the answer. I’m as blood thirsty as the next guy but the Sabres need actual hockey players, like Josh Doan, who can play, hit and fight. Standing up for teammates isn’t foreign or forced for him. It’s what you are taught from juniors on up. Dunne is ok in that regard although his foot speed will always be a handicap. Tuch needs to drop em. Greenway needs to drop em. All the defenseman need to drop em. Maybe not Dahlin due to the minutes he logs and we know Power will get destroyed in any kind of physical confrontation. It’s been proven that goons don’t influence the other teams actions.

They don't have anyone who brings the puck up ice and you're scared. Sure, you're wary of TNT, but you just go and take away his space because he's got reach but not control. He doesn't create space because he's really only a threat to shoot, not to make otherworldly passes or breeze past you. Now... not every team has a player that creates space. But the Sabres really, really need one. And yes -- a goalie would be nice.

Everyone loves a kid line. But when they debuted together in 2005-06 their ages were Vanek-22, Roy-22, Afinogenov-26. Benson-21, Kozak-23, Östlund-22 are babies by comparison. (And they don't have the support of 3 other good lines, an excellent balanced D-corps, and Miller -- and a good coaching staff with Ruff in his prime and still with the fire within.)

Increased share of electricity production from expensive forms of electricity production (solar, wind) is also contributing to increased costs of electricity.

Scoring wise Tuch is a top 10 RW and top 50 of all forwards. Add his PK ability and he is a top line, but not an elite forward. FYI he is the Sabres top scorer (pts wise) and is 50th in the NHL (forwards). Colorado has 2 players in the top 10 and 3 in the top 38. We have a ton of middle 6 forwards and and 2nd pairing D of various quality, such as Power, Byram, Samuelsson, Doan, Benson, Norris, & McLeod. Quality is the issue. Mcleod, for example, is a high end 3rd line center, but a low end 2nd line center. The real issue for the Sabres, besides bad management and goaltending, is the lack of elite talent.

I won't be surprised to see Tage back at wing, but his defensive play won't really be the reason.

We'll find out for sure what Ruff thinks once they're both in the lineup together.

That's amazing. Benson totally would.

Maybe I should start following my local team more closely.

yep and most on here do not want us playing a goon on the 4th line. They really need a fighter as Tage nor Dahlin should be fighting. This elbow was without a doubt 5 and a game...end of story. As long as we do not use anyone who can fight teams will continue to do this kind of crap without worry...

In program management, cost and schedule variance at the 15% mark of a project's timeline are difficult to overcome. So if a project is overrunning at 15%, barring some radical change, the project will end in the red. I think the Thanksgiving benchmark is a similar thing: By November, a team is what it is, and barring a radical change, that's hard to alter. If there's any hope for the Sabres, it lies in the fact that the Sabres to this point have lost more games to injury than most teams. If they can get healthy and stay healthy (looking at you, Josh Norris), maybe they can overcome the slow start.

Never start anyone on the road.

Could that suggest the team has no confidence in UPL so they feel they need to play a much tighter defensive game to limit scoring opportunities because they feel they are going to end up in the back of the net more often?

Lots of environmental impact to this AI. Just like the bit coin "harvesting" BS. Increased electricity demand due to AI data centers is driving up electricity costs all over the country.

It didn't end up on camera, but Dahlin did actually give Meier a couple of cross checks after the play. Yes, that's all he did, but honestly don't see him EVER getting into a fight; he isn't that guy that'll drop the gloves. And, no, it wasn't enough of a response. Not in any shape or form. But it wasn't AS pathetic as people are making it out to be. MHO. YMMV.

No, it's the other way around: UPL has the lower GAA with a similar Sv% so UPL is facing fewer shots.

Perhaps Ellis doesn't give up big rebounds like UPL is so prone to do so he faces less shots because of that? UPL has had one of the worst rebounds over expected metrics for years now. Like we are talking 120th or higher out of 133 goalies.

But that's one more thing this crew watches but don't get right. Brind-Amour doesn't ride a goalie until he loses a game and then run with the other guy until he loses. He picks the guy he expects will get them the W in the harder games and then spells him in the easier ones; and if one starts playing particularly well or particularly poorly, the determination of which guy will get them the tougher win changes. They really don't seem to twig to the WHY of what successful teams do. They get the WHAT, but because they don't get the WHY, they can't replicate that success. One of my classmates a long time ago in a statistics class, who simply didn't get it, when seeing the grade they earned on a test complained "but I followed all the steps." No, you didn't, because you put it down to a recipe that needed to be followed exactly when it fact it was a set of guidelines that had a lot of if/thens in it. It isn't do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and then profit; but rather if A then B, if C then if D then E and if not D then F and if not C then G and if not A but C then H. Personally expect Ruff understands that, but isn't going to do the X's and O's at this point in his journey and the guys he has working for him can't do the X's and O's at this level because they simply don't understand the WHY of what they're trying to do. Right now, in net, still believe UPL has the highest ceiling but he also has the lowest floor and too often he plays closer to his floor than the ceiling. Lyon is calm and can get in a groove, but giving him 1 game every 4 weeks will never see him in that groove again. Ellis is an unknown, but he's good at squaring up and then finding a way to get a body part in front of the puck but he still can resquare himself pretty quickly. Personally, would be treating Lyon and Ellis like the Canes treated Gerber and Ward back in '06, and throw UPL in every now and then (but sooner than 4 weeks later) and see if he can recapture that lightning in a bottle he had for a couple of months so long ago. It makes sense to trade one of them, but don't want Adams being the architect of that deal.

I had an error in the post you quoted and corrected it, FYI.