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It’s impossible. No other team can do it. What’s a GM to do? I guess we have to wait for the playoffs until we develop one. /S

And therein lies the risk of a rebuild solely focused on the draft. Excellent word crafting btw.

The Sabres have 10 defenders and 13 forwards that they have rights to from drafting. You need 14 forwards and 7 defenders on the NHL roster and Buffalo currently has 2 first overall defenders. Something to think about for the 2026 draft.

is it really that difficult to acquire a legit NHL goalie?

I don't see how this team finishes above 10th unless.... 4 players? improve a substantial amount starting in net

fine whatever fair value for him The team is barely improved.....if any

Now Byram has put himself in a position to put himself in a “prove it” situation whereby his next contract will be based on. If he excels, he benefits. And also his market value goes up if he ends up being dealt.

It's a seemingly ongoing thing: the GM/front office is only capable of "fixing" or at least focusing on one thing at a time rather than a complete holistic approach. This comes from the top and Darth Pegula the Wise's flavor of the month approach: Leino was great in one playoff series against us: get him! Mittelstadt was great at the World Juniors for US: jump him up the board! Taylor Hall is going to make us contenders: get him! Fix the 4th line! We have Dahlin/Power/Muel all locked up long-term -- get all the RHDs! Was Mrtka the best player available? He very well could be. Time will tell. Did the pick fill an organizational need? No, it added a potentially great player to an organizational surplus. The future might very well be "Add scoring forwards!" but that is the most expensive to attain unless it's a sell-off-Skinner scenario.

Mittlestadt didn’t work out Cozens didn’t work out Peterka forced his way out Quinn has yet to figure it out Rosen will probably never figure it out. Savoie was shown his way out. Benson is 20, Kulich and Östlund are 21, Helenius 19. Something something hatching chickens?

he can't play NCAA now thought that would be a good path for him at his size to play against 22, 23 year olds instead of junior age players so now it's probably 1 more year of junior then AHL

A guy with middling size and decent skills that stayed in the NHL for a handful of years but kept playing for about a decade after that. Would 100% rather take a chance on him than on running Wilford back. Would prefer an actual experienced NHL coach, but am willing to settle.

Don’t feel bad. I’m stuck in the 90s. Now where the heck did I put my flip-phone? 🙃

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.