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Hey, is it possible to place a bet on who will win the 2026 draft lottery? I'm not much of a gambler but I'd put down $100 that somehow the Penguins win.

Auto-correct sucks

Do not agree. I think Kesselring playing an extra 5 shifts a game won't be much of a problem considering he did it at various times in Utah.

UPL - 1 good season in 5 professional seasons. JAG Krebs - JAG Doan - 4th line grinder. Kesselring - 17:30 minute a night guy. Likely asking too much for him to move up to 22 minutes a night. 3rd pairing guy on a good team Samuelsson - Bust. Should have been bought out. Greenway - loved the Minn Greenway. His injuries have robbed him of that physical game most nights. JAG Norris - Will score goals when healthy, which is never. Quinn - still has a chance to be a good NHLer. Has to stay healthy. Very cautiously optimistic. All could make an impact with Kesselring and Quinn being the most likely. Unfortunately, your analysis starts with 3 guys with significant injury histories (should be 4 w Quinn) the odds of getting and keeping all of them healthy for the majority of the season is unlikely. Sadly, Adams is trusting all these guys to make an impact. What’s the odds of that?

yeh tired on the tail end of a double at the Hospital... brain fried

I disagree. Minor point: Appert was new to the NHL staff and it was neither clear how much his Amerks system had in common with Granato’s Sabres system, nor how much influence he had on Ruff’s system last season. More importantly, this was Ruff’s system, not Granato’s. I’ll defer to better systems minds than mine as to what the differences were, but there were differences, and it was reported that there was pushback from the players about those differences, particularly when things started falling apart in the fall. To my eyes, Bo Byram’s play notably elevated from what we saw at the end of the previous season, largely because the Ruff system had much more in common with the Colorado system he was used to. Meanwhile, his teammates on the blueline (with the exception of Dahlin) notably regressed to my eyes. Clifton’s drop-off was precipitous largely due to terrible reads. Power was visibly thinking instead of acting on a consistent basis. Samuelsson never looked comfortable. Luukkonen started guessing and overplaying things because he could no longer trust what his defencemen would do. Similarly, other players who played well under Ruff - I’m thinking specifically McLeod, Tuch, Zucker - were guys with a lot of games played outside Granato. Add in the defensive struggles of Quinn, Cozens and Peterka - all of whom had almost exclusively played a go-for-broke style under Granato for their NHL careers - and I think all the signs were there of an out-of-sync collection of players. To my eye, the team looked poorly coached. Personally, I never thought Granato was a terrible coach, and I do wonder whether the game has passed Lindy by. But I don’t think either man is completely incompetent. I think there was a concerted effort to change the way the team played that resulted in rough transition for a number of players, and eventually coach-driven changes to a roster that seems to have been a poor match to what the coach wanted to do. Theoretically, the learning curve should be over and the roster changes should result in a better fit. Neither are things we can count on though, especially when the quality of the roster, and the coaching staff remain questionable.

LOL not a big fan of Adams name

Luke Osburn is someone to keep an eye on. Richard too.

Hard pass. After his legal issues which MSG had to pay off to make disappear and the fact he plays when he feels like it that’s a hard no from me dawg

I think Ratzlaff, maybe Strbak might become something, the rest seem like longshot of them outside top 10

Hard no.

None of this matters we still don’t have a goalie.

Don't believe Lidstrom is a coach. He'd be a great mentor though should he be willing to do that. The guy that would be the ideal coach would be Mike Ramsey. But he's not leaving his beloved Minnesota. Wonder if they could convince him to be an advisor and just come to town for TC and conversations every so often via Zoom or the like.

They do make a heck of a sammich

There is a precipitous drop off after the top 10. I suppose that’s fairly standard but it’s a massive cliff.

It depends what else the Flames or Rangers going to give as giving up a 24 year old for a 30 plus old is foolish for this team that isn't one player away from winning a Cup.

He needs Nick Lindstrom to coach him

I can't give him one at this time. I don't like him, I know that. I don't agree with how he handles most things. I think he's surrounded (publicly) by idiots and I don't think he's all that bright himself. What am I grading him against though? I'd have to actually sit down and do an analysis to really go deeper. And, I am waiting to see where things go.

only nitpick is that Wahlberg is not a center.

Well, that's a big part of why IMHO Wilford needs to go. He needs a coach that will force him to start to do that. Could've sworn that Power has said that a big part of his lack of aggression comes from being much bigger than the other kids when he was in youth hockey and getting called for penalties any time he'd do anything more than just look ath them. He needs the coach that will force him to actually engage and also needs to hear about it everytime he holds the puck for 4 seconds just standing there when the right pass was available 2 seconds in. Pretty sure he's a bright guy, so he should be able to figure it out. But both of those he needs to be coached to trust himself to make that play and know that if he takes a penalty, it'll be forgiven (most of the time) and if he trusts himself to put the puck into a tighter area that will allow a teammate to really create chaos that an oops on that pass will get forgiven way more than going to a safe outlet 2 seconds later with that opportunity gone will.

Do you really think much changed with the coaching? Sure Ruff was behind the bench but Appert was there singing the same program that the Sabres had been playing. Wilford was there, preaching the same craptastic defensive scheme. I don't really think anything changed with the Sabres last year with regards to coaching other than Lindy Ruff being brought in as a figurehead to help placate fans into believing in the team. We know the coaching search never happened. Pegula had a hometown guy they could pump up in an effort to make fans believe that Buffalo "believes in itself". No real coaching change and no change in style. Pegula is clearly operating the Sabres as a means to accomplish some goal we've not thought of yet. As for Power, he COULD be a lot of things and I expect him to improve as would be the case with most young defenders, but right now I'm not sold that he's what the Sabres need on the blue line. Then again, I'm not sure that it matters who is on the roster when the defensive scheme is so broken.

Could have traded him, signed him way earlier (from Ullmark’s own account he was negotiating with the team in good faith for a long time before changing his mind), convinced him to stay, or, failing all of that, do the bare minimum as a GM and understand where your player’s head is at if he truly wasn’t interested in staying, and then not back yourself into a corner by leaving yourself literally no other options and having no backup plan to Ullmark if that didn’t work out. But this is Adams’ documented MO: he doesn’t have a pulse on his players. He blamed them coming into camp “too overconfident” 2 seasons ago and last year he blamed them coming in “out of shape”. He’s always surprised by where his roster is at because, professionally, he’s a buffoon “Given the circumstances.”’ Yes, Adams let the Ullmark situation slowly slip away through inaction, found himself in a corner, and did the “best he could”. How many times do we wanna see it eh

Some other notes: Jack Quinn: 30-goal top 6 winger or 35-point defensive liability? Josh Norris: 35-goal scorer or broken body waste of a roster space? Jordan Greenway: textbook big-body 3rd-line checker or broken body waste of a roster space? Mattias Samuelsson: capable #4/5 or broken body, broken spirit waste of a roster space? Michael Kesselring: emerging 2-way horse and missing piece on the blueline or serviceable 2-way #4/5? Josh Doan: hard-to-play against 20/20 grinder+ or Beck Malenstyn 2.0? Peyton Krebs: disposable JAG or emerging 2-way 3C? Ukka-Pekko Luukkonen: disposable JAG or legit NHL starter? I'm curious if any of these "roster filler" pieces have anything more to give.

Until he stops playing passive defense, he could train himself up to be a mack truck and it wouldn't matter.

Sabres also don’t have the luxury of pretending they can address their roster with the urgency the teams who haven’t missed the playoffs for 14 years show. Their results are a statistically documented, historical outlier. Their approach to fix it has to be relative. He also thinks “ppg forward” means “power play guy forward” lmao edit: Harrington, that is