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Last year, we received our gravy boats upon entry. (And yes, people did turn them into drinking vessels.)

Indeed. I'm not much of a college football person, but I was on the scrolling seat myself.

No doubt. After all these years I do watch with a very critical eye. Remember when they blew Toronto out? What did that amount to? Nothing. Win or lose I won't get excited until I see consistent effort.

Every year there are guys who fall due to some biases and they all get picked at a certain point when they fall far enough for a team to think it's worth the gamble. Benson is no different.

The games he’s missed have already started to paint the picture of what he “is”, though, that’s the point. It all counts. Best ability is availability “the results” is always the answer to “what do we have” - the context of my post was Norris-in-so-far-as-he-contributes-to-the-result-this-year, and not a definitive analysis and judgment on his once and future career The context is the team build. “What we have” is currently a roster pacing for 78 points

Cozens has 15 points in 20 games this year but is already a -11. Yikes. That's really hard to do.

Well we don’t necessary know what they have with Norris. Yes, he tends to be made of glass but we were saying the same thing about Samuelsson this time last year. He could be a Norris candidate if he keeps it up (not saying he will). I’m just saying we will have to see what happens with Norris when he gets back. Hopefully he doesn’t break the second he touches the ice on his first game back. 🤞

the job of the GM is to build a team that is good not one that is incrementally better than the sh*tty one he just built. It’s not good enough to just be “better than the guy who was an awful 2C”, the goal is still “good 2C” There’s no logical reason Adams’ failure to field a proper 2C grants him lowered expectations going forward for the position. ”anything we get from Norris is gravy” would be applicable if he wasn’t the planned 1C / 2C: gravy in terms of “winning the trade” but building a good team far supersedes that as an aim I mean great, we don’t need anything from Norris to justify the trade. But we need something from him to justify the damn roster

Well, typically, there's 4 of them.

Benson was a special case.

The player you traded him for was a net negative. Anything positive out of Josh Norris is gravy. You got a bad player off your team.

This just inspired me to scan through the scores. Wow, there’s a lot of cupcakes today.

For some fans one win resets the clock. It’s where expectations have cratered to. The regime is always one solitary win away from “well maybe the plan is working after all”. Sort of masterful on the team’s part in a way.

New York State's version of SMU (rich but not smart enough to get into a good state school) is really killing it against Notre Dame, yeah?

So you’re saying I can’t get my giveaway ninja throwing star until AFTER the game? What’s the point?

He is a bust only due to health. When healthy he is a really good player. The problem is he is never healthy for long stretches.

Depends on whether playing him is likely to raise or lower the interest in said player. 😉 Remember, Jacksonville never played Rob Johnson after he got that 1 start against Detroit (pretty sure it was Detroit, maybe it was somebody else, but pretty sure). There was limited tape on him, but it was great. His playing more could only lower his value. And they played Butler to a tee.

And you of all people, the guy that nearly constantly rails about how the Sabres don't follow analytics anywhere nearly often enough, often with more than adequate cause; are now going to argue that had Savoie been playing in the Q, or anywhere that his path wouldn't have crossed Benson's, that the Sabres still would've taken Benson when they did? Will have to agree to disagree. Expect they don't put nearly enough weight on analytics to have been willing to overlook the size/speed (or more specifically the combined lack of each) when he was on the board and they were on the clock if they didn't already know him intimately.

What you saw in this game is not what I saw. That’s okay. As you point out, how they play in the next 4-6 games will be more telling than one game.

No, they don't have a size bias. That is beyond obvious. BUT except for Benson, they have a HUGE speed bias when it comes to smallish/undersized players. Heck, they have a bit of a speed bias for larger guys too typically. Have a very hard time believing if they didn't have the inside track on getting to know Benson before drafting him that they would've been willing to step outside that bias for speed when he was on the board. I really doesn't matter either way; they DID draft him. But again, expect that without having drafted Savoie, Benson wouldn't have been that high on their draft board. The reaches they make are almost always burners.

The team is in last for their conference and got wanna take a victory lap after beating a bad Chicago team? Ok I guess

This reply makes 0 sense. I don't agree. Analytics showed there were high end underlying numbers for Benson.

The thing that has changed, and it's very arguable whether it's changed enough and whether it won't revert back to where it's been much of the last decade +, is they are generally getting NHL level goaltending so that even in games where they've given up more than 2 shots in the 1st 15 minutes they aren't automatically trailing and they aren't getting those motivation killing bad goals when the score is still 0-0 or 1-1. They also are, again with 2 glaring blaring exceptions, playing very well at home since the Otter game. They were better at home last year than on the road though still nowhere nearly as good at home as they needed to be. This year, they're generally very good at home. Can that carry over to the road? It hasn't so far, but they've also been missing a lot of important players for a significant portion of those games which makes it much easier for opponents to get the matchups they want. IF they get tougher to outmatch lines when they get healthier, maybe they can get to a point where they're winning about 1/2 of their road games (or getting enough OTLs that they pick up about 1/2 of their available road game points).

Well yes, I think they were lucky in both cases. I don't think watching Savoie mattered though. I think that's just your conjecture. Sabres do not have a size bias like some teams (eg. Philly). Adams should have known their were goaltenders going to be waived. DiPietro was another candidate if not Ellis. The question now is what is he doing and why isn't he doing it? Decide already. If he's set on UPL then trade Lyon. Can't see Edmonton not taking a shot at him. Just make a decision. What is Adams doing anyway? Just lunching and golfing with Staal (who does what as well?)?

It means, if they hadn't had significantly more exposure to Benson because of their relationship with Savoie, they wouldn't have drafted Benson. They'd've followed the same logic the teams before them used to convince themselves that though he was incredible in Junior his lack of worldclass skating would, when combined with his lack of size, keep him from having the sort of success you hope for in a pick taken towards the top of the draft. For once, luck was on the Sabres side, and they'd lucked into him being a teammate of their previous year's #1 pick, so they got a much better look at him than others did and they knew (or had a great expectation) that the intangibles he brings would outweigh the issue of being short without all-world skating. It's OK and it's actually a good thing. They may have lucked out with Ellis being available right when UPL was broken and Georgiev was proving he's no longer an NHLer too. If UPL hadn't injured himself in the off-season, there's no way Ellis is a Sabre today.