Taro T

Yes, they do seem to finally have an NHL level player heirarchy and they likely will start getting roughly a year older as a team for the next 3-4 years as they don't have true kids taking up 60 or so % of the lineup as time goes on. They never mentioned Skinner. But they also never mentioned anyone in the bottom 6 nor the bottom of the D either last night. Dahlin was mentioned A LOT (not surprisingly, especially when 1 question was directly - who will Dahlin's partner be), Byram once when discussing the core (1st level (aka original guys brought in) and 2nd level (newer guys filling it out, he was in that grouping)) and Power and Samuelsson discussed as Dahlin's typical partners though it was said he'll also play with the offensive guys when needing a goal (and that very well could be Byram). Sometime this evening, I'll try to add the rest of my notes to that other thread. Not sure if Jokiharju was mentioned, or not, but he definitely wasn't mentioned as a partner for Dahlin; nor was Clifton mentioned as a partner for him. Like said above, they only mentioned the guys they see at the top of the lineup in last night's talk. And because of a specific question asked, there was talk about guys getting moved down the lineup and how that gets done. Personally, didn't hear anything that changes the belief that Skinner is pencilled in on the 3rd line and that he won't be a part of the top PP unit. That might be confirming notions already held, just like reading from last night that Skinner will be bought out is confirming notions already held.

No, they remained seated. By any chance did you in a past life write songs for Tonic? Because there's one that just screams you everytime it's heard.

Have said it before, am pretty sure next year is when Skinner gets bought out. Especially if that middle 6W they bring in ends up Kane, between being able to give him an incentive laden contract and the cap finally going up again, they'll have plenty of cap space to bring in the other pieces they might realistically be adding this year. Next season is when that extra cap space really starts to become truly critical. Still expect one of (or maybe both) Savoie and Kulich to be injury callups during the season and not convinced that either won't stay in the lineup but don't expect either to make it right out of the gate. With Rousek the callup when a bottom of the lineup guy breaks.

Yep. Mine was the one about any additional modifications to the hockey department / coaching ranks and about the PP. The last one with Granato was the only one (other than the very 1st one that was done over Zoom) that I didn't get a question asked. (My son asked my Q of Levi when he was there as I had to leave before I got a chance to ask it.)

So, they had the biggest B&G I yet. Had about 2/3s of the rink set up with chairs and about 3/4's of those were full. A few people were also scattered throughout the lower bowl but there weren't too many of them. Some topics covered (with my commnets in parenthesis): What's been the main thing this off-season so far. For Adams it was the exit meetings with the players; finding out what they thought of their individual seasons and letting them know what he thought of them. Missed Ruff's answer. Kevyn & Lindy talk every day so he's getting an understanding of what players Lindy wants to target. Mentioned part of that is getting the pairings right. (So though personally didn't expect to see any changes to the D perhaps there might be some changes there. Guess we'll see in 3 or so weeks.) Kevyn - Jerry Forton's done a "phenomenal job" and he will now oversee the pro scouting in addition to just the amateur scouting. He said that Jerry is the one that oversees the draft. (So, love or hate the past couple of drafts, it seems that Forton is the one getting all the input and making the choice.) Lindy - No settling in period for him getting back to Buffalo. Spoke a few times about how glad he is to be back and how he considers himself to be a Buffaloanian. Says the biggest area of improvement will come from how the Sabres defend. Said a big part of the offense last year tailing off some is teams were gameplanning to take the rush away from the Sabres and they weren't ready/able to get the tip in / net front goals they needed to make up for that. Sounds like getting guys to the front of the net will also be a priority (along with the improved play in their own end). They will find different ways to win hockey games this year; they won't only beat teams via goals off the rush. Both have been watching the playoffs and spoke of how the D play picks up in the playoffs. Lindy - wants to get to know the players this off-season. Spoke about how Appert knows many of the young players and gives Lindy input on them. (But there are a lot of guys on the team Appert has never worked with. He's worked with a lot of the young guys but there are more than a few that haven't spent any appreciable time in Ra-cha-cha.) Kevyn - loves the draft. So much going on this time of year - draft coming up, contract negotiations w/ RFAs, UFAs become available shortly; and all at essentially the same time. Duff - Development camp will be held July 1 - 4. Lindy says he's evolved from earlier in his career by focusing more on building relationships with the players. He wants to get to know their families and their games so that trust is built because guys are going to get asked to change their games. He then rementioned how he's just getting to know the guys. Kevyn says he's learned and lot and continues to do so. He's found there are better ways to do things (presumably than from when he was starting out). And he tries to prioritize "what matters most" each day and that might be something w/ a ST focus or a LT focus depending upon the day. Lou Lamiorello told him to remember that the GM is putting out fires every single day. Q to Lindy - do you know what's on a GM's plate? Lindy - Kevyn is constantly trying to make the team better; it differs from what a coach does because he evaluates the play after every game but moves on by the next day's practice. They both need to set what the standard is of what is acceptable. Kevyn added - do the right things at the right time. Not sure if this next statement was from Lindy or both of them - there needs to be a higher level of play. (Applause for that answer.) How to choose a captain. Lindy - it has changed through the years. The captain sets the example for everyone and is the captain for the whole team. He leads by example; he doesn't chirp his teammates; EVERYBODY has to meet his standard. The captain sets the examples by how he practices, does stuff like gets to the rink on time, helps the coaches by asking guys why they did what they did in a particular situation (and helps to critique it). Kevyn - "we'll have a real good captain." (So, it sure does seem like they already know who they intend to be wearing letters this year.) How do you keep guys in the moment? (paraphrasing that Q) Lindy - it seems counter intuitive, but let them have fun. There will be tough games but put it behind them and get ready the next day in practice. Kevyn - we both want to raise the standard. What will you do today to make yourself the best you can be. (The way they've been bringing this theme up, it seems this is a new thing. Personally, like it in theory; let's see how it get implemented.) How do you drop a guy down a line? (another paraphrased Q) - Lindy - You talk with them. You never really arrive; you always have to get better; there is always somebody trying to take your job. Missed a bit of the answer to a Q about the vision for the bottom 6. Only caught the part about how in the playoffs the top lines tend to cancel each other out and the bottom 6 become more important (mentioned E-Rod). Missed the rest of the answer. Question asked about whether there will be additional changes to the coaching staff and to the hockey department with a follow up about who will be coaching the PP because it was disappointing last year. (Question got an ovation. Well, it was either the question or the questioner's flow that got the ovation. Maybe it was both. 😉 (Actually, the ovation for the Q was pretty sweet. It was the only one that was asked by an adult that got that reaction.) Lindy - Seth Appert and Lindy will run it with Seth leading it. There will be significantly more motion. They want to get shooters into different positions. (Draisatl and McDavid in the playoffs as the example of what they're going to strive for.) Motion is a key to keep your best shooters open. The Amerks PP has been good. They want to keep possession on entries and want to keep the same 5 guys together on the PP. (So don't expect a lot of experimentation wtih personnel in season once they get something they expect will work.) Kevyn - would like to possibly add another pro scout for out west to the staff. The analytics staff is an extension of the 2 scouting staffs (pro and amateur). Lindy was asked about similarities between Hamilton and Power. Said he sees similarities with Hughes, Bratt, and Hischier on the Sabres. Presumably Dahlin was the 1st comparable (but maybe he was talking about the other Hughes, would Thompson be the comparable(?)). Peterka was the Bratt comparable and Cozens the Hischier comparable. He talked about how it took that Devils team 2 years to come together and this team has been together for 2 years as well. KA - seems to be rooting for Florida as the Okposo draft pick improves by 2 rounds if they do. From a Q by a kid about the dream of playing hockey, Adams mentioned how you don't retire, you just get told you're not good enough anymore. And he's always dreamed of winning a Stanley Cup with the Buffalo Sabres. (So, still chasing the dream.) Lindy says chase your dream. And Duffer mentioned there are areas you can work in the game even if you aren't good enough to play at that level. They answered a few other Q's about Capfriendly going away and the Salary Cap going up; about FA and how Adams approaches it; who Dahlin's partner will be this coming season; and about the goalies heading into last year and heading into this year. I might try to post those answers tomorrow, but right now should've been in bed 45 minutes ago. Lindy ended the night telling the crowd at Kevyn's insistance about what he told the security guard at the Bills practice this morning. He 1st told him that he was Adams' Uber driver. (Apparently Adams was in the back seat for some reason.) He then told him that he's the Bills new Tight End. His 40 is slow but the hands are still good. G'night all.

Canandaigua is WAY too crowded with boats, jet skis, and the like. Cayuga is way nicer IMHO. Large lake as Finger Lakes go; much less traffic; Ithaca at the south end; sand bars and coves towards the north end; some cool cliffs along parts of the shore. Good fishing.

Well, it depends on whether others in the room defer to those with the letter on their shirt. And, with not being in the room so take it for what it's worth, it sure does seem like this team tends to historically take on the personality of their captain. Did not want Okposo as the captain this past season. Felt the team needed to become Dahlin & Tuch's team. Definitely don't want Girgensons as the captain or even wearing an A next year.

IF he is not given a leadership role within the team wouldn't HATE having him back again. But personally expect it's time for both parties to move on. And expect that it's very likely he's going to move on.

Serious Q: has Lance broken ANY Sabres related news since he became the BN's main Sabres reporter? If not, wouldn't get too worked up over the report.

Well, that's kind of where the handing out no full NMC/NTC's come in along with having a full plan of who will LIKELY will be ready in '25, '26, '27, etc. with an expectation of who will be moved out to make room for kids that have higher ceilings than the players that are here AND of which kids will get moved because they have lower ceilings than the players that are already here. They've done a good job of building up the prospect pool and have good young talent on the big club. And now they're entering into that next phase where the cap actually becomes constraining and they really do need to have a true plan to make it happen. Personally, expect that Adams has a plan for this. Will it work? That's the $88MM Question. 😉

So, both teams are well past their primes? Not seeing it.

The bolded can't be emphasized enough. Teams need to lock up their good players early and those deals will turn into deals when the guys are actually in their primes. And yes, they'll miss on some of those. Predicting the future is never an exact science. But if the scouting and analytics teams are quality, those misses will be few and far between. It's also important to not be giving out full NTC/NMC contracts as those are what get you at least 6 years of Skinner on a deal that's overpriced by anywhere from $2-$8MM over what he's giving you (depending upon year). And paying guys when they show that they have a strong possibility of living up to their potential goes a long way towards "walking the talk" that they want to build from within and to the greatest extent reasonably possible keep their own guys in house and will reward guys when they demonstrate they deserve it. Which, should they ever actually get back into the playoffs again, would help alter the reputation as being a place players don't want to go. If you win and treat people right, guys will want to be a part of it.

Botterill (who played college hockey at Michigan and IIRC won 3 gold medals with the Canadian WJC team (he defilnitely played for Canada 3 times, not positive about the 3 golds, but pretty sure)) had a huge aversion to selecting CHL players from any of the 3 junior leagues unless it was an absolute no brainer in the 1st round. He loved him some Euros and NCAAers. He's the guy that let Hagel get away.

IF he's practicing "servant leadership" it could be a good thing. I.e., if being the leader is making sure the people doing the work have what they need to do their jobs, it could be good. But if he's the one deciding the direction of the scouting (which really should be coming from Adams, not him), then yes, that is troubling.

Personally am extremely disappointed in the league for not giving Draisatl a 1 game suspension. He left his feet, his elbow into Barkov's mug was the initial point of contact, and the hit was pretty much unnecessary. They CLAIM to make removing head shots a priority. But then they don't make it one.

In the plus column, he did want McAvoy way back when the Sabres drafted Nylander. (Of course, he couldn't talk anybody above him to pull the trigger on that kid.) In the minus column, don't know that he was the driving force of any of the picks that were good. He gets blamed for the Finnish goalie in the 2nd a couple of years back. If that was his call, yeah, that's one more in the minus column.

Take a look at his path to the point of playing with Eichel. What at all stands out in it indicating that an NHL team would be wanting to take a flyer on an undersized kid? He didn't have a strong pedigree and in his Junior year he took a huge step back. Without being associated with Eichel he likely ends up having a path to the NHL at best similar to that of Brian Rafalski (who played a different position but was also undersized and also was a much better hockey player than E-Rod) who still took 4 years playing abroad (after even having gotten to play for Team USA at the World Championships at the end of his college career) and being elite in the leagues he was playing in to get a shot at the NHL. Am extremely happy for Rodrigues; love it when the little guys actually make it. But if Eichel isn't his center his senior year, the Sabres aren't likely interested in him and absolutely NOBODY was interested in him prior to that. You seem to be viewing his making it from the perspective of hindsight. But when you look at where he was at, at that time, without Eichel there he has much poorer numbers his senior year and either has to work his way up from the ECHL for an opportunity or has to play in Europe for a while and hope to get noticed. Was the dream of playing in the NHL big enough for him to have put in the necessary work at that point AND get the break of having a pro scout actually notice him and give him an opportunity before he decided to walk away from it? There's a reason very few Tim Thomases or Brian Rafalskis actually make it to the NHL. Every year you go outside the NHL is one more year an NHL club will be willing to take a chance on a potentially more talented kid because you've already "shown" you're not good enough. How did you show you aren't? By not being there. Chicken and egg. And without having played that 1 year with Eichel, THAT is the path he almost definitely would have had to follow to make it. Rodrigues got lucky. But he was prepared to actually capitalize on that break he got. Good for him. But there are a LOT of players that are good enough to be NHLers that don't ever get that opportunity. Because there are way more tweeners out there than there are jobs for them. There likely aren't 32 true 1C's in the NHL. There definitely aren't 32 1G's out there. But there are waaaaaaay more than just 256 guys that are good enough to be 4th line W's in the NHL out there. Even counting for injuries and callups, only about 500 guys get that shot any given year, but there's probably at least 1,000 that could be some team's JAG. (And a handful of those guys could be a lot more than JAG, but they never get the opportunity to show that.) A lot of guys never get that opportunity to capitalize upon; or if they get the opportunity it came at the wrong time (for whatever reason) for them to put their best foot forward and force the team that gave them the chance to keep them on the roster.

???

Without playing on Eichel's line his senior year, his numbers don't end up standing out to the point he gets an NHL contract offer. At his size and pedigree, he wasn't getting an NHL deal from anybody without that season. He wasn't drafted and through 3 years of NCAA hockey, he hadn't done anything that screamed future NHLer. And at his size and skill level, would he have had the determination to work his way up from the ECHL onto an AHL deal and eventually force a team to take a chance on him at the NHL level or would he have decided that a better use of his time at BU would be to put his degree to use before potential employers decided he was too long past it to give him a break in another field as well; had Eichel chosen BC rather than BU to call home while waiting to get drafted? There are a LOT of guys with Rodrigues metrics that could be able to play at the NHL level that never get the opportunity. There's way more tweeners than there are jobs available for them in the NHL. But with Eichel showing up, he got an opportunity to showcase himself, and he took full advantage of it. Playing on a bad Sabres team, he got an opportunity to get a shot at a position he hadn't played in college and made the best of it. Good for him. And truly am happy he's getting a moment in the sun, so to speak. But without the luck of being Eichel's linemate that 1 season, he very likely never does get the opportunity he has now.

The league USED to publish that data. Not sure when that started, but it was still getting published daily by the NHL through the '05-'06 season. Not sure exactly when that stopped; pretty sure it was during that next year. (But personally wasn't saving that data daily anymore, which is why the uncertainty about when that practice stopped.) But always suspected they stopped doing that because sites like NHLNumbers (since bought by PuckPedia) and CapFriendly (now soon to be CapsFriendly and private) paid for that information (or they got it from other organizations that paid for it) and the league would rather make money off it than not. And a big part of those other groups paying for that data was the semi-exclusivity of receiving it. Was tracking the Sabres daily cap hit back in '05-'06 on an Excel spreadsheet, but life got too busy to keep it up. And pretty soon after that, the data wasn't available from the NHL directly anymore.

He was another of the players that did not react well to Krueger's coaching. By the end of Housley's last year, he was (by default pretty much) their #2 C. That did not carry over into Ralph's 1st year.

Yeah, they don't worry as much about giving Kane an incentive laden contract that pushes a lot of his earnings into next season. 😉

It's not like that was the only source of that information in the past. And Puckpedia likely won't have a monopoly on that data either in the future. (Not sure what else is out there. Primarily used Puckpedia but went to CapFriendly if the answer to a Q wasn't readily obvious at PP.)

No data. Thus the "(d)idn't watch it or even know about it before it happened, but THAT is innovative" part of the post. 😉 Also, though am just outside Ra-cha-cha, which is still kind of a hub for the deaf community, had not known what the differences are between ASL and say the "Rochester Method" or other sign languages. (Knew Ra-cha-cha had its own thing going for a time. Never really learned much about it (still haven't). (Add one more item to the seemingly endless "to-do someday" list.))

They both have their place.