MattPie

If the Sabres don't have to personnel to have a competent PK, they won't win the cup. 🙂 I'm not saying it's impossible that the Sabres don't have a bunch or players that are 2-way PK stars-in-waiting, but that would be an outlier from every other team in the league.

It's not about traditional line roles, but there have to be at least 8 guys that are competent PK players on the team. Most of the young guys were not drafted for being 2-way players, so until someone can fill those PK roles there's a place for a better than average 4th line skillset player. If the Sabres really get to a place where they have 12 forwards that can play 2nd line and up offensively, then they should be looking to package guys up for truly great 2-way players to fill out the 4th line and PK. Some forwards have to play D sometimes, we're not Toronto. FTR, I don't think this will really be an issue, the odds of every single rookie forward hitting this year are fairly slim. If it does become an issue, I don't have an issue trading Z away as long as a better all-around player comes back.

Same. Teams aren't all young scoring forwards, if it really becomes a thing, maybe you trade one of the younger guys that don't fit into the plan for a piece that you need. If one of the younger guys truly matches Girgensens full skillset, then we can talk.

I hope not. Well, not sure. I think I normal team could turn Matthews into enough very good pieces (a la the Eric Lindros or (hopefully) Eichel trades) to be a better team afterwards. Somehow, I think Toronto would do something dumb and they'd get worse.

I think the stats (both fancy and not) do have a tough time with trending data vs. average. "well, last year xxx averaged below the league for the season, etc.". But as the Sabres are showing, that doesn't always make sense. At best, they stats folks will cut the data down to half a year or since Valentines Day or whatever to show that it's different. But I don't see many "over the course of the year this changed x" type stats. As others said above, this makes sense when you're dealing with relatively static players and doesn't cope well with very dynamic situations (like the Sabres, 2019-2022). I'm going to pick on @LGR4GMfor a second, in the Tage thread there's a lot of talk about his average shooting % over the last three years, but (IIRC) it's only gone up each year. You can't really take a meaningful average in that case; there's no stability in the data. I think the average that comes out (~11%?) does make sense, but the data used to get there would predict something ridiculous like 30% if taken at face value. This isn't to excoriate stats, I'm an engineer and I do believe math can explain a *lot* of things. People are still learning what predicts and what doesn't. I think as the methods get refined the stats will get better at seeing trends and not just averages.

Yeah, there was such a big gap between #8 and #9, the top of the east were siphoning points from the hapless bottom half more than most years. In most years, the 7-8 teams would be battling the 9-10 teams down to the last week. 1st para: I think it's just the way it rolls. I remember a few years in the 90s or 2000s where there was a *clear* line between the playoff teams and not in the west. One year there were 7 good teams in the west, and then #8 had 88 points. It happens. 2nd: I seriously doubt any team is going to tank from #9 to try to get to #11 to gain a couple % chance. No owner is going to approve "Well, we may have a chance to get at least 2 more home games and have people in the seats right down to the wire. But if we lose a bunch of games, we can go from 0.8% to 2.6% of moving way up in the draft!"

It's Buffalo, something will fall apart this year. Yes, 1991-1994, 1999, and 2000 scarred me, why do you ask? Also: Beasley to Tampa Bay... practice squad.

Still surprised Suban didn't catch on anywhere. Or maybe it just wasn't worth a minimal offer to get beat up for a year to him.

I understand this timeline where the Bills are good. I figure the wheels will fall off at some point.

I think there's room for "This is the best offer we can make" and "Oh crap, we *have* to match this even though it doesn't make sense". And "we're not going to add even more to an offer we don't think makes sense".

Censure the Sens!

The Jets helmets are sharp. Is the league moving back to the darker colors rather than the primary colors that have been a thing for the last bunch of years? I have nothing else to say about this game.

Might be some people weren't allowed back on the plane, lol.

Nice work, thanks! Bold: Dallas had an abundance of good goaltending, did they not? I remember chatter about how they had to get rid of 1-2 because they had a log jam. Plus, it's the West where last year there wasn't as clear a line between the playoff and not teams I'd guess.

Sounds like a case of reefer madness to me!