darksabre

I forget when it was, but it was maybe back during the streak, or shortly after? I think he said it in a pre-game interview somewhere. I remember hearing it and being stunned. It was something to the effect of "the other coach likes to match lines but I'm not worried about doing that". He made it sound like line-matching was something fiddly people do. Might have been the Toronto game after the streak?

Interesting. So Mitts, Erod and Nelson are quite good at contributing to winning even though they aren't putting up a lot of points. Meanwhile, Scandy, Risto, and Okposo are the some of the worst at scoring but not helping the team win. This matches a lot of eye-test observations around here.

Throw the power play mess in there and that would be my one-two punch of coaching criticisms at the moment.

Agreed. We're basically playing catchup from Darcy, and it's worse because GMTM messed up so bad.

This is why you never go out on the pond alone.

Housley is on record as saying that he doesn't line match.

It's about possession. You can skate hard all you want, but it's better to have the puck while you're doing it. You can't just be going up and down the ice giving the puck away and taking it back.

The problem with the Sabres tanking when they did was that the cupboard was bare Rochester. If they had tanked while keeping good players in Rochester to develop and then brought them all up a few at a time after the tank things would probably have worked a lot better. Darcy started the tank, but the aftershock is owed to his YEARS of poor drafting that we are only just now recovering from.

Shut up, I want to play pond hockey this weekend

The Oilers game is a weird example to get too hung up on. I know they got crushed on the score sheet, but offensively they played a pretty good game. They had a lot more opportunities from the slot than they had in previous games. They equaled the Oilers in shots in the slot at 14. The problem is that the Oilers scored on 7 of the 14 shots they took from the slot. Buffalo scored on only 2 of 14. Defense/Goaltending/Puck luck is what killed them. They need to clean things up in front of their goalies and they need their goalies to be a little better/lucky.

Don't hit me with them negative waves so early in the morning.

According to the charts, it's the most must win of all must wins so far.

(I actually thought Sobotka looked okay on Skinner's line with Jack out...) *ducks*

I think the no-confidence vote succeeds tomorrow.

Phil: "I tried something new one time and it didn't immediately work so I'm never doing it again." Give. Sam. His. Own. Line.

There does seem to be some precedent for this. https://www.cheatsheet.com/culture/real-reason-donald-trump-always-eats-fast-food.html/

They really should be splitting time 50/50 right now. This is pretty normal stuff from Hutton being put in the starting role full time despite not being a full time starting goalie.

It's absolutely a trash deal. Cogliano is basically used up and Dallas decided that used up Cogliano was better than Shore. Which speaks volumes about both team's opinion of Shore. Swapping depth players is reshuffling deck chairs for both teams.

It was a choice. He was trying to make a political statement.

Not disagreeing, but pointing out that I think it's difficult to predict which players are going to play "heavy" as they develop when you're drafting them as teenagers. Pretty much all NHL rookies seem to need time to really develop that NHL level physical game. Veteran players tend to "harden" themselves, but it does take some time. Even guys like Chara. I think this team's biggest problem with respect to physicality is that a lot of players simply haven't had the time to develop it yet. Look at how much tougher Risto is on the puck now? Or Girgensons? Reinhart and Eichel are arguably still more "perimeter" skill guys who aren't mucking every shift, but they do it more than they used to.

It was predictable though. It's why posts about "sensitive" topics like religion are confined to their own thread. At some point you have to know what content is going to feed the trolls. This one was obvious.

You do know that some things aren't universally funny right?

We're inching towards "heroic run to 9th" territory, but I'm not panicking as much as it seems other people are. This team puts good games together, just not consistently. I hope they figure it out. They have the potential.

I don't think he'd rather protect Rochester. I think it's just the reality of the situation. There's nothing that taking guys, including coaches, from Rochester can really do to help the Sabres right now. So he's not going to do it. It doesn't make much sense.