darksabre

Got the J&J one-shot vaccine at lunch yesterday. 30 hours later and I have had zero side effects.

This is why I think the fancy stats stuff is still lagging behind in providing context. They might be able to look at things like shot quality and say "this player is just unlucky" but they really still aren't getting into the meat of what makes hockey so interesting from an analytics standpoint: the flow of the play. I still believe that until we are modeling player movement on the ice and analyzing how the way one player moving around the ice and taking certain actions influences the play of the other players on the ice, we can't really look at stuff like Expected Goals and come to strong conclusions. So when the stats crowd was hemming and hawing about players just being unlucky it made me go "hmmm" because all that said to me is that the stats they were using to make that argument were inadequate.

I like that. I never for a second bought into the argument that the Sabres were good but just unlucky. The stat models don't tell the whole story. You watch that team on the ice and you see that they aren't doing the things they need to do to win and there's no way you can just call it bad luck.

It would be an honest to goodness accomplishment if they somehow managed not to finish dead last in the league.

I don't know if Granato deserves any credit beyond being a replacement level coach, but whatever he's not doing is working.

Guess I'm gonna watch something on Netflix instead

I really like that the GDT isn't pinned yet. It's a nice tribute to Taylor Hall.

Expecting to find out that he tripped on the stairs and broke his hip on the way up to the team box.

I would also note that I think goalies on bad teams are more likely to get injured because they are forced to make more high injury risk saves.

Lol what in the world

No one thinks Granato is that good. They think he's so much less bad.

Blues just lost to the Avs and ROR is the post game. He's still the same guy who just blames himself for everything. I don't care if this guy won a Cup, he's weird as hell.

He's good enough to backstop a championship team. I'd like to lock him in for under 5mil per, but I would understand if he walked for more on less term.

Boy I hope Linus stays for the right price. He's really improved his control for such a big goalie.

Also, Dahlin's job in that situation is always to take away the pass. If the shooter beats the goalie, fine, but you gotta commit to taking away the pass so the goalie can commit to the shooter. Especially when the shooter is a right handed shot coming down the right wing. The angle is already bad for him, the goalie has the advantage. Make him take that shot.

Turns out all they had to do to get the Sabres to skate hard and go to the net is let most of the good players get hurt and not really do any coaching.

Ruotsalainen looking for his chance to finally play like

Sure. All I'm saying is we're never going to be able to completely leave The Tank behind. It's going to be with us forever, one way or another. Especially as long as the team is bad.

I'm not even trying to argue whether or not the tank was bad, or whether or not the Pegulas are the problem. I'm arguing that it is impossible to totally separate the past from the future. Think about player trade trees. Do the Sabres make the ECF in 2006 if they don't trade Rick Martin to the Kings in 1981? People can argue all they want that there should be a statute of limitations on the supposed influence of The Tank, but the problem is that we don't know that. If the Rick Martin trade could make the Sabres good 25 years later, couldn't The Tank make the Sabres bad 50 years later?

The entire Pegula family could evaporate into thin air overnight and it might not even matter.

I'm dead serious. The Bills could just as easily still be bad. Their recovery was never an inevitability. And neither is the Sabres.

I'm sure some people thought Bricklin could be fixed, or Enron, or the Whalers. Sometimes the momentum is too much to overcome.

It's not about pure logic. Sports teams aren't machines. They're living, breathing organisms, made of human beings and all of the associated baggage and history that comes with that. Why does one business fail and another succeed even if they are constructed the same? This organization is poisoned, it's infected, it's stained with disgrace. That carries a lot of weight. Can it be fixed? Maybe. But it's a heavy lift. Effective management may not be enough. And we should accept that it's possible that no one can turn this ship from the course it's on.

How so? Does the influence of historic events not extend across generations, even centuries?

I'll echo wildcard. Until the team is good again everything is the direct result of the tank. The stink of desperation, the recklessness, the lack of planning, the empty prospect pipeline, the hapless owners. A confluence of conditions that created a particularly catastrophic event from which everything afterwards projects. Like Marty going back in time and punching Biff Tannen, it changed the whole course of history on that timeline.