ska-T Chitown

At this point, is there really all that much to lose? I still feel like there is something in the tenacity he sometimes displays that means there could be more to him?

Not directed at you, but I saw the bold and got 'triggered' as the kids say ... I agree we are too young, and it seems like a lot of folks 'round these parts do, too. BUT, if you lurk in pretty much any thread there are far too many "let Girgs/EJ/KO* walk and replace them with [insert 21 yr old barely cutting it ROC guy]" ... which is not going to move the age/experience needle in the correct direction. *Disclaimer: Those three might be the "swap depth for the correct depth" that @dudacek pointed out Van did. But, letting the three oldest guys walk without quality veteran replacements is not going to make anything better.

I can't even read that single paragraph word vomit / AI non-sense. The whole time I picture a small child in front of an audience reading a loud and monotone book report or some other thing. Ick.

Didn't Quinn and JJP have the advantage of having Peca on the coaching staff? I sorta feel like having him coach the Big Club for one day would make a difference, lol.

I would agree and add that when I think of injury prone, it is a player that gets hurt in a situation when a lot of others might not. My knee/leg/ankle almost sympathy broke just watching what happened to Quinn. I think a majority of players end up on IR if they were Quinn right then.

I, too, have had a week by Wednesday. 🍻 And the beer league team I was supposed to sub for tonight said another regular signed in 😥 I have actually seen quite a few witty posts today across various threads and I appreciate them all just a little bit more than perhaps yesterday.

I do tend to over-generalize, so I hope people don't read too much into it, but I also would not blame them if they did.

I am fascinated by SS's general fascination with how players spend their free time and the implication that if they are not shooting pucks 24-7, they are not "serious" about hockey. As someone pointed out in a different thread, these "kids" seem to be pretty tame compared to past generations. Playing X-Box or Playstation or honestly whatever TF they want when it is not time to be on the ice or in the video room ... good for them. One side of SS mouths <ugh, these guys don't have any cohesion as a team> ... team takes a trip together ... Other side of SS mouths <ugh, these guys are on vacation together?> Poor Mitts gets a lot of $hit for hosting parties to try to build esprit de corps ... and I think most folks here would agree that Casey's year-over-year progress is pretty darned good and we'd be happy if other players improved their game the way he has. The USNDP uses certain video games with its players to improve hand-eye coordination and reaction times to certain hockey-like situations. Science! I henceforth call BS on any claims without substantial proof (like, the real kind) of any player now (McJesus? Crobsy?) or past (Mario? Poodle Hair? Mogilny? Patty L?) that did not do something non-hockey related during their spare time. It is not possible, especially in-season. Burn out is real. I await my Red X's

I am wondering if my off-handed comment about not include the Phliers was confusing. I was musing that OK, in one scenario PIT is en fuego and gets in. So en fuengo, in fact, that it would make it likely they took 2nd or 3rd in their division so my scenario was incomplete without mapping out how filly was doing. Filly is not tremendously far ahead of the Sabres and if they collapsed, perhaps they finish 3rd or 4th in the WC behind your Buffalo Sabres! I am not near my trusty speadsheet right now, but I promise to fill in the gap later.

I am confused. Pts %-wise: it looks like this after you swap out TB for TOR: Sabres get more points than Detroit and they are in ... what am I missing? TOR finishes 3rd in the division, gets in. TB get WC 1 and Sabres get WC 2. There is nothing that says one WC from each division, is there? The Atlantic can finish 1, 2, 3 in the WC, no? I mean, all fantasy, but for argument's sake, play along. 🙂

lol - it is definitely not a great picture. I felt bad because I definitely cherry-picked the "low of the lows" for my first "projection", 23 games ago. Both 20 and 25 games ago were higher point % than 23, so yeah - I wonder who we can acquire in a trade using a low-teens 1st round draft pick?

Same thing as before, but with different arbitrary timeframes; extrapolating a team's trend line over the last 10, 20, 25, and 30 games from whatever current game they are at. Buffalo finishes no higher than 3rd and misses out by 20 points in that scenario. It is maybe possible DET pushes TOR into the WC, but I don't think TOR is falling below 52.4%, so yeah. "Last 20" could realistically have PIT pushing PHI out - but again, the Sabres are like 15 points behind still 😞 "Last 30" hurts because magically 30 games ago, the Sabres were somehow 0.500 and are obviously not currently a 0.500 hockey team, so trending down. Anywho - yeah, things are bleak. whomp whomp.

Does anyone currently tearing it up in the NHL have an overrated younger brother we can draft??

PA - I absolutely should have removed that line ... I actually just copy/pasted the whole thing out of the game day thread. Over there it seemed like a generic tongue in cheek playful swat at SS (hell, myself included). I can guarantee it was not directed at you, nor anyone else specifically!

sorry the end of the graph gets all funky - I had to add some numbers to do the project math without using different game totals because I am lazy. Also, since the Sabres are on a TWO GAME WINNING STREAK (!!!) I did not want to cut the graph off at 46 games for the flightless birds.

Moving this from the gameday thread to here. Here is a graph of 8 teams in the East WC picture: The Sabres have been last or tied for last in this group (no BJ's, no Otters) since game 20. Since the Blue&Gold are trending up, I decided to just map every team's progress since game 26 - it looks good for Buffalo until you realize TB and PIT are on fire since then ... Buffalo would go from tied for last to ... drumroll ... 3rd - one spot out of the playoffs. However, at the current paces TB and PIT would run away with the two WC. I am too lazy to go back and add PHI (which, dear peer reviewers, I acknowledge they were a mistake to leave out) and another cuspy team to see where the trends took us. I had not planned to do the trend, but seeing as the Swords were trending up, I gave it a whirl. I took each team's point pace at 26 games and at 49 games (had to fudge numbers for PIT, NJD, and WAS), got a point% increase trend per game over that stretch, projected it out of the remaining 33 games (% total add), new projected point % and translated that into a projected point total. Interesting to see that the Aisles and Ovechkins have been playing like hot garbage for quite some time, while (Crosby, Malks, and Tang), The Pegula Shop Boys, and Ride the Lightnings lead the upward swing (in that order). No idea why that turned into a music reference bit at the end. Anyway - I am sure there are dozens of actual statistical reasons and hundreds of practical reasons why my Excel Fun is not very accurate, but it paints a strange picture compared to the Ol' Doom and Gloom squad around here. Cheers!

Moved my projection comment over to PA's new thread...

I am not sure the tweet's Jost speculation is reasonable in any way...

I don't disagree with the pure - pull a card from the deck methodology used above. Those are good hard numbers. The interesting bits to me are the 'soft' numbers. Since the 1990-1991 season (32 champs because none in 2005) - only 16 teams have won the cup. The 'hard' numbers have to assume "all things being equal" because there is no way to account for all the variations each year. I will see if I have enough time and bourbon this weekend to put together a spreadsheet of how many playoff appearances each franchise has since 1990-1991. I won't be truly meaningful, but I suspect that 1/3 of the teams will account for half or more of the slots. I am not sure how a long-term adjustment factor could be developed - or even a short term one to account for things like you could tell the Sharks did not really have a realistic 50% chance at making the playoffs this year. One would guess, however, that a team would "average out" over a 14 year period to be closer to 50% each year than not. <shruggy thing here>

It is really quite odd. If the Sabres are indeed playing a system where the folks who are not on the puck are supposed to be in specific areas (and from what I have seen - most very successful D-Zone teams employ this strategy in some form) - then they are just not good at it. I feel like I have seen beer league teams (definitely not mine, but that is for another thread) implement it better. Most D-zone strategies involved out-numbering the other team at the puck and then playing 'zone' behind that to prevent the cross-ice killer. Regardless of what system they employ - having ANY system implies every player has a role. If a player decides to play hero, then at least one other player has to now decide whether to cover for The Hero or to do their own job - a complete lose/lose situation. Even worse is if there are two players who recognize The Hero has gone rogue and both decide to try and cover and now you have two roles neglected. It must be "ok" within the system for The Hero ... otherwise every single video session would be some coach circling Cozzy off in his own world in like fifteen squiggly red circles and saying "Cozzy! WTF was going on here??" And if that is happening (and has been happening) and he keeps doing it ... then he is hopeless.

But, but, but ... Taylor Hall chose us! Right? RIGHT??!!

There were times during the Kings game when I swear Tage was going twice as fast as anyone else on the ice ... just like last year. Maybe his dad pulled him aside after the Ducks game and said "thanks for playing like crap, but seriously you are so much better than this, just go do hockey"

Why you gotta hit me right in the feels, man? But yeah - great point and I guess I would not be shocked if it were true.

I know Duds already replied - but the bold/underlined part is an actual defensive system that is taught at many levels of hockey. The 1a to the breakdown on that particular goal is the time/space Bryson allowed the Kings player (as dudacek pointed out) with the 1b being the far-side winger probably not paying enough attention to the open ice to better take away that option by blocking the passing lane. Either way, these are the types of great discussions that keep me coming back to SS even in these bleak times. I definitely appreciate all the effort to analyze the plays!

Yes, having a fully stocked cupboard but nothing on the table is not a good way to do things. I genuinely wonder what other teams thought last summer of the miscellaneous packages of Oreos, Thin Mints, and Little Debbie snacks we had amassed. Obviously fans tend to over-value their own players and each GM probably thinks theirs are somehow a little more likely to do well than other might. That said, I think quite a few of the talking heads thought we had good prospects. I also mention it because if GMKA does not have a plan other than "how many potentially electric prospects can I hoard?" ... we are truly effed!