TheAud

And in 10 years we'll have 67! I am pretty sure that's how this works.

Now this year's team has played the same number of games as the prior two years had played by Dec 31st. I.e. 38 games each. 2014-15: 31 points 2015-16: 34 points 2016-17: 37 points Attached is the updated chart I had posted elsewhere a week or two ago that shows the path's of each team point totals over 82 games.

Their performance ,largely in terms of save %, have been pretty close this season, except as pointed out above the last few games have given Nilsson a small advantage. I would expect over time that advantage will disappear. Based on lifetime performance I'd expect Lehner to be the better goalie over time but that's not to say that we couldn't A) Ride the Hot Hand or B) Experience the Devan Dubnyk Scenario. (Big goalie looks average or below average for a period of years then suddenly becomes an All-Star). It will take a 'few' more games to convince me we are seeing B, but I am fine with A based on Nilsson's play last night, Lehner's marginal play vs. Boston, and Lehner's terrible shoot-out performance (although in fairness, Nilsson has been lousy there too, just not as bad).

Thank you for looking this up. So I was 11 years old. Seems like I was younger in my memory but it figures my friends parents wouldn't be bringing two 8 year olds out for a game. 11 year olds makes more sense. 8-4 really rings a bell but I am thinking we may have left the building before the 8th goal was scored. It may have even been Gare's hattie and we heard the horn go off as we walked out and then heard what happened on the radio. I could be dreaming that part, I can't find a box score for the game (granted I only looked for 5 minutes). I couldn't recall the two Sabres who scored the play off hat tricks in the same game (I was in the middle of first stint overseas at the time and although I followed the Sabres closely, life was crazy) but I did recall the Lindy-Hitchcock feud in that series. God I miss the Sabres in the playoffs.

It looks like 18 inches gap, at least, in the picture. My guess is it's sort of an optical allusion based on how Zemgus is standing (not at full height) and where the camera angle is. Or Porzingis is on his tippy toes.

And Girgs is 6'2"!

But Al Gore did build the internet. Please help me I'm feeling a little slow here...how is it that in the past Rigas and Golisano, and in the present Pegula, have not owned the Sabres because the Knox's and the fans are the only owners the Sabres have ever had? I assume you are making a metaphorical or philosophical argument of some sort? Time passes and things change. You and I may be old enough to have been Sabres fans in the Knox days (at least, I'm that old) but there are many fans of the team who weren't even alive when they owned the team. How is Ted Darling relevant to them? (My best friend lived down the street from the Darlings and I once got to attend a Sabres game where they had been given tickets from Ted, in the first row, in the corner vs. the Flyers. I recall Danny Gare scoring multiple goals. Sometime I need to track down what game that was, I must have been maybe 8-9 years old. It's like a dream.)

Our 4th line reject has more goals then our current entire 4th line

LOL Thanks for that one!

He hasn't gotten shorter. :-)

I hear ya but Chara is also, likely, the strongest man in the NHL.

I'm all for some fisticuffs, but no. No one fights Chara. It's like a deathwish.

From Sabres.com...are we really gonna see Des and Grant in the line-up together? I just threw up in my mouth. Sabres projected lineupMatt Moulson -- Jack Eichel -- Kyle Okposo Marcus Foligno -- Ryan O'Reilly -- Sam Reinhart Evander Kane -- Johan Larsson -- Brian Gionta Zemgus Girgensons -- Derek Grant -- Nicolas Deslauriers Jake McCabe -- Rasmus Ristolainen Dmitry Kulikov -- Zach Bogosian Josh Gorges -- Cody Franson Robin Lehner Anders Nilsson Scratched: William Carrier, Justin Falk Injured: Tyler Ennis (groin), Cody McCormick (blood clots)

Well, to get to 100% they'd need a PDO of ~104% for a 10-15 game stretch. If that happened the GF% would go up quite a bit. I really hope that happens! (Could probably calculate it using an estimate of expected shots on goal and so forth but even though I am off work today I don't have THAT MUCH time on my hands. :rolleyes:) To me, both those guys are in the same mold - big, fast, hit hard, pretty good skill but don't have a 'high end' hockey sense so they end up out of position a lot, sometimes quite badly, which sort of negates the shock and awe of their speed and power. Would like to see Bogo paired with someone like...oh, I don't know...wait for it...maybe...Mark Pysyk! Actually, would like to see Bogo with Gorges on the 3rd pairing and Kukilov with Franson or Falk on the 2nd.

Roger that

I was looking at some fancy stats on Puckalytics.com. I don’t claim to be an expert in this area but it does interest me. Here’s some that jumped out at me today: Top 7 defensemen in terms of 5-on-5 ice-time Sorted by Goals For %, with on ice PDO listed as well. (GF% being what % of goals scored 5-on-5 were they on the ice for that Buffalo scored, and PDO being a measure of shooting % for and against with 100 being the long term average – so it’s a measure of ‘puck luck’ with numbers higher than 100 being lucky and below 100 being unlucky, implies a regression to the mean is coming at some point). I am not looking at any ‘quality of competition’ info here which obviously is important. GF% PDO Franson 58.6 102.1 McCabe 53.9 101.7 Falk 50.0 99.0 Risto 48.6 100.4 Gorges 43.5 99.3 Bogo 30.0 95.5 Kuli 28.6 96.5 Some references: Buffalo’s team average for GF% 5-on-5 is 48.3%. This is 19th in the league with Montreal in 1st at 62.0% and Colorado last at 37%. In 2015-16 Buffalo finished at 44.8%, and in 2014-2015 at 38.5%. Interpretations: -Franson and McCabe have been playing well but benefiting from PDO’s that will probably bring them down a bit in the future, especially Franson. McCabe is doing it with many more minutes and tougher competition (I expect). -Falk doesn’t appear to be hurting the team, which is what my eyeballs are saying too. -Risto is slightly above the team average which is actually a strong number since he plays such a huge number of minutes against the top competition. -Gorges is a bit sub-par, but we already knew that. Great on the 3rd pairing, not so much on 2nd pairing. -Bogosian and Kulikov – one the one hand, my God it’s bad. They appear to be getting absolutely caved in without generating any offense to speak of. I think that’s somewhat true. On the other hand, their sample sizes aren’t as large as others (due to missing so many games to injury) and their PDO’s are really low and should be expected to regress higher over time, raising the GF% numbers. But still, not pretty. (If these sort of posts are inappropriate for GDT’s someone please just let me know and I’ll look for other places to do so if I get the inclination)

Lehner tonight, Nilsson tomorrow? Or vice versa? Would sort of like to see Nilsson tonight.

I know, right? I didn't go back and look at each one but in at least two of them the other team didn't even need the 3rd shooter to win the SO. Of course 0 for 6 is a bad run and I expect some regression to the mean coming but our shooters are now 3 for 14 with one of those goals from Cal O'Reilly. Okposo leads at 0 for 5. Frankly speaking we are lucky to have won one of the 6 shootouts thus far.

Hard to work on improving the goalies in shootouts when the only shooters at hand for DD to send against them are ours! :wallbash:

Yes I'm joking. Lighten up, Frances

Lehner has played well shoot outs aside...he's a playoff goalie!

Can we replace Lehner with one of those cut outs that look like a goalie with the 5 openings for shootouts?

I'm just hoping they can get shots off before being poke checked away or having the puck roll on them. Also I'm expecting at least one puck randomly hits Lehner.

Well one point better than none.

Well this thing has gone south quickly