dudacek

They bring in two guys whose games line up in the physical side of the ledger and you think that means they will bump the puck-moving #4 who got 20 minutes a game instead of the stay-at home #5 who got 15? And not just from the starting lineup, you’ve got him all the way down to #8. if the starting 5 is what you expect, Jokiharju is more useful in the lineup than a 4th stay-at-home guy, no? Who’s carrying the puck on the 3rd pair? Or god forbid if Dahlin or Power gets hurt?

I guess the grind gets to us all. To be clear, I think your opinions are fair comment and I see where you’re coming from. I’m talking about what you choose to post about, and I’m just not seeing the hope here, sorry. If I missed the hopeful posts, please share.

I can see that working too. I continue to be surprised at the number of people who don’t see Jokiharju among this team’s 6 or even 7 defencemen. Its so unanimous now, I’m starting to 2nd-guess myself, but I don’t see how, if he was (way) ahead of Boosh and Stillman last year, he ends up behind them now?

I always thought Levi, Power as real 2D and Quinn as a legit top sixer were the keys to improvement next year. Looking at the lineup without Jack, I think a lot of pressure is mounting on Krebs to seize the 3C spot the way Cozens became a legit 2C last year.

I'm endorsing the job Adams is doing because i believe it will help us win now, not 3 years from now. That it will also help us win 3 years from now is a bonus. As for the rest of your post, I suspect we will both have the same opinions next year after the Sabres make the playoffs and fail to win it all. I think I will always find reasons to hope and you reasons not to. And you will always be right until they win it all.

Who are the smaller guys? Peterka and Skinner are 5'11" 190 pounds. Krebs is 6'" 185. They all get their noses dirty. I'll give you Olofsson. Every team has one. How many teams have a Dahlin, a 6'3" 215-pound *****-disturbing #1 defenceman? plus a 225-pound point-per game locomotive first-line winger like Tuch? and a 6'7" unstoppable tree like Thompson in the middle? That's right, nobody. Sabres' size advantage at the top of their lineup is a lethal weapon. It's time people around here recognized it.

I’m holding out hope for another move or two, but I’m more or less on board with @Thorny‘s take, save Stillman - there’s no way he’s starting over Johnson and Boosh given what I saw from Granato last year and heard from him last week. Who gets the Quinn slot to start is the biggest question. It should be Olofsson based on ability, but it should not be Olofsson based on fit. Having Vic in the lineup might really push Donnie to scramble things up. Would a Jost Girgs Vic spare parts line survive judicious 4th line matchups, with the latter 2 getting their ice on special teams? Because I don’t mind Kyle Peyton JJ as line 3.

I need to become the voice of truth for this: The Buffalo Sabres are poised to become a force because far and away the have the most talented group of big men in the NHL. I defy you to find a group of 6’3” players anywhere close to Thompson Tuch Cozens Dahlin and Power. We are a load!

These things are constantly shifting, but there is no doubt that last year he was a top 10 centre. Matthews was not better than him last year, neither was Crosby. Injury was the only thing making the case for Hughes and Pettersson. Stamkos, Malkin and Bergeron aren’t the players they were. There are smarter centres, but there is no one outside of McDavid and maybe MacKinnon who better combines stickhandling and shooting, or creates more a more challenging physical matchup for the defence. He needs to repeat to cement his status, but I have no problem putting him in my top 10.

That’s really the key to this defence, having at least one of those 2 on the ice 40 minutes a night is going to be a huge advantage. But I also think this summer Adams did to the defence what he did to the offence last summer: pushed the JAGs (Clague, Bryson, Stillman) out of the starting lineups. However they end up being used, Mule, Cliffy, Joker, EJ and Boosh are all legitimate NHL defencemen.

They did and I was wondering about that myself. Don't think it means much though; neither Power nor Rosen signed immediately the previous draft.

Looking over his numbers since he was a junior, I don’t know that Devon Levi has ever had what I’d call a slump. He’s had the odd off game and occasionally even sprinkled a few close together, but he has been incredibly resilient and consistent. Fingers crossed that will carry over to the Sabres.

Patches has already been working with Johnson and our other young D, so there should be a nice transition there. I guess we now need a new development coach. Prospal had a good NHL career and 3 years as a head coach in the Czech league. Smart, versatile player no idea of what sold him for this job. All the young Euros in the system may have been a consideration.

Detroit and Boston are #2 and #4 with 36 and 32, respectively. St. Paul is #3 at 34 and Minneapolis leads with 39. Buffalo is actually #6 with 22 (I was reading from a wrong column earlier), Chicago #5 with 24. St. Louis is behind both with 16. Thunder Bay Ont, population 108,000 stands out on the overall list with 96, good for #8. Toronto, predictably leads with 429, well ahead of #2 Montreal at 267

#1 and #4, respectively.

Lalor is the correct answer according to my source: https://www.quanthockey.com/nhl/city/nhl-players-career-stats.php?city_id=3731 Another interesting one is Buffalo is the 7th-ranked American city in terms of producing NHL players. Can anyone name the top 6?

Boston used all 6 defenceman a lot more than the Sabres, who played their top 2 a ton and their bottom 2 sparingly. Some of the disconnect goes to perception as to who/what your 3rd pair is, and to misperception about how often players actually play with their ”partner.” For example, most people on here would probably say JJ Peterka was a 2nd liner for Buffalo last year and Casey Mittelstadt was a 3rd liner, when Casey was actually the Sabres 5th forward and JJ the 10th in terms of average ice time. That’s probably because JJ played a lot with Cozens, who definitely was the 2C. But it ignores all those times when special teams or a shortened bench or line juggling meant that JJ wasn’t playing when Cozens was. On a per game basis, Clifton ranked 4th among Bruins defencemen, not including Orlov. By the measure of total ES ice time, he was 2nd. https://www.nhl.com/stats/skaters?report=timeonice&reportType=season&seasonFrom=20222023&seasonTo=20222023&gameType=2&playerPlayedFor=franchise.6&filter=gamesPlayed,gte,1&sort=evTimeOnIce&page=0&pageSize=50

Grelczyk got 17:14 a game, Clifton got 17:51 It was because of McAvoy’s Injury of course, but Clifton actually ranked 3rd on the Bruins in terms of total ice time last year, behind only Lindholm and Pastrnak.

Looks like he only played one full NHL season, but he played 12 years total with Montreal, St.Louis, Washington, Winnipeg, San Jose and Dallas. I think of him as a Hab and a Blue.

People around here talk all the time about “fixing the defence”. I don’t see much separation between the Sabres and any of the 4 teams around us in terms of the defence corps. Hedman Ekblad Dahlin Chabot Seider Sergachev Montour Power Chychrun Wallman Cernak Forsling Samuelsson Sanderson Gostisbehere Perbix Mikkola Clifton Zub Maatta Bogosian Ekman-Larsson Johnson Hamonic Chairot Fleury Mahura Jokiharju Brannstrom Holl Dehaan Kulikov Lyubushkin Bernard-Docker Lindstrom I also think our forwards stack up very well against that competition. Can Levi be as good as Bobrovsky, Husso, Korpisalo and Vasilevkiy? The first 3, why not? It’s certainly not a gimme, but this team, as it is currently constituted, has as good a chance as any of those 5 at grabbing a divisional playoff spot. I’m sick of thinking about Detroit and Ottawa. The goal in that room should be taking down Tampa.

Maybe the Sabres belong more with the Florida teams - who, on paper, regressed this off-season - than Ottawa and Detroit.

Copy editing died with the internet. Some readers demand better writing, but few are willing to pay for it. We get what the market supports.

On the most successful regular season team in NHL history, Clifton was a 4 who dropped to 5 after they picked up Orlov. On the Colorado Stanley Cup championship playoff run, Eric Johnson was the 5. It seems to me hockey fans think there are about 20 1st-pairing defencemen and maybe 50 guys who are top 4.

No… …and yes! He was on the 2002 Salt Lake Olympic team. I have no memory of that. Only one more to go. Stanley Cup winning stay-at-home D, played for 6 different NHL teams in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

One of these guys won a Stanley Cup in the ‘80s. The other was an Olympic silver medallist.