dudacek

I love me some Jack Quinn, but the answer has to be Owen Power. He's going to go from 'damn that kid's going to be so good,' to 'damn, that kid is good!"

You're even more right than you think: Girgensons and Okposo were on that team as well, even if Girgs blew his achilles (?) and was unavailable.

So one of the very best goalies in the league, so long as we can get him in a quantity deal that doesn’t include giving up an NHL player, or one of our best prospects, or us falling out the first round?

Skating, passing, scoring, stickhandling, hockey sense, forechecking, agitating, driving offence, tilting the ice, transitions… You really need to take off your “Sabres suck” filter sometimes. You just finished rolling your eyes at re-signing Girgensons and now you’re advocating signing Nosek, who is basically an older Girgensons with worse size, worse offence and worse possession skills? But hey, he can win faceoffs, even if he can do squat with the puck after winning them.

So, not really?

Krebs is the 3C of the future and will be better than Stepan or Nosek from day one this year.

The Sabres forward depth chart last year based on total ice time: Thompson Tuch Skinner Cozens Mitts Okposo Olofsson Peterka Quinn Girgensons Krebs Jost Hinostroza Asplund It’s really interesting to compare that to how it looked down the stretch: Skinner Cozens Mitts Krebs Quinn Thompson Okposo Tuch Girgensons Peterka Greenway Olofsson Jost Hinostroza The above is for the final 24 games and it’s twisted by Thompson missing 4 games to injury and Tuch and Greenway 7. If you do it by per game played it goes: Tuch Thompson Skinner Cozens Mitts Krebs Quinn Okposo Greenway Peterka Olofsson Hinostroza Girgensons Jost The most interesting thing to me is how much more Donnie leaned on Krebs down the stretch. Hinostroza only played 6 games. The Sabres went 11/10/3 over that period.

Better than Barrasso, better than Vernon and better than Turgeon. At least his omission is starting to get attention, unlike an even more glaring snub: Rick Martin, who was arguably the best left wing of his era.

I feel like I'm arguing against myself, but I have to give the counterpoint: I think you're giving too much credit Hill's relative NHL experience as significant when it really amounts to two seasons as a full-time NHL backup to Comrie's one. Regardless: Laurent Brossoit had a resume no better than Hill's: 106 pedestrian games as an NHL backup. And Logan Thompson was an undrafted prospect with 20 NHL and 50 AHL games to his name. For context, not one of them had ever had an NHL season as good as Comrie had in his last year in Winnipeg. At the start of the season, Hill wasn't a fallback, he was one 3 questionable goalies Vegas tossed into the deep end with their fingers crossed at least one could swim. I don't see much difference at all with what Adams did last year with Anderson, Comrie and UPL. At least this year he has Levi's talent to add to his hope chest. I'm not talking bang for your buck in terms of winning trades, I'm talking what the analytics say about investing your cap space or your resources heavily in "elite" or "proven" goalies rather than Adin HIlls and Devon Levis. Does the same logic that has stopped GMs from picking goalies high in the draft any more apply: the risk/reward is too variable?

To be clear, I agree with this. I am just starting to wonder if the facts are against us. There is nothing in the resume of Adin Hill prior to this season to suggest he was any more capable of winning the Stanley Cup than Eric Comrie. Jordan Binnington was just another Dustin Tokarski before he got hot. Stuart Skinner was (and maybe still is) Ukko Pekka Luukkonen. Hellebuyck, Vasilevskiy and Saros might be the 3 best goalies in hockey. They combined for 3 playoff wins and an .880 save percentage. As poor as Buffalo’s goaltending was last year, the missed the playoffs by one point, and that was with just three good NHL defencemen, two of which had played less than 60 NHL games. You don’t think our fancy analytics team has run the numbers on goalies and their actual bang for the buck? Maybe Kevyn knows something we don’t.

Agreed. He’ll be working with Fox, Trouba and Miller in New York. In front of Shesterkin.

Nobody has Morin anywhere near the top 13 but he is in the 2ndry tier of defencemen who might fit the “surprised no is talking about him higher” comment Forton made. Highly skeptical he’s the guy at 13. At 39, sure. I wonder what the other comment was that has Wawrow making that connection.

I think “OK with the 3-goalie system” is just code for “I’m not going to let it force me into a bad trade”. Two years ago he went Anderson Dell Tokarski let the chips fall where they may and it didn’t bite him. Last year it was Anderson Comrie UPL and it did, barely. He clearly loves Levi. Adin Hill just won the Stanley Cup. Linus Ullmark is about to win the Vezina. Maybe goalies are just like running backs: collect a bunch of them, someone will get hot? I’m like the rest of you: I want a reliable guy who doesn’t cost too much. I’m starting to wonder if that’s a unicorn.

Poor Peca. In all seriousness, Housley did a good job with Nashville’s blueliners under Laviolette and Peca seems to work well with young forwards. Given Lavi’s unfortunate competence and the early boost he provides, I’m not expecting the Rangers to backslide next year.

You seem to be the most conservative poster on here when it comes to trades. What I mean is pretty much every goalie who comes up for discussion either costs too much in assets, has/wants a contract you’re not interested in, or isn’t good enough. Is there any goalies out there you think are worth pursuing?

Adams has become in incredibly adept at these things in talking philosophy without talking meat. "We've told Tyson Jost we want him back" for one year and at a pay cut "For Russians, it's about specific situations and the information that's available" for example Michkov only wants to play for Washington or us so we are desperately trying to move up ahead of the Caps. "We're comfortable with three goalies" but only until I can flip Comrie or UPL for fair value.

As Thompson showed, there’s a difference between a breakout year and a career year. Skinner, IMO, just had a career year. We’ll have to see which one Tuch, Mitts, Dahlin and Cozens had. Im reasonably certain UPL, Power, Mule, Quinn, Krebs, and Peterka have more to give. Also hopeful Greenway and Levi are additions that will be improvements over the guys they are replacing (Anderson and Olofsson) Girgs, Okposo, Boosh, Joki, Bryson, Stillman, Jost had neither breakout, nor career years. And I expect, at the very least, we will be adding a competent defenceman.

Well, you do seem to know negative better than most...😜

Yep. I do pay about $200 a year to watch every Sabre game streaming.

I never thought Greenway on the 4th line was a thing. You don’t pay players $3.5 million or give up 2nd round picks for them with the intention of playing them in the #11 slot.

Yes, it would be nice to have a 3rd liner from a 112-point team on our 4th line. These guys were 4th-line regulars on some of the best teams in the east this year: AJ Greer, Pat Maroon, Zac Dalpe, Derek Stepan, Nathan Bastian.

Maybe I phrased it poorly, but to me the implication of your post is that the forward group wasn't good enough with Okposo and Girgensons and that we aren't going to be good enough icing a team that includes them as regulars. You said $5 million that could have been used on a good 3rd line centre, but they still have $5 million available to use on a good 3rd line centre. their signings don't preclude that from happening. A 3rd line centre makes Jost redundant, not Z and KO. They signed those two to provide leadership, defence and boardwork from the bottom of the roster. To me they are as good in that role as any and better than most. And how were you planning on upgrading the 4th line left wing position?

Why do you hate the current forward group so much? I look at last year’s forward group and see a lot of big forwards with good overall speed and compete and a ton of scoring ability. I’d like to see more defensive awareness and physical strength, which they have tried to address with Greenway. I see Tage, Tuch, Skinner, Cozens, Mitts Okposo and Girgensons all properly slotted and good at their roles. I see improvement needed from Quinn, Peterka, Krebs, Greenway, Olofsson and Jost in theirs. The 1st four are all certainly capable of growth. I think their growth would go a long way toward addressing the flaws of the corps. I want all of them on my team and in the starting lineup. I would like to see Olofsson and Jost removed from the starting 12 in favour of a player or players who add more edge, responsibility and/or PK ability (plus hopefully the ability to take faceoffs) to the 3rd or 4th line. In short, I’m OK with running most of last year’s forwards back because I think the forward corps is very nearly there. Goalie and defence are a different story.

The idea that Okposo and Girgensons are somehow to blame for the team being bad while they’ve been here, or that the team can’t be good if they are here, is just something I can’t get my head around.

Wouldn’t surprise me if he had a number of prospects he’d package all three for and kept offering them as long as one of them was still available.