dudacek

I'm curious as to how they're going to line up at centre ice. I think Osltund is inked as the 1C and Leschsyshyn and Dunne should get two of the other spots. But will Kozak be there as a 3rd defensive centre? Will Savage be the 4C if Kozak makes the Sabres? Or will Wahlberg or Helenius be moved back to the middle? I'm hoping its Helenius and he and Östlund take turns leading the offence.

All valid concerns and I have shared them myself. I wonder how much of "experience" is age, how much is in-game NHL experience, pro hockey experience, practice repetition, mental maturity, physical maturity, exposure to and comfort with NHL routine and lifestyle...so many variables. But there is no doubt this group needs more experience.

It will be interesting. Debrincat wasn’t invited, Robertson wasn’t on the 4 Nations team and Conner was benched 4 nations, so USAHockey may like those guys less than you do. I think Tage is U.S.A.’s 2nd best scorer and Tuch exactly the type I’d want in my bottom 6 so they’d be on my team🤷 But Ill be rooting for Canada so more Chris Kreisler please.

Jokiharju was a square peg last year. He’s gone. Clifton was objectively terrible last year. He’s gone. The biggest need was a physical RHD who could play 2nd pair minutes. Kesselring appears to be exactly that. The Sabres sucked at xGoals last year. They added 2 D in Kess and Timmins who measured very well in that stat. Dahlin is elite and he and Byram were analytically an elite first pair. Power should have better partners supporting him. Byram and Power are very talented and now have enough experience where it should start to show through. Samuelsson can and should be better, will be playing in a lesser role, and is coming in with a lot to prove. The defence corps is among the league’s biggest and can skate very well. The pieces seem to fit together in a way they never did with Bryson, Jokiharju and Clifton. Johnson and Novikov are close and might be ready to be better depth options than Bryson. I realize there remains projection involved and the coaching could be an obstacle, but I am more bullish on this D corps than any other aspect of the team. It could be legitimately good.

Longshot but a very interesting pickup. He’s a UsNDtp grad and played in Michigan state last year so right in their wheelhouse. Brian Savages son, and a D-first hardworking centre with history of wearing letters. Shoulder injury ended his senior year and might have cost him an NHL contract offer.

I hope this matters: the 23/24 Sabres had 7 players in their first 3 seasons (Quinn, Peterka, Power, Samuelsson, Luukkonen, Krebs, Benson) and 5 players in their prime (Tuch (27), Greenway (26), Clifton (28), Girgensons (29), Thompson (25)) getting regular minutes The 25/26 Sabres have 3 players in their first 3 seasons (Benson, Doan, Kulich) and 8 players in their prime (Tuch (29), Greenway (28), Dahlin (25), Thompson (27), Norris (26), Luukkonen (26), Samuelsson (25), McLeod (25)) expected to get regular minutes. (Kesslering at 25 and in his 3rd year could be classified either way)* The average age is still too low, but the maturity of the key players should be improved.

We're talking the kinda leap that doesn't happen too often right? A player stepping into the upper echelon of the league and leading a notable improvement in results and/or hope? Like Tage in 23, Briere in 06, Hasek in 94? I don' think anyone on the roster has that in him, but I guess that's built in to the question. I kinda expect Power, Benson and Quinn taking leaps, but not to that high a level. Best bet is Levi.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6562358/2025/08/20/nhl-front-office-confidence-rankings-2025/

Kevyn Adams. Imagine that moment in April when he smirks into the camera and says "I told you so." 😈

Damn that 2nd post was fantastic. Im clearly past my prime. Trade me to another board and give me my cup.

No, I’m talking about how I absolutely wanted that team blown up and you didn’t. I don’t want to revisit that discussion but it’s a fundamental disagreement that I think is fueled largely by our perception of that year.

91 points had many if us on thinking we were on the brink of the suffering being over (it has Montreal fans thinking cup contention. Six points less and we wanted Adams and Granato launched into the sun. Objectively 6 points are three bounces or borderline calls, but what matters is how you feel,

It’s about bad on top of bad. We’ve kinda had this conversation before: you kinda hand wave 2021 as a quirk of the pandemic, I consider it one of the 2 worst years of my Sabre fandom. We judge Adams through those two different lenses.

I’ve clarified, but I’m not sure it matters to the point: wins and losses matter, but what matters more is how the team makes you feel. Montreal fans like their team more than Torontos right now.

It can’t be results because the Sabres are coming off their best 3-year run of the past 15 years. Posted mostly tongue in cheek, but the above is straight up factual. 2011-13 was marginally better. The current run is also better than 02-04 and about the same as 06-08. In terms of regular season results, this group feels worse than it is.

It's not anything more than marketing. They sold the tank, they sold Eichel and Bylsma, they sold Botterill and Housley, they sold Dahlin, the sold Krueger and Taylor Hall, they sold Granato and his blinding light brigade, the sold the return of Lindy. Pro sports is sold on hope: when things don't work you press the reset button and sell the new beginning. They've run out of things to sell and they've given up trying. The fans are at the point they aren't going to buy anything other than wins.

I saw/heard rumblings from one or two local sources that the Sabres had talked to at least one person about joining the coaching staff but those discussions fizzled. I wouldn’t call it a “report” and what the persons role was going to be and whether it would involve replacing anyone was unclear. seemed pretty vague at the time and my recollection of it is vague as well. If someone has a link it would be appreciated.

Pet game day thread peeve of mine: The guy who rips the defence man after other team scores on the PP with a “left the guy wide open” Like WTF man, it’s a PK, did you think he was playing man-to-man?

Oddly enough (and probably surprising to some) the most effective PKer of the Sabres regulars last year was Owen Power. He allowed 6.18 PP goals against per 60 Clifton 8.08 Byram 9.68 Samuelsson 11.83 were the other guys with over 100 minutes. Timmins had more then 100 minutes at 6.92 Kesselring didn’t qualify. League median would be about 7.8

When you’ve failed as regularly and consistently as the Buffalo Sabres have you don’t get the benefit of the doubt. Especially when your signature off-season move is trading the remaining bright jewel in a fading collection of young forwards for a couple of unproven and unheralded young support pieces. There’s a general consensus among hockey-watchers that general manager Kevyn Adams is in over his head and a growing concern that the game has passed venerable coach Lindy Ruff by. This was the often disorganized team that allowed more goals than all but three NHL franchises last year and attacked that problem by bringing back a struggling starter who lost his net down the stretch, along with its entire failed coaching staff. This was the immature and fragile bunch who responded to a perceived lack of veteran savvy by adding 4 skaters who average 140 career NHL games among them. Last season crashed on the rocks of a 13-game December losing streak where Ruff openly acknowledged his players where not who he had thought they were, Adams failed to react with any significant action, and goaltender Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen broke under the strain. The rest of the year basically served as an audition where Ruff attempted to sort through what worked and what didn’t and Adams began the process of re-setting, specifically jettisoning perceived building block forwards Dylan Cozens and JJ Peterka from a group that had shown so much promise just two years before. The Sabres aren’t without talent, and that starts on the blue line, where Rasmus Dahlin, Owen Power, Bowen Byram, Michael Kesselring, Mattias Samuelsson and Conor Timmins are as toolsy as any NHL starting six in terms of size, skill and skating ability. But other than Dahlin — who has truly become a world-class blue liner — it’s an unproven collection of talent that has largely failed to realize its potential on an individual level. Perhaps Kesselring, the key piece in the Peterka return, can be the missing piece to unlock the group’s potential? Scoring goals hasn’t been a problem for this iteration of the team, but there is the question of whether that will remain true with the departure of Peterka, an offensive finisher and driver who was not replaced. With Thompson’s move to wing likely permanent, how will they fill the hole at centre? Certainly Thompson is an elite goal scorer and Alex Tuch a legit all-round power forward, but will Ryan McLeod and Jason Zucker repeat their excellent seasons? Can the talented Josh Norris stay healthy enough to be an upgrade over Cozens? Will any of the gifted but callow group of Zach Benson, Jiri Kulich, Jack Quinn and newcomer Josh Doan take a step? Is there enough ‘hard-to-play-against’ in the depth collection of Beck Malenstyn, Peyton Krebs, Jordan Greenway, Tyson Kozak and 30-something addition Justin Danforth? Luukkonen was excellent in the back half of 2023/24 to earn the starter’s net and the contract to go with it, but faltered badly down the stretch this season after being unable to stop the bleeding in December. Newcomer Alex Lyon is a battler and a viable stopgap, but he’s not the answer. Devon Levi might be eventually, but he wasn’t last year and seems almost certain to start the season in Rochester. Uncertainty in net has been an Adams trademark since he let Linus Ullmark walk in his rookie season. Statistically the Sabres got some of the league’s worst goaltending last year, but it’s hard to fully blame the goalies when their environment was so awful most of the time. So much of goaltending depends on the skaters – forwards and defensemen — making good decisions with the puck and adhering to the structure of the system and the Sabres were among the league’s worst last year in terms of allowing high-danger chances. Can the roster tweaks combine with a year of coaches and players adjusting to each other yield significant defensive improvement? Is the collection of talent in the crease enough to take advantage if they do? The Sabres are apparently counting on it. Sure, it does seem like the Sabres have made some incremental improvements in areas where they needed it: roster construction, grit, defence. But incremental is incremental, and incremental is not what is called for when you need to make up a 12-point playoff gap, especially in the wake of two years of decline on top of 12 years of relentless, pulverizing losing. What it all adds up to is that — in a market bereft of it — the Sabres seem to once again be pinning their improvement largely on hope. And in the words of their most veteran skater, Zucker, hope is a ***** strategy.

Finding ways it could work is kinda what I do around here and I hope I never get to the point where that stops. I don't agree with all the nuance above, but I absolutely agree with the overarching theme. I wrote something a few days ago trying to capture my pragmatic view of the off-season. I was going to use it as a thread-starter, but I might as well post it here because it fits..

I don’t really care about top-loading a 1st line, or a traditional hierarchy, just give me lines that can win their matchups.

I don’t think there’s any way to argue the Sabres didn’t look like a poorly coached team last year. It’s the thing most likely to hold them back this year and the reason I think the most likely outcome of the season is a mid-season bloodletting of the brain trust. The decision not to do it in April will likely not only cost the team this season, but also the next few as the new regime restarts the painful (and what should have been unnecessary) process of rebooting the core.

We want the team to be better defensively and harder to play against, right? Here are some statistical comparisons (all #s 5-on-5, green=Sabres got better, red=Sabres got worse) Cozens/Norris TOI: 17:04/18:21 DZone starts 10.8% /15.4% Shot attempts against per 60: 60.56/60.94 xGA per 60: 2.89/2.63 Hits: 187/124 Blocked shots: 35/34 Takeaways 12/9 Faceoffs 52.1%/54.6% Peterka/Doan TOI: 18:11/13:31 DZone starts: 10%/8.7% Shot attempts against per 60: 61.53/47.66 xGA per 60: 3.0/2.0 Hits: 27/45 Blocked shots: 14/14 Takeaways: 18/10 Lafferty/Danforth TOI: 9:53/14:23 DZone starts 11.4%/13.8% Shot attempts against per 60: 57.82/60.44 xGA per 60: 2.55/2.64 Hits 84/125 Blocked shots: 16/31 Takeaways 5/7 Faceoffs 50.4%/50.5% Jokiharju/Kesselring TOI: 17:50/17:41 DZone starts 10.7/9.06 Shot attempts against per 60: 54.79/55:07 xGA per 60: 2.54/2.35 Hits 44/82 Blocked shots: 44/65 Takeaways 12/20 Clifton/Timmins TOI: 16:03/16:55 DZone starts: 11.9%/9.2% Shot attempts against per 60: 63.39/56.56 xGA per 60: 2.79/2.5 Hits: 180/55 Blocked shots: 81/79 Takeaways: 23/11

I'm very much in favour of adding a reliable veteran top six forward. I was just replying to @Archie Lee's hypothetical. That said, like @Weave I'm not sure Mittelstadt fits that profile. And I think you are missing out on the reality that there is internal competition. Of course I'd rather have another Norris-level player in that 4th forward spot and push somebody into the press box with Malenstyn. But look at what they do have. Everyone acknowledges Norris, Tuch and Thompson as top 6 forwards, but they forget that Jason Zucker and Ryan McLeod were both reliable plus players who each played 16 minutes a game and topped 20 goals and 50 points. I know you disagree, but by objective statistical measures, they were legitimate 2nd liners. There is one spot up for grabs in the top six and at least three high-pedigree young players — Kulich, Benson, Quinn — competing for it. Maybe Doan makes four. You do only "need" one of the group to break out. If two of them bust out, you are pushing a legitimate 2nd-liner on to your 3rd line. And McLeod and Zucker aren't just going to hand over their ice time. To me, that looks like the definition of internal competition. Taking it a step further: Danforth, Krebs, Greenway and Doan are 2-way players who all played 3rd line minutes last year. Add in two of Kulich, Quinn and Benson and you get 6 players fighting for 3rd-line minutes and three guys capable of 3rd line minutes on your 4th line. Again, that looks to me like more internal competition. And it also looks like depth. I'm not saying this group is good, or even good enough. I am saying there is enough depth and internal competition to give the coach options. The fact of the matter is, you don't even need any of these players to break out statistically. Their production from last year adds up to a playoff-calibre offence. You need them to take care of their own zone. Let's hope the coaching staff gives the ice time to the ones that do.