dudacek

See, I feel the same way about Hart as you feel about Demko. And that’s the thing about goalies, I think we all have our perceptions based on our exposure and our biases as to what makes a goalie good, and very few of us are watching these other guys night after night after night. I mean we’ve all watched UPL and Comrie pretty intently this year and I’m willing to bet there is no consensus on this board as to who is better. Listening to Marty Biron it’s clear he prefers Comrie and he clearly knows more about goaltending than me. But I don’t see it, and the numbers clearly back me up. Statistics aren’t real helpful. You prefer Hart by a wide margin, I prefer Demko by a wide margin. Statistically there is no reason to support either of us. Statistically, Demko has played 156 NHL games for a mostly mediocre team and has a 2.92 GAA and a .915 SV % while Hart has played 194 games for a mostly mediocre team with a 2.97 GAA and a .905 SV %. Each has had one outlier abbreviated season with poor numbers. The sure bets aren’t on the market. It’s a bit of a crap shoot with the next tier, the guys we’ve been talking about. Are they safe enough to be worth paying a high price? I don’t want to be paying Kulich for Hart and I don’t see any reason for the Flyers to take Rosen for him. Is there a happy medium? And after those guys, are they are they really any better bets than Levi and UPL?

Can you imagine what Devon Levi coming in now and leading the team on a run into the playoffs would do for the business side of the operations? The kid has a natural magnetism regardless, but allowing it to resonate under those circumstances…

How many NHL goalies can anyone safely predict will be flat out good next year? (I guess that's why GMs don't invest huge assets in trading for them)

Another nugget to chew on: Hart's career SV pct is .905. UPL's is .901.

Related, but separate thought to my previous post, another thing I hadn't really considered: If Carter Hart can put up a .914 season as a 21-year-old 1st-time NHL starter in Philly, and Thatcher Demko can put up .915 as a 25-year-old 1st-time NHL starter in Vancouver, is it unreasonable to think Devon Levi or UPL can't do something similar next year in Buffalo?

I hadn't really considered that he was approaching the goaltending position differently than others. Now that you bring it up, I just automatically assumed his approach would be the same to each roster position. Thinking out loud, it may be that his struggles in the crease are the result of thinking UPL and Devon Levi are on similar tracks to their peers on forward and defence, when their runways are much longer and their landings much harder to stick: basically he's isn't approaching it differently, and maybe he should?

The way you’ve come around on Quinn since the draft warms my heart.

Pretty sure Ullmark was the only instance we know for sure Adams declined to pay the price. The Murray deal was killed by Murray not Adams, and rumours of the Gibson deal suggest the same. We also just saw Adams overpay for Greenway, paying the price to get him now, when Minny still had use for him, as opposed to later, when they would be forced by the cap to trade him and he may have been available for less. Bill Guerin made it pretty clear Adams stepped up to make that deal happen, and Greenway’s agent’s comments today to Marty and Duffer seem to support that. I don’t there is any kind of track record established that he’s strictly a budget shopper.

No, actually, I think Im more aligned with your way of thinking, that an overpay is OK under the circumstance if it gets us closer to our goal. It’s more the degree of overpay I was reacting to. The market dictates a top-of-the-line proven goalie is worth, at the most, 2/3s of what’s being offered. And that’s on top of the fact Hart is demonstrably far more projection than top-of-the-line goalie. Make your overpay a little closer to market, or save it for a better bet, like a Saros. I look at at Perreault’s offer as kinda like offering 2 firsts for Casey Mittlestadt because you loved him as a prospect and he seems to be coming into his own this year. It’s not inconceivable he could turn into a 60-point scorer and justify the price, but wouldn’t you be better off using those assets to buy a Sam Reinhart or a Bo Horvat? Or get a Anthony Beauvillier for a 2nd?

You guys are insane. Never mind how good he is or not, doesnt anyone pay attention to the market?

Giving up 2 firsts and a 2nd would make him the most expensive goalie ever acquired this century -and by the degree of a 1st round pick at minimum. More than Ryan Miller, more than Roberto Luongo, more than anyone. Not a bad return for a guy with a career .905 save percentage.

Prefer Demko, but Hart’s contract status works and his talent an upgrade. Would not give up this year’s first for him.

And when they aren’t burying guys, they think they aren’t using their size. Greenway looked pretty powerful in every battle I saw him in.

Had a moment last night watching our 2nd unit PP that floored me: Mitts was the most experienced player on the ice, at 24, with 261 NHL games under his belt. Krebs: just turned 22, 119 games Quinn: 21, 61 games Peterka: just turned 21, 64 games Power: 20, 71 games And we’ve got 22-year-old Dahlin and 21-year-old Cozens on the 1st unit. The youngest guy on the Leafs PP was Matthews, who is 14 months older than Mittelstadt.

This is what I shake my head at: Since when is 54 points to 75 points to 88ish points over two years slow? It’s significant, real, measurable improvement.

Intriguing column from former Canuck and Devil employee Rachel Doerrie on how things really work inside NHL organizations. https://thehockeynews.com/news/when-an-nhl-gm-becomes-a-dartboard

Tommers was fighting so hard to get through the blanket they were trying to put on him tonight. He’s not a guy who shuts down when the competition ratchets up. He’s still learning how to beat tough defence, but he’s got the mental toughness to make it happen. Jokiharju with another outstanding game: 4 hits +2, 27 minutes. It feels like Sabrespace only notices him when something doesn’t work and takes for granted what he does well.

Dudley was hard to replace

Yes, in June everyone knew the six best Sabres would all simultaneously have career years, so the brain trust ignored all the fantastic goalies lining up to come to Buffalo and targeted the most milquetoast goalie they could find in order to not raise expectations too much. That’s certainly what I would have done under the same circumstances. Who wouldn’t?

Can’t remember the last winger this franchise has had who combines size, strength, skill, character and likability the way Alex Tuch does. I was surprised but a little skeptical of how good he was last spring. But he’s been all that and a lot more this season. He’s far better than I ever thought he could be. My god, did Adams ever make a 5-star meal out of the ***** sandwich that was the Eichel situation.

The very nature of the type of game Granato wants to play screams for an athletic goalie who excels at making saves in high danger situations as opposed to a shot-blocking systems goalie who excels at not making mistakes. (Fights the urge to check and see if anybody has left Northeastern in the past hour.)

Oh he’s under contract and definitely will be in the mix. He’s also shown in the past that he can be better than his performance this year has shown. It’s just the idea that someone who has performed to the level he has this year might not be targeted for an upgrade that makes people twitchy. At least people who care about making the playoffs.

The book on him as a Sabre might be unfinished, but it’s not unknown. In his 17 games he has not proven himself to be an NHL caliber goalie. He has done no more to suggest he should get a shot to carry the load next year than Dustin Tokarski did last year.

I had a goal for this season of not getting too invested in what I called “Armchair GMing” - “why aren’t they doing this? They need more of that” and simply try to enjoy the games in and of themselves as entertainment and focus on appreciating the things that I like. Stepped back from posting as much for a long stretch to help myself with the process. Can’t say I’ve always been successful, but I’ve tried, and for the most part this team has given me the most fun of any Sabres team in years. It’s interesting to me that we’ve used almost the identical phrase to describe what seem to be exactly the opposite approaches. In retrospect your phrasing is better. In answer to your question: for me, results of the whole matter now, but they matter less than improvement from the pieces. At some point those items are going to trade places, but I don’t think that was ever going to be this year.

This is painfully cynical and the fact that many of you seem to buy into it as a major motivating factor in the decision-making process makes me sad.