dudacek

This raises some good questions. Its obvious that Granato and Adams have adopted a pretty steadfast approach in terms of how they want to manage the psychology of the team in order to shake off the malaise of the past decade. Does that approach only take us so far? Will adjustments be needed? When? Was Dallas an example of when they should adjust, or a test of their resolve? Talking strictly people management here, not hockey tactics.

Dahlin is a true one now, but he certainly wasn’t two years ago. I said this before, but this board glosses over the flaws of Samuelsson and Power in their slots in a way it does not with Jokiharju and Lyubushkin. Mule and Owen flash being good 2/3s but they are not yet good, consistent ones.

See others have addressed the space issue, so I’ll add that with space come opportunity, which is what young goalies need more that anything. These guys not only need a team, they need to play regularly for that team in order to develop. What teams tend to try to do is a version of this: the 24-year-old moves up to the big club, the 22-year-old moves into a prominent role with the minor league team, the 20-year-old plays in college or Europe and you pick another one to move in behind them. If you’ve got 3 20-year-olds it’s going to be hard to to sign and develop them all. Doesnt mean you can’t pick them and only sign the best of them 2 years later though. Another thing is the quality of goalies available in the draft. The Sabres hinted the reason they reached on Leinonen last year was the lack of goalies available who had NHL potential. In the 4th and 5th rounds you want to be picking a guy with some NHL potential and you literally might think the best goalies left do not have that potential. This will slowly gain momentum until it is fixed. The Sabres play the way they do by choice. They also have a history of overreaction: have they overreacted to the extreme defend mode of Ralph by adopting an extreme attack mode under Donnie. Will that ultimately prove his downfall, or is it part of a process and a slow course correction is coming?

Agree with the size bias, but this isn’t the only chart Levi ranks well-down on. He seems to have as many skeptics as fans. And these aren’t reporters, what I like about the Hockey News list is it comes from polling hockey executives and scouts. As usual, the polling is done around the WJC and gets coloured through that lens. Levi is going to prove a lot of hockey people wrong.

The other thing is that it’s been a long time - 2015 - since a goalie was moved for even as much as a first. NHL GMs seem very untrusting and gunshy these days when it comes to trading for goalies.

Been having the goalie conversation with a Canuck fan buddy, who is buying in to the current hype in this market that the Canucks could get 2 1sts and a top prospect for Thatcher Demko. Was trying to burst his bubble so I looked up the best-ever returns in a goalie trade in the last decade or more: Roberto Luongo for Jacob Markstrom and Shawn Matthias Ryan Miller for the 25th pick and Will Carrier (roughly) Martin Jones (!) for the 13th pick and Sean Kuraly Robin Lehner for the 21st pick Corey Schneider for the 9th pick Could not find another deal that netted a 1st-round value. So goalies rarely cost too much - just once have they ever netted a Savoie quality prospect, and that was straight across, Schnieder for Bo Horvat Luongo and Miller were elite Saros-quality goalies when they moved. The other three were younger and generally considered emerging studs.

Hockey News Future Watch is out. Sabres are ranked as the 4th best pool behind New Jersey, Anaheim and Detroit. Our top 5 prospects are: Kulich (15th overall) Savoie (28) Östlund (55) Rosen (73) Luukkonen (NR) Levi was our 7th-ranked prospect and also failed to crack the top 100 overall. I counted 6 goalies in the top 100, with Wallstedt as the highest-ranked at #8 overall. Johnson was 6, Poltapov 8, Kisakov 9 and Portillo 10

Levi does have something special, but that doesn’t preclude adding a real goalie. All it precludes is adding a real goalie with a huge amount of term. If you have to dump the vet at a loss because Levi pushed past him, no one around here is going to be crying about that. Same goes with UPL and or Comrie. This isn’t like a David Perron blocking a JJ Peterka from a middle-six role, this is about the starting goalie: the best man wins.

I don’t know for sure, but your point is a good one, there aren’t many and it’s been awhile. This is Levi’s 3rd post-draft season. Carter Hart played 31 games in his D3 year. Spencer Knight played 32 in his, after playing 4 in his D2 year. They’re the most recent comparables to Levi that I can think of.

He’s not ready to be a #1 and I’m not sure he ever will be. Developed properly, I haven’t written him off as an NHLer though. Hope Levi gets a good look down the stretch. Failing that, I hope UPL gets 2/3rds of the starts left and gives us a good sense of what he might be for next year. Comrie and Anderson aren’t the answer now, nor will they be in the future.

i think it's more like they were too emotionally invested in the Islanders game and too emotionally immature to put it past them.

I'm not sure what you're arguing? That Comrie should have been pulled with 10 minutes left when it was 7-3? Because he would have been less embarrassed? And/or because the team would have been more embarrassed? To be clear, I don't really care that he did or he didn't. I was just curious if anyone had seen it happen that late in the game. It probably has, I just don't remember it.

It is interesting that this is how the team has responded to Adams emotional declaration of faith last Friday: an inspired win over Tampa a well-played tight loss to Edmonton where they got goalied. a frustrating 1-goal loss where they seem to be tight and struggled with adversity tonight where they completely fell apart It's funny, I more or less felt like Tuesday blew our chances. After being able to shake off adversity more often than not, they played tonight like they agreed

The bold wasn't my question. As for your other point, I agree entirely.

Personally, I'm done with Comrie. Not because of tonight, but because of the body of work. 17 games played and just 5 starts where he's had a SV% above the bare-minimum Mendoza line of .900. The guy's had 10 starts - well over half his games - where he's had a SV% under .880! Has that ever happened in the past 25 years? We've had far better performances from goalies on far worse teams. Sure there are plenty of other issues to fix, but that one is blindingly obvious and it is fixable. He ain't it. It's beyond debatable.

Has anyone ever seen an uninjured goalie replaced with 10 minutes left in the game? It was 5-3 with just over 10 minutes left. Maybe it was "cruel" to Comrie. It also would have been cruel to the backup to put him there.

Botterill gets no credit for Dahlin or Thompson or anyone else playing well on the current team given how how those players performed when he was in charge. The NHL is not a video game. A GM is not simply responsible for acquiring talent, he is responsible for developing talent and fostering an environment that allows talent to succeed. Botterill was a miserable failure.

The Sabres tried to address the first issue by acquiring Chychrun. They failed, but I assume they will try again. The fact that Owen Power and Mattias Samuelsson are not yet “good” 2/3s is frequently glossed over here because of how good they are considering their inexperience. Getting them that experience, along with addressing the first issue should go a long way to addressing the 2nd issue. Acquiring Riley Stillman is an attempt to address the 3rd issue. I hope signing Ryan Johnson will be another step in that direction. And I hope signing Johnson and acquiring a few more young defenceman over the summer will help solve the final issue. I’ve never disagreed any of these things are issues, I just think people need to recognize that solving them takes time.

I agree. There are four separate issues that are bleeding into the same conversation: The fact the Sabres are short one good 2nd pairing guy on the NHL roster. The current inability of the Sabres current 2/3/4/5 guys to play up in the lineup when someone above them is hurt The inability of our 6/7 guys to play up the lineup at all The lack of prospects we can project into filling any of those holes, made worse in the eyes of some by Ryan Johnson's status (both ability and contract) That's part of the reason why I posted this over here. I wanted to concentrate on the last issue.

Posting here instead of the trade defenceman thread since it fits better. Context is why I’m not overly worried about the number of defencemen Adams has taken high (first 2 rounds)in the draft since he took over. In 2020, he was entering a situation where the team had just used 3 of their previous 4 high picks on defencemen. He chose 2 wingers (Quinn and Peterka). Prior to that, team had not picked a winger high in 4 years and that winger (Nylander) was a bust. In 2021 he took a defenceman high and followed with 3 more wingers. In 2022, the team had chosen just one centre high in the past 4 years and 1 goalie high in the past 7 The team took 3 centres and a goalie It would seem to me, these things tend to be cyclical and the cycle should swing back to defencemen this year. I think it also matters where your pick falls and the talent available there. There was no way the Sabre weren't going to pick Kulich at 28 last year, given how high he was on their board. That said, the above lends credence to those who maintain teams pay far more attention to positional needs than they will publicly admit.

Krebs is starting to be used as the 3C and I think is definitely one of the players they are referring to when they say they are counting on internal growth.

Using percentages instead of raw numbers again, I see. Why don't you just say Adams has drafted 1 defenceman in the 1st 2 rounds over the past three drafts? It's the real numbers that matter. (And ignore that Bos, Sea, Phi, Win, Van, Nas, Pit, Stl, SJ, TB, Edm, Tor, VGK, Cal, Ott, NYR, NYI — literally half the league — have also drafted 1 or less over that span And then you can argue he should have picked a Dman over Kisakov or Leinonen (And ignore the merits of passing on Dmen to pick Savoie, Östlund, Kulich, Quinn and Peterka) Yes, the NHL blueline has depth problems. Yes, the pipeline could use more bodies. No, Adams has not been unforgivably negligent: we have 5 defencemen 24-and-under in the system who have been picked in the top 32. I doubt you'll find five teams in the league with that kind of young capital on their blueline. If you want to define him by Clague and Bryson, I'm obviously not going to stop you.

He's certainly more of a "concept of" right now, but I'll be judging him more on a next-year basis. A lot of inertia for him and Donnie to shake off there.

Yes, Granato. Context was in the aftermath of a speech Adams gave the players trade deadline morning. They told the players, and they're telling us: they believe in internal development and they have no plans to bring in saviours.

And then there's that Power kid, who is younger than most 'prospects' but somehow never counts in these discussions about how Adams has "ignored" the defence.